by Sienna Blake
Diarmuid knew of Ailis. So did Declan. I’d spoken of her all too much to them back when we were teenagers.
“That was a shitty chord. You losing your musical touch or what?” Diarmuid teased.
Now it was my turn to avoid.
Avoid the topic of my musical block.
Avoid the topic of a certain green-eyed witch who was back in my life to curse me.
“Spill it, bro,” I blurted out. “What’s got your knickers in a twist?”
There was a long, weighted pause at the other end. So long I thought for a second that he’d hung up.
“Diarmuid, did your dick fall asleep? Spit it out.”
“There’s a girl…” he blurted out. “A woman.”
Wasn’t there always?
I listened as Diarmuid spilled his guts to me, how he was falling for a girl he shouldn’t, a seventeen-year-old woman from his past, considered legal in Ireland, but of course, there was a plot twist. She was one of his work assignments in his role as a Juvenile Liaison Officer. A big fat no-no.
If he pursued her, he would lose his job.
My blood turned cold as the parallels between his situation and mine became apparent.
Ailis was overage, that was for sure. But any involvement with her meant the end of her time at DCM and most likely, the end of her career before it even started.
It meant I’d lose my teaching position, this salary that was keeping me afloat and access to the recording studios I needed to get my album finished.
I wasn’t going to say anything to Diarmuid, but…well, misery loves company.
“I want someone I shouldn’t want, too,” I said quietly, finally voicing the secret I’d been trying to keep from even myself, breathing life into it.
Fuck. I want Ailis.
“You what?”
“You heard me.”
“Who?” he asked.
“Don’t judge.”
Diarmuid let out a snort. “Do I ever?”
“No.” Diarmuid and Declan might not be blood but they were my brothers. They would love me no matter what I did. “One of my students,” I admitted. That was all I’d admit.
Diarmuid sucked in a breath. “Jesus Christ.”
“I know.”
“You could be fired,” he said.
And it’d ruin everything. For me and her.
“So could you, you fucker,” I snapped back. I deflated just as soon as I snapped.
“So…” Diarmuid said.
“So,” I repeated.
“What are you going to do about it?” he asked.
Corner her against a door and kiss the shit out of her. Rip off her clothes and hoist her bare ass onto piano keys before making music with her body and mine. Make her scream my name over and over as if it were her ultimate performance.
I shook my head of yet another dirty fantasy starring Ailis. She certainly had no stage fright in any of those.
“Not what I want to, obviously,” I said, my voice growing hard.
Just when I was on the verge of making something of myself, she had to waltz back into my life, oblivious as fuck, ready to unbalance me, to distract me. To make me want her—want her so badly it warred with my need to make music. She made me think of her constantly, even when I should be focused on my unwritten debut album.
Ailis could never know my thoughts. She could never know how much she affected me. I couldn’t let her in.
“The only thing I can think to do,” I admitted to Diarmuid, “is to be cruel to her so she never knows that I want her.”
33
____________
Ailis
Then – Limerick, Ireland
The doorbell rang on the first day of end-of-year holidays. I could never have predicted as I opened the front door to my family home what was waiting for me on the other side.
But for it to make sense you have to know what happened a few days ago…
At the end-of-year school concert.
I was nervous before I had to go onstage, of course. But that was nothing until Danny got up to perform. Right. Before. Me.
What the hell was he even doing on stage? He wasn’t earmarked to perform in this “shitty amateur hour”, words that I’d overheard him saying.
But Danny was Danny. He did what he wanted. Changed his heart at a moment’s notice, at a whim, consequences and everyone else’s lives be damned. And he got away with it too. No one said no to Danny O’Donaghue. Son of a rock star. The musician prince. A future rock king.
He’d taken the stage and the audience had erupted into pandemonium. Some were even giving him a standing ovation before he started playing.
Jealousy twisted in my guts.
This was what I wanted.
To perform, to sing, to play. To stand in front of an audience and be loved. To be someone. To be worthy.
They just gave it to him. Because of his stage presence, his rock star DNA, and yes, finally because he had a God-given talent for playing and a voice so deep and crooning he made Chris Isaak sound like a girl.
I had to work for every clap I got. No one in my family was a musical legend. They didn’t even sing, except for at wakes and weddings and always in a drunken, off-key voices. My parents didn’t have money for guitar lessons, so I had to teach myself after watching hours and hours of YouTube videos and playing on my shitty second-hand guitar.
Danny grinned at the audience, who were loving him already, and he played a few tune-up chords.
They screamed. He grinned wider.
Then he launched into a song that took me all of three seconds to recognise. It was the one he’d written for me. The one he’d sang in the hospital when I was sick. The one that had made my heart so swollen with love for him. Before he shattered it.
“She”.
My heart thudded out of beat. I felt sick. At the same time, I felt high. Naked. Vulnerable. He was singing my song—my song—in front of everyone. They didn’t know what it was about. But I did.
I did. And hope soared in me. Finally after these two years, there was my Danny, come back to me.
I stood there at the edge of the stage, thunderstruck, my feet rooted to the ground, staring at his lips moving against the microphone. So close. So tender. The way he used to sing against my skin.
He struck up the chorus.
I flinched as unfamiliar words soaked through me. He changed it. It was different.
His eyes swung to the right, zeroing in on me. He sang this new chorus to me, his lip curling in disgust, his brows furrowing over his eyes.
“But she. She had broken wings.
And broken things
Followed in her wake.
Hate her, curse her.
I hope she never flies again.”
Every word was like a poisoned thorn burrowing into my skin. Arrows ripping holes into my skin-like wings. I’d been soaring. Now I was falling. Hope shattering as I crashed.
It was all a blur as he finished the song. I blinked and suddenly he was pumping his fist at the applause, then striding offstage towards me.
He halted right in front of me, just offstage.
Questions bubbled up in my throat but refused to go any further.
Why would you do that?
Why would you ruin that song?
Why do you hate me so much?
“Like the song, Dearg?” His blue eyes sparkling with bitter amusement. He thought my hurt was funny.
Before I could answer I felt a nudge at my back. “Ailis, you’re on.” It was one of the stagehands.
“Excuse me,” I muttered, hating myself for sounding so weak. Any enthusiasm I had for this concert had drained from me.
Danny didn’t move. He just stood there, taking up too much space. Forcing me to squeeze past him, my skin erupting into violent shivers at his touch.
My guitar had already been set up on stage by one of the other stage hands dressed in black and moving swiftly. I stumbled to the centre, all too aware of Danny’s eyes on me, mo
re intense than the entire hall full of people. It burned deep down into me, searing at my bones, liquefying my marrow.
But the show must go on.
I sat on the stool, pulled the guitar on my lap and tried to take comfort in the familiar weight and shape of her. I forced a smile to the waiting audience, already whispering to each other, the air disturbed with restlessness.
The show must go on.
I strummed the opening bars of the song I’d picked out, an acoustic version of Camila Cabello’s “Never Be the Same”.
I closed my eyes, shutting out the world, and began to sing.
I heard the collective stillness of the audience, felt their surprise. My guitar playing was good enough, but my voice was my strong point, where I was unique. And this song allowed me to showcase it.
I opened my eyes, encouraged by the reception; no one had booed me yet. I could barely make out the faces against the spotlight. Were they enjoying it? I didn’t know.
But I kept playing and singing.
A twang sounded. It might as well have been the sound of hope breaking away from my heart. My guitar string broke right there. Right in the middle of my song.
My cheeks bloomed with frustration, with the unfairness of it.
But the show must go on.
There was nothing I could do except to stop playing, to sing the final chorus a cappella.
When you strip away the instruments you are left with the raw and exposed voice. There I was, placing myself naked for everyone to hear. A small hush rustled across the audience. Was this a good thing? Was this a bad thing?
I didn’t know. In that moment, I honestly didn’t care. I slipped away in between the notes of the melody. I became nothing but breath and song. Not even the most beautiful pair of wicked blue eyes could rattle me.
When I finished the audience erupted into applause. I stood up, took a bow, then instinctively turned to my stage right.
But Danny was gone.
That was a few days ago.
So. Today. The first day of summer holidays. The ring at the doorbell. The large package on the other end for me that I was made to sign for.
The box was huge, almost as long as me, and heavy.
“Oooh, what did you get?” my sister, Rachel, crowed as she crowded me when I walked into the living room where the rest of my family were gathered.
I shook my head. I didn’t know. I wasn’t expecting anything. I didn’t order anything. I looked up to my ma and da, both nursing cups of tea, my da with biscuit crumbs on his shirt front.
I placed the box on the floor, as there was no room on the low table or couch to lay it, conscious of the this way up marked across the box.
“Well, go on. Open it,” my da said.
I grabbed a pair of scissors and cut through the heavy tape before pushing back the freed lid.
There, nestled in Styrofoam, was a beautiful acoustic guitar, a Martin D-42.
Holy shit.
A guitar. For me.
Not just a guitar but—I brushed my fingers across the Brazilian rosewood face—a 1936-42 Martin D-42.
Blood drained from my limbs. Dear God. This guitar must have cost more than what my father made in a year.
“There’s a note,” my sister Eileen said, pulling a small square envelope with my name across the front taped on the box that I hadn’t noticed before.
She pulled out the paper inside and I snatched it out of her hands, ignoring her protests. My ninja reflexes were refined after years of dealing with two nosy sisters.
I read the card.
Throw out that insult of a guitar. Now you have no excuse.
There was no signature at the bottom.
But I knew exactly who it was from.
I just had no idea why he’d done this for me.
I fumbled with my jumper hem, my nerves shot to shit as I waited on the front step of what had to be the largest, most ostentatious house I’d ever been to.
A servant answered the door, a tall slender woman dressed in a conservative maid’s uniform, hair pulled back into a bun.
“Hallo?” she said, staring at me, her accent placing her from Eastern Europe.
“Um, is Danny here? I’m a…friend from school.”
“Oh, miss,” the maid said, “I sorry, but he’s gone.”
“Gone? What, like for the summer?”
She shook her head. “Gone. Moved.”
Moved?
“W-what?”
“Yes, yes, he don’t live here anymore.”
“Oh.” He just left? Without saying goodbye.
As if he’d say goodbye to you, Ailis. What are you to him?
But he bought me a guitar. Didn’t he? No one else could have done it. No one else I knew had the money to buy a 1936-42 Martin D-42 flat out. I must mean something—something—to him. Right?
I still needed to thank him.
“Do you know where I can find him?” I asked. “His forwarding address? An email? A phone number?”
She shook her head. “Sorry.” Before she shut the door in my face.
I walked aimlessly after that, rare sunshine falling on my face. My head a whir, my heart a jumbled mess.
I suddenly realised what the guitar was.
A kind of sorry for how things turned out.
An acknowledgement of what we had been and could have been.
And a goodbye.
He was gone and he was never coming back
34
____________
Ailis
Now – Dublin, Ireland
After my violin piece performance, I expected to be called to stay after class. But Danny slipped out of the lecture hall as soon as he dismissed us. He said nothing about my performance. No feedback. Not even an angry scowl.
It seemed he didn’t even care enough to comment. Or he was saving it up for next time.
My nerves were frayed as I took my seat at the next Advanced Perf class. My knuckles were tight on the armchair as Danny strode in.
But this time, his gaze didn’t sweep up the stairs to meet mine. Disappointment filled me.
From then on, Danny ignored me in class, no longer calling upon me or picking on me. No longer demanding I perform. He barely looked at me.
I should have been happy. I should have been grateful that for whatever reason, he’d decided to stop toying with me.
Instead, I was disappointed. I ached for his attention, no matter how violent or destructive it was.
It was like I’d become invisible to him. That was worse than being hated.
How fucked up was I?
Weeks flew by and the air grew colder. The leaves turned and scattered nature’s lace across the grey footpaths.
Midterm was almost upon us, and the midterm assessment was something that was on everyone’s minds.
Danny had already shown that he was not the standard teacher. He cursed and swore and cut off performances to give feedback, encouraging us all to offer our thoughts too. He sent us out into the grass oval to perform or onto the street to busk on rare sunny days. He loathed to follow any sort of curriculum, even going so far as to tear the course notes in half and scatter them like birds when one of the students waved it at him. So the question of what he’d actually give to us as an assessment was looming over all of us.
“It’s one thing to perform here in this classroom to your peers,” Danny called out to us the week before midterm break. “It’s another to perform in front of a live audience on a real stage.”
My guts rumbled with anticipation.
“There’s an open mike night on at The Jar this Friday to celebrate the last day of term. I expect you all there with a piece ready to perform. Don’t just perform, impress me,” he yelled out. “This performance is your midterm assessment and I will be grading you.”
The class erupted into murmurs as everyone digested this news. Veronica stuck her hand up.
“Ms Shaw?”
“Do we have to perform solo?”
&nbs
p; “No. You can organise yourselves into a band if you wish, but everyone must perform at least a thirty second solo during the piece.”
Veronica waved her manicured hand at him again.
Danny let out a sigh before he said, “Again, Ms Shaw?”
“Do we have to perform with instruments?”
“Perform whatever you like. With instruments. With vocals. Both. Or without,” his eyes flashed with wicked intensity as he looked straight at me. “Although if you can perform vocally and don’t, you will be marked down.”
That shot was for me. It hit me right in the solar plexus.
Friday was four days away. There was no fucking way I was going to be able to sing in public with Danny watching.
“I am so fucked,” I muttered into my hands.
Ethan nudged me. “Are you going to sing?”
“I don’t have a choice.”
He shot me a sympathetic look. “We can practise together this week. And we can go to the open mike night together.”
I suddenly got an idea, one that maybe, just maybe might work.
I lifted my head. “That’d be great. In fact…you still up for that duet?”
Ethan broke out into a grin. “Hell, yeah.”
Friday night came quickly, every day passing made my nerves ratchet up higher until I could barely eat, barely sleep in anticipation of the open mike performance.
I wanted to do well.
Hell, I just wanted to be able to sing properly in front of everyone and to not make an ass of myself.
I hoped that my plan would work. It had worked during practice, but the real test would be tonight in front of Danny.
We planned for Ethan to pick me up at my apartment before we walked over to the university together.
“Wow, Ailis,” Ethan said when I opened my front door to him. “You look great.”
I brushed down my black body-hugging top that scooped across my shoulders, tucked into my dark skinny jeans. I’d even worn boots with a small heel to get that extra height. I’d pulled my hair up into a messy bun on the top of my head, letting a few curls fall down the side of my face. Anna had helped me do a smoky eye look with more eyeshadow and eyeliner than I’d ever worn before.