by Sienna Blake
“Should we put chocolate chips in?”
I glanced over at her. “Chocolate chips?”
She nodded, reaching up to the cabinet above her head and pulling out a bag of semi-sweet chunks.
“We haven’t had chocolate chips in our pancakes in a long time,” she said, smiling over at me.
She held the bag out for me to take. I stared at it, mixing spoon frozen in the bowl of pancake batter. We both knew why we hadn’t had pancakes with chocolate chips in such a long time: they had been Jaime’s favourite.
If a recipe called for a cup of chocolate chips, Jaime doubled it and then added another half cup “just in case”. He never explained what the “just in case” was for. But as I still stared at the bag Ma hung suspended in the space between us over the stove, waiting for me to simply reach out and take them, I thought maybe I’d found an answer after all these long, painful years. Perhaps Jaime knew, or at least a little part of him knew.
He added his “just in case” chocolate chips just in case it was his last pancakes. He added those extra few morsels because he might not get any more. He enjoyed those chocolate pancakes (more chocolate fondue than pancake) because he wasn’t going to take anything for granted, not even a stupid fecking pancake.
Because he had his one life. And he was going to live it happy and fulfilled and without regrets.
My breath came out shaky as I wrapped my fingers around the bag of chocolate chips, my hand brushing against Ma’s. Her sharp blue eyes watched me with nothing but kindness.
“You alright?”
I gave her a small smile in the first light of dawn. “No,” I answered truthfully. “But I’m working on it.”
Ma simply nodded, let go of the bag of chocolate chips, and returned to pushing the melting butter around the hot griddle. I poured the chocolate chips into the batter, stopped, and then tipped the whole bag over.
Just in case.
* * *
I was going to talk to Kayleigh.
I was going to tell her what was about to happen and that I wanted her to say no. I was going to tell her that I wanted her, I wanted to be with her.
I just needed to get her alone before Eoin popped the question. That was proving harder to do than expected.
“Darren!” Aubrey tugged at my arm as I was trying to slip through the kitchen when I saw Kayleigh come downstairs and join Noah on the couch. “Darren, wait, wait. Can you run to the store?”
I turned back to her, trying not to look frustrated. “The store?”
“I forgot the shallots for my famous omelette.”
From the couch, Noah leaned his head back and shouted, “Nobody knows about your omelette, darling.”
Ignoring him, Aubrey again tugged at my arm. “Please, Darren.”
I checked the busy-as-usual kitchen where everyone was preoccupied with something, even, surprisingly, Eoin.
“Can’t Noah go?” I asked, one last desperate attempt to get out of going.
Noah’s excuse came in the form of an empty mimosa glass raised above his head.
So I went to the store. I cut more wood outside for the fire. I loaded the tablecloth into the laundry machine so it could be dry for dinner that night. I figured out which light bulb needed to be replaced when a strand went out on the tree. I checked the air pressure in Ma’s car and Eoin’s car and Michael’s car. And I…and I…and I…
“Hey, have you seen Kayleigh?” I asked Noah, catching him on his way back from the champagne bottle to continue his checkers game with Aubrey on the floor in the living room.
“She went up for a shower.”
I nodded and took the stairs two at a time to the second floor. I’d just seen Eoin fidgeting with the ring box in the pocket of his hoodie and it’d made me nervous. If I was going to talk to Kayleigh, it had to be now.
My heart was racing as I rushed to the bathroom door and gave it two quick knocks before slipping inside.
“Just a sec—Darren!” Kayleigh’s eyes went wide as she held her towel tight against her body. “Darren, what the hell?” she hissed, pointing an angry hand at the door. “Get out!”
I held up my hands and averted my eyes. “Sorry, sorry.”
“I don’t care,” Kayleigh growled. “Get out.”
I shook my head and stayed where I was. “No. I’m afraid this is my last chance.”
Kayleigh’s mouth was halfway open, probably ready to hiss another “Get out”, but she stopped herself. “What do you mean?” she asked. “Last chance? Last chance for what?”
The words that I’d rehearsed in my mind to say to Kayleigh disappeared, and I was left stumbling for them in the steam-filled bathroom. I wanted to tell her how I felt about her. I wanted to tell her how special she was to me. I wanted to tell her that I wanted nothing else in the whole entire world but her.
But fear tightened my throat and I couldn’t get those words out.
Instead, I blurted out, “Kayleigh, you need to break up with Eoin.”
Kayleigh sighed and dragged a hand over her damp face. “Darren, is this really the time and is this really the place to discuss this?”
“You need to do it right now.”
I glanced over at Kayleigh and found her staring at me in confusion. “Right now?”
I nodded.
“On Stephen’s Day?” she whispered. “In front of your entire family? The day after Christmas?”
I looked her straight in the face and said without a trace of doubt, “Yes.”
Kayleigh stared at me, dumbfounded. “What?”
It looked like she was trying to find the punchline somewhere in my grey eyes: she could keep looking if she wanted. There wasn’t one.
“I need you to do it right now, actually.”
Kayleigh laughed despite the fact that there was no humour in the tone of my voice. “Right now? What, here in the bathroom? With me in a towel and you standing there?”
“Kayleigh, I’m not kidding,” I said. “Eoin is—”
The pounding of footsteps echoed down the hallway to the bathroom, and Kayleigh silenced me with a frantic finger to her lips. The knock at the door came mere seconds later.
“Kayleigh Bear?” Eoin called against the woodgrain of the door outside.
Kayleigh’s eyes were focused on mine as she answered, “Just a second.”
She jabbed a finger at the shower and mouthed, “Get in. I’ll cover for us.” I tried to whisper that I needed to tell her something, but she smacked a hand quickly over my mouth as she pushed me toward the shower.
“My little Kayleigh Bear,” Eoin called again. “Can I come in?”
Kayleigh’s eyes went wide as the doorknob turned. “Hold on, hold on, I’m coming,” she shouted, not doing a good job of hiding the nervousness from her voice. “Just…just a second.”
My calf hit against the edge of the tub and I stumbled in as Kayleigh shoved me back. I tried to whisper, “Kayleigh, wait. Eoin is—”
She pulled back the curtain to hide me. Before I could stop her, she was opening the bathroom door.
“Hey, there,” I heard Kayleigh say in a voice a little too cheerful and a little too high-pitched before the lights flipped off and the door shut behind her.
Alone in the shower I listened to her guide Eoin away from the bathroom till her voice disappeared. “Wow, it smells delicious in here. I can’t wait to eat. I’m just going to change and then I’ll…”
Everything around me was now silent. I wasted my chance to warn her. I wasted my chance to tell her how I felt. I wasted my chance to argue why she shouldn’t say yes to a successful and wealthy rugby star who could take good care of her.
I wasted my chance to give the only argument I had for why she should choose me being simply that I loved her.
Now I would have to wait and see.
I would have to wait and see if she loved me, too.
Kayleigh
Darren was insane.
As I was rifling through my duffle bag in my jeans and
a bra searching for a clean sweater to throw on, I shook my head in disbelief. I couldn’t believe he had asked me to do that. What was he on?
There was no way in hell I was going to break up with Eoin at his mother’s house with his entire family gathered round. That was unnecessarily cruel, unnecessarily embarrassing, unnecessarily unfair.
I couldn’t lie: I was just as eager as Darren was to be with him, to be truly with him. When he burst inside the bathroom as I was stepping out of the shower, I imagined him nodding toward the tub as he grabbed at the hem of his grey Henley and yanked it over his head.
“Get back in,” I heard him say in my mind.
I imagined him stripping himself naked, pulling the curtain closed after him, and taking me right then and there under the hot stream of water, my breasts pressed against the tiles, fingers digging into the back of his neck as I tried to steady myself as he fucked me, rough and desperate and fast.
But that was all impossible. At least for a little while longer.
I pulled a comb through my wet hair in front of the little mirror in Eoin’s childhood bedroom. I was certain that I wanted to be with Darren, that much I knew. But I was also certain that I had to let Eoin down gently, kindly, softly. I wasn’t going to just dump him like a lump of unwanted coal from a stocking on Stephen’s Day, of all days. What did Darren expect, after all? That I would say “So long, pal!” between chocolate chip pancakes and eggnog round the fire?
It was ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.
No, no, after today I would sit down and come up with a plan for the best way to break up with Eoin. It’d have to happen progressively so as to seem natural, five stages at least. Maybe six or seven. Because I wanted to break up with Eoin, but that didn’t mean I needed to break his heart or worse, break up his family.
After I peacefully, calmly, gently, very gently, ended things with Eoin, Darren and I would have to wait a while before starting things. How long, I wasn’t sure. A couple of months? Half a year?
I laughed to myself as I quickly braided my damp hair down my back. What on earth drove Darren to stampede into the bathroom and demand just like that, as if things could happen with the snap of his fingers, that I tell Eoin it’s over?
With an amused chuckle and a shake of my head, I headed downstairs where the family was gathering around the kitchen table almost buckling beneath the weight of yet another massive feast. There were platters piled a mile high with maple smoked bacon. There were bowls filled with sugar-dusted raspberries, strawberries, and pomegranate seeds. There were plates of cheesy scrambled eggs, Clonakilty sausages, and the obvious star of the show, chocolate chip pancakes. Eoin was going around and filling everyone’s champagne glass as the merry sounds of chairs scooting in and lips smacking and hands rubbing hungrily together mingled with pleasant conversation and the snap and crackle of the fireplace.
I smiled because everyone was smiling. Well, everyone but Darren, of course. His head was buried in his hands, elbows on either side of his empty plate while everyone else dug in.
I wanted to tell him that he was being silly. Everything was going to be just fine. We knew that we wanted to be together and that was all that mattered. We’d figure out all the rest later; there wasn’t reason at all that we had to rush, especially if we were potentially talking about the rest of our lives. I wanted to tell him to grab a pancake and relax.
It was a beautiful, perfect day.
“Kayleigh Bear,” Eoin said, grabbing my attention. He stood at the end of the table, holding out the chair for me. “Come sit here.”
Smiling, I made my way around the table and let Eoin help me into my chair. I reached past Michael for the bacon, expecting Eoin to take his seat next to me. So I was left awkwardly holding the platter of bacon above my plate as well as a glass of champagne when Eoin clinked his knife against his own. Frowning in confusion, I looked first at the empty floral seat cushion on Eoin’s chair and then up at Eoin, who was still standing.
“If everyone could wait just a minute to eat,” Eoin announced, holding his champagne glass between fidgeting fingers. “I know Ma’s pancakes look great, but if I could just...this won’t take long.”
The family exchanged curious glances around the table, but then one by one shrugged and set down their forks, their knives. Darren was the only one to not put anything down, but that was only because he was the only one to not have picked something up in the first place.
I went to return the heavy platter of bacon to its former place but found the spot taken by a ceramic boat of maple syrup. I was going to ask Aubrey if she could scoot it out of the way but was interrupted by Eoin clearing his throat, so I was simply left holding it.
“Alright, well, I’ve thought a lot about what I wanted to say,” Eoin started, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot next to his chair. “So I hope I can get at least a little bit of it out the way I got it in my head.”
I tried not to squirm in my chair, but the platter of bacon really was rather heavy. How long was this going to take? Those chocolate chip pancakes looked delicious.
“I think I can speak for everyone here when I say that family is everything,” Eoin continued. “We are so lucky to have each other. And we’re so lucky to know that we’ll always, always have each other.”
The muscles in my arms were starting to strain. I tried to catch Aubrey’s attention to nod at the maple syrup, but she was nestling her head against Noah’s shoulder and hugging his arm tight to her chest. I bit back a defeated sigh and consoled myself with the fact that I could skip arm week in my imaginary workout schedule.
Next to me Eoin was fiddling with the stem of his champagne glass as he continued, “I considered doing this atop some mountain in the Alps with a helicopter or something like that. Or at a private villa on some white beach with crystal-clear waters surrounding us. And for like a good thirty minutes or so I was set on doing it in a hot air balloon over the Grand Canyon. That would have been pretty bad-ass.”
Eoin seemed to lose himself in whatever the hell he was talking about, and it took everything in me not to tap my toe impatiently against the floor. I was starving and my arms were burning. Finally, Eoin shook his head loose and cleared his throat again.
“Anyway, I got rid of all of those ideas, because I realised mountains and oceans and Grand Canyons would mean nothing if my family wasn’t around for the biggest moment in my entire life. So far.” Eoin paused, and I thought we were finally going to get to cheers to family and eat.
But then Eoin lowered himself. Not to his chair, where he was supposed to be. But to his knee.
Eoin lowered himself to one knee next to me.
Next to me.
Why was he on one knee next to me?
All along the table there were excited gasps from his family. I was still busy staring at that cursed empty floral-patterned seat cushion.
“Kayleigh Bear,” Eoin started.
He reached for my hands, only to find them still preoccupied with the platter of bacon. He laughed slightly uncomfortably when he tried to relieve the burden from my grip and I resisted. My mind screamed ridiculously, “You can’t put a ring on a finger that’s holding a platter of bacon! Don’t let go. Don’t let go. Don’t let go!”
Eoin wrestled the bacon away from me and after searching the laden table, settled on just putting the platter next to his bent knee. I couldn’t believe what was happening as Eoin slipped my hands into his and rubbed his thumbs soothingly along the back of my suddenly clammy palms.
“Kayleigh Bear,” Eoin started, sucking in a deep, steadying breath. I’d never seen him so nervous. “That night outside of Dooley’s you saved me from being hit by a car, but there was nothing you could do to save me from you. From the moment I laid eyes on you I fell, I fell harder than I ever thought was possible. I knew right then and there that I’d found my soulmate.”
Panic was starting to tighten my chest as I stared down in disbelief at Eoin.
“I know we haven’t been
together for very long,” Eoin continued. “And I know that a lot of people will say that it’s too fast.”
I tried to force a tiny, pained smile to match even a tiny portion of Eoin’s wide, beaming smile. I hoped it didn’t look like a grimace, because that’s what it felt like to me.
“But as far as I’m concerned, the only thing that I need to know is that you’re my soulmate, and I’ve known that since you were on top of me on that ice. So, Kayleigh Scott…” Eoin paused as he pulled a black velvet box from his pocket and flipped it open to reveal a dazzling diamond ring that I thought only existed in movies.
Eoin smiled up at me. “Will you do me the greatest honour of letting me get to know you and all your wonderful little details for the rest of our lives?”
I stared dumbly at the diamond ring, jaw hanging open stupidly.
Eoin leaned in a bit closer and whispered, “Just in case that wasn’t clear, I’m asking if you want to get hitched. I just wanted it to sound nice, you know?”
“I understood,” I managed to croak out like a hoarse frog.
Of course I understood what he was asking. It was more than obvious. The answer was even more obvious: no.
No, absolutely not. No. No. No. No, I cannot marry you. No, I’m in love with your brother. No. No. No.
I opened my mouth to speak, but then I remembered Eoin and I were not alone. My eyes scanned over the O’Sullivan family: face after face of joy and excitement and anticipation. Darren was the exception—Darren’s face was paled and pained as he stared at his still empty plate. He was the reason I wanted to say “no” to Eoin.
But what would happen if I did?
Eoin would be crushed, his family would be disappointed. Darren alone would be relieved. We would all spend the rest of the holiday in awkward silence, tense small talk, impatient clock watching, all begging that the minutes and seconds flew by faster and faster.
Eoin’s brothers would try to console him. Michael would take a turn. Then Noah. But when it was Darren’s turn, Eoin would see in Darren’s eyes that he was relieved. He would think about at all the times he almost caught Darren and me together, all the hidden glances, stolen touches. He would see what had been right in front of his nose the whole time. He would see what he had been so clearly blind to.