by V. Theia
He couldn’t bear to be parted from her though he slipped from her body, he rolled on to his back and pulled her with him.
She did what she always did on his come down. She petted him all over his torso.
Danny was sunk.
With the first kiss. The first touch. The first look.
He was gone.
And he didn’t know if he could survive her leaving him a second time.
The thought weighed on his mind even as he had her over and over, quenching a thirst that raged on with the hours.
Danny cleaned her up and fed her.
What he didn’t do that night was sleep a wink.
TWELVE
“An Irish fairytale…with just a few dents along the way.” – Aoife
“I’m not one of those modern men, little Misha. I’m old fashioned in a lot of ways, so I’m going to tell you one of those stories that begins Once Upon a Time. Don’t you be telling on me now, you hear?”
From around the corner of the kitchen, Aoife stood listening to Danny talking quietly to the baby and her heart seized and then restarted with an effortless thump with so much love for him, it winded her.
She smiled when he started the true tale of falling off a slide to impress a ginger haired girl. She leaned into the wall, a hand over her racing heart and listened in with a wistful smile on her face.
“You see, the boy was besotted with the ginger haired girl. He thought she was magic because her smile was his favorite thing in the world. Though they were only wee bairns themselves, not much older than you, little one. But he knew he loved her, so he did. After all, he gave her half of his cookie that day. If that’s not love I don’t know what is.”
She heard him chuckle and Misha babbled happily. It sounded like there were two females in the house now in love with a pastor.
Without alerting him to her presence just yet, she had to hear the rest of the story, even though she’d been there that day.
“So it goes, the boy wanted to impress the ginger rascal girl something fierce. Side-note, if a boy ever tells you he can fly from the top of a slide, tell the crazy fool he can’t and to go get more cookies instead, Misha.”
Aoife held in her giggle.
“So there he was, puffed up chest in his little gym shoes and shorts, looking down at the ginger rascal girl on the ground, it had to have been a mile in the sky, he could barely see the ground. And his knees started to knock. He promised her too much, you see. But the way she smiled up at him with the wind whipping her crazy frizzy hair all around her freckled face, there was no way the boy was backing down. She was the prettiest girl in school—in the whole world, as far as he was concerned.”
Aoife’s heart pinched in her chest.
They’d been in love so young. Best friends first. Partners in crime. No one person has ever come to mean so much to her in her life as Danny Murphy.
“So there he went, flying through the sky, little Misha. Can you imagine his fright when he flapped, and he flapped, and he didn’t fly? He made an awful thud, so he did, when he landed on the padded playground floor and then he made it worse by crying his eyes out.”
Oh, her young Danny-boy, even then he was adorably gallant.
“But you know what the ginger rascal girl did, Misha? While the boy was laid on the floor with his broken ankle and skinned knees and tears streaming down his face with all the other boys laughing at him, and him feeling like a failure because he couldn’t impress his princess. She ran all the way home to get his mammy, and when she came back she sat with him, and made him laugh and rubbed his hair and told him how cool he looked leaping through the air.” He went on, while Aoife fell more in love with the rumbling of his deep voice as he spoke of their shared past.
Every good memory had Danny in it.
“The moral of this story is, little one, sometimes you fall in love when you’re a six-year-old boy trying to impress a ginger rascal girl.”
Aoife moved then, with her tumbling belly and flamed cheeks, she pushed open the door to see Danny cradling a now sleeping Misha in his arms like he was made to hold a baby.
Oh, there went her crazy-wanting ovaries.
She wanted at least a hundred babies with him. At least.
“Did they live happily ever after, Danny-boy?” She asked, more in a whisper as her bare toes brought her further near him.
He’d been out of bed when she’d woken. Doubts had crept in because she didn’t know how he’d feel this morning. Maybe he’d have the night before regrets.
But he smiled, and the smile reached his gorgeous eyes.
“I wondered when you’d show yourself.”
She winged up both her eyebrows. “You knew I was listening?”
“You’ve never been quiet, Aoife. More like a bull in a china shop.”
She giggled and her whole body heated over when he held out a hand toward her. She scurried as fast as her feet would carry her and climbed into his lap.
“So … do they?”
“I hope so, sweetheart,” he rasped, kissing the side of her neck. “I really hope so.”
There was no morning after the night before talk, she realized as she snuggled into his lap just as comfortably content as Misha was laying in his arms.
It wasn’t needed.
Because just like that, as if seven years’ worth of space hadn’t separated them, Danny and Aoife became in sync again.
With a million problems to solve before they could legitimately have their happily ever after, she felt at peace with a heart full of hope and a gorgeous man with his arm around her and his mouth nuzzling the sensitive skin near her ear.
She was hopeful she was on the right path to righting all the wrongs of the past.
When you knew deep in every part of the body that you were meant for one place and one man, hope didn’t let go. It guided you through the turbulence in order to get you back to where your heart belonged.
“Can you still fly, Danny-boy?” She whispered so she didn’t disturb the baby and also because she was so giddy she thought she too might fly away.
She played with his hair and did her own nuzzling.
“Only when I’m inside you.”
Dead. She was dead.
And she’d been killed by a sexy as sin pastor of all people.
Oh, the deliciousness.
Pity life had to intrude.
It was a pity happiness wouldn’t last more than a few hours.
THIRTEEN
“There was a happiness in my boy not even God could put there.” - Robert
It was like having a deep pulsing wound that pained when poked, being away from her.
Danny left Aoife in bed … his bed … at 5:45 am that morning to go on his run around the town. It was while he was jogging by the edge of the mountains, a normal favorite route that he had a pang of separation anxiety for her and almost turned around.
Christ above, he was being a right eejit.
Fortunately for him, or maybe divine intervention, when he arrived back at the church grounds, he quickly showered at home and got into his work clothes of blue jeans and a T-shirt over a plain, long-sleeved Henley, giving his hair a cursory brush back with his fingers, he found an old friend in the church thumbing through one of the spring gala pamphlets.
As pastor, Danny was involved in most of the towns activities, especially charity based.
“We didn’t have a meeting, did we?” He asked his old friend and NA sponsor.
“Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry?” Chuckled Robert as he turned to watch Danny’s stride along the aisle. The pair shook hands and then went in for the hug as normal. Danny grinned back. “Sorry, I just meant I wasn’t expecting you today or even until the end of the month. It’s good to see you, actually.”
“Problem?”
“No. Maybe. I could do with your ear.”
“Lucky I have two. Shall we have tea?”
With a hot pot of earl grey made, Danny carried both cups and biscuits thr
ough from the back room and found Robert in the front pew scrolling on his phone. “I keep promising Mariah I’ll spend less time on this thing, but here I am.” He chuckled. “I tell her I could be addicted to crack again.”
Wasn’t that the truth.
Addicts tended to replace one addiction with another when they got sober.
With Danny he could say his was exercise.
There was nothing better than running on a cool winter morning or a sunny spring day. It cleared out his cobwebs and let him think quietly, especially on those days he just wanted to score a hit.
That monster never quite left his back, but he’d found tools to combat it.
That included Robert himself. He’d met the older man during his third week of attending church in that basement after his NA meetings. Only to find out they had more in common than faith. Robert too had been an addict back in the 70’s, clean and sober ever since, and a pastor in his own church in Denver.
Danny owed the man his literal life. He’d saved him one too many times those early months when all Danny wanted to do was slide back into the dark. With Robert on the end of a phone willing to drive hours if need be to pick Danny up, no matter the time of day, Danny had made it through the other side.
It was because of Robert too that Danny pursued a job in the church.
It was also because of him that he didn’t return to his old way of life back in Ireland. Instead, choosing to stay in America.
He was friend, family, a confidant and savior.
Robert knew about his life. And that included everything about Aoife.
Danny didn’t beat around the bush.
“Aoife is back.”
“Ahhh, well this is going to be more interesting than scrolling recipes on Facebook.” Robert mused, pushing his phone away in his jacket pocket. He accepted both cup and a plate of ginger biscuits. Sugar was also another addiction replacement. The pair of them could go through a box of biscuits in an hour between them.
“When did this happen?”
“This past week.”
“I can’t decide if you’re happy or not about her reappearance.”
“A little of both,” Danny said. “Happier.”
“But?”
He sipped his own hot drink and ran a hand through his messy hair and let his legs stretch out in front of him. He’d always loved this church. From the moment he’d unlocked the doors on his first day, he’d felt welcome… at home. The feeling was no less true now, even when his head and his heart were in a slight turmoil of uncertainty.
“She has a child with her.”
Robert didn’t miss a beat. “Not yours, I take it. You don’t think you can accept someone else’s child?”
“No, it’s not that. I’ve taken to her, so I have. Misha is a darling princess, and I suspect she’d wrap me around her little finger as easy as her mammy can. No, it’s not that at all. I’d love any baby of Aoife’s.” he amended with the truth. “I want all her babies to be mine, or I did. But I would accept them.”
“What’s the problem, Daniel?”
“Some trouble with the father. Aoife just turned up looking for refuge. And I’m worried once it’s dealt with, hopefully it is soon. I wonder if…”
“If you’ll lose her as quickly as she’s returned?”
Enslaved in the sight, smell and knowledge that Aoife was back again, he damn well was fearful of how long she’d stay.
It sounded ridiculous because he was still thinking of ways to get her out of the country and yet he couldn’t think of her leaving either.
“I’m afraid of what I’ll do…become … to keep her.”
“You realize you’re talking about love?” Robert said with a smile to his eyes. He sipped on his tea and helped himself to another of the ginger snap biscuits Cora stocked in the tin. “You’re compartmentalizing yourself, Daniel, into who you were and who you are now. You think somehow you’d act differently with Aoife because of who you’ve grown into. But it’s all love. You are not two different men. You’re just in a different place in your life. You love her and a man in love will do anything he must to keep it. If he’s smart. Ask my Mariah.” He grinned again.
Danny adored Robert’s wife. She’d welcomed him—drug addict and lowlife, into her home with no questions asked when he was at his lowest point and she’d made him part of her family.
“She’s staying with me, her and her baby.” Danny confessed, as if he expected Robert to look at him with judgment when he knew the man was far from it. “She’s in my bed.” There it was. The slight guilt of it.
He loved her with his everything but on some level, because he didn’t know whether she was staying or going once she was no longer in danger, he felt unsettled.
Would Danny even matter? Right now he was a safety for her, but what’s to say how Aoife would feel once there was no danger keeping her here.
He felt guilty for sleeping with her, for giving in to his desires as easily as he had.
He wanted permanently. He didn’t do hook-ups. He could have slept with half of the town’s female population; they didn’t hide the fact they were attracted to the new pastor over the years. Too many of them brought him food and offered themselves at the same time.
None of them had been hard to turn down.
Beside him on the wooden bench, Robert didn’t chuckle, but he looked pleased when Danny cast a side glance. “It’s about time, you’re not made to be alone, son. You’ve talked of her often, a lot in those early days, and I knew she was the one, regardless of her not being around. You know as well as I do the signs we’re given to what is meant to be.” Then added. “Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and He will establish your path.”
“Proverbs. 16.3,” half-smiled Danny, the tightness loosening in his chest. “I keep hearing; Whatever exists has already been named, and what humanity is has been known; no one can contend with someone who is stronger. But I don’t know if I’m trying to justify what I’m doing.”
Robert looked on in earnest as he finished off his tea. “If you’re connecting with Ecclesiastes 6:10 you know it’s for a reason, Daniel. No one is judging you. Not me. Not Him. Only yourself. Mariah would tell you to stop being a stupid man and talk to your girl.”
Danny laughed lightly. She would too. Mariah was about as outspoken as they came. “I always said she was the smart one in your marriage.”
“I can’t deny it. You and Aoife were too young to deal with the kind of feelings you had in your younger years. You’re both in a different mindset now. You’re certainly more mature if this isn’t the life she wants. Talk to her about what you’re thinking.”
“Your answer to anything is to talk,” Danny scoffed good naturedly.
“I don’t think it would sound right one pastor telling another to go and climb back into bed with his lady. But if that’s what you need, son.” Danny, more relaxed now, was in the middle of a barrel laugh when the door from the side opened suddenly and brought the cooler temperature inside along with a ginger haired girl holding a baby.
It was so resonate of several nights ago his heart seized seeing Aoife fresh from sleep with pillow marks on her cheek, dressed in oversized PJ’s and his T-shirt, and her wild mane cascading down over her shoulders.
He was up off his seat in seconds, striding towards her with his heart in his mouth, love pounding his temples.
The answer was simple really.
Looking at her.
He wanted her.
Needed the love from her. And he needed to give it.
He wanted what she represented and that was a life together.
Her and Misha. He wanted them both.
Already the little one squealed seeing him and reached out her chubby arms in delight.
Aoife stalled seeing that Danny wasn’t alone. He read her face easily that she was nervous, possibly embarrassed she’d interrupted him.
She made to turn. “Aoife. Come here to me, sweetheart.” He held his arm out and just like th
at, she flashed him the prettiest smile and scurried the few feet that separated them and was pressed into his side.
“I didn’t know you were busy,” she whispered. “I missed you.”
“Not busy. Come and meet a friend of mine.”
Whatever Aoife used to be or was now, she was never indifferent, so when he tried to usher her forward her skinny-girl legs stopped him in his tracks. He looked down and saw her fire-red cheeks. “I’m in my PJ’s, Danny!”
“It’s nothing Robert hasn’t seen before, come on.” He grinned and heard the man himself chuckle standing to his feet.
Emotions spilled all over her pretty face and the urge to dip down and kiss her freckles was a strong one he didn’t ignore.
She was his girl. Beginning and end. She was his girl. She was his girl when he was just a boy, and she was his girl now he was a man who followed his faith.
“You look beautiful.” He told her huskily and watched her melt as the baby batted her little hands against his chest, needing attention too. “And so do you, little one.” He kissed the top of her fluffy hair.
“The lovely Aoife I’ve heard so much about,” Robert started with a smile. Danny felt her hand tighten on the back of his shirt. “This is Robert. He’s a right one for cheating at cards, though he insists he’s just that good and he’s married to a saint who puts up with him.”
“Don’t believe a word this young Irish rogue says, he’s just butt hurt I take his money.”
“You … you both gamble?”
“Usually for cookies. Sometimes Almond joy bars.”
“Addicts love their sweets,” Danny filled in for her with a grin as he held her closer. The feeling of rightness didn’t rush past him. He reveled in just how good she felt as he introduced her to the other most important person in his life.
She caught on to what he was saying. “Robert is also my sponsor.”
“Sponsor. Best friend. Taxi service. Coach. Referee and overall champion of poker.” Offered Robert making Aoife laugh. “It’s so lovely to meet you finally.”