“What?”
“Car’s that way.”
I turn in the opposite direction and march past him.
“I wasn’t trying to trick you or anything,” he continues.
“I know.”
“Then why are you upset?”
“I’m not,” I lie. Or at least not for the reasons he thinks I am. I should never have agreed to this. This is the exact opposite of not spending time with someone. And I don’t like him like this. All heartfelt and sincere and… I let out a breath. “You’re going to have to knock it down,” I say as we emerge through the trees.
Declan bats a low-hanging branch out of the way. “What?”
“You brought me here for my professional opinion,” I remind him, climbing awkwardly over the gate. “You’ll need to completely rebuild it to make it any way habitable.”
He grimaces, looking back the way we came. “How about a lick of paint?”
I land with a soft thud on the other side.
“Some bright cushions?” he calls as I make my way back to the car. “A complimentary welcome basket?”
I turn to see him still standing in the field, looking almost disappointed. It’s a look I’ve seen on my clients’ faces many times. Usually when it hits them that realizing their dream isn’t going to come cheap.
“It’s got a lot of promise,” I say finally. “But you’ll need to do it right if you’re serious about it.”
“I’m serious.”
“Then check the building regulations before you even begin planning. Then start with the foundations. Get a carpenter to help with the roof. Water in the walls is going to be a problem. You also have no room to insulate inside and if you don’t want to change the appearance outside, you’ll have to rely on heat from the fireplace. And you’ll need to extend it. Once you start adding in furniture it’s going to get very cramped very quick and you… What?”
He’s smiling at me now, twirling the flashlight in his hand. “Nothing. Do you have a business card?”
“I’m on vacation. Can we go now?” I add, glancing pointedly at the clouds. I’m suddenly eager to get back to the hotel. To other people. To somewhere where it’s not just him and me.
“Anyone would think you wanted to be rid of me.”
“My best friend is getting married tomorrow. I have things to do.”
“Then who I am to keep you?”
He plants a hand on the gate before I can respond and launches himself neatly over it.
I turn back to the car before he can catch me staring, shivering as a light rain falls from the sky.
9
The clouds are here to stay. That’s what it feels like anyway as they remain a stubborn gray blanket in the sky for the rest of the day. By evening, everyone is resigned to the fact that it’s going to rain during the ceremony and an awning is erected between the hotel and the tent so that no one gets wet on the way in.
To cater to Paul’s ever-increasing family numbers and to make up for the smaller showing on the bride’s side, we’re forgoing a larger final party at the hotel for a supposedly reflective evening in the village pub, run by Uncle Harry.
It’s supposed to be a quiet night, a couple of drinks and some music, but by the time Annie drives us down for our fashionably late entrance, it looks like the entire village is there to celebrate.
I’m surprised so many people can fit inside. Kids sit cross-legged on the floor or under tables, eating chips and sipping soda. Others sit on the back of well-worn leather sofas or tuck themselves into the corners. There isn’t an inch of space. Luckily, I’m with the bride and have two reserved spots right in the center of the action.
“Real quiet,” I say loudly to her as we take our seats. “I’m feeling very reflective.”
She only grins as someone shoves a Guinness into her hands.
“Nothing for me, thank you,” I say as a woman leans over to take my drink order.
“Ah, you will.”
“I won’t,” I say firmly. “One of us needs to be sober tonight.”
“It’s one drink,” Annie says, taking a sip.
“Really,” I say to the now confused woman, who’s still insisting on taking my order. “I’m good, thank you.” I turn back to Annie who now has a mustache of creamy white foam. “Take it easy, party animal.”
“This actually doesn’t taste that bad,” she says, licking her lips.
The door opens and I glance up to see Declan arrive with a few others. Again, I’m dismayed by my instant reaction to the mere sight of him, as though the world suddenly tilts in his direction. There’s no hiding from him as he glances around the room. I haven’t seen him since he dropped me back to the hotel earlier, and though his eyes meet mine, they don’t linger, skipping over us as he gestures his group to the opposite side of the pub.
“Can you sing, Sarah?” a man to my left asks as he tunes his fiddle.
I force my attention back to him. “Not a note.”
“You’ll fit right in then.”
I learn pretty early on that I made the right choice to stay on the Coke. The drinks flow freely in the room and the tight circle of Paul’s friends around us makes sure that we don’t pay a cent for any of them. The bus is due to take everyone back to the hotel, meaning there are only a few sober people, and I keep a close eye on Annie as she accepts her second, third and fourth drink.
I have no doubt she only intended to have one to make a good impression on her new family but, Annie, who usually only ever drinks white wine spritzers and the occasional vodka shot, takes to Guinness like she’s been drinking it all her life, as though determined to drown any pre-wedding nerves. I soon lose count of how many she has, easy to do when they keep handing her new ones, and it’s a little after ten when she turns to me during a particularly fast song and puts her mouth right by my ear.
“Sarah?” Her eyes are unfocused, her breath damp on my face. “I think I’m… I think I’m going to…”
We make it to the restroom, where I kneel in the narrow space between the toilet and the wall and hold back her hair. The music continues loudly from the next room and I keep time with it as I rub circles into her back.
When she’s finished, Annie slumps on the ground next to the basin, looking dazed.
“Thanks,” she says with a sigh.
“What’s a maid of honor for?” I nudge her foot. “You want to go back to the hotel?”
“Yes. But it will look bad.”
“It will look worse if you puke all over your dress tomorrow.”
A little more persuading and I finally get her to agree.
“I’m going to take this girl home,” I say to a chorus of boos in the main room. Annie’s mom waves cheerfully at us from the corner. Mary sits next to her, so deep in conversation she doesn’t even notice us leaving. “Come on,” I say, draping Annie’s arm across my shoulders. “We’re going to bed.”
“I’ll go with you,” Paul says, trying to get up. One of the cousins promptly sits him down again.
“I’m fine.” Annie laughs. “Sarah’s got me. Stay. Have fun. Don’t be ill in the morning.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
Paul reaches up to kiss her, ignoring the hollers from the rest of the room. It’s another ten minutes before we can leave the party. We’re stopped by every person for well wishes and Annie’s still laughing as we finally stumble out into the night, waving at the smokers by the window.
“I thought you didn’t like to drive,” she says as I put her into the passenger seat.
“It’s a straight line, I think I’ll manage.”
I do manage but very, very slowly. It’s pitch black with no streetlights and I’m terrified at any moment a wandering cow will amble into the middle of the road. We make it back in one piece, though by now Annie’s mood has plummeted as expected, the joy of other people and the booze wearing off into the usual tired moodiness.
Luckily, I have plenty of experience of getting Anni
e home after a night out and know I have about ten minutes to get her into bed before the tears start.
The hotel is dark and empty, except for the man at the desk who gives us a sympathetic smile as I get Annie into the elevator.
“I need air,” she mutters as I swipe open the door to her suite.
“Can you undress without vomiting?” I ask, only half joking as she breaks away from me, stumbling into the room.
She doesn’t answer and I follow cautiously as she heads for the balcony.
“Annie?”
There’s a reason Annie doesn’t drink often. She is a terrible drunk. Sad and sore.
When I see she’s not about to fall off the balcony I start working on her bedroom, pulling the covers back and getting her pajamas ready. At least it’s not an early-morning ceremony.
I wonder if I have time to get those extra-strong painkillers from Mick.
“Annie?” I call when she doesn’t come back inside. I peek through the balcony doors. There’s a small table and chair set to the side but she’s not sitting at it. She’s sitting on the ground, her back to the wall. Her knees are drawn to her chest.
“Come back inside.”
“I can’t do this.”
I hope to God she’s talking about undressing. I keep my voice light. “Having doubts the night before the wedding is a little bit cliché, don’t you think?”
She says nothing, resting her forehead on her knees.
I crouch beside her. “It’s normal,” I say. “And you’ve had a lot to drink but if you cry, you’re going to make it worse. You’re just dehydrated.”
“Everything’s going to change,” she moans, her voice muffled behind her hair.
“It’s not changing,” I say soothingly. “Nothing’s changing. You’ll be married. So what? You want to be married. And then you’re coming back to New York and everything will go back to normal and we can go for lunch and we can get drunk and we can have fun like we’re eighteen again.”
“We can’t.”
“Of course we can.”
“No.” She lifts her head; her eyes open wide as she tries to focus on me. “We can’t.”
And she says it so seriously that I shut up.
Her face crumples. “I’m not moving back to New York. Paul and I talked about it and we’ve decided to move to Dublin.”
Dublin?
“What are you talking about?” There’s a painful wrench in my chest. “You guys were always planning to come back.”
“I know.”
“Paul hasn’t lived in Ireland for years. Why would he make you move here?”
“It’s not him,” she says, hiccupping. “It’s me.”
I shake my head, confused. “You’re going to have to help me out here, Annie.”
“I’m the one who wants to move. I asked him to.”
“But… why?”
“Because I like it,” she says with a little sob. “I like Dublin. I like Ireland. I like that it’s small and that people are friendly and I like the food and I like his family and we’re close enough to London that he can go over for work when he needs to. It feels right.” She looks at me mournfully, a mascara-stained tear sliding down her cheek. “I don’t want to a raise a family in New York. I want kids here and I want them to have little Irish accents.”
“Okay,” I say, my mind scrambling to come to terms with this massive change to my future. “Okay.”
“At least I thought that’s what I wanted,” she continues, so quietly I’m not sure I even hear her right. “But then you came and I realized how much I miss you and how I don’t have any friends of my own here. Only Paul. Even in London, all our friends are ours, not mine. It’s like I have nothing of my own anymore. What if I’m making a mistake? What if I’m supposed to be in New York with you? I mean it’s all gone so fast.”
“Fast?” I have to laugh at that. “Annie, you’ve been dating for three years. You’ve been engaged for two of them.”
“But the only reason we got engaged was because he was moving to London and we wanted to commit to each other. I mean, we’re so different.”
“Now you’re just being ridiculous. You’re basically the same person.”
“I should have had sex with more people,” she says. “I should have had sex with lots of different men so I know exactly what I want. Then I would know for sure. Then I could—” She cuts off as her eyes flick behind me. “Oh no,” she wails, hiding her head in her hands.
I turn, alarmed to find Declan standing at the entrance to the balcony.
He’s clearly come straight from the pub. The top buttons of his shirt are undone, his tie loose around his throat. His eyes are bright and focused on Annie.
“A private party and I’m not invited?”
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“Paul sent me to make sure you got back alright. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Go away.”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” he says shortly and before I can stop him, he comes right up beside me, his legs brushing mine as he crouches.
“I told you to go easy on the stout,” he tells her.
“I know.”
“You’re not having doubts, are you?
“Of course not,” she lies, outraged. She looks at me, panicked, but before I can tell Declan to get lost, he smiles at her.
“Because if you are,” he continues, “you should listen to your conscience.”
“What are you doing?” I hiss.
He ignores me. “If your conscience is telling you not to marry Paul, then that’s that. We’ll call it off. You haven’t signed anything yet, have you?”
Her brow creases. “No.”
“Paul will understand. He only wants you to be happy.”
“But all the guests.”
“Nah,” he says dismissively. “They’re only here for the party. And there’s no need to cancel that bit of the day.”
“But I want to marry Paul,” she insists, leaning toward him.
“You do?” he asks with exaggerated confusion. “Then what’s the problem?”
She pouts and collapses back against the wall. “You’re right,” she says, looking accusingly at me. “He is annoying.”
Declan takes her hand between both of his, moving his head so she’s forced to look at him. “Annie, Paul is my only brother. And despite all his attempts to persuade me otherwise, I love him very much. And I have never seen him happier than when he’s with you. To tell you the truth, I don’t think I even saw him smile before you came along.”
“Shut up.”
“It’s true. Do you know what he did after your first date? He rang our mother and told her he was going to marry you one day. Now granted, that’s because she was trying to set him up with a friend’s daughter from her bridge group but that’s still a very romantic thing to say. Or how about how he stayed in New York for three months after his job finished so he could be with you. That’s an expensive city, I don’t know if you noticed. He was almost broke when he came to London. I had to lend him money so he could take you to dinner.”
“That’s not true.”
“Oh yes, it is. Annie Dunmore, he couldn’t believe his luck when he found you. He loves you more than I’ve seen anyone love anyone. And no matter where you choose to live or what you chose to do, I know you two will make it work.”
She gazes at him with watery eyes. “How do you know?”
“Because I’m a secret romantic,” he says. “And we know a thing or two about this stuff.” He lets go of her hand and sits on the ground, stretching his legs out. “If you cancel the wedding tomorrow, it won’t make a blind bit of difference. It’s only a wedding. People have them every day. But I think if you love him and the only thing stopping you from wearing what I’m sure is a very beautiful, very expensive dress is that you’re worried things might get hard in a few years, then I think you should marry him. Because things will get hard whether you do or don’t. At least this way you get some
happy memories to go with it. And a toaster.”
Annie’s brows draw together. “You got me a toaster?”
“They’re more expensive than you might think. This one does four slices at once.”
There’s a flicker of a smile on her face. “Don’t tell Paul,” she whispers.
“Never.”
“I love Paul.”
“I know.”
“He’ll make fun of me.”
“He will,” Declan says seriously. “And we can’t have that.” He slaps his hands against his thighs. “Now, you’re getting married in less than twelve hours, which means you’ve got an awful lot of sleeping to do if you want to stay awake for the after-party.”
“Oh God,” Annie groans. “I’m going to be a mess.”
“Just get through the vows. He’s stuck with you then.” He pats her knee as if talking to a child and hoists her up into an almost-standing position. “Come on,” he says. “Deep breaths.” I grab her other side and her weight shifts instantly between us.
“I’m okay,” she mumbles. Declan and I glance at each other and slowly let her go.
Annie immediately starts swaying.
“Alright.” He sighs and with one quick movement, his hand catches the back of her knees and she’s up in his arms. She doesn’t complain, her head dropping wearily to his shoulder.
His eyes meet mine. “I wasn’t kidding about that bad back.”
“Right,” I mutter and hurriedly open the door as he brings her inside, laying her gently on the bed.
“At least she won’t have to stand for several hours in a heavy dress tomorrow.” He steps back, rubbing his neck. “You might want to get a bucket.”
I shoo him aside and go to remove her heels. I’m about to tell him to leave when the door clicks shut behind me.
Oh. Fine.
Annie stirs enough to help me undress her and I run a makeup wipe over her face to get the worst of it off.
“Sorry,” is all she mumbles before I shush her.
When I finally get her under the covers, I set a glass of water on the nightstand and an empty champagne bucket on the floor. Just in case. Paul is spending the night in the village out of some semblance of tradition, so at least I know she’ll be undisturbed, but I still feel bad leaving her. Only when I’m sure she’s asleep do I lock the balcony door and slip out into the hallway.
One Night Only: An absolutely hilarious and uplifting romantic comedy Page 8