by A. S. Kelly
I concentrate on my work: it’s a full house and the customers don’t let up for a minute, coming to the bar asking me for drinks. It’s a bit tiring and every once in a while I need to take a break for two minutes to catch my breath and collect my thoughts, but it’s okay, I don’t mind, it’s one of those rare occasions where I don’t feel completely useless.
“Everything okay?” Liam says, approaching the counter again.
“Yes, thanks.”
“Could you prepare us four more pints of Guinness, please?”
“Sure, Liam. Right away.”
I turn my back to get the glasses and I can hear some girls chatting on the other side of the counter:
“No, I don’t believe it. It can’t be him.”
“But it is, I’m telling you. It’s him.”
“I didn’t know he was Irish.”
“Well he is. Somebody like that couldn’t very well be English, now could he? Did you see what a load that guy has? I’d jump him right now.”
“You’re drunk, you’d probably fall face first on the floor, or on your ass.”
“E-Excuse me,” I say, silencing them right away. “Who are you talking about?” I try to ask without stuttering.
“That guy there, the one who just ordered four beers from you. Don’t tell me you didn’t recognize him?”
I turn slightly to give him a quick once over, but he notices and so I blush like an idiot and go back to looking at the two half-drunk girls.
“Come on!” one of them says. “Where the hell do you live? It’s Liam O’Reilly, the singer—”
A glass slides out of my hand, breaking on the floor and calling Liam’s attention back to me. He gets up and comes behind the counter.
“Need a hand?”
I shake my head and bend down to pick up the glass.
“Hey, what’s happened here?” Aaron asks, appearing in front of me, looking red in the face.
“Nothing, I just broke a glass, that’s all. Everything’s fine.”
“Maybe you need a break,” he says before turning and setting his heavy glance on Liam.
The two have a staring match for a few seconds, before Liam walks away saying nothing. I follow him with my eyes. I see him go back to his table, talk to the guys and then walk out the door without looking back.
“Go on,” Aaron recalls my attention. “I’ll finish this,” he adds, sending me on my break.
I leave the counter and head over to the table, where Jay and Patrick start squirming in their chairs the second they see me.
“What happened? Why did he leave?” I ask them.
“What? Who?” Patrick says as if he doesn’t know what I was talking about.
“You know who—”
“—Oh! Liam. He remembered he had something to do.”
“Patrick,” I say with a big sigh. “Who is he?”
“He’s—he’s Liam, Rain. Liam’s an old friend.”
“I mean, who is he really?”
Patrick goes white and runs a hand over his shaved head. He doesn’t look at me, staring instead at his beer and running his finger over the lip of the glass.
“He’s an old friend, Rain.” Jay stands up and puts an arm around my shoulders. “Nothing more, really,” he says calmly.
“Then why did those two girls say he’s famous?”
Jay’s arm tenses on my shoulders before slowly relaxing again.
“Famous? Oh please,” Patrick intervenes. “He released a couple of songs with limited success, that’s all. Maybe those two fans are into his music and they recognized him, but I assure you, he’s nobody important.”
I nod, moving backwards. I stop a moment in front of their table to reflect on what they said before heading toward the door and the open air.
“Rain, stop, I beg you.” Jay joins me outside.
“It’s that—I always get the impression that everyone’s trying to hide something from me, you know what I mean?”
“I know.”
“It’s so—”
“—Unfair. I know, it’s disgusting. I can’t even imagine how you must feel, but believe me, none of us is trying to hide anything from you.”
“Really, Jay?”
“Really.”
He gets closer to me and and wraps his arms around me. Jay is wonderful, like a brother to me and I love him like I love Aaron.
“Did I know him?” I ask, raising my head and looking him in the eyes.
“No,” he responds dryly. “You didn’t know him, Rain. We used to hang out together a bit, but then he left and made a life for himself and has just come back now after a few years.”
“Okay,” I respond, slipping disappointedly out of his embrace.
I thought I could trust him. I thought he would never lie to me. Instead, now I feel like he’s hiding something. And I can’t understand why.
12
Liam
“Where the fuck are you? Call me back right now. This thing—is getting out of hand, Liam. I can’t lie to her. Call me for Chrissake!”
I listen to the message five times before deciding to call him back.
“Where the hell are you?” He answers on the first ring.
“Hey, Jay, calm down.”
“No! I will not, for God’s sake! She asked me some things. I’m afraid she suspects something. She asked me if she knew you—where the fuck are you?”
“I’m in the hotel.”
“What hotel?”
“I’m in Howth, Jay.”
“Tell me the name.”
“Maybe it’s better if you calm down first.”
“Give me the fucking name!”
So I tell him where I’m staying and not long afterwards there’s a crash as the door opens.
“I will not let you do this,” Jay yells, bursting into the room and going directly to the bed.
“Do you want something—” I ask him.
“I don’t want anything. What I want is for you to go back to where you came from.”
“I can’t do it,” I say, sitting in the armchair in front of him.
“Did you really come back for her? What is it you think you’re going to get? Huh? To take Neil’s place? Or to take advantage of her?”
“God no, Jay! Is that what you think? That I came back to play around with her? She is—she’s all I’ve got left.”
I can’t hold back my emotions any more. I need to say it out loud to someone in order to make it real, before this thing makes me completely lose my mind.
“I was crazy about her, Jay. I always have been. Damned crazy about her.”
Jay sighs and walks over to me, he puts a firm hand on my shoulder, forcing me to look at him.
“It’s not necessary that you tell me how much you loved her, Liam. I’ve known you since we were ten years old.”
“What—what the heck…” I mumble, confused.
“Do you think I’m an idiot?”
I shake my head several times, drawing my eyes downward. I wasn’t even able to hide how I felt or perhaps my feelings were too strong and too intense to be held in my heart.
“Why didn’t you stay? Why did you abandon her? You should have waited, stayed by her side, helped her like we did, helped her to get back on her feet—”
“I couldn’t because she was about to marry him.”
“What?”
“Neil had asked her to marry him, but she hadn’t given him an answer. That night, the night of the accident, he asked her to make a decision—He didn’t want to go on tour and leave her in Dublin. He wanted to bring her with us. She didn’t want to leave her work, her life—she wanted to stay.”
“And he thought it was a good idea to give her an ultimatum, or what?” Jay asked.
“She didn’t want to accept, she didn’t feel it, not like that. She didn’t want to be a nuisance, someone you drag along with you, someone waiting in a hotel room—and then, you know the rest.”
“At this point, I don’t know a fucking thing, Liam,
so you’d better spill it.”
“He was angry, furious—he kept yelling at her and telling her she couldn’t do something like this to him, while he was driving like a crazy man. And then she looked in the rearview mirror. She looked in that fucking mirror and caught sight of me. I implored her with my eyes not to do it. I asked her not to do it, do you understand? I asked her not to marry my brother! And Neil realized what was happening. One look was enough for him to understand everything and he lost his mind—and then, that damned car arrived.”
Jay sits in silence. He touches his face a few times before speaking.
“And when she woke up—”
“—She didn’t know who I was, she didn’t want me next to her—she couldn’t even stand to look at me. I couldn’t get close to her, to speak to her, to ask forgiveness. Maybe her mind chose its place, maybe it was the right thing for her, to be like this.”
“You could have waited—”
“No!” I shake my head and jump to my feet and turn my back on him. “I couldn’t do it. My heart was broken.”
“It’s not your fault, you know.”
“I destroyed two lives in one shot.”
“But you’re both alive, Liam.” He stands and comes toward me. “You’re here.”
“And what life have we got? Let’s take a look, shall we? I’ve fucked up everything, every tie I had, every goal reached. I’m an ex-fucking junkie who almost died by his own hand. I lost myself. I don’t exist any more.”
“And yet, I see you.”
“No—I’m not able to go on like this, I can’t even play music anymore. Nothing is left of me. Nothing. I died on that street, same asphalt, under the same rain falling on him. And I died with her.”
“She’s also still here, Liam, just like you.”
“No, she’s not here any more. She’s gone.”
“She is here, just in a different way. It’s still her, you have to dig deeper, go beyond the surface. She’s still here with us.”
“I shouldn’t have come back, I shouldn’t have seen her, I should have—”
“Okay, now that’s enough of that.”
“I should have stayed away from her.”
“The damage is done by now. She met you, she has spoken with you and I don’t think she’s indifferent to you.”
I snap my head towards him.
“Maybe her feelings are there,” he goes on, “hidden somewhere, waiting to be brought to light. Maybe she hasn’t forgotten everything.”
“What—what are you trying to tell me?”
“Rain has always been as clear and transparent as water, she’s no good at lying and completely incapable of hiding what she feels,” he says, pacing around the room, ruffling his hair. Then he pauses, takes a big breath and turns to me again, looking me straight in the eye, while my mind is spinning in confusion.
“Now I ask myself if something has changed for you.”
“What the hell kind of question is that?”
“Did you really come back for her? What are you looking for, Liam? Comprehension? Forgiveness? Redemption—Love?”
“She—was his, Jay. She always was.” I shake my head, accepting the inevitable.
“If you are so convinced of it, I ask myself why you’re still here?”
“Because it’s the only place I can breathe.”
Rain
“Hello, dear, can I come in?” Jay sticks his face around the door to my room.
I wasn’t able to get out of bed this morning. I haven’t left the house, haven’t gone to work and the worst of it is, Jay is the one who had to stay home with me. Not that he makes me feel like it’s a problem—none of them do. But I always have a sense of guilt all the same, because no one can get on with their life because of me.
They never leave me alone.
Damned migraine.
“Come on in,” I mutter from under a pillow.
“How’s it going?”
“Bad,” I say in a whiny voice.
I feel the bed move under his weight and I realize that he’s sitting next to me.
“I’ve brought you some tea and two slices of toast. You should try to get something down. You haven’t eaten since yesterday.”
“I don’t want it,” I complain like a baby. “I’m nauseated.”
“I know,” he says, moving the pillow from over my head. “But it’s five o’clock, darling, and it’s going to get worse if you don’t manage to eat something. Believe me.”
I nod, stretching my eyes while Jay helps me to sit up, placing some pillows behind my back.
“Thanks.” I smile.
Jay is so affectionate and sensitive, he’s the best and I’m sure that the story they made up about drawing lots for who would stay home with me, is a pile of crap, because every time I feel awful, it’s always Jay who takes care of me.
“Why do you do it, Jay?” I ask him.
“We draw for it, you know.”
“Don’t lie to me. You’re always the one who stays home with me.”
“I’m very unlucky,” he jokes.
“In love too, apparently.”
He winces a second before shaking his head as if to shoo away those thoughts from his mind.
“How come you don’t have anybody?” I ask, drinking some tea and grimacing.
“Why have someone else when I can have you?” he answers, caressing my hair.
“That’s the same old excuse I always get when I ask you guys about your love lives. It can’t be true for all of you, can it?”
He bursts out laughing before lying down next to me.
“Rain, you’re the most important thing for all of us, you know that, right?” He holds me in his arms and makes me cuddle up to him.
“I know,” I say, with a heavy heart. “I wish it wasn’t like that. I wish there was no obligation to take care of me.”
“Don’t talk like that. We’re a family and in a family, we take care of each other.”
“Wouldn’t you like to have another family someday, Jay?”
“Ah no, those things aren’t for me.”
“How can you say that if you’ve never tried?”
“Believe me, Rain, it’s better like this.”
“Have you ever been in love, Jay?”
“This conversation is going in a direction that I don’t like.” He gets up and goes to the door. “I’ll let you rest.”
“Jay?” I call him before he can leave. “And me? Tell me, Jay, have I ever been in love?”
He stops with his hand on the door, before resting his forehead against it. He sighs heavily.
“I’ve been in love. One time. It happened to me just once, a long time ago,” he confesses and I understand that it’s a ploy: in order to not reveal anything to me about myself, he preferred to say something about himself. And if he’s decided to do that there has to be something in my past life that people really don’t want me to be aware of, because Jay is the most reserved person I know and rather than open his heart, he would have it torn out of his chest and stamped on.
13
Liam
“Hey, man.”
“Hey, Liam. Still here, huh?”
Patrick is right. I can’t stay away from this fucking place even for half a day.
“Not much to do here.”
“It’s a little piece of shit dot on the map, not exactly downtown London, what did you expect?”
“No, it’s not.”
And it’s better like this.
“Why this choice?” I ask him. If I want to know something, all I have to do is ask Patrick; he goes straight to the point without mincing his words. No sugar coating.
“Because there’s nothing here, mate. It’s a quiet place, people fish or have a little business. Sure, there are tourists, most of whom come from the East and we’ve never had problems with them.”
“Problems?” I ask, while he passes me a pint, sliding it down the counter.
“No one here knows about us. No one know
s about her.”
“I understand.” I drop my gaze to my glass.
“It was hell, Liam.” He leans on the counter, closing the distance between us. “After that mess, with the press on us. They were outside our house, outside the hotel. They wanted to know about the band, about what our intentions were; about you, why you had abandoned everything. We had to find a place like this, where no one remembered us, where no one would ask us questions that could have upset her. Where no one knew her or about her, what really happened, how she used to be. We had to remake our lives in order to give her some kind of future.”
I am, truly, a piece of shit of a man.
I didn’t do it. I didn’t stand by them, with her.
I left.
“Why did all of you stay?”
“What the fuck should we have done? Throw her under the bus like you did? Try our hands at a solo career? For what? Nothing mattered anymore. This has become my family by now, with Jay and Aaron, they’ve always been like brothers, you know. Neither one of them would have ever given up on the other like you did.”