Just Like You Said It Would Be

by C. K. Kelly Martin

  Without warning, somebody was shaking me awake, consciousness sucking one figure out of the room and replacing it with another.

  “Amira, it’s me,” a female voice whispered. “The party’s moved down the back. Why don’t you come down?”

  I hoisted myself up on my elbows, my mind suddenly a complete blank. The wardrobe came into focus first, followed by an uneven patch of wall—Jack’s photos. I stared blinkingly up at my cousin as the events of the past ten days rushed back at me. The chilly barbecue with my cousins. St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Zoey’s birthday dinner in Temple Bar. Sticking my foot in my mouth after Gloria had told me she used to drink too much. Céad Míle Fáilte.

  “Where down the back?” I mumbled.

  “The shed,” Zoey replied, the impatience in her eyes hinting that she was repeating herself. “C’mon. We’re down the shed at the back of the garden. I thought you might want to join us.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Half-one.” She motioned for me to get up, my brain doing a slow translation to one-thirty as Zoey listened to the silence between us. “Are you coming down or not?” she asked, leaning in closer and lowering her voice.

  “I’ll be right there.” I threw on the clothes I’d been wearing earlier, pulled my hair into a ponytail and followed her downstairs. If I’d been more lucid I’d have done a cursory pillow line and sleep gunk check but considering what a deep sleep I’d been in only minutes earlier, Zoey had been lucky to get me out of bed at all.

  “Thanks for waking me up,” I whispered hoarsely as we tread across the backyard. The earlier humidity had entirely evaporated but somehow it seemed warmer. Or maybe I was just beginning to acclimatize.

  Music filtered into the night air as I slipped into the shed with Zoey, surprised to find that it looked more like a living room than the jumbo-sized storage closet it resembled from the outside. Subtract the fog of smoke and Zoey’s crowd of friends—whose numbers seemed to have multiplied since I’d said goodbye to them at the restaurant—and you’d be left with two amplifiers, mismatched couches, a drum kit, stereo, dining area, bar fridge, toaster oven and kitchen counter. “Fiona and Andy stayed here for a few months when they were first married,” Zoey whispered as I stood next to her inhaling the familiar party smell of spilt beer and weed. “Now we practice down here. We soundproofed it and all.”

  I nodded, my eyes jumping over to Darragh strumming his guitar by the kitchen table. His head was bent and he was staring at the floor. I watched his fingers slip smoothly along the strings as he sang about somebody in a bad situation. It wasn’t any song I knew. Maybe it was an original Brash Heathens tune and, if that was the case, I definitely had to be at that upcoming battle of the bands gig because it meant they were as good as Gloria had promised. Or that Darragh was at least. Now that I was studying him it seemed like an oversight not to have taken a better look earlier. He may not have been hot in a South American soccer player sense, but he had this blue-eyed, pale boy musician thing happening in a pretty big way.

  Wavy dark hair spilled down just over his ears and his skin was so white that it would’ve made him stick out like a sore thumb on a beach back home, but it did him the favour of making his blue eyes seem even bluer. A California swimming pool blue that seemed noteworthy even by Irish standards. If I’d grown up in Ireland I’d likely have developed a certain amount of immunity to the allure of ultra-blue irises, but as things stood my defenses were weak.

  From what I remembered about seeing Darragh on his feet earlier in the night I guessed he was roughly five ten. He was dressed in a grey crewneck, well-worn jeans and battered Doc Martens—the kind of clothes that implied he didn’t really care what he looked like and had no intention of using his appearance to his advantage. Then again, I didn’t trust my judgment when it came to guys anymore and there was no use in developing an interest in someone who already had a girlfriend and who I’d never see again after August.

  I unstuck my gaze from Darragh and his guitar and scanned the room, telling myself I was just overtired, my mind playing tricks on me. He’s the same guy you saw earlier at the restaurant and didn’t look at twice except to notice how his girlfriend was hanging off him, I advised.

  But as my eyes roamed over the contents of the shed, I noticed everyone was watching Darragh with an attentiveness beyond friendly politeness. I couldn’t keep my eyes off him for long either. My ears were paying rapt attention too, honing in on the lyrics as he sang:

  They said you went away

  You had your reasons, it’s okay

  There’s been a better time and place

  Don’t know if I could make this

  case for you

  Stop and smell the bitter air

  Voices crackle in despair

  Did you think I didn’t care?

  No, I know it’s bad out there

  Sorry for your disappointments and

  Sorry for their lies

  I know how long you fought them

  Every triumph hard won

  And still they think you won’t run

  Well, the cold it’s been colder

  But since you’ve gone I feel older

  Did you think I didn’t care?

  No, I know it’s bad out there

  They said you went away

  You had your reasons, it’s okay

  The room broke into applause as Darragh finished playing. He looked up, offering a nod of thanks back in our direction. “You up for Save Me?” he called to Zoey, a hint of a smile appearing on his lips.

  My gaze shifted to Zoey sauntering confidently across the room. She leant against the edge of the Formica table, her and Darragh trading the kind of at ease with each other looks that must’ve come from playing music with someone on a regular basis. Zoey’s head tilted towards him as he played the opening chords. Then she was parting her lips, a powerful voice—something like Cassie Ramone meets Hayley Williams—belting out of them and turning her into a stranger, bona fide lead singer material with her own original brand of charisma.

  I clapped loudly when they stopped, Zoey smiling at me from her place at the table. The music had made me feel restless and giddy, like when we’d walked through Temple Bar earlier. With the live performances finished for the moment, I pulled up a bit of floor, planted my hands on either side of me and tried to get in tune with the party. Normally I hated showing up in the middle of parties. It usually meant everyone else was on a wavelength it took too long to catch up to. But I still had the shadow of expectation in my stomach and it wasn’t something I wanted to walk away from.

  “Here,” Nick said, bending down to hand me a beer. “I think you’re a bit behind us.”

  “Thanks.” I popped the can open and took the smallest of sips, the liquid sour on my still drowsy stomach.

  The girl next to me leaned over my lap slurring, “You know, this is the best country in the world. Irish people travel everywhere in the world but almost everyone comes back. There’s nowhere in the world you can party like you can party in Dublin.” She shut her eyes and laid her head against the shoulder of the girl on the other side of her.

  “Yeah, I’m sure she’s never seen a party like this before, Roisin,” an ironic voice retorted from behind me.

  “Sit down, Kevin,” cooed the girl. “Isn’t it true what I’m saying?”

  I glanced up into Kevin’s red-rimmed eyes as he squatted to offer me the joint he was holding, his hand pausing in mid-air as though he was having second thoughts. I shook my head, saving him any worries about being a corrupting influence.

  “I’d ask you too,” Kevin told Roisin as he sat down next to her, “but you obviously don’t need it.” Next thing I knew he was resting his head in her lap, stretching out on the floor.

  Three’s a crowd and my eyes searched the room for someone semi-lucid and unattached to talk to. Surprisingly, Gloria was squished into one of the couches, her chin sagging in what looked like boredom. I zipped over to her and perched on the arm
of the sofa. “You’re still here,” I observed. “I figured you were going home after you dropped me off.”

  “I’m heading soon.” Gloria frowned as she glanced past me, her comment about watching the eejits echoing inside my head.

  Then Zoey swept in front of us, stealing my attention. “Hey, you two were fantastic!” I cried, one of my hands clasping her arm. “Were those songs originals?”

  Zoey’s eyes sparkled. “You liked them?”

  “I loved them. Both of them.”

  “Darragh and Rory take care of the music,” Zoey clarified, still smiling at my compliment. “And the first song was all Darragh’s. I can only take credit for the last one’s lyrics.”

  “And Kevin just tags along for the hot chicks,” Gloria cracked.

  Zoey laughed and eyed Kevin in Roisin’s lap, shrinking joint still between his lips. I had no clue what all the staring in Kevin’s direction was about but wasn’t nosy enough to ask. Mostly I just sat there with my legs crossed, listening to Gloria and Zoey talk and feeling out of step with the party but not ready to leave yet. That weird sensation of being on the verge of something had faded to nothing and my thoughts had boomeranged forcefully back to Jocelyn.

  Would Ajay and Joss’s parents somehow pull themselves together when the time came? Could Ajay handle prison? And what if he couldn’t? The thought stole my breath as I tried to tune back in to the sound of Zoey’s and Gloria’s voices.

  Between Kevin’s joint, a guy with a buzz cut who was vaping and two girls chain-smoking regular cigarettes, the room had turned as hazy as every one of the AA meetings I’d seen in old movies. Not only did the smoke reek, it stung. My eyes rebelled, spilling hot tears down my cheeks. I wiped them briskly away and got to my feet. Time to calm myself down and fill my lungs with something good. “Clean air break—I’ll be back in a few minutes,” I announced.

  Gloria nodded and inclined her head towards Zoey, already jumping to the next topic. I headed for the door and stepped onto the lawn. It was darker in my aunt and uncle’s backyard than it ever was in Toronto and I stared into the sky, in awe of how much brighter the stars seemed because of it. If I knew anything about astronomy I could’ve picked out constellations there and then.

  Edging towards the fence, I sat down on the grass, inhaling fresh air and watching the sky sparkle. Butterflies looped in my stomach, but they weren’t solely unhappy ones any longer. For a few seconds it seemed as if this moment was exactly what I’d needed. Just me in an Irish garden, mesmerized by a thousand pinpricks of distant scattered light, my aunt’s flowers swaying gently around me. It felt almost spiritual—not in a way that involved God or religion but like maybe I was where I was supposed to be in the universe, despite the crazy things going on elsewhere.

  I must’ve been out there five minutes when Darragh swung the door open and stood in front of the shed staring down at his phone. His fingers swiftly tapped the keys, composing a message. He was so intent on it that he didn’t notice me.

  I pulled my knees towards me, trying to make my presence known. “Hey,” he said, his startled gaze whipping over to me on the lawn. “I didn’t see you there. You all right?”

  “Just taking a breather,” I told him.

  Darragh nodded at me and I swear at that instant I was so wrapped-up in my starry altered state that I was back to barely noticing what he looked like. “I liked your song,” I said honestly. “You and Zoey are really good.”

  “Thanks.” Darragh’s lips poked up as he ambled towards me.

  I wasn’t sure whether I wanted company or not—it felt like having someone else around might break the spell I’d been under—but I wasn’t about to tell him that. “Zoey said you and Rory write all the music for the band,” I offered.

  In the glittering darkness I couldn’t make out the colour of Darragh’s eyes. They could just as easily have been a boring muddy grey.

  “She’s a brilliant singer and lyricist.” He sat down next to me on the lawn, setting his phone down in front of him. “Are you not cold out here?”

  Irish phraseology killed me. The accents too. My voice sounded like a flat line compared to his. “A little, but it’s kind of nice.” My fingers combed the cool grass in front of me. “The stars look really close here. I was sort of tripping on them before you came out. Either that or it was the smell of weed in there that did it.” I cocked my head to indicate the shed behind us.

  Darragh’s mouth broke into a grin that colonized his entire face. “It was probably the weed,” he agreed. Then he looked up at the sky and back at me, smiling again, like I’d said something funny.

  “What?” I asked.

  Suddenly his phone beeped. He eyed it warily in the grass in front of him and it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen Ursula in the shed. Darragh reached for his phone. He flipped it over so that it was face down, turning back towards me like he’d lost his train of thought.

  “So how’d the band get together?” I asked. “Were you all friends before?”

  “Just me and Rory.” Darragh raked his hair back behind his ears. “He was in the year ahead of me at school. We talked about starting a band for ages before we got off our arses and did something about it. Back in November we finally got serious and put an ad in Hot Press. That’s how we found Kevin and Zoey.” He glanced up at the sky like that was the end of the story. “You should come and see us do Battle of the Bands at Enda Corrigan’s in Temple Bar. The venue’s right around the corner from the restaurant we were at tonight.”

  “Gloria said something about it,” I told him. “I’m hoping I can make it, but I don’t know, it depends on Zoey’s parents. They seem kind of like mine, which isn’t really a good thing.”

  “Are they giving you hassle? I thought Zoey’s parents were fairly sound.”

  Sound. I’d never heard that one before, but I could guess what it meant from the way he’d used the word. “No, they’re okay. They’re actually really nice people but with me being underage I guess it’s natural that they don’t want me out late or at the pub.” I shrugged. “I shouldn’t complain. In the scheme of things this vacation is nothing.”

  Darragh tilted casually towards me. “It could be. You can’t write it off yet, can you? It’s hardly gotten started.”

  “True. It’s just, there are other things I should be doing.” I glanced down at my fingers in the grass. Suddenly they were ice-cold. “Somebody who needs me at home and I’m not there for them like I should be.” I’d gotten real with Darragh without meaning to and I folded my hands into my lap and clammed up, hoping he’d leave the issue alone.

  Darragh peered at me in the moonlight. “It probably doesn’t feel like it now, but the time will fly in and then you’ll be back at home.” His hand settled on his phone, but he didn’t pick it up.

  “Yeah, I guess.” The temptation to confide in him grabbed me around the middle and squeezed. “You must think I’m really out there—first the stuff about the stars and then this.”

  Darragh shook his head and pressed his lips together. “I think I’m just catching you at a weird time. So what are you into?”

  “Into?”

  “It sounds like you need something to keep you busy. It’ll make the time go in faster.”

  Having never written a screenplay, it seemed premature to profess my dreams of conquering Hollywood. Maybe not even Hollywood—my favourite movies were usually character-driven ones starring people like John Hawkes or Michelle Williams. Movies that taught you something about life and characters that felt complicated enough to be real. But generally I liked anything good, whether it was a classic Katherine Hepburn comedy or a depression-inducing end-of-the-world movie like The Road.

  Darragh was still watching me, awaiting my answer, and I tapped my knee with my nails and took the plunge. “One thing I’m really interested in is screenwriting. I thought I’d try to get something finished this summer.” So far I’d been too distracted to put down a single word, but there’d been instances when my focus h
ad bobbed toward an unfamiliar teenage boy—a character sculpting himself out of nowhere but who I already knew was being crowded out of his house by his mother’s boyfriend.

  Darragh’s eyebrows arched in surprise. “You should check out the Irish Film Institute for courses. I have a friend who was taking a production class there. They might have something for screenwriting as well.”

  “Great. I’ll look into it.” My mind surged with fresh possibilities. Taking a class at the Irish Film Institute would help me get into film school for sure. I needed to start writing right away, despite my tension level. Writers didn’t have the luxury of writing only when their lives were pictures of serenity. “That’d be perfect. There’s an idea that’s been fermenting in my head lately that I really need to…” My voice trailed off. The troubled boy was too new to talk about; let alone with someone I’d just met.

  But Darragh nodded like he knew exactly what I was talking about. “Life never gets boring then, does it? You always have something to keep you company, no matter where you are.”

  “Is it the same for you with music? Like part of you is always someplace else?”

  “Mostly when I’m in the middle of working on things. But the music’s always there on some level.” Darragh pushed his legs out in front of him like he was getting comfortable. “It’s something that makes life feel bigger in a way other people might not understand if they don’t have something like that in their lives, you know?”

  I thought I did, yeah. It was just strange to hear an approximation of my own feelings come out of someone else’s mouth. No one I knew back home wrote anything voluntarily. “So what’s the ultimate goal with music?”

  “I can’t imagine life without it.” Darragh furrowed his brow. “I want to be the kind of musician that still can’t go a day without picking up his guitar when he’s eighty-seven. They’ll have to pry it out of my stiff hands when I go.” He erupted into a chuckle. “Jesus, I sound like I’m taking myself a bit too seriously, don’t I?”