“It’s okay,” I shout back. “I’m not that insulted.”
Michael gives a loud fake sigh. “Nope. Nope. I’m afraid this won’t do.” With the car still moving, Michael unbuckles his seatbelt and wriggles his way into the backseat, where he plops next to me. “It’s all yours.”
Callum rolls his eyes in the rearview mirror.
“I’m not sure I can climb through without getting your seats muddy,” I say, slightly more concerned about my ability to make a graceful landing without showing Callum my bare ass than the cleanliness of his car.
Callum laughs. “They’ve seen worse than your shoes. Remind me to tell you about the time I drove Michael back from Galway. We rescued a baby cow. The backseat smelled like manure for months.” He pats the seat next to him, inviting me up.
“Don’t look at my butt,” I say, glancing over my shoulder toward Michael. He gamely covers his eyes, and, though I narrowly miss elbowing Callum in the jaw, I manage to make it into the passenger seat, dignity intact.
We drive for a few minutes across darkened roads before I finally ask the question: “So . . . what is a cèilidh?” I pronounce it “seel-duh.” I can sense both boys smiling in the semi-dark.
“You want to take this one?” Michael asks.
“So,” Callum says, taking his eyes off the road briefly to look at me, then looking back at the road, then looking back at me. “First, it’s pronounced like ‘kay-lee.’”
“Irish spelling is totally fucked,” Michael calls from the backseat. “I apologize on behalf of the nation.”
Callum clears his throat. “As I was saying, it’s basically a party. But, like, a traditional party. Or—sorry—not traditional, but, like, kids dancing to Celtic music and just all of us getting together, you know? Dancing together.”
“If Callum could ever get a girl to dance with him,” Michael says.
Callum’s eyes go wide, and he reaches back to try to hit his friend in the backseat.
“I kid, I kid!” Michael calls. “Uncle!”
Callum withdraws his arm.
“Besides,” Michael says slyly, “we all know the real issue is our mate having a few too many girls to dance with, if you know what I mean.”
“Shut it!” Callum says.
But we’re all smiling. The car is so warm I feel drunk already.
* * *
We finally arrive, and I notice a microphone is set up in the corner on a makeshift wooden stage. I wonder if someone will be performing later.
“C’mon,” Michael says. “Let’s get you a drink!”
“Got it!” Callum says and disappears into the flow of dancing teens to get us some alcohol. I was worried before I left that I’d be out of place in my jeans and tank top (I traveled light and neglected the possibility that a cute boy would invite me to a party), but now that I’m here, it’s apparent that I could have worn my flannels and been fine. People’s outfits are all over the map—some girls are in dresses, while others, like me, are in jeans and boots. Everyone is wet and slightly muddy from the rain, and they’re all perfectly okay with it.
Callum returns with two bottles of beer. He clinks his bottle against mine, takes a sip, and then says, “Come on, let’s dance.”
So I do. I don’t know any of the steps, but I stare down at my feet with enough focus that I manage not to stomp on anyone else’s feet. The dance moves seem to be: step, kick, kick, kick, then a swing—where Callum wraps his arm around my arm and spins me around as fast as we can go.
After dancing for a while, I tell Callum that I’m going to grab some water, and I head to the bar. I’m just leaving when I see Maeve a few stools down.
“Hi!” I say. Looks like a half glass of Bailey’s and a beer makes me more social.
“Nora! I’m so glad you’re here!” She gives me a hug, and I’m taken aback by how friendly she is.
“Yeah,” I say. “Callum brought me. Callum Cassidy.”
“I know Callum!” she says.
“And his friend Michael,” I add, so it doesn’t seem like I’m obsessed with Callum, which I only am a little.
She smiles and begins applying lipstick. “So,” I say, trying not to be too obvious, “Callum’s a good guy?”
Maeve laughs. “Yes, he’s a good guy.”
“Is he . . . single?”
Maeve carefully twists the base of her lipstick and replaces its cap. “Callum is . . . a good guy.” She smacks her lips and fixes a smudge. “But I don’t want you to, you know, get the totally wrong idea. He’s incredibly friendly. He flirts with everyone. Everyone. That’s not to say he doesn’t like you—he probably does—but just . . . you know.”
“Did you ever go out with him?” Of course she has. She’s gorgeous and lives here, and he’s come here every summer. I bet they’re practically engaged.
“No! God, no. I’ve known Callum since I was a baby. He’s like a weird younger brother who’s actually older than me. But he went with my friend Fiona last year. They’re still mates, but, you know, he hurt her. She got jealous, she broke it off.”
“Oh.” I’m not sure how I’m supposed to respond. I don’t really need whatever this thing is with Callum to be a big deal. I’m only here for a few more weeks anyway. I just want to enjoy Ireland, not get caught up in some love triangle. How come in the books it’s always the girl with two gorgeous and equally brave men pining after her? In real life it tends to be one boy who probably isn’t that great to begin with surrounded by a handful of girls who’ve built him up to be the love of their lives. Even under the thumb of a dystopian Colony regime, Valentine Neverwoods doesn’t know how good she has it.
“You should meet Fiona!” Maeve says. “She’s here. Redhead. Probably one of dozens, but she’s lovely. You’ll like her.”
“Yeah, sure,” I say. “Listen, I’m going to . . .” I give a headshrug and point, the universal sign for “get back out there.”
“See ya in a bit!”
* * *
I don’t spot Callum right away, so I stand by the periphery of the party, watching the bodies move and hearing the waves of laugher rise and fall in time to the music, now something with a bass beat that makes both the structure of the building and my rib cage vibrate.
Callum swings into view, doing the step-dance with a pretty redheaded girl who apears to be a good four inches taller than him. He doesn’t see me; his face is frozen in a half-laughing smile. I continue clapping along with the music, wondering whether I should go up to him or wait for the song to end. When the song does end, I start making my way toward them, hoping to cut in, but Callum still doesn’t see me. A new song begins, and he’s dancing with the girl again.
“Let’s dance,” Michael says from behind me, and in a wave of relief, I accept. Michael has a helmet of dark hair and a slightly acned face, and I decide immediately that he’s the type of person I could be instant friends with. We dance for another song, until I’ve forgotten all about Fiona and Callum and instead just start laughing involuntarily. Now I get why Kate Winslet decided to stick with Leo instead of her rich, guylinered fiancé: Irish dancing is the funnest thing I can possibly think of.
“Nora!” Callum calls out, heading over to me and Michael, his arm around the redhead. We’re all winded and grinning. “Have you met my friend Fiona?” We shake hands. “Michael, mate, I saw your lady out for a smoke outside.”
“Ah, thanks, I’ll grab her a drink,” Michael says.
“I’m going to grab another too,” Fiona says, and the two of them head off toward the bar.
“Where’ve you been? I lost you,” Callum says.
“Oh, just . . . you know . . . here.” I smile and he smiles back, and he wraps one of his arms around my shoulder. It feels really, really good. Better than it should. He’s wearing a leather coat that’s impossibly soft and still smells like rain.
“Wh
o’s Michael’s lady?” I ask.
“Maeve—you’ve met her, I bet. She’s at the Deece too. Her parents run the place.”
“Yes! I know Maeve!” Her parents are Áine and Declain! My brain is too busy firing off exclamation points to remember whether I said anything embarrassing about Callum in front of her. “I didn’t realize she was dating Michael.”
“They’ve been dating for around three years now. They’re impossibly relaxed about the whole thing too. I don’t think I’ve ever seen PDA. Michael’s just so not that kind of guy. He’s held this gang of us together over the years; he’s kind of the heart of it.”
“Are they your group chat?”
“Yeah—Michael, Maeve, Claire, Cameron, Jono, and me. Jono’s in London for the summer, and Claire’s in Dublin. That’s the gang.”
I wish I had a gang. There’s something impossibly romantic about six friends who have known one another forever and share a massive group text even when they’re separated.
“So you guys are like the TV show Friends?”
He laughs. “Yeah, I guess we are.”
“So who would you be?”
“Well,” he turns serious. “I s’pose Michael and Maeve are Ross and Rachel then, even though he’s really more of a Chandler. Or Phoebe? Could a boy be Phoebe? Cameron is more like the Ross.”
“So . . . you’re Joey?” Of course. Handsome womanizer who likes sandwiches.
“Yeah, I guess so, although I’d like to think I’m not quite the dumb one.”
A boy with a beard gets up on the stage and takes the mic, an acoustic guitar swinging at his waist. “All right now, gents, down another because we’re singing next.” He’s joined on stage by Fiona, who’s carrying a violin, and a boy with another stringed instrument that looks like a cross betweeen a banjo and a mandolin.
They start playing and singing, and everyone in the entire hall except me knows the words. “It’s a folk song, sort of,” Callum says. “One of those songs everyone just knows. You’ll catch on.”
And after the first chorus, I think I do. When the chorus hits, everybody shouts, “No, nay, never! No, nay, never, no more! Will I play the wild rover, no, nev-errrrrrrrr! No more.” Except after the first “No, nay, never” everybody gives four big claps. So it’s something like, “No, nay, never!” [CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP] “No, nay, never, no more!” [CLAP CLAP] “Will I play the wild rover, no, nev-errrrrr! No more.”
The words for the rest of the song elude me, but I defintely got the clapping down.
“It’s like Friends!” I say to Callum once the song is over.
“Hm?”
I sing: “So no one told you life was gonna be this way” and then do the four claps. CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP. I wait for his reaction. “There’s a mashup waiting to happen!”
“I’m pretty sure the world isn’t ready for your musical genius,” Callum laughs. “But I fancy you anyway. Now, let me get you that promised drink.”
Callum emits a pheromone or something that just makes me want to be around him, in the crook of his arm again, smelling his leather coat. Is that what pheromones do? It might be the beer (and the shot Fiona, Maeve, and I do later at the bar), but by the time Callum walks me back out to his truck, I’m floating, with “The Wild Rover” stuck in my head.
“No, nay, neverrrr!” I sing. Callum laughs. Even though the rain has stopped, the ground is still wet and spongy, and every surface is slick with water. The air smells like Callum. Then he presses me up against the driver’s side door of his truck, and even though my back is getting soaked, he holds me there for just a minute, our faces close.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hi,” he says.
And I stare into his blue eyes for so long that I half-expect them to change color or morph like a gif somehow.
And then one of us leans in, and I’m not sure who, but we’re kissing and it’s perfect and his lips are soft and taste like beer but in a good way. I press into him harder, just a little, letting my leg slide slightly up his, denim on denim.
We break apart and smile.
“Michael!” Callum calls out as Michael and Maeve make their way out of the hall, hand in hand. “Mind driving? I had a few.”
“As always, mate.”
Callum throws the keys, and Michael catches them one-handed, kissing Maeve on the cheek in victory. “Need a ride?” he asks.
“Nah, I’m going to walk.” She gives me a look like I know that you were just totally macking on Callum Cassidy, and yes, I said “macking,” but I’m cool enough to pull it off. I give a shy smile back.
“All aboard!” Michael calls, hopping into the driver’s seat.
Callum opens the door for me and insists I sit in front. I do, this time without argument. It’s the same drunk feeling I had on the way here, only now my head is swimming for real: with the alcohol, with the heat from the barn, and with the memory of Callum’s lips on mine.
17
I’M DRUNK, BUT I’m not drunk drunk. I’ve seen movies—I know what drunk drunk looks like: stumbling around, slurring words, texting exes. Okay, I think to myself. Well, to be totally honest with myself, I do feel the strong and overwhelming urge to text my best friend’s boyfriend whom I used to hook up with. I think about texting Nick (thank you, Deece WiFi), and then it’s done, a Facebook message eloquently reading, “heyyyyyyy.” It’s like I’m the evil little boy from that episode of The Twilight Zone where he sends people out to the ominous cornfield because he has creepy telepathic powers. He just needed to think something, and bam! it was done. That’s how the message to Nick happens. It’s like my fingers aren’t even part of the equation. Straight brain-to-message technology.
The grass is dark and slick. The world is washed over with dimness like an old, forgotten painting. A hawk somewhere caws loudly.
I enter Evelyn’s house and make it back up to my room without being too loud, I hope. It’s twelve forty A.M., and though I’m forty minutes late, my beer-fogged brain tells me not to worry.
And then I see that the light in my mom’s room is on.
“Hi,” I say in her doorway. She’s reading the Tina Fey memoir I bought her a few years ago for Mother’s Day. Her T-shirt, the one from Dad’s fortieth birthday party, has half a dozen holes along its edges. “Enjoying your book?”
“You’re late,” she says. “I waited up for you.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t ask you to wait up.”
“Of course you didn’t ask me to wait up. I was worried about you!” She’s yelling, but in a half whisper, trying not to wake Evelyn. The whisper-yell is almost scarier.
My mother yelling at me for coming home late from a party: What Lifetime Original Movie did we fall out of? At least she doesn’t seem to realize I’m slightly drunk drunk.
“Are you drunk?” she whisper-screams.
Dammit.
“No. I had one beer.” And another beer and a shot and then another beer. I don’t want to get in a fight right now with her leaving so soon, so I come up with a plan: “Hey, Mom. There’s no class tomorrow. Why don’t you and I spend the day together? Just us.”
She deliberates, taking a deep breath and pacing back and forth for a few steps. I don’t realize I’ve been holding my breath. “Okay,” she says finally, and I deflate with relief. “Just you and me. Now we both should get some sleep.”
* * *
Evelyn made us a picnic, and even though the ground is still slightly wet from last night’s rain, she tells us that it won’t be too bad with a blanket. So, my mother and I sit on the top of a grassy hill overlooking Evelyn’s and eating sandwiches with butter and ham (it’s less gross than it sounds) and bags of an Irish brand of potato chips called Taytos. I realize that I have never seen my mother eat potato chips.
“This is new for you,” I say.
“What do you mean?”
“Eating potato chips! Eating a sandwich!” My mother is the type of woman who pre-slices cucumber and red pepper to bring to work in Tupperware with organic hummus. It’s part of her control freak nature.
The air smells different today: a little like mulch, but mostly like ocean. My mood buoys with every inhale.
“I can go with the flow!” she says and takes a big bite of her sandwich. “I’ve never had ham and butter before, though.”
“Surprisingly good, right? They had little sandwiches like this at—” I manage to stop myself, but not soon enough. My mom gestures for me to finish my sentence. “Dad’s wedding. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“It’s okay, Nora. Really.”
I don’t believe her, but at least she hasn’t fallen apart. We pack up and begin walking back to the cottage. Suddenly, my mom stops, staring ahead in a stony silence. I flash back to the weeks after my dad left, when I would come home from school and see her sitting on the couch, staring blankly at whatever infomercial happened to be on the screen in front of her.
“Nora,” she says finally. I can feel what’s coming—she’s going to start in again on how hard it’s been since Dad left and how much harder it’s going to be next year when I leave for college. I swallow hard and wait. There’s not much I’m going to be able to say.
“How would you feel,” she chooses her words carefully, her profile haloed by the sun, “if I were to stick around in Ireland a while longer?”
I just run my hand along the wicker handle of the picnic basket, back and forth, back and forth, so she jumps back in: “I’ve just been getting along so well with Evelyn, and it’s been so nice to spend time with you.”
“But what about—I mean, don’t you have to get back to work?”
Her face darkens—she’s clearly not pleased with my reaction. “I spoke to them already. It’s fine.”
“You . . . spoke to them already.”
I say nothing else and head back toward the cottage. How does my mom continue to do this? To manipulate people and situations so that the chips fall in her favor? My trip has become her self-help vacation, her divorce therapy, her own little Eat Pray Love.
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