B07F3S1H9W

by Eoin Brady

  “I’ve done my drinking.”

  “It’s one more pint.”

  He gave her a withering look. “It’s never just one more though.”

  Katie hugged him tight. “Don’t disappear on me again. Be happy.”

  “You too.”

  Diarmuid bought the remaining cast a round and on the pretence of going for some air he left.

  Three buses and the better part of the day later Diarmuid returned home. He walked up the steep slope of Slieve Foye and along a small road with a few scattered houses perched above the village of Carlingford. There was no sneaking in to the house, fronted with windows to capture the full view of the Mourne Mountains and Carlingford Lough. His mother was opening the door before he made it half way up the drive, on the pretence of putting the bins out.

  “Oh well, look who it is. How’d you get on love?”

  “Hey Mam. How are things since I’ve been away?”

  He heard a derisive scoff from the sitting room. “You’d swear you’d been away for more than a full week.”

  “Shut up Dad.” Only a week? It had felt much longer.

  He heard his dad giggling from the sitting room.

  He sat on the edge of the sofa with his family. A nature documentary played on the television, and books bulged from wide shelves around the walls. They seemed a weak form of escapism now compared to what he had experienced. Escape I must.

  “Well so, how did you get on?” his dad asked.

  “Ah it was grand. The people were lovely. Went in the first day and asked the lads to only ever speak to me in Irish. They were only delighted to see somebody show some enthusiasm for learning the language.”

  “How long did that last?”

  “Until the second day, when I asked them to only ever speak to me in English.”

  His parents laughed.

  He told them all about the island, everything of his time there but nothing about Shade. They would ask too many questions. There was a lot to talk on. None of it he wanted to even think about at the moment.

  “Do you think your play will go further now? Will you get more money for it?” his mother asked. She had always been bad at hiding her feelings. Her hopeful look that he would soon move out had hurt before; now it was another motivator. Nothing could have been as powerful as meeting Shade.

  “No Mam, I think my path is in books.”

  “How’s Katie getting on?”

  After catching them up on Katie’s life, watching the end of the documentary and sharing stories he had gathered from the island, Diarmuid raided the fridge and disappeared into his room. “The bachelor pad” as his father had taken to calling it, soon to be the retirement home if he stayed there much longer. The usual comfort he found in the familiarity and safety of his space now felt stifling. This was where he wanted to be whenever he was not there. At one time, the computer was as close as he could get to the world. All that wasted time.

  His computer started with a whir. The light went on and he no longer had to stare into his reflection. He was about to draw his curtains but the view of the moon stopped him. He stood there in darkness and watched it. The same moon rises for you. I hope it sees you smiling Shade.

  CHAPTER 19: HOW I QUIT MY JOB TO TRAVEL

  Where you are in your life at this moment, is it where you thought you would be a year ago? Two? Five? How can you predict where you will be happiest in ten? Are you content now? What does fulfilment mean to you? Won’t it change over time?

  When I was younger I never knew what I wanted to do. “What do you want to be?” I hate that question, as if you can only ever be one thing.

  Diarmuid sat away from the monitor. I was wrong. The Shade of her blog is not all that different to the one I met in person. I wish I could tell her that. He continued reading.

  There are so many choices it feels like being at the spring and source of many rivers. Dying of thirst while surrounded by so much overwhelming potential. I could see all I wanted to become but to take one route meant forgetting about the others. If only I lived forever. In my imagination that stagnation meant many other rivers started to silt up.

  When I was younger I envied friends that knew what they wanted to do with their lives. They had started moving towards those aspirations. Even if they only had the faintest sense of direction, they were still moving. I felt like they were leaving me behind, idle with indecision.

  Take money out of the equation. What would you do if it was not an issue? I asked myself, and the answer was travel. I knew if I stuck with college for the sake of it then I’d never be top of any chosen field because I did not have the passion required to do that. It would be a nine to five, the part between weekends. A degree would just be an expensive piece of wallpaper. I spent so much time and thought on wondering what path I was going to take that I went nowhere.

  So I put my money into saving and planning. Took a break away from deciding what I wanted to be. I worked what hours I could get. I tried to find work I could do online. It was slow at first but I started cutting away the tethers that kept me to one place. I started to learn how to teach English so I could do that abroad. I even asked my hairdresser if she would show me a few simple cuts, the thought being that I could have shears with me and charge people for a trim. (I was really looking to pinch as many miles out of my money as possible).

  I stopped drinking, sold my car and started cycling to work. As my plans grew and became more expensive I cut more things from my life that seemed necessary but, on closer inspection, were just forms of escapism. Spent hard-earned money on nice things to salve the fact I was working a horrible job to buy them with.

  I also had the worst anxiety I’ve ever experienced in my life. There’s the anxiety of staying and that of going. When I told my co-workers my plans it was rare to not meet with scepticism. ‘Shouldn’t you be looking to save for a house?’ ‘What about children?’ ‘If you go off now all the good men will be taken.’

  I wanted none of that, though admitting that is difficult because we grow up thinking that we are destined for that life. I wanted to want that, until I didn’t.

  So after more than a year of intense saving, and spending work breaks and every spare bit of time I could on research, I finally set out with no guarantees. Months before departure I had set up my own blog. For the longest time it felt like I was speaking to myself but then people started to find me and terrifyingly, to read me. There were over a hundred posts up there before I was confident (drunk) enough to tell my family. (I did not give up drinking every day of the year).

  The thing is, I still don’t know what I want to be. We are never only one thing. A job is just that, a job and not a definition.

  Had I listened to the anxiety, accepted the comfort in routine, then I’d not be here. You know the adage, if I can do it, then you can too. Well in my case, if I can do it then you should have created a thesis on the subject by now.

  My first trip was everything I wanted it to be, but it wasn’t enough. I set alarms for myself, not for a boss. I’ve yet to experience anything as addictive as that. Soon though, I ran out of money and had to return to waking for others. I felt so detached from the morning commute. (In winter I got the bus, I’m not a money-saving zealot). I learned from my mistakes on the road and I wrote constantly. Not a day went by that I did not add to my blog in some way. The job kept the lights on in my apartment but the blog kept me going, it was a light for me. Over time I grew, the blog started paying for its own web hosting and the cost of a domain. Then it paid for a few coffees, then it started paying for flights. Now it keeps me on the road and waking up for myself – and planes.

  The sun replaced the moon while Diarmuid read her blog. He felt ill and on edge, as if reading the words of her blog felt like listening in on the whispering of her consciousness. We agreed to be strangers, to know nothing about each other. No histories and no past meant there was only present and the possibility of a future we could share. It had crossed his mind that this information was
public and designed with the express purpose of retaining attention and being read. Just not by him. Is this not what I wanted though? The Shade that nobody else got? Exhausted, he went to bed and brought up her website on his phone.

  He looked at the picture on her “About” page and his insides roiled. There was a sadness he had rarely known. Maybe there was a way that our week together could have gone which would have ended differently. Had I not read that blog we would have had more time together. We would not have parted like this. With the island on the other side of the country it felt so much like a dream that he questioned everything, his feelings and the words of her blog on ending road romances. She could see the letter and its contents as a cute memento, hide it away to be a nice surprise a few years down the line.

  At the top of her blog was a button that read ‘contact me.’ Diarmuid clicked it. A list of her social media pages and her blog’s email address came up. He knew she checked these daily, otherwise what else was she doing on her phone and computer for most of the day? All he wanted to do was write to her. “Hey stranger.” But the memory of her latest blog post still stung too much to be ignored. She did not like persistence.

  She has the letter. He stared at her picture. She won’t smile because of me again. “Goodbye Shade.” He clicked out of her blog and turned off his phone. I won’t look at it again, I won’t contact her. She has the letter, I’ve done all that I should. She has the letter. Katie thinks the whole thing was negative. Hardly. If anything it’s motivated me to be the person I think would make her happy. Okay that sounds wrong even in my own head. I want to be happy in myself and my flaws. I want to be better, for me.

  As he lay in bed he thought back to the little moments during the week. Sleep eventually came and when it did she was the last thing on his mind. She has the letter.

  CHAPTER 20: FORGET-ME-NOT

  “You threw the letter away?”

  The buzzing of the tattoo gun stopped and Shade was sure Hayley jabbed her with it on purpose.

  “Ow! Hales!” Shade bit into her forearm to distract from the pain in her back. She was getting a few new additions to the tattoo bouquet of the Chantham Island Forget-Me-Nots.

  Hayley took a swig from her bottle of Mexican beer and turned the ink gun off. “I can’t believe you. Why did you throw it away? Ugh! I’d pay good money to see what he wrote. Aren’t you the least bit curious? Shade … all these flowers on your back, different stories. Are you sure I’m not painting little funeral wreaths for all the chances you fuck up?”

  “You know you’re not. And less of the sass please. He walked off, remember? He fits the criteria of ‘a holiday thing.’”

  “You’ve been sitting here all evening telling me about him. I think even I’ve fallen a little in love with him from the way you’ve been going on. It was not just a ‘holiday thing’. It was something special that happened while you were on holidays. And fuck off, you travel for a living. So how do you expect to meet somebody if not while travelling? Your entire life fits under the category of ‘holiday thing.’”

  ”Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

  “Oh, what was that you said? You don’t want any anaesthetic for your back? Okay, if you say so.”

  “I didn’t think you’d take his side on this.”

  “What are you on about? There are no sides. If he was only after you for sex, by the sounds of it he got it without having to put all that much work in.”

  “Excuse me?” Shade put on a mock shocked expression.

  “You know what I mean. The little flower bracelet, the plans and the fucking letter. I bet you anything it said ‘Meet me here at such and such a time’, and he’ll be standing there alone.”

  Shade was glad Hayley had closed the parlour so they could speak candidly, though Hayley knew no other way of speaking. “Why do I need to meet somebody? I’m quite content doing my own thing. Going with others right now is an unnecessary complication. I’m not against it,” she said, trying to prevent Hayley’s speech which she had perfected over the course of giving it so many times. She was adamant that Hayley and her sister should never meet. “I haven’t met the right person yet.”

  “Fuck off. You’ve not given many people a chance. By your standards somebody would need a level of predatory persistence that would border on criminal.”

  “You’re forgetting that he left. Besides, it was only a couple of days.”

  “Exactly! It was only a couple of days. Can you imagine if there was no end in sight? Are you hurting?”

  “Well my back’s a bit sore now that you mention it …”

  “Piss off. I meant have you left him on the island, or is he here with you now?”

  “I tried to kill him with a drone.” Shade showed her the footage she transferred to her phone before the drone died in the harbour on Inis Meáin.

  Hayley picked up the tattoo gun to continue. “What’s bothering me is the letter. Everything else aside it would have ended cleanly if not for the letter, you know? He gave it to you during the night? Then in the morning he disappeared with it. Can you remember if you did something the following morning for him to react the way he did?”

  “Honestly, nothing. Everything seemed to be getting better.” Shade said something she had never given voice to. “I like him and I miss him.”

  “Tell me everything about the last time you saw him,” Hayley said.

  Shade clenched her teeth as the needle pricked her flesh imbuing it with deep blue ink.

  “He said something about putting all his good sense when it came to me down in it.”

  “Right and that’s what you said to him the first night after the pub when he did not kiss you goodnight. Shade, that doesn’t sound like somebody who’s there for one thing. Who goes to that amount of effort? What if he took the letter and spent the day and night writing how he felt? Ah, Shade … what if it was another plan?”

  “None of that can explain why he acted the way he did the morning he left. I can’t describe the look he gave me. He was so distant. We never touched. You’d swear it was something I’d done.”

  “How would you go about finding him?” Hayley asked.

  “I don’t want to.” The only noise in the studio after she said that was the buzzing of the gun. She turned her head to look at Hayley and tried to read her expression but Hayley made a point of focusing on her work.

  “I’ve no idea how to find him,” Shade relented. “He would have to be the one to contact me. I mean it’s not impossible. Of the two of us who do you think would be the easiest to find online?”

  “This is the first time I’ve been able to pin you down in over six months. Use the American cycle excuse for three of those months but what about the others? Which reminds me, I have something for you.”

  Hayley put down the gun and wheeled her chair back to the counter. She brought a slim rectangular box back and gave it to her. Shade’s first thought when looking at it was a watch or bracelet. She gave Hayley a sceptical look. It was not unusual for them to send presents to each other – immediately on entering the studio Shade spotted some throws and items she had sent to Hayley.

  Shade opened the box. There was a pen inside. “You do know my blog’s online, right?” Hayley actually blushed. “I’m joking, I love it.”

  “It’s a concrete pen. The hope is it will slow you down long enough to keep you in one place for a while.”

  Shade hefted it on her palm; the weight was in the sentiment. “Thanks Hales.”

  “Read back to me again what he wrote in your journal in the pub.”

  Shade took out her travel notebook and read them to Hayley. She still hadn’t converted it all into a blog post but there was no rush. She had enough fodder lined up to publish that she could take some time for herself. Besides, things will have to be a bit different now with the Hollow Ways job. I need to focus on that.

  The hardest part was reading the notes she had made of their last moments together. Everything that happened and as much of what was said as s
he could remember.

  “It sounds like you’re writing about two different people, the one suggesting songs you should listen to and secret places to visit. Then the short and cold goodbye.”

  “Good luck in Iceland.” Shade waved Hayley away and sat up. “Good luck in Iceland?”

  “Shade you’ve gone pale, I was only messing about the anaesthetic, there’s more there if you need it.”

  “I never once mentioned to him that I was going to Iceland. That was all part of his stupid fucking game. We gave no information about each other.” Laura mentioned she thought I had ended it with him. She reads my blog.

  Shade could not recount everything she said while under the influence of drink in the pub or for most of their activities. It would be an easy thing to let slip, but she was going to London after the island, and she had been quiet on that out of habit. There was no way he could have known, unless …

  “Oh fuck. I know what happened.”

  “What?”

  “He read my blog.”

  “So? Your writing’s not that bad, unless he has a serious hang up about grammar.”

  “Have you not read my last post?”

  Hayley looked abashed. “Well I can’t read them all you know. I save them up for long journeys. Fine. I’m in London the whole time, and the last thing I want to read while it’s pissing rain here is about you languishing in some sunny paradise.”

  Shade brought the blog up on her phone. She cringed at the post in question and handed it to Hayley.

  She only needed to read the title. “How to End a Road Romance.” Her mouth gaped open as she looked from Shade to the post.

  “Look at the side of the blog,” Shade said. There was a little interactive map designed to attract attention. When you clicked a country it showed articles she had written about it. A little arrow indicated her next destination would be Iceland. London was only a layover and not worth a mention.

  “It wasn’t meant for him.” Shades mind raced, she pictured his face the morning he departed, how he couldn’t bring himself to look at her. How on the occasions that he did he saw her as a stranger. “He thinks that was about him. No wonder …” For a second she felt annoyed. He thinks that of me?