FOUR
There is more anonymity to be had as of late. I’m not really hiding, just preoccupied. Rhea rests, sleeps and struggles with the reaction to her meds most days. It’s been weeks now that they’ve kept her in the hospital loaded up on pain meds, the poison of chemo keeping her tired, weak. The white blood cell count is so low now that they make us wear gloves and masks. They make no promises that the count will improve.
But that does not make up the anonymity. It’s the way I guard myself, how closed off I am from the life I knew outside of the hospital. Rhea has become a planet I orbit around, where everything else is less import. Nothing compared to that child and what she requires.
Even the distraction of Declan and Donovan spotting me last week as I rushed into McKinney’s to grab a bite to eat didn’t rouse me. The only thing that registered was how low they spoke to each other, which meant that I had distracted them, hushed them, raised their pity. And then Sam, my ex-boyfriend who still ran the place, stared a bit too long at me with that same look of pity, and maybe the mildest hint of guilt about how we had ended. He’d wanted to say something. That was clear in his features, in the way his lips parted as if to say something.. But I didn’t care what Sam had to say to me. I didn’t care that my best friend’s boyfriend and his teammate were gossiping about me, likely talking about how tired I looked, how disheveled, how worn.
I’d tossed the money on the counter and took the white bag stained with french fry grease and left McKinney’s without a backward glance at anyone.
I feel that orbit, the one that keeps me tethered to my cousin as I walk toward a coffee shop, bone tired and weary from the worst nights Rhea has endured in four years. She is frustrated, she doesn’t understand with the frustration of a child why her body refuses to behave the way she wants it to.
But tonight was the first I’d seen her argumentative. The first time she had retreated full into herself, not speaking to anyone, not wanting anyone’s company. Not even mine.
That hospital, and the small, defeated girl is where my mind is now. It keeps my attention and I can do nothing to take in the town around me or the people I know who smile, who may or may not have asked after Rhea. I barely register anything as I walk to the coffee shop, focusing on the thought of caffeine to keep my eyes from slamming shut. The smell of dark roast, the sweet hint of sugar that wafts out of the shop as customers leave, none of it really distracts me. Nothing keeps my attention for long but Rhea… Rhea and the look she gave me. That look and the last thing she said to me before I left.
“Just leave, Sayo. I don’t want you here.”
She hadn’t meant it. Logically, I know that. But the bite of her words sticks sharp. I feel wounded, feel the pain throbbing as I open the door, only to be assaulted with raised voices as I make my way inside. Even through my miasma, I recognize those voices.
“Layla, seriously?” Mollie is saying. “This shit has got to stop.” The brunette’s face is bunched and angry as she screams at her best friend. Layla’s eyes are darting between Mollie and Donovan, who is looking both ridiculous and enraged as his skin has been stained a fantastic shade of pink. Without having to think about it, I know that Layla is responsible. She and Donovan have sparred ever since they were kids. They stayed away from each other for years, but when Autumn and Declan started dating, they were thrown back together again, and an increasingly obnoxious prank war had ratcheted up around them.
Normally we try to laugh it off, but this, this is ridiculous. This is pointless. For once, seeing them argue, seeing the result of their latent sexual tension, the anger they pretend keeps them apart, is so fucking juvenile and pointless that it becomes reprehensible.
“Then tell him to stay away from me. Tell him to not even look in my direction!” Layla’s voice is pathetic, pleading though she is adamant, proud, growling at Donovan like this latest fiasco is his fault.
Autumn and Mollie step away from Layla, as if they know they cannot save her from herself. Normally, they’d find this funny. Normally, I would, but my friends are finishing their last semester. Soon they’ll be out in the world and supposedly functioning as adults. They’ll be leading lives that Rhea never will. The commotion around me is too much—Declan holding Donovan back, Mollie and Autumn alternating between yelling at Donovan and fussing at Layla, the balding shop manager screaming about the noise, demanding everyone leave and Quinn in his juvenile “Please Feck Off” shirt grinning around them all as though this latest debacle is the height of amusing.
“I didn’t do a freakin’ thing to you, you insane woman!”
“Really? Nothing at all? Do you know how long it took me to get the green dye out of my hair? You’re about to find out, asshole.”
It’s too much, all of it. My anger rises, boiling until I cannot take the ire of those two idiots and their pointless fucking shouting a second longer, and I snap.
“That is enough!”
The quiet becomes a tangible thing. It seeps around the room, stilling everything, filling up the space with awkward tension my shout created. My hands shake and for the life of me I cannot keep my lips from trembling.
Layla, at least, is immediately repentant, stepping toward me, hand outstretched.
“Sayo…”
“No, Layla, this is bullshit.” I can do nothing but glare at her. I know what I must look like, desperate and hopeless, with deep, dark circles around my eyes and a sallow color of my skin, but it doesn’t matter for shit.
Layla lowers her head, ashamed, guilty, it’s all there. “I come in here for caffeine because I haven’t slept, I can’t sleep, and this shit is still going on?”
“I didn’t know…”
I silence her with a wave of my hand. “You will be finishing college next semester. Both of you,” I glance at Donovan, taking no joy in how he frowns, in the way he lowers his gaze. “I don’t give a shit what your problem is with each other. Grow. Up.” They remind me of children uncomfortable about being caught in something stupid, embarrassed that they’re getting a lecture and that just pisses me off even more. “I just came from an eight-year old’s hospital bed. She’s dying…” Something huge, something thick clots my throat and it takes me a moment before that word leaves my mouth. I haven’t uttered it once, not about Rhea, not even when she asked me about Heaven and angels. The room has grown silent.
“My little cousin wanted to go to college.” It’s the only thing I can think to say. It’s the only way to make them understand how precious time is and how recklessly they squander it. “Hell, she wanted to turn ten. She wanted to come to CU because she knows how much I love it here. She knows how much we all love it here.”
Autumn is my best friend, but she reaches out to touch my shoulder, to offer me the comfort she always has in the past, I resent it, I resent her for no reason that makes any sense. I shake her off, not giving her more than a glance because my skin feels tight. Because my anger is a chain weighing me down. “But that’s not going to happen for her. She’s not going to get the chances that you both have. The opportunities that you are ignoring because you can’t let go of whatever high school bullshit you both are still holding onto.”
Donovan starts to protest but one flash of my glare and he backs down. “I’m sorry, Sayo. You’re right. You’re absolutely right.” His mouth works for a moment, and then he stammers, “I’m sorry you had to see this.”
“Sayo—” Layla tries but Mollie and Autumn are pulling me away, taking me through the door with Declan trailing behind.
“Sweetie, I’m sorry you heard that,” Autumn says but I’m still angry. I don’t want to hear her. I don’t want her comfort.
“It’s fine.” My arms are tight around my waist and I want to shout, to rage some more, and I find Autumns attempt to tug me against her side extremely annoying. “Stop…” I manage, breathing through my nose when she doesn’t hear me, when she tries patting my back. “Autumn, please.” It comes out as a growl.
“Sayo?” Since we were kids Autumn has never looked at me the way she is looking at me now. Her eyes are round, her pale face flushed, her expression confused.
I step back, then another and they don’t move, not my friends, not Declan or Quinn who stands behind him. I want to tell them I’m fine, but that would be a lie..
“Autumn, I just want…”
“What do you need, sweetie? I can help you.” She moves forward, wanting to bridge the gap between us, ignoring Declan’s hand on her elbow. “Sayo, we love you. We’re all here to help you.”
I know that. I honestly do, but I can’t take their help. I can’t take anything. I don’t want to feel anything. It’s too heavy—the frustration, the loss of hope, the emotion, the mother fucking emotion is choking me. And when I catch the glint of moisture in Autumn’s eyes, when Mollie’s normally stern, stoic expression slips into something softer, something that looks too much like sympathy, that emotion threatens to choke me completely.
“Just please, Autumn, please, all of you… I just want to be alone. Please, just let me be alone.”
I don’t look back, even though I hear footsteps behind me, even though I smell Autumn’s faint perfume in the air, even when I hear Declan’s voice, him telling her to leave me be. The humidity has thickened in the night around me and I walk right into it, seeking comfort that I can get from my friends, comfort that I refuse to take from any of them.
WHEN I WAS a kid, I got the strangest looks from people in town. Looking back, I understand it. I was one of the few non-Irish, non-redhead kids at my school or sitting in the pews at St. Theresa’s Catholic Church. As time went on, the scrutiny lessened, especially when my parents filled their house with one child after another that looked even less like the good townsfolk of Cavanagh. We didn’t mind it much and it became something we outright ignored. When our parents introduced rugby into our lives—which was impossible to avoid in this town—that scrutiny disappeared altogether.
Everyone was the same on the pitch. Every voice rooting for the Cavanagh Cocks in the stands, was a brother or sister in arms. Every shot of excitement, of joy at a try made, echoed in the stranger’s voice next to you.
There is something that happens when CPU plays. The town goes still except for the activity on the pitch. Stores shut down, churches end Saturday mass early and only the bars open, and even those have a live feed of the matches for the poor sods not lucky enough to get a seat at the match.
It was here, right on this pitch that I spent most of my best teenage moments. Autumn, Mollie, Layla and I snuck our first sips of whiskey from Layla’s older brother at the topmost bleachers. Autumn got Artie Jones’ number for me right on the sidelines as we left a match our junior year of high school. Mollie got her first kiss from Tommy O’Claggin just below the seat I’m sitting on underneath the center row of bleachers.
Everything about the pitch reminded me of happier moments—those where I laughed the hardest and, later, when the performance of our squad mattered to me, screamed the loudest.
Tonight, the uprights sway slightly in the wind that has picked up, and the pitch itself is freshly mown, ready for the rugby season and the match tomorrow morning. All around campus and in town, there are crimson flags with our mascot and the university crest flapping along light poles and emblazoned across the windows of buildings. Cavanagh is prepared for another banner season and the town has been dressed for it.
I won’t be there. I’ll be back at that hospital, sitting outside of Rhea’s room, waiting for Aunt Carol to tell me I can go back in. I won’t push myself on her if she doesn’t want me there, but I have no intention of doing anything but being there with her.
“Just leave, Sayo. I don’t want you here.”
It’s stupid. Pointless to cry. Tears don’t help. They are a useless waste. Yet I sit here, leaning on my knees, nudged between the end seats with the pitch looming massive in front of me, and the tears come. They cover my face. They frustrate me and as the wind continues and the moisture on my face makes me shiver, I curse my stupidity and pointless need to be left alone. I could have let Autumn hug me. I could have let Declan buy me a coffee and I wouldn’t be wasting my tears. I wouldn’t be alone.
I damn sure wouldn’t be freezing.
Another whip of wind and I close my eyes, wiping my face dry against the sleeve of my dingy, thin sweater. The weather hasn’t even turned cool yet but I haven’t been able to shake the chill that has set in my bones. It’s been months and months and nothing I do warms me up.
When my face is dry, I open my eyes blinking at the sudden appearance of a Styrofoam cup sitting on the bleacher in front of me. It’s still warm, the heat from the coffee pipes small lines of steam from the opening in the lid. It smells like heaven.
“Think nothing of it. I was getting one for myself anyway.”
Dammit, it’s Quinn. I want to be angry at him for disrupting my pity party. I want to hate him and roll my eyes at him and tell him to piss off.
But, I want the coffee more.
In way of a thank you, I nod at Quinn because it’s the only gratitude I’m willing to give. I am not one of the gold digging tarts he’s used to. I suspect none of us are. Cavanagh is not the Dublin that Declan warned us Quinn was used to. The lavish parties, the easy drugs, the free-flowing drink, the lack of care or responsibility—that is a world away from life in Cavanagh and I suspect that Quinn is quickly discovering this.
So he gets a nod and to his credit, he seems satisfied by it.
“You hiding?” he asks, not looking at me as he leans his arms against the bleachers behind him. He is relaxed and his tone tells me he only asked to pass the time, maybe fill up the awkward silence that crowds around us.
“I’m not hiding.” My voice is thin and rough.
“What is it, then?” When my only answer is to take a quick gulp from the warm cup, Quinn leans closer, this time shifting his leg to rest his foot on the bleacher in front of him. “Just now you looked like how I reckon I have every bleeding morning.” When I frown, Quinn shrugs. “When I wake up and remember I’m in this shitehole.”
“Shitehole?” At his flippant nod, I dump the coffee he brought me onto the ground and crush the cup in my furious fingers. Brushing past him, I angrily stomp down the bleachers to fling the ruined cup into a trash can, not interested in spending another second with that asshole.
“Oi. Hold up.” I don’t do anything but along the sidelines, flipping my fading pink hair over my shoulder as Quinn trails after me. I hear his big boots clomping down the metal steps. Shitehole? This town? Really. What an insufferable…
He catches up to me, effortlessly. “Have I twisted your knickers in a knot or something?”
“Don’t,” I shout, turning in a flash to poke Quinn with my finger, “you ever, ever call this town a shithole. You’re damn lucky Joe and Declan are letting you darken their door. This town? A shithole?” Winded by the quick release of my anger, I inhale, filling up my lungs just to give myself the capacity to continue yelling at him. “This shitehole, as you put it, has a university with sister programs all over the world including Trinity, Cambridge and Oxford. In this shitehole we have five New York Times best-selling authors, two Grammy-winning producers and ten, count them ten rugby players that went on to play in the international leagues, two of who landed on squads that won the World Cup. So we must be doing something right in this shitehole.”
We’d drifted from the bleachers, just outside the edge of the pitch where the steps lowered further down onto the field. Quinn stares at me with his mouth slack and his gaze busy moving all over my face as though he’d caught sight of something he wasn’t quite sure he knew how to process.
He keeps staring, even after I calm down, after the cool wind bristles against my hair and I wrap those faded pink locks around my fingers to keep them from flying in my face. Quinn’s silence, the attention he gives me is unsettling, as though he needs time to sort out who I am and what he wants to do with me. But I am not a woman who waits for any man, no matter how pretty they are. “What the hell are you looking at?” I manage, pulling my wild hair around my shoulder while I lift my chin, expecting Quinn to say something insulting.
“Jaysus, are you gorgeous when you’re angry.”
Yep. I knew it. Leave it to an asshole to completely block out what I said and focus on how I look saying it. “And you are a misogynist pig.”
He has the audacity to laugh. At me! And Quinn doesn’t fight the fit of laughter or even pretend like he’s the least bit remorseful. “Can’t deny that.”
“Get the hell away from me, Quinn.”
I manage a step, but suddenly notice the form of a large man walking straight for the pitch. Dammit, it’s Sam, my ex. He must have come looking for me after hearing about my blow up at the coffee shop—news and gossip goes light speed in this town. He’d given me a look the other night at McKinney’s, one I thought had been pity, but him coming this way, looking the way he did—like a man on a mission—maybe he wanted to start something back up again, and thought finding me might give him the opening he was looking for. I wasn’t eager to deal with that crap right now, so without thinking, I backtrack, grabbing hold of Quinn and using his large body as a meager shield.
“And what are we up to?”
“Quiet,” I say, craning my head around him to spot Sam getting closer. I flash my eyes up at Quinn’s face. “Ex-boyfriend that I really am in no mood to talk to right now.”
The hesitation in his body lasts only a second and then Quinn nods, grabbing my face so that I am forced to look at him. “Relax, love. I’ll handle it.”
And then he is kissing me. Quinn is forceful, his tongue gliding along my mouth, insisting, expectant, then he pulls on my arm like he has the right to, moving us until I am against the wall of the restrooms, my back cold and scratching on the brick wall.
There are footsteps behind us, the crunch of gravel and the long, slow release of an exhale but all of that is secondary sensation, something that barely registers as Sam retreats. I am too caught up in Quinn’s mouth, his touch, and why the hell I’m not tell him to piss off.
Finally, he pulls away, but Quinn is not smiling. There isn’t the slightest hint of laughter on his face. There is only that tight, blazing glint in his eyes and his gaze burning over my features like he means to set my skin on fire.
He isn’t aggressive, isn’t hurting me, but the delicious musky smell of his skin and the cologne from his body is like a tranquilizer, as if the very scent of him is some numbing drug that keeps me paralyzed against the brick wall. Somewhere in the back of my mind I hear myself screaming, telling me to push him away, to escape. He isn’t holding me there, in fact he is barely touching me at all, but still I am immobile and hate that nothing but the pull of his gaze and the whisper of his fingertip along my cheek is locking me in place.
“Was that sufficient?” I can barely hear him over the wind, and he pulls the hair from my face and keeps it still between his fingers with his hand cupping behind my ear. “You damn well kissed me back.”
“No,” I say weakly, trying to pretend that I am indifferent to the smell of him, the feel of those hands. “I didn’t.”
“Liar.”
“I meant what I said. Get the hell away from me.”
Instead Quinn steps so close that the smallest hairs on his chest tickle my collarbone and his wet bottom lip skims along my chin. “You like having me about, don’t you, love, because I don’t mince my words.” I close my eyes, not wanting him to see anything there that he might take as longing. But Quinn is a bully, a beautiful, seductive bully, and he doesn’t seem to like me not watching him. He doesn’t seem to like not being able to read me. He curls his fingers, tightens my hair around them and my eyelids flutter open. I’m careful to glare at him, leaving nothing sweet or honest in my eyes. Still, he doesn’t buy it. “Don’t worry. I’ll let you have your anger.”
“That’s because…”
He stops me with his thumb smoothing along my jaw. I am distracted by the sight of his face so close to mine, his dark eyes, and the smell of coffee and sugar lingering on his breath. If I move my head, pull my hair free from his fingers, then my mouth would be on his; our bodies would be pressed together. For a brief second, I wonder if his stomach is as firm as I thought it was that morning on Joe’s porch. I wonder how far down that thin patch of dark hair goes, if it thickens further down his body. Just the thought of him, of that beautiful skin and those taut, lean muscles has me wanting to let him take me, right there against the wall. I’d defile the place that holds my sweetest memories if only to quell my curiosity.
If only to forget everything else.
Quinn drifts so close, holds my chin, keeping my head still with his free hand and I swallow back the knot of worry, the words I know will stop him from kissing me. He’s so close, the airy breath from his mouth tickling down my nose… just a half an inch closer and I’ll taste him again.
If I hadn’t glanced at him, if I hadn’t glimpsed that slowly creeping smirk—one that was all attitude, all smug triumph, then maybe I would have let Quinn kiss me, this time without the excuse of putting off my ex.
But I do glance at him.
I do see that smirk that every entitled asshole learns, it seems, before they utter their first “I said right now,” and it is that smirk that totally snaps me back to reality.
“You let me have my anger, O’Malley,” I pull his hand from my face and feel a stab of vindication as the smirk disappears, “because if you didn’t then you’d have to apologize for once in your entitled, pampered life, wouldn’t you?”
He jerks back, putting at least a foot of distance between the two of us. I can feel his anger spark against mine. “I apologize for nothing. Not one fecking thing.”
“And that’s your biggest damn problem, isn’t it?” Quinn’s body has gone stiff, his shoulders so straight I wonder how his muscles aren’t cramping. “You are too proud. You have zero shame. You are nothing like Declan.”
“Jaysus, I hope not.” He laughs then, but there is no humor in the sound. Quinn sounds, in fact, mildly disgusted by the comparison, which only adds fuel to my anger.
“You could learn a lot from him, you know that? You could learn what it is to be generous and thoughtful. You could learn what it means to care for others before thinking only of yourself.”
“Why in God’s name would I want to do that shite?” His voice was flippant, but there was no humor left in him.
“You wouldn’t. In order to do any of those things, Quinn, you’d have to have a freakin’ heart.”
It was a burn that I could not back up, but the insult made Quinn retreat, keeping him still as I walked away from the pitch oddly empty, and still cold, wondering if I’d ever be warm again.