I drove through Lauren’s neighborhood, dodging bicyclists and college students, my vision blurred by the tears that were leaking out of my eyes. Keeping one hand on the wheel, I swiped a forearm across my face to get rid of them. I knew it wasn’t “manly” to cry, but goddamn … the woman I loved had just torn out my fucking heart.

What else was I supposed to do?

Drink, my subconscious answered. Whiskey, and lots of it.

Turning onto my street, I acknowledged to myself that I’d pushed Lauren, but I’d really thought we were on the same page—especially after I’d told her I’d move to L.A. and she’d reacted with excitement. I’d known she was gun shy after what had gone down with that prick Javier, but I’d honestly thought she’d moved past all that. Now, I wondered if she’d ever be able to. If her response to me talking about us being together forever was any indication, I didn’t think she would.

My gut churned as I pulled into the driveway and parked my car next to my roommate Tadhg’s Citroen. I didn’t relish the idea of having to shoot the shit with him right now, so I hoped I’d be able to sneak upstairs to my room before he saw me. Walking into the house I shared with him and Fergus—Eoin having moved into Aoife’s apartment a couple of months back—I was surprised to see our former roommate camped out on the leather sectional with an X-box controller in his hand, Call of Duty playing on the 60-inch television on the opposite wall.

I might not be ready to talk to Tadhg or Fergus anytime soon, but Eoin was a whole other matter. Compared to what he and Aoife had gone through when she’d found out she was pregnant, my girlfriend problems paled in comparison.

“Hey, what’s up man?”

Eoin paused the game, his virtual weapon suspended in midair, and twisted over his shoulder. “Hey! We weren’t expecting you.”

I scoffed and rolled my eyes, then looked for the other two guys. When I didn’t see them, I said, “Yeah, me neither.”

“Shit, that doesn’t sound good.”

I flattened my lips into a hard line and huffed out a frustrated sigh. Crossing the room, I peeked my head around the corner, expecting to see my roommates in the kitchen. When I didn’t see either, Eoin filled me in.

“Tadhg’s in the shower and Fergus is out with some girl.”

I nodded. I loved Fergus like a brother, but this was not a conversation I wanted to have with him in the house since he had a big mouth and a tendency to speak before thinking. Eoin almost knocked him on his ass after he’d told us he was secretly dating Aoife and Fergus had mouthed off about what a hot piece of ass she was. Tadhg was the more sympathetic of the two, but he wasn’t really a relationship guy. He wouldn’t understand how or why I’d fallen for Lauren so fast. Hell, I barely understood it myself.

“You gonna tell me what’s going on?”

I grabbed a beer out of the fridge and sat at the table. Popping the lid, I downed half of it in quick succession. Wiping the foam from my lips, I confessed, “I think I came on too strong with Lauren.”

Eoin pulled his own beer out of the fridge—he was here so often that he still kept it stocked with his favorites—and dropped down across from me. After swallowing a few sips of his own, he asked, “How so?”

“You know how she’s supposed to be leaving soon?”

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure I warned you about that.”

I sighed. “Yeah, you did. But it was too late.”

“I fucking know how that feels,” he commiserated, taking another pull from his beer. “So, what are you guys going to do?”

“She has some stuff going on in L.A. that she has to be back for, but she was planning on staying an extra week and we were going to go be tourists. You know, see all the shit you’re supposed to see but we never do because we fucking live here.”

“Aww, how cute.” Eoin titled his head to the side and batted his eyelashes. “You all loved up on a B&B in Dingle.”

“Fuck you. You know I hate B&B’s and all that flowery shit.”

Eoin chuckled. He’d learned about my aversion to “all that flowery shit” after I’d stayed the night at his parents’ place a couple of years back and his mom had put me up in a room covered in pink rose fabric. She’d explained it was something called Laura Ashley, but I couldn’t have cared less if it was the fucking Queen herself. I’d felt like sneezing the entire night, absolutely positive the non-existent pollen would suffocate me while I slept.

“I take it that’s no longer on the table?” he asked, bringing the conversation back to the reason for the acid roiling in my stomach.

“I don’t know,” I admitted with a sigh.

“You don’t know?” he asked, raising an eyebrow my way.

“We got to talking, and she asked if I’d come out and stay in California for awhile. Since I don’t have anything better to do—” I lifted my booted foot “—I figured why not. But then, because I’m me and you know how I get—”

“—You mean how you can never leave well enough alone?”

I gritted my teeth and nodded. He and I both knew this was not up for debate. “Yes, that.”

If Fergus spoke without thinking, I was notorious for acting without thinking. Anytime a red flag might have been raised, I’d brush it aside, figuring I’d make things work somehow. Frankly, I’d been that way my whole life and was lucky I’d never been burned by my impulsive behavior. Then again, I’d never cared about anything the way I cared about Lauren, so even if I had suffered some repercussion, I’m not sure it would have changed things. If today’s conversation with Lauren had proved anything, it was that I was still prone acting before thinking things through to their logical end.

“What did you do?” he asked, finishing off his beer.

“I told her I didn’t want to just visit; I said I’d move out there.”

Eoin groaned and dropped his face into his hands and then spread his fingers wide so he could see me through them. “You didn’t.”

I groaned back. “I did. But it gets worse.”

Eoin dropped his palms to the table and his head fell back. Speaking to the ceiling, he said, “Of course it does.”

When he brought his face forward, I continued. “I might have said I wanted us to be together. Like forever. Stick a fork in me and all that.”

Eoin took a deep breath and let it out on a long gust. “Wow.” Then he shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. “Wow.”

“Yeah, wow.”

“What did she say?”

I pinched the bridge of my nose as I recalled that moment in vivid, technicolor detail. “Lauren didn’t say anything.”

“That’s good though, right? I mean, it’s not like she told you to feck off or anything.”

“No, you don’t understand,” I answered. “I specifically asked her to tell me she heard me loud and clear, and that she believed me. She bit her lip and refused to speak.”

“Oh fuck.”

“Yup. Fuck indeed.”

“At the risk of sounding like a chick, she has told you she loves you though, right? I mean, this isn’t all just one-sided?”

I took the final drink of my beer, the liquid now warm. “No, it’s not one-sided. She told me she loved me that night at the museum. And then she told me she loved me again, even as she was telling me she couldn’t commit to me the way I wanted her to.”

“Shit, man. I don’t know what to say.”

“Neither did I, so I left.”

“Like, you just walked out of there?”

I nodded. “Pretty much.”

“Yeah, been there done that. It typically doesn’t end well.”

That was the understatement of the century! When Eoin had found out Aoife was pregnant and had contemplated getting an abortion without telling him, he’d been devastated. In the heat of the moment, he’d called her a heartless cunt and then stormed off. They hadn’t spoken for weeks afterward, and it was only Aoife’s brother Declan knocking some sense into Eoin—literally—that had put them back on the path to domestic bliss.

“The good news is I didn’t call her a cunt,” I answered with a wry chuckle.

Wincing, he replied, “Yeah, smart move.”

Months later, the names Eoin had called Aoife remained a sore subject between them, and I knew from past discussions that for the rest of his life, Eoin would regret the way he’d spoken to her that day.

“But you didn’t say anything you can’t take back, did you? I know how you can get. You go for the jugular first.”

“No,” I said with a protracted sigh. “I knew I was getting there, so I told her I was going to head home before either of us said something we might regret in the morning.”

Eoin’s head jerked back and his eyes narrowed. “Really? You said that?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Who are you and what have you done with my best mate Donal Casey?”

I chuckled again. “Fuck you.”

“I’m serious. At the risk of sounding like a mother hen, I’m proud of you. Restraint isn’t really your forte.”

I raised a skeptical eyebrow at him. “Um, need I remind you I practiced a very particular, very painful, brand of restraint for 22 fucking years. I think I know how to hold myself in check, despite some other, more public, evidence to the contrary.”

“Touche.” He shook his head. “I still don’t know how you or Aoife managed to stay virgins for so long, but more power to you.”

“Who’s a virgin?” Tadhg asked, strolling into the room with nothing but his towel wrapped around his waist and a Q-tip in his ear.

My eyes found Eoin’s and I gave him the look.

“No one,” Eoin answered quickly, popping up from the table to pull two more beers out of the fridge. “Just some book Aoife was reading,” he continued, passing the other can my way while at the same time tossing me his own look; one that said, “your secret is safe with me.”

I nodded imperceptibly and popped the tab.

“That’s good,” Tadhg said, dropping into the seat next to me. “After what went down with Aoife, I’m staying far away from anyone who’s never fucked before.”

Eoin closed his eyes on a slow, long blink that I’d deemed his, “Lord give me patience” look the first month we’d all lived together. He’d pulled that one out a lot back then, but usually it was Fergus who was the recipient of it, not Tadhg. “Aoife didn’t get pregnant because she was a virgin, asshole. She got pregnant because she had the flu while she was on the pill and the hormones weren’t in her system.”

“Well, regardless. No virgins for me, man. Too much trouble.” He pulled the cotton swab from his ear and set it on the table between us.

“Fucking gross!” I hollered, flicking it onto the floor. “Throw that shit away.”

“What?” he asked, his jaw falling open.

I looked pointedly to the Q-tip on the floor, its waxy orange coating shiny in the lamplight. “I don’t care if you walk around picking your nose, but don’t put your shit on the goddamn table.”

Eoin chuckled and rose from the table. With a smirk he said, “My baby’s all grown up,” and then strolled out of the room.

“Clean that up,” I barked at Tadhg and then trotted after Eoin. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He flopped down onto the couch and picked up the remote and game controller. Before he flicked the TV back on, his eyes slid to mine. “It means, asshole, that since you’ve been with Lauren, you’re finally acting like an adult.”

“I’ve always acted—”

“No, you haven’t.”

And then he tuned me out with the sounds of digital warfare.