Chapter 24

Avery looked at the scratched black door of the café with trepidation, but her excitement overrode her nerves. An electric thrill zipped through her at the prospect of meeting the Cork Star Wars fans.

The bitter aftertaste of her argument with Cathal this morning was probably the wakeup call she needed. There were two days left for her on this little island. Romance was beautiful, and the sex was amazing, but she needed to eat and have a roof over her head when she got back to LA. That was the tarnished flip-side to this coin. She couldn’t afford to go throwing business opportunities out the window.

A blast of warm air greeted her, perfumed with coffee and french fries. She didn’t have to hunt long for the Star Wars tribe—it was obvious from their T-shirts and baseball caps. Five of the café’s long wooden tables were tightly occupied by Star Warriors. Already heartened by the geeky vibe, she made her way toward the nearest table, which seemed the least crowded.

Brian came up to her. “Avery! You made it! Oh, you don’t want to sit there.” He took her elbow and steered her abruptly past the table, not speaking again until they were out of hearing range. “They’re discussing midichlorians.”

“Hell, no,” she agreed with a laugh.

“We’re just doing the meet-and-greet bit now—we’ve a few new members—and later we’ll move into the back room. Hope you don’t mind that I booked you in for a wee talk at six thirty?” He gave the impression that a lot rode on the answer.

“That’s fine.” She smiled and patted her laptop case. “I’m prepared for anything. My train’s not ’til eight.”

“Marvelous. We’re excited like you have no idea. Here’s our table.”

A space was cleared for her at the head of it and she looked down at two rows of faces, all gaping at her in open awe.

“Hi,” she said, because “May the Force be with you” would be too cheesy. Friendly nods and ‘hellos’ greeted her in return. Before long, she was having a fun time as she explained to her attentive audience what it was like to make the videos. Some had been following her since way before #waiting4skellig.

“Is he here too?” a girl asked shyly.

“No, he’s still in Dingle.”

There was a silence as they chewed on this. Then the table erupted with suggestions, advice and speculations which reminded her of the frenzy of her online fans.

“So, what’s he really like?”

“Has he really not seen any of the films?”

“We should be able to sign a petition to get him a boat or something.”

She fielded their concerns and filled them in on the details of what she and Cathal did on their days together—but not all details.

When the time came for her scheduled talk, Brian ushered her into a separate room where a projector was set up to connect to her laptop. The seats filled with an eager audience, and they hung on her words as she presented her mockups of the augmented reality app for Skellig Michael, then swiftly moved on to future projects at film locations in Cork, Italy, Switzerland, Croatia, France, and Tunisia. It wasn’t lost on her that these were her first honest-to-goodness backers. They’d spread the word for her.

Afterward, she took a seat at the bar for a self-congratulatory vodka tonic. Mid-sip, a dark- haired man approached her. Late thirties, she guessed.

“Hi, Avery, I’m Gordon. Brian’s brother. I talked to your colleague Jeremy yesterday,” he offered as the ice-breaker.

She swallowed hurriedly and shook his hand. “Yes, he told me.”

He was definitely Brian’s brother, just older and more tanned—with a touch of Mr. Bean about his appearance, but a very businesslike Mr. Bean. “Maybe he also told you I’m partner at Creatizone VCs based in Dublin and San Francisco. We specialize in social media startups. We value social influence, not profit margins. At least in the incubation phase.”

“Sounds good,” she said.

“I’m liking what you’ve got here. We should set up a meeting in LA when you’re back, at your earliest convenience. There’s a huge potential in Star Wars apps right now. We should strike while the iron’s hot.”

“Agreed. I’m back Sunday. Earliest convenience is Monday.”

“That’s good. Monday then. You’ll come to our LA office? We’ve a rep there and I can video conf in.”

“Delighted to.”

“I got to hand it to you, the enthusiasm in there was palpable.”

“Thanks. It’s good to get the first reactions, and if theirs are anything to go by, I’m on to a winner.” She laughed nervously in case she was overstepping the mark.

But Gordon smiled back. “My thoughts exactly. They loved the narrative... the farm lad, the urn of ashes. Inspired. I have to ask you—did you get any help with the casting?”

“Casting?”

“The actor. He was very good. Quite the natural. I haven’t seen him around.”

“W-what actor?”

“The blond guy?”

“No, no,” she said, laughing. “Cathal’s not an actor, he’s real. Very real.” She felt herself blushing just thinking about how very real the man was. Every glorious inch of him.

Gordon’s brows knitted. Then he relaxed into a smile. “I don’t know whether you’re staying in character for artistic reasons or protecting his identity until some NDAs get signed, but I suppose it doesn’t matter for now. We’ll get into those specifics later. The point is, for this to scale up, we’d need to know that you’re in a position to create similarly compelling storyboards for the other locations.”

She nodded. Crap, she was unprepared for this.

“If I may make a suggestion, I was thinking for Dubrovnik, you could befriend a refugee who’s looking for her brother? Some sob story like that with topical resonance?”

“Uh, sure. Yes.”

She focused on discussing his torrent of ideas and hitting back with good ones of her own. When he trotted off after their meeting to talk to some other people, she sagged against the bar in relief. Her mind was swirling. She needed to get out of here.

With quick goodbyes to Brian and Sinead, telling them she had to run for the train—which was totally true—she snuck out a side door and raced to the station. She blanked out the questions nagging her until she had navigated the station platform and found a window seat in a carriage near the end of the train and collapsed into it.

Panting, she wiped condensation off the window to peer out at the sunset over Cork’s hilly suburbs. Where was Gordon coming from with an idea like that? Cathal was as real as day. He wasn’t some actor.

Of course, she hadn’t actually seen the ashes.

And he didn’t carry a phone—who the hell left their phone behind when they were travelling?

And he hadn’t taken his car, even though he owned one and it would have made his trip so much easier.

And he was pretty nifty at fighting computer viruses for a pig farmer. Okay, he’d explained that one, but really? A minor degree in computer science barely qualified you to operate Microsoft Word, and she should know. It certainly didn’t equip you with the knowhow to mess about in a registry and wipe a freaking virus. Or were computer science undergrad classes in Ireland light years ahead of those in the US?

And what about that crazy family story anyway? The mother—a widow twenty years younger than her late husband with an undiagnosed mental illness, not receiving any care from the state? And the five horrible siblings—all with strange names—forcing him to live on a farm, imposing their will on him from every corner of the globe?

But if it wasn’t real, why would he make it all up and try to get her to believe it? For kicks? As a dare? And why hadn’t she even considered this before? Before she’d gotten in too deep?

What if the only true thing he’d said was the bit about him being a cubicle slave?

Oh no.

Now that she thought about it, there was a distinct sense of too good to be true about him. She should have considered that, but wasn’t that always her problem? Too trusting in people? Especially men? Too desperate to find out where it was going?

Her heart hammered with the sickening new uncertainty that seemed to mock the happiness of the past four days. Gordon might be totally wrong, of course, but the more she thought about it, the fishier the whole damn thing became.

But on the other hand, Cathal didn’t seem the type to lie about things. He seemed so genuine. He cared about her. Her woman’s heart told her so.

Or was that just her libido speaking? Certainly, he looked after that side of things. Did the rest even matter? She was getting what she wanted from him and she was leaving anyway. What did any of it matter?

Well, she could check out his firm. She opened her laptop and typed “Morrissey and Scanlan” in the browser. They had a scrappy webpage, very 2000’s—plain text in clunky frames with obvious stock photos. Ugh. No staff profiles, just a blurry picture of five old guys, the board of management. Convenient. She could always call the switchboard and ask for him. Tomorrow, during working hours.

Which reminded her. With a sigh, she opened up the Delta Airlines page to check in for her flight to LAX the day after tomorrow. As she chose her seat in row 16A, she took a masochistic moment to picture herself standing outside Terminal 2, R2-D2 suitcase by her side, in that dusty tunnel with its constant cycle of complimentary hotel shuttles, and yellow cabs. Back to the noise, heat, and reality.

She uploaded a synopsis of her conversation with Gordon to her closed Facebook group, naming no names and not mentioning the actor allegation, but stressing it was a great new opportunity. She made a poll asking them to vote on four new concepts for Star Wars fandom trips. Her original idea had been to do a live Facebook session after the meetup, but she didn’t have the heart for it now.

Her fans didn’t give a shit about new locations. All they cared about was about Cathal’s mission. And no wonder—they had precisely one morning left to try to make it over. The hashtag #waiting4skellig was doing the rounds on Instagram and Twitter, and well beyond her usual reach too.

She listlessly skim-read the latest bunch of comments popping up on her feed:

-What if he doesn’t make it to SM? Will you stay in touch?

-Feel it in my bones. It’ll happen on the last day.

-May the Skellig be with you.

-Swim, Cathal, Swim!!

The last comment made her smile. Yeah, he might be reduced to that, and it wasn’t like she hadn’t researched the possibility of swimming, or at least hiring a boat themselves to go out, but both ideas were impossible and terribly illegal. You needed a license to get out and besides, the crossing was so treacherous that it took years of training to learn. Even Mad Graham had done his apprenticeship, it seemed.

She had to be in Dublin airport early on Sunday, so she had to leave for Dublin tomorrow evening. Cathal had to return home then too. Was that a fateful crossing of paths, or was it… orchestrated?

Shit, she had to stop thinking about this until she could actually talk to him again.

She got into the B&B just before midnight, creeping up the stairs. He would be asleep now, in preparation for yet another early start—their last.

But no, he stood there against the doorframe, looking totally gorgeous. For tonight, she wouldn’t care. This part was real—to both of them. He couldn’t fake that. And maybe it was enough for now. Maybe none of it mattered anyway.

“Hello, can I help you?” he asked.

“I’ve come to service your room,” she replied.

“Mmm, this way please.”

Once inside, he grabbed her, pressed her back against the wall, and kissed her. “How was it?” he asked.

“Oh, fine.”

“That good, huh?”

“Let’s not talk about it,” she urged between kisses. “How was your day?”

“I walked. Talked to Mrs. Nolan.” He sat on the bed. “She offered that I keep the urn here, if we don’t get a boat tomorrow.”

“Mm,” she said.

“I told her I’d be back next year in that case.” He wasn’t even looking at her but she felt his question. Will you be there too?

Whether he was bluffing or deadly serious, she wasn’t in the habit of planning things a year in advance, and with good reason—a awful lot could happen in her life in that time. Her silence seemed to suggest the answer to him, because he nodded and looked out the window, sighing. “Let’s just hope for tomorrow.”

“Yeah.”

He scooted over, kneeled and rested his arms on the back of the chair, staring into her eyes. “What are the chances these storms will hit Dublin Airport and prevent you from flying on Sunday—or ever?”

“That would be poetic justice indeed,” she said with a laugh.

“Can I take you anywhere on your last night?”

She squirmed. Then she ran a hand along his shoulder, pressing her fingers into the muscles. “Yes, I dare say you can.”

His breathing grew ragged. “You’re thinking of that place...?”

“Mmm,” she said in her huskiest voice. “Take me there, Cathal.”

“I’ll start the journey here.” He slid her hair to the side and planted a soft kiss on the base of her throat. She shut her eyes and enjoyed how he pressed with his lips all the way to her chin, first softly then greedily, angling her head in his big hands. She let him take control, let him steer. This was one part of him that she was sure of.

If this is acting then hell, I don’t care anymore.