One Christmas, his father finally gets him a bloody dog.

The boy is devoted to the dog, aptly named Dog. The dog is his entire life. The boy feeds it the best food, takes it on long walks in green, lush fields. Tends to its fur and takes it to the vet for checkups. One day, during their walk, a storm brews. The boy realizes he and Dog can’t get home, so he looks for shelter. He finds a cave in the middle of a forest and slips in. It rains hard. Dog is scared, cold, and shivering. The boy cannot bear the idea of losing his beloved pet, the one he’d done everything in his power to win and keep. He hugs the dog tight the entire time, until the storm passes. When the sun reappears, the boy looks down and realizes to his horror that he suffocated the dog in his quest to save him.

Moral of the story: clutching something desperately doesn’t mean you’re going to keep it. You might just kill it.

Plus, call me a conceited son of a bitch, but I truly don’t see Malachy Doherty as competition. He looks sloppy, his house is an utter mess, and his life is shaping up to look even worse. Those are things women don’t find attractive.

And Rory, she is a bit of a wild spirit, this one, but she is not daft. I don’t think.

In the cab, I take my phone out of my pocket and wipe away the idea of Rory and Malachy together.

I can keep her.

I have thus far, haven’t I?

And let’s not pretend she was always into it.

Only a bit more before I seal the deal. Then Weirdo Wackhead can be a distant memory again.

Eight years ago

Mal

Whoever invented the phrase “out of sight, out of mind” evidently had the memory of a goldfish. “Out of sight, out of my fecking mind” sounds more fitting.

I miss her.

Oh, how I miss her like a flower misses the sun. Like the Clash missed the mark with “Cut the Crap.” I can’t stop thinking about her, and that contract is possibly the worst idea I’ve had since wanking into a Shepherd’s pie in tenth grade, straight out of the oven.

My mate, Daniel, claps my back as Sean, his twin, slides a pint of the black stuff across the table of The Boar’s Head. They motion for me to drink up with their chins.

“Feck the contract,” Daniels spits. “Pick up the phone and call the girl.”

I stare at the thick, white foam of my stout. It’s not that simple. It’s not just the contract part, but whatever comes after it. The making-it-work part.

“What if she’s moved on?” I ask my drink.

“In three weeks? Unlikely.” Sean lets out a gruff laugh.

Sean and Daniel look alike, as identical twins do. Same blond hair trimmed close to the scalp, green eyes, and I-fucked-your-wife kind of cocky smirks. The only way I can distinguish them is that Daniel makes some sort of sense every now and again when he opens his mouth, and Sean is a complete ape. And I say that with a lot of love. (Not to Sean. To apes. They’re lovely, intelligent creatures.)

“I can’t do long distance.”

I dip a finger into my Guinness and suck the bitter foam. I hear a sigh from the table next to us. Kathleen. She is sitting with her friends, Maeve and Heather. She flicks her straightened hair, smiles at me shyly, and turns back to Maeve.

“Clearly you must, since you can’t stop thinking and talking about her. You’re a complete puss.” Daniel shoves a handful of crisps into his mouth.

“Two people shorten the road.” Sean taps his temple. “Think about it.”

“Wrong saying, but the sentiment is correct, brother.” Daniel laughs. “I know you said you don’t want to settle down, but that’s exactly what you’re doing, and she’s not even here. You’re settling for misery instead of taking a chance. You haven’t shagged a soul since she left. At least give it a shot. You owe it to us, if not yourself. We cannot listen to your whining much longer.”

“Mal?” Sean asks.

“Hmm?”

“Is Kathleen…single?”

“As far as I’m aware.”

“Do you reckon…”

He completes his question, I’m sure, but my mind is drifting back to Roryland. I pick up my phone and type her name in the search engine. There are only so many Aurora Belle Jenkins in the world, surely. There are a load of pictures of Disney princesses and articles about how to make your own Disney slime before I get to the important stuff.

Outside, thunder cracks, and out of nowhere, it starts to hail.

Random or fate? Sometimes I feel like the world is screwing with me when I think about Rory.

I find her on a New Jersey-based high school website, in an article dated two years ago. She won a photography award of some sort. There’s a picture of her holding her cheap statue in the shape of film, staring at the camera, flipping the finger with a mocking pout. Eyeliner, fishnets, and Toms intact. The girl who left me behind.

Why did I have to find out you exist?

“Anyway…” I shake my head. “Even if I wanted to give her a ring, I don’t have her number or anything like that.”

“Pity,” Sean mumbles into his drink, eyeing the girls at the opposite table.

He looks a bit cross. Then I remember he asked me something about Kathleen. Sean and Kathleen are not in the same IQ bracket. A bit of an odd pairing, but stranger things have happened, I suppose.

“Wait, doesn’t your granddad know her mam?” Daniel snaps his fingers, his eyes lighting up.

Yes, yes, he does. He would have their home number. Rory is not supposed to know about it—not about him knowing her mother, and not about how I know and kept it from her. There’s no chance in hell my granda is going to give me the number, but I could just look at his little phone book. Problem solved.

Of course, there’s a chance Rory went back, got to college, and has already met the love of her life. But if she hasn’t…

If she hasn’t, I’ll take long distance.

Or casual dating.

Or anything, really.

I stand up, finishing my pint in one go.

“Keep us posted.” Daniel slaps my back.

Sean loosens the collar of his shirt, clearing his throat and sliding into a seat next to the girls.

I get out of the pub, heading toward my grandfather’s house on foot. He lives across the village, not terribly far, and I need the fresh air to sort my mind. I hear footfalls behind me, but I don’t slow down. Kiki appears by my side. She is wheezing.

“You’re actually going through with this?”

“Why not?”

It should bother me that Kath has been eavesdropping on my conversation. She’s had her nose stuck in my business as long as I can remember. I chalk it up to Kath being Kath. You take the bad with the good in people.

The good: she’s a grand friend, protective, and never steers me wrong.

The bad: she’s mad as a box of slimy frogs and likes it when I torture her with mixed signals. If I stop, she crumbles and enters a state of depression.

“It’s crazy. You live on different continents. She will never leave America and move here permanently. What kind of future do you have with her?”

“We’ll work it out.”

I round a corner. She’s at my heel.

“That’s just something people say when they can’t figure out how to make something work.”