We stared at each other for a while, smiling quietly. It felt like a promising hello, but somehow also a bittersweet goodbye. Nothing would be the same, I knew, with or without Rory’s forgiveness. She was not coming back—not to live in New York, anyway, and yet she chose to give me the beautiful gift of forgiveness.

“For the record, I hate your new husband for taking you away from me.” I sniffed, crossing my arms and looking the other way to further prove my point.

“For the record, he resents you, too, for what we did to his pictures,” she snorted.

“You told him!” I grabbed a throw pillow and threw it in her face.

She caught it in the air and tossed it back at me, laughing.

It hit my face and fell in my lap.

“Bitch,” I shrieked.

“Traitor.” She waggled her eyebrows.

We both collapsed to the floor, holding our bellies, giggling, and I knew that with or without her, I’d eventually be all right.

Now I’m at the Dublin Airport, waiting for my flight back to New York.

There’s a tall, dark, handsome-type guy sitting across from me, waiting for the same flight and reading a paperback of The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. By the pace at which he flips the pages—barely every minute or so—I know he’s focused on me from the corner of his eye.

I slip one foot out of my pump and wiggle my hot pink toenails, popping the mint gum between my lips and eyeing him brazenly.

He looks up, a polite smile on his face. “May I help you?” he asks.

“No, but I can help you.” I flash him a grin.

His brow rises. “You can? Please enlighten me as to how.”

“I can move somewhere else, so you won’t be distracted and can finish your book. It’s a wonderful novel, you know? Vlad the Impaler was the real MVP.”

God bless my weird obsession with Eastern European folklore.

Tall, Dark, and Handsome closes the book and rests it on his crossed legs, sitting back and giving me his full attention.

“Do you have a name?”

“What am I, Arya Stark? Of course, I have a name.”

He bursts out in laughter, which instantly makes me smile. My heart is pounding all over my chest. I steal a glance at his left hand. No ring. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t involved.

I will never repeat my Callum mistake.

It appears TDAH is also a mind reader.

“Single, in case you’re wondering. Which, let’s admit it, you are.”

“And Irish,” I point out after hearing the accent.

I don’t want this to be a fling. I don’t want a fling. I want a Pretty Woman moment (sans the part where I sell my body, obviously). I want my Richard Gere. I want to know if Tall, Dark, Handsome, and Irish slept with someone else the night of Rory’s Christmas party. If he is the one. If I should be irrationally furious at him about bedding that ho on Christmas. Somehow, I can’t bring myself to be mad at him, though. Because he’s so here now, so alive in front of me, and it feels like the entire world—the sky, the earth, everything between—is ours to explore if we wish to.

“And Irish.” He nods. “But I live in New York.”

“You do?”

He nods again.

“What do you do?” That’s my quota of dos for the rest of the week.

“I own a shop.”

“What kind of shop?”

“One that sells sex toys and other high-end toys of the variety you won’t be buying your godchildren,” he says flatly.

I stare at him, unblinking, waiting for him to tell me he’s joking. When I realize he isn’t, I smile. “Just my type.”

He grins. He has a glorious grin, not to be confused with a smile. No, his looks are cunning and mischievous and drugging.

“I’m Kirby.”

“Summer.”

We both lean forward at the same time, still in our seats, to shake each other’s hands. When we sit back, we both cross our legs. He picks up his book; I pick up my phone. We go back to whatever was keeping us occupied, but we’re both smiling.

“Are you a member of the Mile-High Club, Summer?” he asks, flipping a page casually.

I post a story on Instagram with a picture of his feet, captioned: “Look at these feet! Just imagine the rest of him? #WinkWink!”

“Well, no, but as Groucho Marx once said, ‘I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.’”

Please be my Richard Gere.

Please be my Richard Gere.

Please be my Richard Gere.

He smiles.

“Then how about dinner? Fully clothed.”

“Partial clothing is fine, too, you know.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

One year later

 

Rory

 

A little hand grabs mine, pulling me toward the throng, her tiny feet secured in shiny, red Dorothy-style shoes.

“Pu-leeeeeease. You said five minutes. Surely at least a thousand have passed!”

“It’s been barely two.” I laugh, lowering my camera.

I give the subject of my photo shoot, an engaged couple, a helpless shrug. They don’t seem mad. Maybe because they haven’t paid me.

When I officially resigned from Blue Hill, I promised myself no matter what I do, I will always leave room to have one photo shoot a month that’s completely pro bono. Chicken soup for my inspiration, if you will. Last month it was the 100th birthday party of a woman named Joselyn O’Leary in North Dublin. I came to her retirement home and took pictures of her dancing with her new beau, Finn, who at the tender age of eighty-five, is fifteen years her junior.

Today, it’s a couple of teenagers—nineteen, I believe—who fell pregnant and decided to make it official. They don’t have a budget to speak of for their wedding. They’re going to use the bride’s mother’s living room for the party next month, and the dress and ring were bought at a secondhand store. They wrote me a touching letter asking if I’d be willing to take a few pictures of them, so here I am.

Their wedding will be held at a local council flat, and not only have I been invited, but I promised to come, too.

“Two or a thousand, it is time to go.” Tamsin pouts adorably, the way she does when she’s trying to get me to give her chocolate.

The couple laugh and shake their heads.

“Your daughter is just precious,” the girl tells me, adjusting the polka-dot dress that’s a little too tight on her swollen midriff.

I don’t tell her Tamsin is not my daughter, because frankly, it feels like she is. I move my hand along Tamsin’s ponytail, brushing flyaways behind her ear and smile down at her. I’ve found bringing her when I take pictures brings brighter smiles to everyone’s faces, and my photos have never been better.

“We’ll see you at the wedding, then? Next month?”

“You bet!” the soon-to-be-husband says. “Hopefully she’ll like us more when there are snacks and drinks around, aye?”

Tamsin and I walk hand in hand down Drury Street and toward the growing crowd in front of Mal.

It doesn’t matter that Mal is a millionaire. He will always busk, and I will always love him for that just a little more than I did the day before, because his passion and integrity for his art inspire me.