“I promise I won’t.”
I shrug, kind of sad now that I realize he’s a genuine nice guy. “Then what’s the point? Aren’t we just going to make it harder for me to go?”
“I hope not. I just felt as though I owed ye an explanation for my behavior last night and ye’d make me feel a lot better if ye’d let me take you out for a meal.”
I should say no, but my heart is just not going to let that happen. “Fine. Just let me run upstairs and get changed.” And totally redo my hair and makeup while I’m at it. I don’t say that part, because I don’t want him thinking I’m high maintenance.
“Take yer time. I’ll be here.” He sits back down and picks up a knitting magazine that rests near his chair, folding a leg over as he turns the first page.
I race up the stairs, trying but failing to not sound like a herd of elephants. I burst into the door of our room and start throwing things around, trying to find my makeup case and a pair of boots that don’t suck.
“What the hell, Rid?” says a whiny Erin. “People are trying to sleep around here.”
“Sorry, but I have a date and I have to get ready. Where are my Burberry ankle booties? Have you seen them?”
Erin sits up and stares at me, her hair a complete wreck. “What’d I miss?”
I throw my covers over to the other side of the bed. “Donal is downstairs and he wants to take me to dinner.”
She tilts her head at me. “Did you go down there already?”
“Yes.” I freeze at her troubled expression. “Why?”
“Take a look in the mirror and then ask me that question.”
My eyes widen in horror as she starts to laugh. I dash into the bathroom and nearly scream out loud at my reflection. Angry at myself for being so stupid, I put my hair up with a band and scrub all the leaky mascara and smudged lipstick off my face. Talk about a horror show. How that man found it within his heart to ask me out when I sat across from him looking like a deranged circus clown, I’ll never know. Maybe he needs glasses. Either that or he’s the nicest man alive and I should probably propose to him before someone else snatches him up.
Erin comes into the bathroom and leans on the inside of the door. “So, you’ve got a hot date, eh?”
“No, not hot. He and I discussed things.” I start applying my makeup with hurried, jerky motions as I explain. “We both know this is going nowhere and he’s just taking me out to apologize for being a putz last night.”
“A putz, huh? You actually failed to mention that for some reason. I wonder why.”
I throw a washcloth at her. “Shut up. Like I wanted to rain on your orgasm parade last night. What kind of friend would I be if I did that?”
“No one had any orgasms last night.”
“Whatever. You know what I mean. You’re all gaga over Michaél and I didn’t want to spoil the mood. It wasn’t a big deal, anyway. He’s just not a fan of the cliffs, and tonight he’s going to tell me why.”
“How come? I mean, if this thing between you isn’t a thing, why bother?”
I pause the applying of mascara to shrug. “I have no idea. But I’m not going to fight it. He’s hot, he’s into me, and I’m leaving in a few days. What could possibly go wrong?”
Erin rolls her eyes. “I’m the wrong person to ask.” She leaves me alone in the bathroom.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I yell out after her, but I get no response.
“Whatever,” I mumble to myself. I need to wrestle this hair into something resembling a ‘do before Donal gets so tired of waiting he leaves me behind again.
Ten minutes later and I’m there. Erin has laid out the perfect outfit for me on my bed. I force her to sit up in her bed and hug me.
“I’m totally sick to my stomach right now,” she says.
I let her lie back down. “Me too. I’m hoping some hair of the dog will help me get through it.”
“Beware the hair of the Guinness dog, that’s all I’m saying.” She rolls over onto her side, turning her back to me.
I rest my hand on her hip. “You going to be okay alone tonight?”
“Me? Alone?” Her eyes are closed and her voice is fading. “I have Mrs. O’Grady and her pet cemetery cat to keep me company. What more … could a girl…” She snores the rest of her thought out.
I’m dressed, perfumed, and ready to go less than five minutes later. Donal stands and comes to the bottom of the stairs as I reach the foyer below.
“Ye look very pretty.” He holds out his hand for mine, making me feel like some sort of princess as I descend the last step.
“Thank you. You do too.”
He leads me from the foyer to the front door.
“Goodnight, Mrs. O’Grady. See you before eleven!”
“Goodnight, deary! Have a nice time!”
Donal is driving a truck that looks like it’s been zapped by a shrink-ray. There’s room for the two of us in the front and maybe a couple cases of beer in the back. I hold my laughter in, knowing that to laugh at a man’s truck in any country is to call his masculinity into question.
He opens the door for me and shuts me in once I’m settled, and we drive to the bar in silence. I want to fill the awkward space with words, but nothing will come to mind; nothing that doesn’t sound trite or full of emptiness, anyway. Why do I feel like I need to confess the secrets I hold in my soul when I’m next to him? It makes no sense, so my default reaction is to do nothing at all.
The meal is delicious. Fish and chips that according to Donal are the very best available outside of England. We both sit back with a pint of beer when it’s all over and smile at one another.
“Care for a dessert?” he asks. “I’d be happy to share.”
“Share? Please. I don’t share sugar.”
“Not even with me? I let ye ride Big Dick, after all.”
My face goes red with his flirting. I thought I could handle anything from any guy, but Donal has superpowers or something because he’s making me feel like a virgin all over again. Thank goodness I have learned as an attorney to hide my emotions well.
“Okay, maybe with you,” I concede, “on account of your Big Dick and everything.”
He laughs so loud, everyone around us looks over. Several of them smile along with us, and it almost makes me sad. They probably think we’re a couple and that we’re in love. I almost wish they were right.
Donal calms himself down and then goes all serious on me. “So, as I said before, I brought ye out here with the intention of apologizin’ and explainin’ myself.”
I shake my head. “You don’t have to. I’m fine with not knowing the details.” I’m worried his story will make me like him more than I already do. It’s better if I can imagine he’s a jerk sometimes for no reason. It’ll make it easier to leave.
“But I want to. Ye see …” He looks off into the distance, and I can see he’s not really here with me anymore. He’s in the past somewhere. “For many years, I looked after a girl.”
“Looked after? What’s that mean?”
His eyes are back on me now. “To be fair, I didn’t just look after her. We were an item for some of that time. But it was more out of my desire than hers. She always had an eye for another fella.”
I snort very inelegantly. “She must have had bad eyesight if she preferred some other guy to you.”
He smiles, a lonely kind of expression. “Thanks for that. In any case, when we weren’t together that way, she still needed a lot of looking after. She had a bit of a problem with depression.”
“Oh. That’s a bummer.” I’m starting to get an uneasy feeling as his face goes dark.
“She was in love with this other lad, as I said, but he was married and he didn’t really treat her very well. She tried to hold on but it was too much for her.”
“What was? The relationship?”
“Not just that. Life, maybe. She went to the Cliffs of Moher and …” He shrugs and looks down into his beer mug. “It was the last I saw of her. The last any of us saw of her.”