‘Come on. Stop it.’
‘But you told me—’
‘It’s happened to loads of people. It happens all the time. You wake up the next morning, and you regret it or you don’t remember what happened exactly, but it’s easier not to make a fuss—’
‘But that’s not how it happened.’ She stares up at me. ‘I told you what happened.’
‘But I wasn’t there with you, was I? How do I know what really—’
‘But I told you. I didn’t want . . . I didn’t want to.’
‘You didn’t say no.’ I crouch down in front of her, placing my hands on her shoulders. ‘You told me you didn’t say no.’
‘But –’ she shrugs my hands off her and looks at me with such despair that my skin crawls – ‘I didn’t say yes either.’
A phone call last Halloween. Jamie. (I look at the screen in surprise. Jamie never calls me.) Do you want to go to Dylan’s party? Maggie had hockey training. Ali was in the Bahamas. Just the two of us. (It was never just the two of us. We were too competitive for that, always needing one of the other girls there to act as a buffer.) Drinking. Another shot, another one, another one. Jamie in her Sailor Moon costume. Getting a lot of attention. You’re so hot, Jamie, they kept saying. I didn’t like it. I stroked her hair, kissed her, my tongue in her mouth, the boys crowing. (Her skin was so soft against mine.) She fell. I laughed. Zach’s hands on my waist then, replacing hers, hot breath on my neck, and then we were kissing, and folding on to a bed, and clothes were coming off. The next morning, too many missed calls. (Come to my house, her voice message said in a trembling tone.) Keying in the passcode at the reinforced gates to Jamie’s home. Her mother calling me a bad influence. Jamie, sitting on the bed, crying and crying and crying. (I felt uncomfortable.) (I felt weirdly excited by the drama.) Be careful, I warned her. (Dylan is a dick, but he isn’t that, he wouldn’t do that.) You can’t just say stuff like that. When you say that word, you can’t take it back. She kept asking, What will I do? What will I do, what will I do, what will I do, what will I do, what will I do?
It would change everything.
I didn’t want anything to change.
Let’s just pretend it didn’t happen, I told her. It’s easier that way. Easier for you.
‘Jamie, come on. We talked it through and we agreed, didn’t we? We agreed it would be easier not to make a big deal of it, especially when everyone there was underage and there’d be so much shit if it got out. It would just mean that people would be pissed off with you for getting them in trouble, and you’d miss out on all of the parties because Dylan’s friends wouldn’t want you there any more . . .’ I trail off. I hope no one outside can hear us. ‘Listen,’ I say after a few minutes, checking my phone, ‘I think you should go home.’ She doesn’t respond, just turns away from me, trying to get her breathing back under control. I text Danny the Taxi, asking him to come collect her as soon as he can.
‘Emmie? Is everything OK in there?’ It’s Conor, his voice concerned. ‘Ali said you might need some help.’
‘Grand,’ I say as I open the door to him. ‘J’s not feeling well. I’ve ordered a taxi to bring her home.’
Conor helps me get Jamie to her feet, wrapping his arm around her shoulder.
‘What taxi is it?’ he asks, propping her up as her knees buckle.
‘Danny.’
‘I can’t afford a taxi,’ Jamie slurs up at Conor. ‘Me. Jamie Murphy. I can’t even afford a fucking taxi any more.’
‘We could ask Fitzy to drive her?’ Conor suggests, but I shake my head. I don’t want to have to ask Fitzy for a favour. I grab my clutch bag from the side of the bathtub and start scrambling through make-up and cotton buds and a tiny hip flask of vodka, looking for cash.
‘I’ll take care of it,’ Conor says.
‘Really?’ I ask, and he nods.
‘Oh, thank you.’ I lean in and kiss him on the cheek. ‘That is so great of you. I was going to bring her home myself, but if you’re going anyway . . .’ I walk away so I don’t have to see his face fall. ‘You know where she lives, right?’
I push open the door into the TV room. ‘Hey, sorry—’
I shut up. Mia is sitting on Jack’s lap, irritatingly tiny and doll-like, half-heartedly pushing his hand away as he tries to inch it further up her thighs.
‘I didn’t realize you were into children, Jack,’ I say before I can stop myself, raising my voice so I can be heard over the tinny sounds from the Xbox. He opens one eye, sees it’s me, and then he actually shrugs, and closes his eyes again, as if he’s decided that Mia is the one he wants to be with.
‘Replaced by a younger model already, O’Donovan?’
‘Shut up, Matt,’ I say, my teeth gritting as Mia lets out a tiny moan.
I open my bag and grab the small hip flask, swallowing what’s left in it, feeling it burn my throat.
‘Seriously, man, it must have been like an oven on that pitch yesterday.’
‘Yeah, you were amazing. Is it true there was a selector from the Cork team there?’
‘Do you think he’ll choose you for the senior panel?’
‘He’ll have to.’
Paul O’Brien must have followed Jack in here, slouching in a low-slung chair opposite. He’s surrounded by three lads from fifth year, all leaning towards him eagerly, asking if he needs another beer, or a fag, or a toke of their joint. His eyes are dark, watching me. He leans forward to place his can by his feet.
‘Here,’ he interrupts the guy sitting on his armrest. ‘Do you mind getting me another one? I’m out.’
The guy smiles at me on his way past. Pulling my hair over one shoulder, so the tips of it are almost touching my hip bone, I weave my way through his devoted audience and sit on the empty armrest of his chair.
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘But I need to rest. My feet are sore.’ I reach down to rub my toes, and his eyes trail down my legs.
‘O’Brien,’ Ben Coughlan, the goalie for the football team, says from the open door frame. He’s in his late twenties as well, about five foot ten, his dark red hair cropped close to his skull. ‘I’m leaving.’ He twirls a set of car keys around his fingers.
‘Are you driving?’ I ask him.
‘Obviously.’
‘What if you get stopped by the cops?’ I try again. ‘Aren’t you nervous?’
He rolls his eyes to heaven and I feel as if I’m ten years old. ‘I think I’m safe enough there, don’t you?’
‘Paul, did you hear me?’ Ben tries again. ‘I’m leaving now.’
‘Cool,’ Paul says, but he’s looking at me. ‘I think I’m going to stay.’
‘The girls are in Reilly’s and they’re waiting for us. Aine said Susan is going mental. Have you checked your phone?’ Paul shrugs, and Ben can’t help but smile. ‘Your funeral. Do you have the—’
‘Yeah.’ Paul pushes himself out of the low chair and hands Ben something from his pocket. Ben gives him a mock salute, looks over his shoulder at where I’m sitting, murmuring something under his breath that makes Paul punch him on the shoulder.
‘What was that you gave him?’ I ask Paul as he settles back into the chair.
‘Nothing for an innocent girl like you to be concerned with.’
‘Who said I was innocent?’ I raise an eyebrow at him. ‘What was it?’
‘Why? Do you want some?’ he says, waiting for me to back down like we’re playing chicken. I hesitate, and he laughs.
I am sick of people thinking they know me. I am Emma fucking O’Donovan. No one knows what I’m capable of.
‘Yes.’ I lean over to whisper in his ear, knowing that the top of my dress will fall open. ‘I want it.’ His breathing is getting heavier, and it’s because of me, I am making him feel this way. (My mother yanking my shoulders back. Stand up straight, Emma, look confident, look like you know where you’re going.) ‘Come on, Paul. Sharing is caring.’
He runs his tongue across his teeth and sneaks a look around the room to make sure
no one is watching. The others have gone back to the Xbox, shouting instructions at the two lads playing FIFA. He reaches into the pocket of his jeans and pulls out a clear plastic baggie. Inside it, there is what looks like the firecrackers we used to play with as kids, tiny balls of white paper, twisted at the end. He turns his body to shield me, pulling one out. I pop it into my mouth. (I hope Jack saw me do that, I hope he knows that I’m not who he thinks I am.) Paul puts his hand out, as if he’s looking for money.
‘Oh, I don’t pay for things,’ I say, and he smiles, then places a finger over his lips as if to silence me, and says, ‘Don’t tell anyone, OK?’
‘Wouldn’t look good, I guess. The captain of the football team, the future Cork player. Shouldn’t you be setting a good example?’
‘We haven’t got a match for another three weeks.’ He makes a face at me. ‘Just keep it quiet, got it?’
He doesn’t need to worry. I’m used to keeping secrets.
‘Are you going to have some?’ I ask him.
‘I had one earlier.’
‘Really?’
‘I have a strong tolerance.’ He pulls me off the armrest until I’m sitting on his lap.
‘Isn’t that Paul O’Brien?’ I hear a girl say as the door to the TV room opens, and I sit up straighter when I see the jealousy that flashes on her face. I look at Paul again. He looks more handsome somehow, as if their envy is a flattering Instagram filter. ‘I thought he had a girlfriend.’
‘Don’t worry about that now,’ he says to me, and I want to tell him I’m not worried. Boys with girlfriends are my favourite. You don’t have to worry that they’re going to tell tales afterwards. ‘Susan and I have an arrangement.’
His hand trails up my thigh, but Jack doesn’t see it, too busy sticking his tongue down Mia’s throat.
‘Sorry – what?’ I realize Paul is waiting for me to reply.
‘I asked you if you were at the match earlier?’
‘Yeah, of course.’
‘Did you see how slow we were at the start?’ He shakes his head. ‘Fucking hell. Everyone just expects that we’ll win the county again, but how are we supposed to do that when lads like your brother are quitting the team because of college and half the others are off in Australia or Canada?’ He pulls his iPhone out of his pocket and opens Facebook. ‘I mean, take Cian Healy for example.’ He holds out the photo so that I can see. ‘He was the best midfielder on the team because he was so tall.’ Cian looks amazing. He’s so tanned, and seems to have given up wearing shirts entirely. ‘And who do we have now? Kelly is grand, but he’s too short. But last time I was talking to Cian, he said that he was having too much fun to come home, that the surf was too good to leave. The fucking surf.’ He scrolls through some more photos, showing me one of a dilapidated wooden-framed house, a group of about twenty-five people squashed together to fit into the frame, their faces familiar from matches and Saturday nights drinking in Casement Quay and hungover heads at Sunday Mass.
He puts his phone back in his pocket. ‘No wonder Cian doesn’t want to come back. Ballinatoom is such a hole. It’s the same old shit, every Saturday night. Nothing ever happens here.’
‘Why don’t you go too then?’ I say.
‘Go where?’
‘Australia.’
He stiffens. ‘I can’t just leave. This is the year that I’m going to be chosen for the Cork senior team, I know it. I’ve worked too hard for this.’
(Or waited too long for his uncle to finally be made a selector.)
‘Sorry. I just thought it sounded like you wanted to travel.’
‘I have travelled. I was in Arizona last year, which was really incredible, you know? Have you ever been?’
‘To Arizona?’
‘Yeah.’
‘No, not Arizona. I’ve been to Orlando though. And San Francisco.’
‘That’s not the real America.’ He frowns at me. ‘Arizona is where the real American people live, not some jumped-up city dickheads.’ He talks for a few more minutes about the beauty of Arizona, the people, the food.
‘Wow,’ I say when he pauses to catch his breath. ‘How long were you there for?’
‘Just over three and a half weeks. Best month of my life.’
A shiver ripples over my skin, like the tiniest chip of a pebble hitting a pool of water. It starts swirling in my feet, and creeps slowly up my legs, bleeding from one cell into the next, and it feels so good, it feels so good, it feels so good that I can’t help but quiver with it, stretching my feet and my toes out like my body might break open.
‘Well, well.’ Paul looks amused. ‘That didn’t take long. Enjoying yourself?’
My lips spread in a smile, my eyelids flickering. He leans in to whisper in my ear. ‘I saw you at the GAA gala last year, you know. You were the hottest girl there.’ His words seep through my chest, expanding in my lungs like helium.
And for a moment it’s almost too much for me, the smell of his woody aftershave, the velvet softness of his T-shirt brushing against my arm. I stretch again, my spine lengthening so much I feel as if it might tear out of my back and shoot for the ceiling like a firework.
‘Come on.’ He nudges me off his knee until I’m standing. I drop my head, my breath feeling like the beginning of something that I can’t name. ‘Let’s go find more beers.’
He pulls me along with him, but I don’t want to go, I want to lie down somewhere quiet by myself so I can feel this sherbet dissolving through my veins. In the dining room, I hide my face in his shoulder while he cracks open his can, but the music wraps around me, pulling me into the centre of the room. I feel it invade me, take over, filling my empty bones.
‘Are you OK?’ It’s Maggie. I hug her, trying to melt into her so that our hearts can touch, beat, beat, beat, against each other.
I hold her head in my hands and press my nose against hers so I can look her in the eye as closely as possible.
‘You’re sweating,’ Maggie says, pulling away. ‘Have you . . . taken something?’
I let her go and she fades away, thawing into the shadows.
*
‘. . . She’s a mess . . .’
I bend backwards.
‘What are we going to do?’
I can hear my heart beat and ‘Should we call her parents?’ and nothingness to fall through ‘Has she taken anything?’ blurring ‘But where would she . . .? She’s probably just drunk’ all I am made of is soft ‘It’s not like her though, you know what a control freak she is,’ I run my hands over his shoulders, so broad, so solid, and he loves her (he’s a great kisser, she giggles, and I need to know, I need to know) I press my lips to his and he doesn’t move away, and ‘Jesus Christ, what are you doing?’ what? ‘Emma.’ what? ‘Emma. Emma. Emma. What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Emma. Emma.’ Higher. Higher. Higher. ‘For fuck’s sake, she’s a mess’ inside me ‘Emma. Emma.’
‘Emma.’
‘Hey.’ It’s Paul, and the mist begins to rise again and I can feel the music trickling out of my feet. (I can feel my feet.) (My feet are on the floor.)
‘Take it easy, all right?’ he says. ‘You’re being really obvious.’
Conor has reappeared with a glass of water. He leads me over to the table and sits me on a stool.
‘Jamie got home OK,’ he tells Maggie (Jamie, I love you, Jamie, I am sorry, I will make it better, I will make it better for you), but Maggie isn’t listening to us, she’s yelling at Eli. Conor is so nice (so much nicer than me, but for once I don’t hate him for that) and I wrap my arms around him, and press our hearts together too. I kiss him. I pull back.
Something flashes across his face, but I tilt my head back as the mist descends again.
‘Finally,’ Paul says when my eyes refocus. I hadn’t realized he was still standing beside me. I smile at him, but he doesn’t smile back, and then over his shoulder I can see them, holding hands by the boom box. Jack is talking to a guy I don’t know, while Mia stares at me. Maggie is mouthing at Eli f
uriously while he throws his hands up in defence. Jack nods at something his friend has said, and his gaze sweeps across the room until he sees me. He tilts his head at me, his hand nestled in the small of Mia’s back, and I need him to . . . I need him to see me.
I take Paul’s hand in mine.
‘Well, you didn’t look like you were trying very hard to stop her, Eli,’ I hear Maggie say as Conor steps in front of Paul and me.
‘I don’t think this is such a good idea.’
‘Who are you, her dad?’
‘She’s in no state to—’
‘Seriously,’ Paul says, ‘fuck off.’
‘I think you should come home with me, Emmie.’ Conor tries to grab my wrist but no, no. He’s not enough. (No one will be impressed by Conor.) I shake his hand off me, and I lead Paul into the hall, down the corridor past Sean and a red-eyed Ali. I push open the second door on the right, ignoring Sean calling after me, ‘Not in there, lads, that’s my parents’ room, like,’ and pull Paul in, locking the door behind us.
‘Hey.’
‘Hey.’
John and Deirdre Casey’s bedroom is pristine, a large double bed taking up most of it, the bedclothes white with oversized pink roses splattered across them, the curtains and carpet matching. The far wall is a white fitted wardrobe, bedside lockers on either side of the bed. On the locker nearest to the door, there is a photo frame, a tube of hand cream and a box of tissues. The other locker is empty except for a plastic alarm clock, ‘01.35’ gleaming in red. Paul puts his can of beer down, grabs me by the waist and pushes me on to the bed, lying on top of me as he kisses me.
I need water. I am so thirsty.
His belt buckle is cutting into my hip. I feel like the breath is being squeezed out of my lungs and I can’t fill them back up again. He pulls his T-shirt over his head. His chest is broad, covered in dark, coarse hair. He unbuckles his belt, kicks off his flip-flops and stands there in his boxers, coming for me, pushing my dress down my body. He turns me around and kisses my neck from behind, running his hands all over my body, whispering to me what he’s going to do to me, and what he wants me to do to him.