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Oddly enough, I liked it. Joey Lynch seemed like a straight shooter.
sparking up a friendship as easily as he could snap his fingers.
Wow, tactful, big brother, thanks a lot…
“Funny how my sister always seems to get mauled and knocked around when you’re near her, Kavanagh.”
SIDE EYE
“You stink,” both Gibsie and Joey said in unison. “Fuck off the pair of you and leave her alone,”
Fell over Legos, my ass. Fell into a fist was more like it.
“Lad, you better start talking, because brother or no brother, I will kick your fucking ass.” “You’ll need to talk to Shannon,” he finally said. “I can’t give you the answers you want.”
“If you want to know what goes on inside of that head of hers, then be worth it.”
“Tell my sister our father just called. Our mother had a miscarriage on Friday night, and he’s on the way home from the hospital with her now.”
In this moment, I was acutely aware of our social differences.
I was dead on the inside. I had to be. That, or I was downright evil.
We were bitching about her being a bad mother and she was lying in a hospital bed, losing her baby.
“Hold me,” I sobbed, burying my face in his neck. “Don’t let go.”
“Okay.”
“I won’t,”
“Holding me and not letting go,” I offered weakly. He smiled sadly. “Anytime.”
“Because it was sandwiches or cereal.”
“Having a vagina doesn’t automatically tie you to a cooker—or a fucking hoover.” He shook his head. “Christ, if I even thought about pulling that sexist shite on my ma, she’d cut my balls off.”
“Don’t you have, like, a thing with her?” Johnny’s frown deepened. “That’s in the past.”
“She wasn’t interested in me as a person. She was happy with what I could do on a pitch and under her skirt. It was purely physical. And when I couldn’t give her what she wanted, she moved on to my teammate.”
“I would have bought you a present.”
I knew what was coming when I left this house. And I wanted to forget.
For a couple more hours, I wanted to pretend that hell wasn’t waiting for me on the other side of his front door.
“I might take you with me so you can cheer me on in the stands.” Please do. Please take me away with you.
Today was Shannon’s sixteenth birthday. And she was spending it with me. I was glad.
“Mam needs a hand with the kids.”
“Relief?”
“She had him,” Joey bit out, jaw clenched. “He was with her, and he is home now.”
“I can’t live like this anymore.”
“I think we should consider what Aoife said,”
Agreed
But he never touched me like that.
He never raped me.
until they almost killed him.
I’m the one trying to soften the fucking blows and they just keep coming.
“If he touches you again, Shannon, then I want you to grab the sharpest knife you can, and I want you to plunge it into his heart.” Sniffling, I turned to look at him. “You’re not coming back, are you?” Joey just stared at me, eyes filled with tears. “I can’t,” he whispered as a tear rolled down his cheek. “If I go back inside that house, I’ll kill them both.”
“Goodbye, Joey,” I whispered numbly, and then I climbed out and walked inside.
‘resurrectionator’
“Which made God a resurrectionist and/or a resurrector,”
“I’m talking about the bible, not the dictionary.”
“Not the bloody terminist.”
“Another word that’s not a word.”
I go to mass every Sunday, you know.” “Good for you,” I mocked.
“Maybe you should pray to Jesus for some common sense—”
Could I just be her friend?
She wasn’t speaking to any of us. Except him.
I spent the entire day worrying myself sick about my mother and listening to my father tell me how it was all my fault she lost the baby.
I was the whore. I made him lose his temper. I was to blame for him putting his hands on me. And I was the reason he shoved Mam when she tried to drag him off me that night.
“Who do you think?” Shelly teased with a huge smile. “Mr. Sex on Legs himself.”
“And he lives in Cork.”
“I can promise you it won’t be red.”
