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“I don’t want fifty more girls,” I replied, twisting back to find her still watching me. “I just want that girl.”
Dad never hit Darren like he hit me. He was the firstborn, the golden boy. I was the spare. Darren got open-palmed slaps. I got closed-fist punches.
The silence unsettled me almost as much as her screams. Because her screams meant she was still breathing.
I could take the pressure. I could take the blows. I could handle his whiskey tantrums. I could take it all if it meant that they didn’t have to.
my mother cut me deeper and more viciously than my father ever had. Ever could.
Nothing to do with Joey Lynch skipped my attention, which was how I knew that he was far more intelligent than he led the teachers at school to believe.
“I’m pissed off because that prick put you in a position where you had to ask me to walk you home.”
“You should be embarrassed,” he snapped, tossing his cigarette butt away. “Embarrassed for giving an asshole like Paul Rice the chance to treat you like an option.”
“I always win, Joe.”
Persuasion was certainly a skill that Aoife Molloy had honed to perfection.
“He’s not worth it, Joe.” No, but she is.
Addiction ruled his life. That was the pattern his life had taken, and I hated him for it. But not as much as I hated myself for following in his footsteps.
In my head it was die or get high. And I had too many people depending on me not to die.
I would rather die than expose an ounce of vulnerability to the man I had the misfortune of calling my father.
My body was a map of cuts and bruises, scars and distortion.
Taking it on the chin seemed to be the norm for me. Besides, if I took the brunt of his bad mood, it meant that they were spared—that Mam was spared.
Babies weren’t supposed to be made in order to plaster over cracks in marriages, but that’s what this one would be. That’s what each one of us was, temporary plasters to cover the cracks in our parents’ dysfunctional relationship.
“I’m not afraid of loving a boy,” I told her honestly. “I’m afraid of losing myself in one.”
I would rather take another lifetime of beatings than let him think he got the better of me.
She was like the sweetest fucking smell that wouldn’t go away.
“No, Paul, I’m not picking him over you, I’m picking me over you,”
I watched as he parented his four younger siblings with a proficiency that a grown man would struggle to master. It was so impressive, so heartbreaking, and so incredibly hot all in one breath.
I wasn’t convinced about happy endings, but when Molloy locked her eyes on me and smiled, I could believe in the possibility of a happy day.
“‘Iris’?” I cocked a brow. “Good song choice, Molloy, but I have to admit that I’m not feeling the festive vibe from it.” “No, asshole, not as a Christmas song,” she explained, cranking up the volume. “As our song.”
“Any relationship that is held together because it’s comfortable isn’t a relationship worth having.”
“You shouldn’t settle for comfortable, Molloy. You shouldn’t settle for anything less than being in love to the point of madness. The only person that you should be settling for is the person who unsettles you the most. The person who drives you to the brink of suicide because he or she makes you feel so fucking much that you can’t catch your breath or remotely function without them.
Only when you’re feeling the most discomfort you’ve ever felt in your entire life should you even consider settling. Because that’s when you’ll know you’re in love, which sounds to me like a hell of a lot nicer way to live than settling for someone you have nothing in common with because it’s comfortable.”
It must be nice to be able to sleep at night without the fear of being dragged out from under the covers and beaten to within an inch of your life. Must be nice to not be distracted by the screams of your half-starved siblings or the low wails of your battered and bruised—not to mention brutally assaulted—mother on the daily.
She let him speak to her like he was her keeper. It didn’t settle well with me.
“If I had a packet of Rolos right now, I’d give you my last one.” “Yeah?” I smiled, indulging her. “Well, if I had a packet of Rolos right now, Molloy, I’d give them all to you.”
If I didn’t care about what happened to me, then I had nothing to fear. I could survive feeling like that. I could survive this life.
“I’m your big brother. I will always stick up for you.”
She had power over me, and we both knew it.
“Oh, I’ve been sold on you for a long time now, Joey Lynch.”
“You matter to me, Joey Lynch.”
“Don’t worry, Peter Pan, I’ll be your Wendy.”
The question wasn’t how I was supposed to play hurling, it was how was I supposed to survive if I didn’t.
“Of course you’re fucking worth it, Shannon. You’re worth a thousand of that piece of shit, and don’t you ever let him make you feel anything less!”
She was something else, that girl.
“But don’t ever think that I don’t have feelings,” he said, and then pressed a kiss to my mouth. “Because the only time that I allow myself to feel anything is when I’m with you.”
“I’m not your boyfriend, Molloy.” “Oh yeah, I forgot,” she shot back with a grin. “You’re my bitch.”
One minute I was twelve years old and locking eyes on her at the school gates, and the next I was seventeen, standing in her house, about to tell her father that she was mine.
“Do you love my daughter?” Heart thumping violently in my chest, I felt myself nod. “Entirely.” And then I heard myself say, “For about five years now.”
“Do you see a future with her?” “No,” I replied, hating my admission but needing to give him the truth, because if anyone deserved my honesty it was this man. “I don’t see a future for us, but that’s not because I don’t want one with her. It’s because I don’t see a future for myself, period.”
“I took a chance on that boy, and I’m glad that I did because the man that small boy turned into is a man who I am damn proud of.”
Sure, Joey fought me at every turn. He pissed me off to epic proportions and drove me batshit crazy at times, but on the other side, I had never felt more alive and more like, well, me than when I was with him.
The truth was that nothing about being with Joey was easy, and yet being with him felt so incredibly right. Like I was exactly where I was supposed to be, with exactly who I was supposed to be with.
“Nice shirt.” “Nice legs.”
“If you fight her, you fight me,”
“Because I love your brother, and your brother loves you. Keeping you safe is important to him, which makes it important to me.”
