Page 17 of Promise Me This

She shoos me toward the door, and I jolt into action, realizing I’ve eaten up precious moments of escape time with my clumsiness.

The door to the kitchen is propped open, the way I’ve learned she does on weekdays when guests are more likely to be up early. The gentleman whose luggage I helped carry upstairs when he arrived yesterday on business is already bent over the spread, selecting a fluffy croissant from the aromatic pile. He smiles at me as I pluck a rasher up with my bare hands, careful not to touch anything else around it, and deposit it in my mouth before heading for the stairs without so much as a word tossed in his direction.

He’s checking out today. Not like I’ll ever see him again, so no need to worry that he probably thinks I’m a little bit feral.

Just as my foot lands on the first step, I hear the solid thud of the front door shutting at the end of the hall. I don’t allow myself to look back until I’m rounding the landing, where I hope I’m at least safely out of sight from whoever has just arrived.

The first thing I notice is that Callum’s limping. The second is that he’s noticing me.

I shove down my curiosity, my desire, anything living within me that feeds the urge to run back down the stairs. To run to him.

Instead I turn, letting the curtain of my mussed hair fall between us, and return to my attic.

Chapter Eight

Callum

“You walked in on her showering?” Padraig says, eyes wide. He takes a sip of his beer while the corners of his lips pull into a wicked smile, earning a scowl from me in return. “And still had the nerve to tell her off about talking to Niamh? When did your balls get so big there, lad?”

“She was done showering,” I clarify, pinching the bridge of my nose. With the way this week has been going, I’m either going to succumb to a migraine or a heart attack.

Padraig raises his eyebrows at me, that shit-eating grin growing ever wider.

“She was dressed, Podge!”

I realize too late that I’ve raised my voice, drawing the attention of several patrons in the pub we’re occupying. I glance over at Dermot—the bartender and owner who has one foot in the grave, he’s so ancient—and nod my apology.

“Sure, yeah, whatever you say.” Podge chews at the inside of his cheek, trying to contain his amusement at my suffering. “Did you see anything good?”

I immediately regret telling him this story. First, because now the image of Leo with dripping wet hair is flooding my brain. She stares up at me, shocked as a deer caught in headlights, with her full lips popped apart in a gasp. Her shirt clings to her breasts in a way that makes my dick betray my brain. Not exactly fond of logic, that one. I shift in my seat, suddenly not fitting into my pants as comfortably as before.

Second, and even more troubling, I regret it because there is a small part of me that feels like I’m betraying Leo by sharing something so personal. The rolling in my gut is directly tied to the corner of my brain that still thinks she’s mine to protect, despite the years and evidence to the contrary.

Forcing myself not to read into which reason causes me to say it, I reply, “Let’s just drop it, yeah?”

Padraig leans back in his chair, raking a hand through his hair that then settles at the nape of his neck. He studies me for a long moment before shaking his head in what can only be described as bewilderment. “What happened with the two of you’s anyway? I’d consider myself your best friend, since you don’t seem to have any others, and you’ve never mentioned her.”

Now it’s my turn to lean back with a groan. My beer sits untouched on the table between us, and suddenly the idea of drinking it makes me sick to my stomach. Every Friday at five in the afternoon, like clockwork, I log out of my computer and Padraig turns off his taxi light and we meet here for a beer or ten to decompress. We’ve been doing so for three years, ever since I moved here permanently after deciding Niamh deserved to grow up in a slower and safer environment than Dublin. My uncle didn’t like the idea of remote work at first, but I’ve kept up with the demand and am on a fast track to take over the shipping company when he retires next year.

Not that he’ll ever admit to eating his words.

Even before the move, Padraig and I were close enough. We met on one of the few trips Catherine and I took to the summer cottage before Niamh was born, when she needed a taxi to get from one place to the next even if it was right down the street because her belly was so round and ankles so swollen. She hated being pregnant, resented how it changed her body. Padraig would crack joke after joke, trying to lighten her mood. While unsuccessful, he did manage to endear himself to me in the process.

When Niamh was born, my circle of friends shrank to become unrecognizably small. With everyone in their late twenties, no one was inclined to come hang out with an infant on a Friday night. They were out living their lives, and I can’t say I blame them. Padraig, however, is ten years older than me and content with the pace of my life. He’s just as happy to join me for a beer as he is to come over and help build a tree house for Niamh in the backyard. If that doesn’t make someone a best friend, I don’t know what does.

I chew at the edge of my lip, filling my mouth with the taste of iron. How do you admit to a fellow grown man that, as a thirty-four-year-old father, you still cling to the pain of a love lost when you were twenty-two?

Padraig is watching me expectantly, letting silence grow between us into something vast enough for me to fill. With a sigh, I resign myself to at least try.

“She was an English student at the college in Maynooth when I lived there during my internship with Darren.” My uncle was truly just doing a favor for Mam, as he admitted to me later, but he saw something in me during that summer working at his company that made him keep me on. I’ve been moving up the ranks ever since. “Studying abroad for the summer. We lived in the same manor and spent every waking moment together that we weren’t working or in school.”

I pause, gathering my thoughts, and Padraig spins his hand in a gesture that says, Go on.

I glare at him, not one to be rushed, but continue. “When she had to go back to the States at the end of the summer, we’d already decided we wanted to be together. To make it work.” An old, familiar insecurity has me shaking my head. “At least, I thought we had. She was supposed to come back the next summer, and then move here permanently after she graduated.

“For a few months after she moved back to the States, things were perfect. We spoke all the time, wrote letters.” An involuntary smile tries to take over my face as I remember the late nights spent talking after she finally got out of class. So much for getting more sleep after she left. Sorry, Uncle Darren. “Then she’d go days without responding, and when she did, it was like talking to a completely different person. There was no life in it anymore. That went on for another few months or so until one day she just stopped answering altogether. I never heard from her after that.”

For years I shamelessly stalked her social media, desperate to understand what happened. I watched from a distance as she graduated, studying the photo of her in her cap and gown for hours and wondering why her smile never touched her eyes like it used to with me. I waited for her to announce a job in journalism like she’d always dreamed of. Part of me still imagined she’d call me out of the blue and finally explain things. I told myself if she just gave me a reason, I could accept it. Even if it shattered me.

---