Page 140 of Trying Sophie

“You go ahead and scream as loud and as long as you want. I might just join you. What a fucking fuck face. I could kill Jackson right now.”

“Thank you for picking me up. When I got to Heathrow I didn’t know where I was going but when I checked the departures board there was a flight for Dublin leaving in an hour. I marched over to the ticket counter, slapped down Jackson’s black AmEx, and well … here I am.”

“I still can’t believe you didn’t tell me. How have you been handling this on your own?”

She lifted a shoulder. “You’ve got your own problems to deal with. I didn’t want to bother you.”

“Bother me?! You’re my best friend and you just found out your fiancé’s been cheating on you.” Then, more softly I added, “I would have been there for you, Katie.”

“I know.” She reached over and squeezed my arm. “Besides, I’m here now.”

I turned at the next intersection and after a few minutes pulled the car into my parking space. “Welcome home,” I said, flipping the ignition.

“We’re here already?”

Katie turned and looked through the back window, a slice of ocean visible in the distance beyond, then faced forward and craned her neck to take in the building in front of us, the same shabby exterior that had greeted me a couple of months earlier.

“That was quick. I thought you said you lived out in the boonies.”

“Trust me, this is the boonies.”

She glanced around again. “Hu. I expected more sheep.”

Together we hefted her luggage up the back stairs into the apartment above Fitzgerald’s. I gave Katie the quick, two-minute tour, then led her to my bedroom at the back of the building.

“Home sweet home,” I intoned, pushing the door wide and welcoming her inside.

Katie stepped over the threshold and stopped, no room to actually move about. The floor was covered with my own open luggage, piles of family mementoes I planned to take back to my mom’s place, and the folders, papers, and books I’d amassed while trying to come up with a plan to save the family business.

“It’s not much, but it works.”

“I should get a hotel,” she said, eyeing the tiny twin-sized bed.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I responded. “First of all, Dublin’s like a 40-minute train ride and that’s too far away, and second of all, my grandma would have a seizure if a friend of mine came to visit and stayed somewhere else. You do not want to offend my grandma.”

I bent down, gathered up my papers, and placed them in a pile on my desk in the corner. Flipping my luggage closed, I shoved them under the bed. “There,” I said, gesturing around the room. “Now there’s plenty of room for the both of us.”

“Um, Sophie …” She turned in a slow circle. “I love you like a sister, but there’s no way we’re sharing that bed.”

“I’ve no intention of sharing a twin-sized bed with you … or anyone for that matter. There’s a blow up mattress in the hall closet. Take my bed and I’ll sleep on that.”

“You haven’t even asked how long I plan to stay. I don’t want to put you out.”

“I haven’t asked because it doesn’t matter. You can stay here as long as you like and you’re not putting me out. You and I both know I’ve slept on much worse than a blow up mattress.”

She shuddered and a look of horror crossed her face. “Do you remember that resort in Goa?”

I shivered in response. “Nope, don’t remember it. I refuse to remember it. In fact, I’ve completely blocked it from my memory.” I shook my head and hollered a hearty “la la la” to drown her out.

Years ago, we’d taken a month-long backpacking trip through India with a handful of other young twenty-somethings and it had been … enlightening, but not necessarily in the way the tourism board had intended. One of the first trips we’d been invited to participate in as part of a paid media group, the intent was to present India as a safe and inexpensive destination for those fresh out of college to travel to. It proved to be both, but we’d also gotten more than we’d bargained for.

The organizers had put us up in a tented eco-resort that would have been a splendid way to say goodbye to India, but unfortunately, it had rained the entire night and when we woke up the next morning, part of our tent had collapsed, flooding our room with water and sandy mud. That would have been disaster enough, but things only got worse from there. After dinner our second night, several people became ill and the bathroom facilities proved … unequal to the challenge. As we’d laid in our side-by-side cots that night, we vowed never to go on a trip like that again. Of course we’d both broken that vow—many times over—but it still ranked as one of our worst vacations ever.

Sleeping on an air mattress in my childhood bedroom was a luxury compared to that.

“I can’t take your bed,” she protested.

“Are you sure?”

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