Page 12 of Since We're Here
No. I can’t mess this up. It isn’t a job I can quit and run away from. Getting this right is the most important thing in my life right now.
Eventually, Reese and Stella will find out about me breaking up with Blue and dropping out of the hospitality program and lying about where I am.
So I need to distract them with The Road Trip To End All Road Trips. That means facing Patrick and what we did last night, and most importantly, behaving myself around him from now on.
When I’m at the door to the flat fumbling with my keys, my phone pings with an email notification.
It’s from Patrick.
To: Madison Elizabeth Hart
From: Patrick McNulty
Date: Saturday, 01 March
Subject: Re: Here in Dingle
You’re here? In Dingle? Why?
I’ve just finished with a soccer game and will be at O’Brien’s—my pub—to do some brewery paperwork later this afternoon. I’ll be there after three if you’d like to stopby. I can then refer you to approximately one thousand websites that have easy Irish road trip itineraries already prepared.
Patrick
I continue inside and collapse on the comfortable couch, wiggling my legs out of my boots. Is he fucking with me? He’s totally fucking with me. He’s not going to just send me to some website, is he? We need to make this trip extraordinary. Super special. Something that will make my family forget how much I suck.
I amnotlooking forward to seeing the look on his face when he realizes who I am.
I scoot into a horizontal position and pull down the soft fleece blanket from the back of the couch. My phone buzzes with texts from my sisters, but I turn it on silent and close my eyes. Exhaustion from the jet lag takes over and I drift away.
I’ll face Patrick McNulty—sexy bartender, soccer player, and hot-as-hell kisser—after I’ve had a solid nap.
4
PATRICK
The day manager at the pub is still new, so I’m trying to be around in case she needs help.
“Any questions, Beth?”
“No.” She gives me a look I can’t read. “Sorry again about forgetting to mark the inventory yesterday. I did it, but I just forgot to make a note. My daughter was up sick all night.”
Beth is a single mom who my sister knows from the kids’ school, and she’s nice enough, but I’m not sure I made the right call hiring her. Honestly, she just looks exhausted, which made sense once I learned she also has an evening part-time job.
“I hope she’s feeling better.” My attempt at sounding sympathetic—which I am—comes out sounding harsh. Honestly, single mothers have all my sympathy. It’s why I try so hard to help Saoirse with my nieces when I can.
Beth furrows her brow and returns behind the bar, while I head to a table and open my laptop back up. I might be micromanaging. But good help is so hard to get. I’ve spent most of the five years since buying the pub hiring and training people, just to have them quit and force me to do it all over again. It’s exhausting.
Back then, I was happy to have a distraction from the end of my relationship with Cara.
After leaving Winchester Football Club in England, I was so bone-deeply happy to be going home to Dingle and Cara. But she was already packing for Dublin, looking for adventure outside of the sleepy Dingle Peninsula.
I should’ve let her go and stayed in Dingle, but that’s not how I was raised. My parents had some marital issues when Saoirse and I were growing up, but they worked through it. And since then, they’ve been the happiest couple you could ever find. So I was sure Cara and I would end up like that, too.
But I didn’t do anything right. I didn’t say the right things, ask the right questions, call her the right amount, text her just enough. None of it. We were finally in the same place, and nothing felt right. Cara said half the time I didn’t say anything at all, and the other half I asked aggressive questions likewhere do you go all the time?ordo you like hanging out with them more than me?orare you seeing someone else?
Turns out I was spot-on with those questions, even though she denied it right up until I walked in on her with him.
I don’t think I’ll ever get that image out of my head.
