Page 131 of Since We're Here
Patrick rushed off to important brewery business, and the rest of us stopped at Ian’s tattoo parlor. Ian and Oliver caught up, Ethan showed off his sleeve tattoos, and Reese, Stella, and I picked out matching shamrock designs—drawn by Oliver when he lived in Dingle—and made an appointment to get inked.
I wake up with Patrick wrapped around me in the hotel room. I sit and wiggle to the edge of the bed so I can get ready to meet my sisters downstairs for our appointment.
“Get your cute arse back over here, Maddie.”
Patrick sits up and hooks me around the waist, collapsing back on the bed and pressing his front—his very naked front—against my backside. Also naked.
“That’s better.” He cements me in place with his arm.
“Patrick. I am meeting my sisters in thirty minutes. I need to shower and not look like I just had sex.”
He presses his hand against my stomach and slowly moves his fingers lower and lower, caressing the sensitive skin just above where I want him to be.
I let out a low moan and relax back against him, arching my back and lifting my hand to his head to bury my fingers in his hair.
“Okay,” I say breathlessly. “Gotta make it quick.”
Patrick growls and flips me around. “I can do that.”
I laugh as he buries his head in my neck.
Two hours later,my sisters and I are at the park with steaming coffees from Dingle Brew in our hands, watching the boys casually kick a ball around. We all got small tattoos on the inside of our wrists. Is it cheesy to get a shamrock tattoo while in Ireland? Perhaps. But we don’t care.
It’s Reese’s second ink. The shamrock is on the opposite wrist from her compass tattoo, which she got last summer to represent how she found her true north with Oliver after her divorce.
Stella has a butterfly on one of her wrists. It stands for both her independence as well as her transformation from someone who’d been closed off since our father died when we were kids, to a woman happy and in love, while also keeping who she is close.
For me? It’s also my second, along with the three hearts on my left ankle.
I run my thumb along the sensitive inside of my wrist, slightly irritated from the needles, not taking my eyes off my boyfriend as he dribbles the ball down the field.
“He’s so good at that,” I say wistfully.
“He is.” Reese watches Oliver.
“I wouldn’t want to be going up against Ethan, though.” Stella sips her hot coffee. Ethan approaches Oliver, his bulky frame making both soccer players—each well over six feet tall—look slight.
“He’ll be okay,” Reese says. Oliver darts around Ethan and dribbles away from the rugby player’s colorful expletives.
After the Cliffs of Moher, we spent the night in Limerick. The next morning, we visited a magically pretty waterfall,which was Patrick’s suggestion. Today we’ll drive the Ring of Kerry and spot the beehive huts along Slea Head Drive. We all agreed to skip the Blarney Stone—Patrick was thrilled—and Maria’s suggestion of the Butter Museum in Cork so we could spend another day in Dingle. Then we’ll head back to Dublin with stops at the creepy Viking massacre cave in Kilkenny and Glendalough, an old monastery set in the Wicklow Mountains National Park.
After that, everyone heads to the airport for their flights.
Except me, of course.
“Will we be passing the scene of the sheep crime on today’s drive?” Stella tears her eyes away from Ethan and looks over at me.
“Haha.” I attempt sarcasm. “But... yes. Yes we will.”
Stella giggles. “I can’t believe you crashed into a flock of sheep.”
“Almostcrashed into a flock of sheep. I didn’t crash into them. I saved them by swerving off the road into an inconveniently located boulder.”
“Maddie.” Reese shakes her head.
“What?”
“I hope in the future you’ll be more careful. I don’t want to spend my life worrying about you on a bike in Ireland.”
