Page 49 of Arse Over Irish Teacup
“Grannie loved films. Her favorites are on that shelf.” He gestured to the eye-level shelf.Gone with the Wind, all of theRockyfilms except five,The Gods MustBe Crazy, every movie John Wayne ever made,It’s a Wonderful Life… andFifty Shades of Gray!”
Beth looked at Aidan and giggled. “I wish I’d known your grandmother.”
“She was a character. She would have liked you.”
“I think I would have liked her too.
“So, what’s your pleasure?”
Beth looked over the titles and selected Gone with the Wind. “It looks like your grandmother had a good sense of humor.”
“Aye, she was a character all right. One time she snuck outside my bedroom window making animal sounds like something big. When I went to the window to check, I found someone wearing a clown getup. Anyway, I didn’t know it, but it was her and she grabbed me. I nearly shat myself and there she was laughing so hard she could barely breathe. She nearly fell off the ladder. And she did that only a week before she died!” He was kidding, of course, but said it with a such a straight face he would have passed a polygraph.
That did it. Beth howled at the idea of an old woman dragging a ladder and climbing up to his window. She rocked back on her feet and laughed, then tripped over her own two feet, stumbled into a table, and knocked a lamp onto the floor. Much to her relief, it didn’t break.
“She was from Sneem. Have you been there?”
“No why?”
“You’ll feel like you stepped through the looking glass there. I guarantee you won’t understand a word they say.”
“Come on.”
“No, no I’m serious! Ask anyone around here. Pretty village though. They have a very nice hotel as well if you fancy being pampered. You’ll see it for yourself on Saturday at the wedding.”
“That place sounds nice but Lauren got me a flight home for Sunday.”
“You’re leaving? Is this about the driving? Because I can teach you to drive.”
“No, it’s not just the driving.” Although, she couldn’t deny that was a big part of it. “I don’t fit in here. It’s funny, my favorite book is set in Ireland and I always dreamed of coming here, to see the places in the book, breathe the air, hear the music, enjoy the culture … but I want to go home.”
“Have you seen anything?”
“Not really. A friary, and I saw the tomb. How do you say it? The Poulnabrone Dolmen Portal Tomb.”
“I’ve never even seen that.”
“You haven’t? It’s so cool! It’s the oldest tomb in the world! Even older than the pyramids of Egypt!”
Beth’s tone had changed from bummed out to exhilarated. That wasn’t the tone of someone ready to leave. “I never knew that.”
“It’s true! It was huge too. Those stones weigh tons. I can’t even imagine how they built it. Twenty-two people were buried there and there were artifacts too like pottery, and jewelry and weapons. I think that’s what the signs said. I almost broke my leg falling between those big flat rocks. That is really interesting landscape there with all that limestone. The Burren they call it, right?”
“That’s right. So, what else have you been doing?”
“Staying in my room ordering room service, watching reruns ofColumboandMurder, She Wrote.”
“You can always find one of those playing here. Angela Lansbury lived here, you know?”
“She did?”
He nodded his head. “In Cork somewhere. The story is, when she took residence the local crime rate dropped because the locals didn’t want her to investigate.”
Beth couldn’t help it. That was funny. She laughed, then laughed some more.
“Where else have you been here?”
“I walked around Ennis a few times and saw the friary there, and went into a few shops.” She decided that mentioning that she had nearly driven through some of those shop windows wasn’t necessary.
