Page 2 of Dirty Padraig: Dirty Dusters

Through choice, email is the only real form of communication I have with the outside world these days. Dylan and I have traded places. He’s now the outgoing one. I’m the hermit.

It’s from Fletch, one of my old classmates from Yale, who moved to the UK not long after graduating.

Hey, Paddy,

Long time, no speak. I hope life’s treating you well. I’m heading back to New York on a fleeting visit and was trying to coordinate a reunion. I’m asking some of the old crowd to come along. It would be great if you could make it.

I’ve dug out some photographs. Those were the days.

The date and venue are attached. I hope to see you there.

Take care, bud,

Fletch, aka Cody Fletcher.

I’m not sure how he got my email address. The Duster office, perhaps? Then again, I probably emailed him in the past. Back when I was the outgoing me and not the shadow of my former self that I am now.

Not that it matters. I can’t go.

For one, because I live in Sicily now. For two, I know if I’ve been sent the email, then Jaine will have been sent it too.

Sorry,bud.No can do.

Not when I’m still trying to heal from something I won’t ever be able to heal from.

I move the mouse and let the cursor hover over the attachment.

Photographs.

I frown at the tempting file.

There can’t be any images of Jaine and me, surely. Not back at a time when three months passed in the blink of an eye under a haze of parties, alcohol, and sex.

We barely remembered to study most days, let alone take pictures.

I have to force myself to open the attachment. In the end, I’m glad I did.

A smile covers my face for the first time in I don’t know how long as I flick through memories of the antics of a group of nineteen-year-old students who were living the life of Riley and who still had their endless futures stretching out ahead of them.

It feels like a lifetime ago. In many ways, it was. I see Sasha, and then I spot Cherry’s bright red bob. Please let there be one of Jaine and me.

Click. Click. Click.

Tears prick my eyes to complement the sad smile that I’m now wearing.

Her arms are snaked around my neck while my hands span her tiny waist. She’s wearing her standard tank and combats combo and gazing up at me with an adoring smile plastered across her face, her blonde hair a messy bun atop her head as it always was back then, and her glasses perched on the end of her nose.

I’m wearing jeans and a band t-shirt, with my hair pretty much as it is now, but it’s my expression that I can’t stop staring at. I’m looking down at her with all the love in the world shining from my eyes.

There’s no disputing how I’ve always felt about Jaine Jones.

Fletch is right. Those were the days. Days I wish I could do over before I made one silly mistake.

A mistake I’d live to regret for the rest of my life. A mistake that’s seen me living in limbo with the wrong woman when my soul will forever be intertwined with the soul of the right one.

12 Years Earlier (Age Nineteen)

Yale University, Connecticut

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