Page 231 of Dirty Padraig: Dirty Dusters

CHAPTERSEVENTY-SEVEN

JAINE

Local Park, Upper East Side, New York

Memories.

Of pushing the kids on the swings. Of having a picnic on the grass. Of enjoying a family day out.

I glance around the familiar space as I inhale the smell of freshly cut grass. The kids and I used to come here most days before we went into lockdown, yet I only ever invited Eoin along that one time.

Why?

Because I deliberately excluded him. I intentionally left him standing all alone on the sidelines of my life because I wanted him to pay for something he didn’t do.

Creating memories is what I should have been focused on. Not the bickering or the fighting or the countless confrontations. On the things that truly mattered, not the ones that didn’t.

I realize now that our relationship didn’t end recently. It ended when I spat out the ugly wordkarma.

We never recovered from that.

What we had before then wasn’t a lie. In many ways, it was the only real time we ever spent together. I was just too stupid and too blind to realize it.

Back then, Eoin didn’t ask for much from me. He asked for my love. For me to spend time with him. For me to let him in. He wanted to be part of my life. He wanted to be part of my family. I dangled it all in front of him, then deliberately pulled it away.

He’d given me his love. He made himself weak. He made himself vulnerable. He trusted me to do the right thing with his heart. I didn’t. Instead, I crushed it beneath my unsubstantiated personal vendetta.

Did I then think handing him the story of my life was enough? It wasn’t. He didn’t want the novel that contained my past. He wanted the unwritten part.

My future.

I walk forward reluctantly, watching as my shaky breath collides with the cool air. It’s a bleak, depressing kind of day. It’s like all the color has been sucked out of the world, and it’s then been injected by a fusion of morbid greys. It’s one of those days that can instantly sour your positive mood, turning it melancholy in the blink of an eye.

It’s then that I see him. Tears fill my eyes at the sight.

Eoin O’Connell is a powerful man. Feared. Respected. Envied. But right now, when he thinks no one’s watching, he looks defeated as he sits on a bench, staring across the little pond.

The pond where he taught Fin how to skim stones.

For a man who has it all, he actually wants very little. He wants a wife. He wants children. He wants a family. Because this man was born to be a husband. Born to be a father. Born to head a family.

I didn’t give him any of that. In hindsight, all I did was hand him the rule book according to Jaine Jones, then expected him to comply with the content and follow it religiously.

No arguments. No deviations. No compromises.

I wanted him to change for me when I wasn’t prepared to change for him. I was selfish in many ways. I realize that now. I may have told him the story of my life, but what good are words without actions to back them up?

And now it’s too late.

Because I know exactly what today is.

I approach the bench. He stands to greet me, dressed casually in black jeans and a black leather bomber jacket.

My eyes drift to his face, taking in the dark circles around his eyes. He looks tired. He looks worn out with life. I did this to him.

Me. No one else.

He makes no move to hug or kiss me. Instead, he stands there staring, his gaze slowly drifting over me as he imprints me to memory while I do the same.

---