He answered on the third ring. “Well, well, well, if it isn’t my favorite little kid.”
“I’m not a kid,” I bit out, chest heaving. “I need something.”
Shane chuckled down the line. “I thought you were on the straight and narrow these days, kid. Isn’t that what you told me after the last time?”
Clenching my eyes shut, I ran a hand through my hand and exhaled. “Yeah, well, there’s been a change of plans.”
“Meet me at the green over at Casement Avenue in half an hour.”
I sagged in relief. “I’ll be there.”
“And kid?” he added in a warning tone. “No more freebies.”
NOW YOU KNOW WHY
FEBRUARY 25TH 2000
AOIFE
“I don’t get it,” Paul said down the line on Friday night, tone impatient. “I told you that I wouldn’t do it again. Why can’t you let it go and meet up with me?”
“Because the last time I met up with you, you told people about our private business,” I shot back, rolling my eyes at his new ground-breaking level of stupid. “I’m still mad at you. You broke my trust. And if I can’t trust you, then I can’t be with you—“
“You can! You can trust me,” he urged, quickly changing his tune from hard to groveling. “I’m sorry, babe. I am. It will never happen again.”
“No,” I agreed wholeheartedly, only half-mad because the truth was I only half-cared. “It won’t happen again, because your hand will never get that close to my knickers again, Paul Rice.”
“But I love you.”
“Oh my god.” I rolled my eyes to the heavens. “Get a handle on yourself. We’ve only been going out for a few weeks.”
There was a long pause before the sound of soft laughter filled my ear. “Too far?”
“Just a tad,” I shot back, grinning. “I love you,” I mimicked his earlier declaration. “You big sap. What if I was one of those girls who actually believe the crap boys tell them?”
“Then I might be one step closer to getting my hand back in your knickers?” he asked hopefully.
“Not so much as your pinky finger will get anywhere near my knickers again.”
He laughed down the line before saying, “Listen, there’s an underage disco at the GAA pavilion tomorrow night. Come with me. Let me make it up to you.”
“So, you want to make up being a sleazebag to me by taking me to a sleezy underage disco, where girls line the walls for boys to grope them?” I arched a brow. “Gee, that is so tempting, but no thanks.”
“You’re really going to make me suffer, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I wholeheartedly agreed. “Yes, I am.”
“You liked the necklace I bought you, didn’t you?”
“It was okay,” I mused reaching up to thumb the shiny stud around my neck. “But buying me presents won’t win me over, Paul.”
He sighed down the line. “Aoife.”
“Now off you go, I’m busy.”
“Doing what?”
“People-watching.”
“You’re out?” His tone was curious and laced with jealousy. “With who?”
“My other boyfriend,” I countered, dangling my legs, from my perch on my front garden wall. “Didn’t I mention him before? He’s very trustworthy.”
“Not funny.”
“It was a joke.”
“Who are you with, Aoife?”
“Nobody,” I laughed. “Night, Paul.”
“No, wait, who are you really with—"
Hanging up, I slid my phone back into my dressing gown pocket and sighed as a familiar wave of strange frustration settled over me.
It had been almost two weeks since Joey Lynch dropped the pink-lace-thong bomb on me, and I wasn’t really angry with Paul anymore.
I wasn’t even that irritated about the whole debacle to begin with.
Sure, I was far from happy with him for discussing me with his buddies, but I knew enough about lads my age to know that was what they did.
They talked shit.
A lot of it.
My best friend, Casey, thought I should be raging about what Paul did, and maybe she was right, but I didn’t seem to care enough about it – or my relationship – to wrangle up the necessary feelings.
Besides, being with Paul was nice. He was good-looking, clever, and, for the most part, we had a lot of fun together.
Still, though, I couldn’t help but feel restless.
For what, I couldn’t fathom.
Yes, you can, you little liar…
"What are you doing out here, Aoif?" Katie Wilmot, my next-door neighbor, asked, dragging me from my daydream.
Friends since childhood, our paths had changed course last year when I left her behind in primary school for BCS. Next year, she would be pushing the bar out further by heading off to Tommen, the private school outside of Ballylaggin, but living next door to each other meant that our friendship would remain intact.
Hoisting her small frame onto my garden wall beside me, she slipped her arm through mine and rested her head on my shoulder. "It's freezing out here."
"Yeah, I know." I let out a heavy sigh and rested my cheek on her red curls. "I'm just people watching."
"You mean you're boy watching," Katie corrected with a smirk.
Not bothering to deny something we both knew was true, I turned my attention back to the commotion occurring across the road from our row of houses.
It was half past eleven on Friday night and the Gardaí were making an arrest – which was nothing new for this area of town.
Lately, they had been cracking down on underage drinking, and had scored a coup for themselves in the form of a gang of teenage boys.
I knew them all.
Some were from my street, more were from my school, and then there was him.
“Hey, isn’t that the lad who works with your dad?” she asked, voicing my thoughts aloud, as we watched one of the male Gardaí pin Joey Lynch to the side of the paddy wagon.
Instead of keeping his mouth shut like the others, Joey laughed and taunted the Garda, who was roughly patting him down.
Dressed in his usual attire, an oversized navy hoodie that concealed his blond hair, he continued to talk back to the Garda, goading the Gard into losing his cool with him.
“Joey Lynch,” I replied with a heavy sigh. “And yep. It sure is.”
Snatching the cigarette that was balancing between Joey’s lips, the Garda tossed it on the ground before stamping on it.
The move earned him a slew of verbal abuse from my classmate.
“What an idiot,” I grumbled with a shake of my head, feeling sourly disappointed in his behavior, mostly because I knew he could do better.
Never mind do better, he was better, dammit.
I thought that sharing a box of cereal with him two weeks ago had somehow melted those arctic walls erected around him, but I was sorely mistaken.
He had shown up to school the following day more closed off than ever, sporting one hell of a nasty shiner, and an even nastier attitude to match it.
Joey never mentioned it to his friends either, something I knew for sure because Paul would have taken leave of his senses, had he gotten wind of my cereal encounter with our classmate.