“That’s the good weather gone now,” he says around the pencil clenched in his teeth as his arms move back and forth in a steady motion, sanding the curves. He always has a pencil in his mouth, like a child with a dummy. “The days will be getting shorter and darker. This is probably the last good day we’ll get this year.”
Bloody hell. It’s the beginning of August. I didn’t come here to be even more depressed than I already am.
We Irish love to talk about the weather. We take it very seriously.
“Ack, sure, a wee drop of rain won’t do us any harm,” he says, not looking up at me.
“Aye,” I mumble and continue with the varnishing of the cabinet because what else am I supposed to say?
I look out the window at the grayish sky, where a sliver of sunshine peeks between clouds.
Here, I work hard to distract myself. It’s difficult when we only get a few orders a day, but if I manually tire myself out, I might sleep at night. My only purpose each day is to exhaust myself to the point of numbness-no longer thinking, no longer feeling.
No longer realizing that I’m stuck in the same place I was four years ago, living with my mam and gran, doing the same old routine day after day. I’ve had zero inspiration to create new inventory. Even yoga has become an empty ritual, void of any satisfaction.
My only social life is when Mam drags me along to funerals or one of my brothers asks me to collect them from the pub because they’re too drunk to drive.
I’m still part of the Queens yoga group chat. Sometimes when I read the messages for a fleeting second, I forget where I am, and I’m teleported back to New York.
Then I remember and feel a sharp stab of pain before the emptiness sets in.
I have no tears left. He drained them all.
Now I’m hollow.
I get up, go to the furniture store, come back, have dinner with Mam and Granny Deirdre, watch TV, and try not to stalk Killian online.
Sometimes I think I should have accepted his offer. After my feelings for Killian fade away, when he’s just an entertaining story, I’ll kick myself for not taking the green card.
Orla begged me to stay until she was blue in the face, but the only way I could stay was to accept Killian’s charity. Those last few days in New York were a blur. Killian and I went from one hundred to zero in twenty-four hours. An emotional roller coaster-one minute, I’m soaring high above the clouds in a fancy helicopter, and the next, I’m plummeting back to earth at breakneck speed.
I went from seeing him every day to never seeing him.
I didn’t even tell him I was leaving New York. What was the point? After the fight in the office, he didn’t reach out. He didn’t care.
Inhaling the familiar scent of sawdust and wood, I take a deep breath and tell myself to get a grip.
This, too, shall pass.
I mean, we were only together for a few weeks, for Christ’s sake, and I’m twenty-five. The world is my oyster. Plenty more fish and all that jazz. When I’m Granny Deirdre’s age, I’ll remember it as a really sexy time in my life, that’s all.
My Fifth Avenue fling with a billionaire, something to laugh about in the pub.
This, too, shall pass. Yet no matter how many times a day I tell myself that, the dark cloud follows me.
The bell at the front of the shop rings to warn us someone is in the shop. Usually, Mam is out the front-yes, I’m working with my mum again-but she’s on her break.
“I’ll get it,” I say to Tommy and stroll up to the front of the shop.
As I approach the woman waiting at the till, my smile is met with a discontented scowl.
“Hi, how can I help you?” I greet her cheerfully. I fucking hate sales. Almost as much as cleaning.
“I’ve got a problem with the phonebook table I bought from here,” she says curtly. “I’ll need to return it.”
“Oh. What’s the problem?”
“It’s too big for my hallway! It won’t fit!”
I keep my smile steady. That’s hardly our bloody fault.
Why does she even need a phonebook table?
Who needs to use a phone book these days? I didn’t realize they still made them.
I sigh heavily. “Bring it in.”
“Do you not do pickups?”
“No,” I say through gritted teeth. “Not for refunds unless something is wrong with it. Is there anything wrong with it?”
“This is very inconvenient.” She ignores my question. Her eyes narrow as she waits, expecting me to say something. “McKinney’s furniture store has better service. I’ll have to take my business there from now on.”
Fuck, I need to get out of here.
“You’re welcome,” I mutter as she struts out of the shop. Moody old bag.
I glance at my watch. 2:00 p. m. It’s morning time in New York. I can’t look at the time without converting to New York time and thinking about what everyone is doing there. Teagan. Orla.
Killian.
Orla has her civil service examination in a few hours. The first step of her becoming a New York cop. It’ll be really slow going because she’ll have to have been in the country for a certain period. I’ll never sleep if she ends up patrolling the streets of New York.
I give her a call to say good luck.
She answers right away. “Hi!”