"It was your idea," the girl insisted. "After we got kicked out that club—"
"We got kicked out of a club?" I asked, incredulous.
I had barely ever been to a club, no less gotten kicked out of one. The girl laughed again, light and airy and carefree.
"Well, technically you got kicked out," she explained. "I wasn’t the one who stormed the DJ booth to sing a very stirring rendition of 'Tiny Dancer'."
I stopped again in the dancing sunlight on the trail. "I sang 'Tiny Dancer' at a club?"
The girl nodded. "There wasn't a dry eye in the whole place," she said. "How does that eye feel, by the way?"
"What eye?" I asked, prodding around where she was looking, only to pull back with a hiss of pain. "Did I get punched by a bouncer?!"
The girl's laugh harmonised with the singing birds like they were performing a duet. It would have been beautiful had I not been so horrified.
"Of course not," she said, stepping forward with me alongside her. "The bouncers kicked you, and me by association, out and then a police officer punched you."
I skidded to a stop.
The girl rolled her eyes. "Look, we're never going to get there if you keep—"
"A police officer punched me?"
"Well, technically it was only a lady dressed up like a police officer."
"A lady punched me?"
The girl shook her head. "You really don't remember much, do you?"
I winced as I again gingerly touched my eye. "Apparently not."
"We crashed that bachelor party at that strip club and—"
"Bachelor party at a strip club?!"
"And, well, it's my opinion that she was just jealous," the girl continued. "I said there was no way you would get up there on stage and you said ‘just watch me’ and then there you were, giving me a show. It was pretty obvious, to me at least, that she was just jealous because your ass was way cuter than hers and you shook it way—"
"You've seen my ass?!"
The girl laughed again. "How else was I supposed to tattoo my name on it?"
I froze and the girl doubled over in laughter this time.
"I'm just kidding!"
I exhaled shakily.
"Obviously I let the tattoo artist do it."
"What?" I screamed.
The girl skipped on ahead as I frantically pulled down my pants to check my ass. I huffed angrily when I found no bandages from fresh ink. I stormed after the girl to find her covering her mouth in uncontrollable giggles.
"Your name isn't on my ass, is it?" I asked her.
She shook her head.
"No, but you did want it," she said, grinning up at me with those wild hazel eyes. "And after getting refused at the tattoo parlour for being 'dangerously intoxicated', we bought a large pizza with everything on it and snuck into St Stephens Green, which is where you said you remembered this Irish festival your dad took you to once in Glenda-something and that we should go."
The girl jabbed her finger into my chest.
"Hence, your idea."
Just then we emerged from the forest path to a wide grassy clearing near a huge lake, surrounded on all sides by low green mountains. In the clearing were tents and booths and dance floors and tables and benches and dozens of people still setting up for the festival.
"So should I go get us some beer?" the girl asked. "And I saw a woman selling kilts over there—"
I snorted. "Beer? Kilts? No, I'm going home."
I turned to head back down the trail for the parking lot where I could maybe get enough cell service to call a cab, but the girl rushed to block my path.
"You can't go."
I placed both hands on her narrow shoulders and moved her aside.
"Look, last night was obviously memorable in the very, very unable-to-remember-it kind of way, but I have to get to work."
"But you said you wanted to come to this," the girl insisted, stubbornly blocking my way again.
I stepped around her with a sigh. "I was clearly not in my right mind."
"You said you felt more alive last night than ever before in your life," she said, darting back in front of me.
I brushed her aside. "Yeah, that's called tequila."
"You said you wanted me to make sure you didn't chicken out like this."
She tried to push me back with her delicate hands on my chest. I picked her up as easily as plucking a dandelion and placed her down behind me.
"It's not chickening out," I told her. "It's called being a responsible adult with a career, a very successful career, I might add."
The girl stubbornly stomped her foot. "You said you might say something like that."
I laughed. "Oh yeah?"
The girl nodded.
"Yeah," she said. "You said you might try to leave and say silly nonsense like that, and you told me what I should do to get you to stay."
I rolled my eyes and turned around to face the path toward the parking lot again. I took long, steady, certain (if not a little hungover) steps.
"Trust me," I called back toward her, "there is absolutely nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing that you could do to get me to stay up here with—"
The girl's fingers on my arm suddenly wrenched me back around, and before I could finish my sentence, her hands were on my face and her lips were on my lips.
Her kiss startled me like the fierce burn of the Poitín down my throat, but as she pulled me closer a warmth surged through my
