"Five hours!"
"You are not looking at that thing."
I was about to complain when I saw Abbi at the top of the stairs of the narrow, two-story restaurant. I had texted her earlier to bring me some paperwork to sign. I waved her over as I slipped a pen from my breast pocket.
"What else do you have in there?" Eoin asked. "A typewriter?"
"Nobody uses a typewriter anymore," I muttered, already reaching out a hand for the file from Abbi.
I did not greet her and she did not greet me. Eoin watched in bewilderment as Abbi stood silently next to the booth, arms jammed across her chest. I flipped through the file, my pen darting across the signature lines.
"Umm, are you going to introduce me?" Eoin asked, leaning his big body across the table.
I didn't look up from my paperwork. "No."
I added the last signature and closed the file, passing it back to Abbi without a word. Without a word herself, she tucked it into her briefcase and turned to leave. Before she could, Eoin wiggled out from the booth and blocked her path.
"Hello there, are you Michael's friend?"
Both Abbi and I scoffed.
"This is my assistant," I told Eoin as I calculated how high I would have to jump to reach my Blackberry. "And she was just leaving."
Eoin introduced himself anyway. Abbi shook his hand stiffly.
"Why don't you join us," Eoin said, shifting to block Abbi's retreat and indicating back toward our table.
I wasn't sure who said “no” more empathically. But either way, it was close.
Eoin glanced over toward me, but I was refusing to give even Abbi's general direction the courtesy of my gaze.
"I see you've been working your trademarked charm, Mikey."
"Don't call me Mikey."
My fingers tore at the edges of the thick paper menu; I was unable to keep myself from fidgeting with her so close. I could smell her perfume. I could see, even just out of the corner of my eye, the gentle curves of her long, lean body. With her so close, I could remember like it was yesterday that weekend nine years prior.
"I promise I'm much more pleasant," Eoin was telling Abbi. "And I'll make sure that Mikey here doesn't bite."
Abbi was still refusing, more politely than I would have. I sighed in relief until I saw Eoin with his big grizzly bear paws on Abbi's shoulders, helpless as a floundering salmon as he forcibly guided her into the booth. Eoin stuck Abbi between the two of us so that she couldn't escape without crawling under the table. In her panicked eyes I thought she might be considering it. Abbi kept almost awkwardly close to Eoin, who was watching me with peculiar interest as I scooted to the very edge of the booth, one ass cheek practically hanging over open air.
Our whiskeys arrived and silence descended once more after Eoin added another to the order along with the rattlesnake queso for the table. Abbi and I both kept our eyes locked on the table as Eoin drummed his fingers against his glass.
"Well, aren't you both great craic!" he said.
I needed an escape. There was no way I was sitting through a dinner with Abbi and my brother.
"I think my cell phone is ringing," I said, moving to stand. "I better—"
"You better sit your ass back down," Eoin said. "Unless you'd like to explain to Ma why you can't spend an evening with your sweet little brother."
I glared at Eoin, who was blinking innocently with his chin in his hands.
Fine. So I wasn't physically escaping. The only option was to escape mentally. I downed my whiskey, said fuck it to getting any work done that night. When the waitress brought Abbi's drink, I told her she better go ahead and bring the entire bottle.
By our third whiskies and our second rattlesnake queso, we all sank a little deeper into the booths and grinned a little more easily with our glossy eyes and pink cheeks.
"I bet you figure you drew quite the short stick ending up with Mikey here," Eoin said to Abbi.
Abbi's eyes darted to mine. I recognised that flush in her cheeks. Strands of her hair had slipped slightly from her braid in the heat of the crowded restaurant to fall over her hazel eyes.
"I know he's got a bit of a hard exterior," Eoin continued, draping his big arm across Abbi's shoulder casually in his gregarious, friendly manner. "But I promise there's a heart in there."
I rolled my eyes. "Shut up, Eoin."
Abbi sipped her whiskey and said, "I haven't seen any hint of it."
Eoin waggled his finger. "He'll surprise you," my brother said. "You'll think you've got him all figured out, that he's this cranky, workaholic robot, and then all of a sudden he'll surprise you."
"Shut up, Eoin."
We were nearing the bottom of the bottle of whiskey and I waved at the waitress for another. But Eoin did not shut up.
"You're not going to believe this," he said, eyeing me with a grin as he spoke to Abbi. "But Eoin was once in looove."
"Eoin, seriously, shut the feck up."
"I find that very hard to believe," Abbi said, though she still looked at me in surprise, as if there could still be the faint possibility of me being so stupid as to fall in love.
But Eoin, fuelled by three large pours of whiskey, clearly had no intentions of shutting the feck up.
"It was years ago," he started the story and my stomach dropped. "I mean, how many years ago was that, Mikey? Like a decade it seems."
"I don't know," I grumbled irritably, eyes fixed on the single ice cube in
