Eoin leaned in closer to Abbi to whisper conspiratorially with her.
"You're not going to believe this, but I was in Australia for a rugby tournament and I call Mikey here after this big promotion—"
"Can we please talk about something else?" I asked, knowing it was futile.
Eoin was a runaway train and he was going to plough through whatever stood in his way.
"Anyway I call him and he answers and he's wasted, like thoroughly plastered. So I ask him where the hell he is and I swear to God," Eoin paused to cross his big beefy finger over his chest. "I swear to God, he said, 'I'm in love.' Unbelievable, right?"
I sensed Abbi's eyes on me as she said, "Yeah, unbelievable."
"He was at some sort of Celtic festival up in Wicklow mountains," Eoin continued. "I'd never heard him like that. You know, actually happy."
Eoin reached across the booth to jab playfully at my arm. I just shrank back farther into the leather seats. I couldn't bear to look up at Abbi.
I was afraid she would see in my eyes that I remembered that moment like it was yesterday. I was afraid she would see that I revisited it in my mind with a longing so hard it hurt. I was afraid she would see that it was the greatest “what if” of my life thus far and I’d imagined a hundred scenarios, tossing and turning in bed, where I’d acted differently.
Most of all I was afraid I would look up and see in Abbi's steady hazel eyes that she didn't remember, that it didn't haunt her like it haunted me, that she had moved on, forgotten. That she didn't care.
"And you know what?" Eoin continued to my horror. "I think I believed him. Really and truly believed him."
My attention was fixed on the ice cube in my glass.
"I mean, he was definitely wasted. There's no doubt about it. But I think he was in love with whoever this girl was. The real kind of love, you know? The painful, risky, scare-you-to-your-bones kind of love."
The ice was melting away to nothing just like my resolve not to look up to see Abbi's reaction. The heat of my fingers gripping the glass was warming up the whiskey, warring with the fast disappearing ice trying to keep the liquid cool. And yet I couldn't move my hands away; they would shake too terribly.
And they would see. Eoin. Abbi.
They would know.
"So believe me or not," Eoin finished, leaning back casually in the booth, entirely unaware of what he was doing to me, how he was torturing me. "But I'm telling you it's true. Every word of it."
We were all silent for a while, the clatter of forks on plates, the hum of mingled conversations, the bustle of pots and pans from the kitchen filling the space. I let the noise pour over me, thankful for it. Thankful that it was loud and all-encompassing.
I was fully contented with drowning in the noise—it and bottomless whiskey—for the rest of the night.
But then Abbi spoke. And the insignificant, pointless, blissful noise disappeared as quickly as if someone unplugged a stereo. Her words were all I heard.
"I could believe it," she said. "Maybe."
The ice had melted. So had my resolve. I dared to look up at her. Her eyes were waiting for mine. They were the eyes of a girl standing in a hallway of a posh Dublin hotel caught red-handed with a stolen bottle of wine and a platter of hors d'oeuvres trying to break into a linen closet.
I regarded her as I did all those years ago: with curiosity, with fear, with the strange sensation that I stood just as much of a chance against her as I did a tornado on a wide plain.
But then Abbi averted her eyes and sighed. What she said next made me wish she'd never spoken, that she'd never disrupted the insignificant, pointless noise.
"But we all change," she said, reaching for her own whiskey. "And it's a very rare thing to ever change back."
Michael
Another party, another fancy hotel, another boring old man with a boring old voice and boring old things to say.
I resisted the urge to yawn as a director of this or vice president of that droned on about low interest rates and the FCC and corporate tax loop holes. PLA Harper and Levi, Levi, & Burke were celebrating the upcoming merger with a grand fecking celebration at the historic Brown Hotel in downtown Denver. The floors were marble, the rugs oriental, the ceilings moulded and it was all the fecking same.
"Yes, yes, of course," I said, not because I'd heard a single word of what this generic Mr Smith said, but because I'd learned to judge just by a facial expression what response was required given a particular length of pause.
Mr Smith was, of course, satisfied with this, thinking proudly to himself that he'd successfully wrangled the attention of a senior partner at the largest corporate law firm in the world, which was soon to get even larger.
Not even the bubbles in my glass of fine champagne managed to lift my mood. I'd learned to play this game, to win this game, but for some reason I no longer had much motivation to or interest in playing. Something had changed. I was no longer calm, steady, stealthy, like a shark prowling the waters of the wealthy and wealthier. I was restless, unsettled, impatient. Impatient for what, I wasn't sure, until she walked through the tall French doors to the ballroom.
I didn't even bother to politely excuse myself from my oh-so-stimulating conversation with Mr Smith or Mr Jones or Mr Who the Fuck Cares. I simply walked away mid-sentence, leaving him babbling away to the empty space, which, in effect, was
