I shook my head as well and smiled.
Eoin returned to a chair full of potato wedges and grumbled, "I'm sorry no one appreciates my poetic genius."
Duffy snorted as she adjusted the blanket around her baby. "Poetic genius? Keep your day job, darling."
I glanced once more at Abbi before actually loosening up enough to take a bite of food. The oppressive silence eased slightly as my family interrupted their blatant gawking with a few bites or sips here and there. I couldn’t stop my eyes from darting across the table to Abbi every few seconds. Each time I found her focused on her untouched plate.
My grand plan to win Abbi back, to earn my way into her little family, certainly did not involve this.
After several minutes of mostly awkward, totally silent semi-dining, Abbi suddenly cleared her throat and dabbed at the corner of her lips with the napkin from her lap, her gaze still fixed down.
"Um, Eoin," she said softly. "Would you do me a favour?"
Every fork, knife, spoon, or glass that had been raised was lowered and all eyes shifted to Eoin at the end of the table. For the first time that afternoon, it was his cheeks that coloured slightly.
"What's that?" he asked warily, like a child afraid of, but fully expecting a spanking.
Abbi pushed a few peas around her plate with the back of her fork and then said, "Could you possibly pass me the tater tots?"
Her question was met with a tense silence. Eoin looked over at me as if I had the answer for what he was supposed to do. When there was no response, Abbi finally glanced up and looked around the table.
"Get it?" she asked, the tiniest crack of a smile playing at her lips. "Tater tots? Tots as in kids."
She looked around imploringly at my family as the silence grew and grew. She caught my eye across the table. I couldn't help but grin myself. Eoin never did know a silence he didn't love to destroy, and after the moment dragged out to its most awkward peak, he burst out into an ear-deafening roar of laughter and slapped his big hands down on the table.
"Eoin!" half the family shouted as plates clanged, wine glasses tumbled over, and the legs of the table nearly buckled. The other half of the family was laughing.
"Ha! I knew I liked her," Eoin shouted. "I knew I liked her from the moment I saw her. So, when's the wedding?"
I expected Ma to put an end to Eoin's nosy prying, but Abbi had apparently opened the floodgates because we received a barrage of personal questions instead.
"What's the baby's name?" Ma asked, pushing aside her plate to lean forward. "Is it a girl or a boy?"
"How'd you two meet?" Kayleigh asked over Ma, and Noah asked over Kayleigh, "How come you didn't tell us you had a kid?"
Darren asked about when they would get to meet the kid and Duffy asked how old the kid was and Eoin got down on one knee by my chair to wrap his big hands around mine and beg me to make him best man. I shooed his hand away, which was like trying to swat at a fly the size of a Great Dane, and pushed back my chair.
Abbi looked bewildered and overwhelmed and amused, like she'd stumbled upon some strange circus family that she couldn't look away from. I went around to her side of the table and scooted her chair out for her. I took her by the hand and led her away behind me to my family's increasing protests.
"No, don't go!" Noah cried. "We'll be quiet again, we promise!"
"Michael, was that a yes or a no on the best man thing?" Eoin shouted after us as Abbi and I started running down the hallway, laughing at our great escape.
I opened the front door for her. She tugged off the towel around her hair and let it drop before darting out into the rain. I jumped out right after her.
"Your family is crazy!" she shouted over the downpour, smiling from ear to ear.
"You flew across an ocean without telling me. You're crazy!" I shouted back.
Her eyes sparked like lightning amongst the rain clouds as she yelled even louder, "You bought me a house without telling me. You're crazy."
The rain soaked us, matting down our hair and seeping into our clothes. We blinked against the drops as we stared at each other. I slipped my wet fingers between hers.
"I need to show you something."
Abbi
The office was immaculate. On the highest floor of the PLA Harper building in the heart of Dublin, it had floor-to-ceiling windows with a sweeping view of the city lights nestled like sparkling diamonds amongst the fog. On one wall were built-in shelves of a deep, dark wood, polished to a high sheen, modern and sleek. The intricately carved ceiling moulding looked like it belonged more in Versailles than an office, and the marble floors with dark swirls of grey looked too beautiful to step upon. But there Michael and I stood, in the centre of the massive, completely empty office, with muddy puddles of water extending around us as we stood side by side in silence.
"What is this?" I asked, glancing from the view up to Michael.
"This is my office," he said. "Was my office."
I turned to face him, my shoes making slurping noises like I was stepping through a bog.
"What do you mean?"
Michael glanced around the empty office. "I didn't come back to Dublin for my old life, Abbi," he said, hands in the pockets of his rain-soaked pants. "I came back here to say goodbye to it."
I followed his gaze around the
