“So, do I offer to buy you a drink again?” I asked as I sat beside her. Trying to tell if she was still wanting to give up. I couldn’t see why, what did I do wrong this time? Yes, we had that big fight a little while ago, but I had been trying so hard to make her feel safe ever since. We were good together, weren’t we? She had been happier? We both were. That couldn’t all have been lies and pretend could it? I had thought I showed her a better way. Lily curled into my shoulder, crying. Oh God, what had I done? Only a handful of hours ago we had been at the studio working on our song together with the band ready to record it in London.
I felt terror pooling in my stomach as I held her tight. “Darling, tell me what’s wrong? I can say sorry, fix it, whatever you need. Youse just need to talk to me. Anything, please.”
“I can’t, you can’t fix this. No one can,” Lily cried.
“I will try, I promise. Whatever is hurting youse, we can fix it. Together!” I vowed, and I meant it. I would cut off my own arm for her. Give her my own heart in some tacky chick flick moment just so she could go on living.
“You can’t stop the tour,” she sobbed.
I was dumbfounded for a moment, not following the line of thought. “What do ye mean? Youse are coming on the tour with me.” Then something clicked into place in my mind. “You don’t want to,” I finished with a sigh.
“I do,” Lily insisted, wiping at her puffy eyes.
“Lily throw me a fucking bone here. A subject header. Anything! I am not a mind reader,” I snapped.
“This!” Lily said waving her hand towards the river, “How can I leave all of this behind? These last few weeks I have had a home here. My first real home. With you, with the band and this city. All of it. I belong somewhere, finally. How can I just leave all of this behind?”
“Oh.” I said softly, playing her words over in my mind. “Do you want to stay behind? Live here until I come back for ye? The flats here, you could get a lot of sketching done. You wouldn’t have to want for money, you know that.”
Lily shook her head, burying her face into his sweater, breathing him in.
I stroked her hair. “It’s hard. Every single time. Dublin isn’t just a city. It’s a living, breathing person. She’s alive, she becomes a part of ye soul. Changing ye. Helping ye be who and what ye should be. I was lucky to be born in a city where anything really can happen. Yeah, I worked hard for what I have. Bloody hard to get to where I am now. Years busking on Grafton street. Playing the pubs, never thinking I would be anybody. Hell, even playing weddings. Whatever I could do to make rent. Just making the music, that was what was important. Keeping it real. Putting the effort in. It’s hard for me, too. Hell, probably a little harder each time I pack and up leave. Not knowing if the tour will extend or shorten, or when I will see my home again. Sometimes I wish that I never had to leave at all. I think about giving it all up, touring, music and settling down right here to raise a family and get a normal job.”
“You would go mad; the touring is far too much a part of who you are.”
“You are probably right.”
We stared at the water in each other’s arms watching the sun set. Trying to burn every last second into both of our memories. To hold that moment in our minds for as long as we needed it before we could come home to it again. A photo could never be enough. Never express the same level of emotion as this single moment in time was stirring in our joined hearts. I found my cheeks damp, my voice rough with emotion when I could finally speak.
“How do ye want to spend your last night in the city?”
“Can we just go for a walk?” Lily asked.
I smiled down at her. “Yeah, I think I would like that too. Come on, English, will buy ye some chips or something on the way.”
As we walked away, she pulled me closer for a stolen kiss before asking me, “What is your real name?”
“Real name?” I asked, confused.
“Sparks is hardly an Irish name, dude.”
I laughed. “Oh, that. Yeah, I forget you didn’t know me before all this shite. Adrian Edmund O’Connell, the boy who did the busking around the town for enough coin to get the cover costs to see a ‘real’ band play in the Button Factory. Feels like eternity ago.”
“O’Connell, like the street?” she asked.
“Yes, English, like the street.”
“I like it, it suits you.”
“Maybe I think it suits you better,” I half joked.
She didn’t answer, but she did crawl under my jacket as we walked down the Liffey for our last night of freedom.
Chapter 15
Lily’s POV
We had flown in late last night, making the most of every possible moment we had left in Dublin. A picnic in the park in Nov had not exactly been a cosy affair, but it had been romantic. Just the two of us. If things were different, and I wasn’t so broken. I might have actually thought about us having a
