For a moment, I’m thrown back to those first few days after leaving Shelter Harbor. In my head, I’m back in the belly of the cargo ship owned by one of Declan’s Irish associates that I crossed the Atlantic to Ireland in all those years ago. Cold, wet, hopped up on whiskey and cigarettes with the rest of the pirates, mobsters, and general low lifes on board.
Missing the fuck out of the girl I’d left behind and trying to drown the screaming inside. Trying to drown the memory of walking away from the one thing I ever cared about and knowing I was doing it for her and that she’d never know.
I drop my face to my hands, rubbing my eyes as I slowly climb from sleep there in the back room of the bar. Back here, back home.
I gotta get a bed.
I groan again as I straighten up, feeling my back crack after a night on this godawful fold-up cot.
What I need to do is get a place that isn’t the spare store room of a fucking dive bar. That’s what I need to do.
The thought stops me.
Getting a place here means staying here in Shelter Harbor.
I’m not sure where that idea comes from, but it stops me cold.
The thing is, I’m lost, and I know it. Five years spent sans-passport in another country being the guy I never wanted to be in order to dodge responsibility here, followed by another three years of being a damn nobody in Southie Boston.
I’ve been keeping my nose relatively clean. Trying to keep my hands clean too. Work-wise, I’ve been picking up the odd construction job for my landlord, who’s a contractor.
There’s also my plan - the one plan that I haven’t really told a soul about yet, because it’s not quite there yet. Which is a nice way of saying I need a fuckload of money to get it off the ground, and a fuckload of money seems to be something I’m a tad short on at the moment.
But whatever happens, I’m sure as shit not going back to Dublin, and there’s nothing really for me in Boston that I couldn’t walk away from, well, three days ago.
That sort of leaves Shelter Harbor, I guess.
The phone rings again, and I groan at the name that pops up across the screen.
Valerie.
Like I said, it’s not like I’ve been a monk for the last eight years. Valerie lives down the street from me - a loud, brassy, and if we’re being honest, trashy Southie girl. There’s nothing there but a warm bed, and even that was done with weeks before I came back here.
I wince, pinching the bridge of my nose as I take the call.
“Hey, Va-”
“Oh, so you ah fuckin’ alive?”
That thick, almost comically Boston accent with the dropped “r’s” hits me like a bucket of water to the face.
“Yeah,” I clear my throat. “Yeah, I’m alive.”
“Siiilaaas.” Her voice softens to a whine as she drawls out my name. “You didn’t come ovah last night.”
Yeah, no shit.
“You know Thursdays are our night.” I can practically hear the pout through the phone, and I can imagine those overly-plumped, thickly-painted lips puffing out, her hand toying with the frosted tips of her jet-black hair.
“I waited up for you, wearin’ that little thing you like so much. I got worried.”
I frown. “Feelings” and “worrying” about the other has never really been part of the equation with Val.
“Yeah, sorry about that. My uncle’s sick.”
I wish, I think with a grin.
“Awww baaaaby!” she brays into the phone. “You should come ovah and I could make you feel bettah.”
In another life, it’s a tempting offer. But not in this one.
Girls like Valerie are who guys like me are supposed to be with. Girls like her, with the fake hair, the fake nails, the smell of cigarettes on their breath and cheap wine on their lips are who guys like me who come from families like mine are supposed to end up with. They’re the ones I’m supposed to punch a ticket at the factory for and come home to, so we can watch Sox games in fucking track pants and bang out a fourth kid named for a saint.
Girls like her, and the stuff I’m supposed to do is what brought me to Ivy, and chasing after what I was never supposed to have.
“Can’t, Val. I’m not in town.”
“Well where ah you then?”
Her tone instantly changes again, this time accusatory, suspicion lacing her voice. Except there’s no groundwork for jealousy or suspicion with people like us. I know exactly who I am to her. I’m the guy she doesn’t bring around to her friends - not yet at least.