Breakaway (12 page)

“I do.”

Sandra kissed her mother’s cheek. “Thanks so much, Mam.”

“Ah, you know me. A right sucker for punishment.”

She looked at LJ and Oona sternly. “I better get a good report from Gran when I get home. Ya hear me?”

The kids nodded earnestly.

Sandra’s mam smiled at Erin as she jerked a thumb in Sandra’s direction. “Keep an eye on this one, will you?”

“Don’t I always?”

Erin had no intention of getting even the slightest bit tipsy, since she wasn’t much of a drinker. Sandra, on the other hand, sometimes needed a bit of looking after. She’d always been able to put away the pints. It embarrassed Erin sometimes.

They were out the door and halfway up the street before they realized Sandra was still holding the bat.

“It’ll only take us a min to run it back,” said Erin.

“Don’t be silly. I’m bringing it with us to the Oak. That way if Larry comes in, he’ll get the message loud and clear that if he messes with me, he’ll be walkin’ out with a head cracked open like a melon.”

“Meanwhile, everyone else will think you’re mad.”

Sandra grinned. “And when have I ever given a toss about that in my life?”

*   *   *

“Jesus, Mary, and Saint Joseph. If I had false teeth, they’d be dropping to the floor right about now.”

Old Jack’s exclamation as Rory and Jake walked through the pub door together had the exact effect Rory knew it would: it killed conversation.

“You always were melodramatic, Jack,” Rory said, enjoying the look on people’s faces, especially the Trinity. He could hear their pea-sized brains working furiously:
What the hell is Jake doing with Rory? The feck’s back in town less than two weeks and already Jake has let bygones be bygones? Jakers is a good sort, but this is sheer weakness.

“You two kiss and make up?” Bettina asked dryly as Rory and Jake sidled up to the bar.

“Looks that way,” said Rory.

“That’s putting the cart a bit before the horse, mate,” said Jake. Rory smiled tightly, ignoring the light laughter that came at his expense.

Rory nodded at Jack. “Two pints, if you please.” He was feeling pretty good right now. The hometown crowd could hold grudges for decades, but now that they saw he and Jake were making amends, their hatred of him might loosen its grip. And once he and Erin were back together, well, he’d be back to being the pride of Ballycraig.

Jack plunked the pints down before Rory and Jake. “C’mon, then. We need a good story to cheer us up, especially after the way Galway got slaughtered today by Sligo. How did you lovebirds reunite?”

Jake smirked. “Didn’t this one come knockin’ at my door beggin’ for forgiveness.”

“I didn’t
beg
,” Rory corrected, mildly irked.

“God forbid the Great One beg,” muttered Teague Daly.

Rory rounded on him. “First of all, there’s only one Great One, and that’s Wayne Gretzky. Second of all, you got something you want to say to me?”

Teague shrunk in his chair. “No.”

“Didn’t think so.” Rory looked at Jake. “Mind if I continue the story?”

“Be my guest.”

“I showed up. Jake punched me in the nose. We figured we could hash it all out over a few. Nothing a few pints can’t solve, right?”

“Go tell that to my cousin,” Liam called from farther down the bar.

He spoke his mind, Liam. Rory admired that. He had a sense that if the circumstances were different, and they were back at the Wild Hart in New York, he and Liam could have been great mates. Too bad his own treachery had made that impossible.

“I already have, in a manner of speaking,” Rory told him. “I think it’s great you want to protect her,” he continued as he looked around the bar. “I think it’s great you all want to protect her. But Erin can hold her own. Believe me.” He grabbed the pint glasses, looking to Jake. “Grab a table?”

“Over my dead body,” Bettina declared. “If you two end up rolling around in a good punch-up, I want to see it up close.”

“And this way, you can all listen in on our conversation as well,” Jake pointed out.

“As if we would,” Bettina said indignantly.

Jake and Rory looked at each other and laughed.

“Go to hell, the both of ya,” said Old Jack. He pointed a warning finger at Jake. “Watch your back, son.”

“No worries. I can take care of myself, Jack.” He touched his glass to Rory’s. “To friendship.”

Rory thought he detected a note of sarcasm.
Getting paranoid,
he told himself.

“To friendship,” he echoed.

“What, have I got a booger hangin’ from my nose?”

Erin cringed. She and Sandra had no sooner stepped over the Oak’s threshold than their fellow villagers behaved as if they were watching a tennis match, eyes going from Rory and Jake…to Sandra and Erin…back to Rory and Jake…back to Sandra and Erin.

Sandra turned to Erin, exasperated. “Do I have a booger hangin’ out or what?”

“San, you’re carrying a bat,” Erin murmured.

“Oh, Christ.” Sandra lifted the bat, seemingly oblivious as to why people shrank back. “Don’t worry: we’re not here to harm anyone.” She chuckled before flashing Rory one of the most threatening looks Erin had ever seen. “Well, maybe one or two people.”

Sandra lowered the bat, and the bar patrons exhaled a collective sigh of relief. Erin refused to glance at the bar. The sight of Rory with Jake completely stunned her. She couldn’t wrap her mind around it at all. She tugged on Sandra’s sleeve. “C’mon. Let’s see if we can find a seat.”

Together they headed toward the back. The local band
were to the left of the old stone fireplace, winding down from a well-known traditional reel; Sandra glanced at Erin and put a finger down her throat as if she were going to vomit. “Christ, if I never hear this song again in my life, it won’t be too soon.”

Erin agreed, heart sinking as she scanned the room. Every table appeared to be occupied. She was about to point it out to Sandra when her friend lunged for a tiny table that just that second was being vacated, beating out two middle-aged, mildly drunk women whose puffy faces had clearly seen better days.

“’Scuse me,” one of them said in an unmistakable cockney accent, “but that’s our table, you fat cow.”

Ever so subtly, Sandra began swinging the bat by her side. “Excuse me: what gives you the right to think you can talk to me like that?”

“San,” Erin said quietly.

“This is our local,” Sandra continued.

“Well, la-di-bloody-da,” the drunker of the two said.

“You’re damn right, la-di-bloody-da,” Sandra retorted. A standoff ensued. Sandra made a great show of looking back and forth between the bat and the Brits.

“Fine, take your stinkin’ table,” said the bottle blond who’d called Sandra a cow. “We were thinking of clearing out of this piss hole anyway.”

Noses up in the air, they walked away. The one time they glanced back with matching sneers, Sandra gave them the two-fingered salute.

“Ha!” Sandra crowed as they slid into their seats. “Pathetic, those Brits.”

“Sandra, you’re holding a bat. What did you think they were going to do?”

Sandra ignored her, looking around. “Not too many old ones in tonight.”

“
Strictly Come Dancing
is on, remember?”

“Oh, yeah.”

Erin’s parents were among the show’s devoted followers. Often, when she was in her room studying, she could
hear it blaring from their TV. Sometimes she’d come in and watch it with them. It made her mother happy. It also helped Erin take her mind off the fact that she was home alone on a Saturday night.

She and Sandra had no sooner gotten comfortable at their hobbit-sized table than out of the corner of her eye Erin spotted Old Jack waddling toward them, his expression uncharacteristically grave.

“Evenin’, ladies.”

“Hey-o, Jack,” said Sandra with a broad smile. “It’s been a while.”

“Too true.” Jack held out his hand. “Gimme the bat.”

Erin groaned.

Sandra looked offended. “What, you think I’m gonna club someone?”

“San, just give him the bat,” Erin urged.

“It’s not you beatin’ on people I’m worried about,” Jack explained. “It’s some of the other elements here.”

“Tourists?” Sandra mouthed.

Jack nodded curtly. “All I need is for a few of them to get pissed out of their skulls and grab it away from you, and I’ve got a real situation on my hands.”

Sandra frowned. “That’s never gonna happen. When’s the last time there was a good punch-up here?”

“A month ago. Two of them PJ people were in their cups and got into an argument over whether the Salmon King could triumph over the Guardian of the Toadstool or some such nonsense. Before you knew it, they were throwing punches and crackin’ each other over the head with chairs. If it wasn’t for Liam, they’d have smashed the place to bits.”

“All right,” Sandra grumbled, handing over the bat.

“Thank you.” He leaned over the table, looking like he was going to burst with a secret. “What d’you think of Frick and Frack over at the bar, hoisting a few?”

“Who?” Sandra asked innocently.

“Laughin’ it up like the old days, letting bygones be bygones,” Old Jack continued, looking for a reaction from Erin.

“Good for them,” Erin replied flatly. It made perfect sense. Angry as Jake had been at Rory cutting him dead, it had always been plain to see that it pained him deeply, like being shunned by your own flesh and blood. She wasn’t all that surprised to see them together, though she doubted Jake had welcomed Rory with open arms.

Old Jack looked disappointed with her answer. “Is that all you have to say about it?”

“Stop being a mixer, Jack,” Sandra warned.

“Right, right.” Old Jack sighed, knowing he wasn’t going to get anywhere. “What can I get you two? Black Velvets?”

“Sounds good to me,” said Erin.

Sandra agreed. “One of us’ll be over in a few to pick them up.”

“Good enough,” said Jack. He held the cricket bat in both hands, weighing it, assessing it. “I think I might get one of these permanent.”

“Just remember to hide it from Bettina,” said Erin with a grin.

*   *   *

Jack gone, Sandra plunged immediately into the topic of the night.

“What do you think happened with Jake and Rory?”

“Obvious: Rory went and begged for forgiveness and Jake accepted his apologies.”

Sandra looked disappointed. “I know. He’s good at spouting the tough words sometimes, is Jake, but in the end, he’s a big softie.”

“I know.”

“I hope he’s making Rory crawl a bit.”

Erin rested her chin in the palm of her hand and studied her friend’s face. “You’re very big on the crawling, aren’t you?”

“Don’t you think he should suffer at least a little bit for what he did?”

“Yes.”

“Well, there you go, then.”

Erin couldn’t quite see the bar from where she and Sandra were sitting, and she was glad. She didn’t want to see Rory and Jake together right now. The rapidity with which Jake forgave Rory made her feel petty. There was no way she was going to forgive him that quickly, assuming she forgave him at all.

“I’m parched,” Sandra declared. “I’m gonna go tell Jack to hurry with our drinks. Be back in a tick.”

*   *   *

“Good Christ, help me, here comes Sandra.”

Rory steeled himself for what was certain to be the tongue-lashing of all tongue-lashings. Sandra wasn’t just Erin’s best friend; she was her protector. God forbid anyone said or did anything that hurt Erin in any way: Sandra would hand them their bollocks on a plate. Erin was the same way when it came to Sandra, which had always worried Rory. He was always fearful that one day, Sandra’s husband was going to spew his filth at Erin the way he did at Sandra. Well, that would be the day that wanker met his Maker, that much was sure.

He could think of one positive to Sandra’s ripping into him: it would help take his mind off Jake telling him that he and Erin had “gone out” a few times. What did “gone out” mean? A meal? A stroll? Just the thought of Jake being with Erin in any capacity beyond close friends set Rory’s teeth on edge.

“Hiya, Jake,” said Sandra. “Long time, no see.”

“Ah, Aislinn’s been working me to the bone.”

“Usually does. You do get some time off, though, don’t you? Time to relax, do a bit of wooing?”