My Brother's Girl Read online

“Eoin!” shouted a teenage boy who ducked under a woman’s arm to get to the front. “Eoin, can I get an autograph?”

  “Your autograph?” I asked the man called Eoin with a confused frown. “Why does he want your autograph?”

  But Eoin didn’t answer me as he stopped the approaching boy with a massive paw of a hand extended out in front of him.

  “Later, lad,” he said. “I have something very important to do right now.”

  Before I could ask him what exactly that was, Eoin pulled me into a massive hug that crushed my lungs and stole my breath. He rocked us back and forth there on the ice as I remained helpless with my arms pinned to my side. He finally released me, but only to hold me by the shoulders so he could lean back to get a better view of me.

  Attempting to push away his iron grip, I said, “Okay, so, one, are you famous? And two, please tell me that you didn’t just say soul—”

  “Fuck, darling dearest! You must be freezing!”

  Eoin immediately began stripping off his coat and then his sweater and then, I’m shitting you not, his t-shirt, leaving his very impressively chiselled chest naked save his snow-dotted scarf.

  Around me the crowd grew as whispers became louder and concern changed to excitement. A buzz took over as I heard his name on every lip.

  “Yeah, yeah, it’s him. It’s Eoin O’Sullivan.”

  “I told you! You called me a goddamn liar and I told you. Eoin O’Sullivan, Eoin Fucking O’Sullivan.”

  “Eoin O’Sullivan… Eoin O’Sullivan… Eoin O’Sullivan… Eoin, Eoin, Eoin O’Sullivan.”

  Dumbfounded, I could only stare as “Eoin Fucking O’Sullivan” piled his clothes on me like a shivering coat rack. My head tilted to the side as I studied him. Shite…this man wasn’t a stranger after all. I’d seen him before. I’d seen his face on a rugby poster in Andy’s office. His dark hair was hidden beneath his hat, but his green eyes, wide and boyish and sweet, were more than enough to recognise him by. Eoin O’Sullivan was a rising star for the All Ireland rugby team. And if I wasn’t mistaken, he had just pronounced his love for me.

  Christ.

  Shoving aside the arm of his wool coat so I could breathe, I lifted a finger and said, “Thanks, but, um, I’d like to go back to what you just said a second ago, if you don’t mind. Did you say soul—”

  “Shite! Are you guys alright?” Through the circle of people watching us and whispering excitedly to one another, a man burst through, hands digging anxiously through his hair. “I just lost control, fuck, I—are you alright? Hey, you’re Eoin O’Sullivan. Fuck, I almost killed Eoin O’Sullivan. You were brilliant in the Six Nations finals last year against England, you know? Jaysus, are you alright?”

  I held up my hands to calm down the mounting situation. “We’re fine,” I said. “Everyone is just fi—”

  “We are not fucking fine!”

  My eyes widened in confusion at the emotional outburst from the rugby star on the ice with me. The still growing crowd fell into a startled hush as Eoin pushed himself indignantly to his feet and threw his scarf back over his broad shoulders. “We are far from fine, my friend,” he boomed. “Far from fine, you hear?”

  Scrambling to my feet, I stepped in front of Eoin. “No, no,” I assured the driver, who stared at Eoin behind me with worry in his eyes. “We’re both fine. No harm, no foul. You can all go. We are fine, just fi—”

  “Wrong!” Eoin interrupted.

  Gloved hands reached into coat pockets and purses for cell phones that began to blink red lights, which meant, to my horror, that they were recording all of this. Flashes snapped from all directions so it was impossible to cover my face from all of them.

  “Should we call the police?” a woman in the crowd asked, phone already in her hand. “An ambulance?”

  “Call everyone,” Eoin ordered, circling his hand over his head. “Call every authority there is. Get everyone here right away. Call the goddamn prime minister.”

  I blindly reached behind me to cover this lunatic’s mouth as I desperately waved a hand at the woman. “Please, do not call anyone,” I begged. “Really, we’re just fine.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen!” Eoin called out so everyone in all of Cork could hear. “This stunning woman before you has clearly lost her mind.”

  Before I could reply, he twisted me around to face him, slid my hand to the searing hot skin over his heart, and kneeled in front of me.

  “Wait, what are you doing?” I hissed.

  He ignored me as he held my hand firmly affixed to his pounding heart, snow falling on his dark hair. “This woman just saved my life.”

  The buzz from the crowd was attracting even more attention from the local bars and pubs. I looked longingly at my car past a sea of winter hats and ear muffs—so close and yet so, so far.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Eoin continued. “This gorgeous, stunning, beautiful woman before you clearly must have hit her head when she bravely dragged me back from the brink of certain death, because she keeps insisting that we are fine.”

  I looked imploringly at the crowd. “We are fi—”

  “We are not fine,” Eoin interrupted. “Not me, at least.”

  I leaned down and whispered, “Maybe we don’t make a big deal about this?”

  Eoin reached up, cupped my cheek, and shouted to the crowd, “How can I be just ‘fine’ when I’ve found the love of my life, my forever, my soul— No, no, wait!”

  I sighed in relief. Good, I thought. He wasn’t going to say it.

  “No, no,” he shook his head emphatically. “I didn’t find her. No, my soulmate found me.”

  Like a goddamn movie scene, the crowd, probably fuelled by a pint, maybe two, clapped and cheered as Eoin stood and swept me up into his arms, my elf ears tumbling to the ice.

  “I love this woman!” he shouted. “I love her!” He then looked down at me, his green eyes crinkling with more happiness than I thought was possible in one human. I had to admit it was quite infectious. “Come get a drink with me.”

  “Oh, I don’t know…”

  Eoin again addressed the crowd as I hung suspended in his arms. “Should she come get a drink with me or what, folks?”

  A raucous “yes” drowned out the pounding music from Dooley’s. I was about to make up some excuse when I noticed Andy, thankfully clothed once more, wedging his sizeable belly out of the back alley exit. Our eyes met and I saw his widen in surprise before narrowing in anger. Shite. Agreeing meant avoiding a confrontation with Andy.

  So agree I did.

  “Alright,” I said with as much enthusiasm as I could muster given the situation.

  “Yeah?” Eoin asked, his excitement admittedly helping a bit.

  I smiled, his boyish charm too much to resist, and nodded. “Yeah.”

  Eoin grinned and tightened his hold on me. “I want you to know that I’m going to treat you like a proper lady,” he started, looking down at me with such earnestness. “You deserve to be treated right and right you will be treated.”

  “Great.” I smiled.

  “I promise you to be the most perfect gentleman to you.”

  “Emhmm.” I nodded along to Eoin’s passionate, soul-baring, not-quite-Shakespearean monologue while craning my neck to see past his broad shoulder. I almost yelped at the sight of Andy now barrelling toward us, only slowed down by the ice and his drunken double vision.

  “…and I vow to buy you all the flowers in Cork and Dublin and all of fecking Ireland and all of Eur—”

  “Right, right.” I tapped Eoin’s shoulder impatiently. “How ’bout we just start with that drink, yeah?”

  Eoin grinned down at me and winked. “Off we go then.” He took a massive step forward.

  I couldn’t help a tiny smile as I watched Andy stumble to his knees. Serves him right, I thought as Eoin carried me through the crowd.

  “You bitch!” Andy called from the ice. “You’re fired, you bitch!”

  Ducking my head into the safety of Eoin’s shoulder, I sigh
ed in relief as he took me farther and farther away from that surely nasty encounter.

  “Did you hear something?” Eoin asked.

  I shook my head emphatically. “Nope.”

  We continued down a quiet alley, me still in his arms as the snow swirled in the light of the street lamp above us. It was actually a little romantic. And if his pile of clothes weren’t warm enough, his bare chest felt like fresh logs on the fire. Maybe a drink with Eoin “the love of my life, my forever, my soulmate” O’Sullivan, wouldn’t be so terrible after all.

  “We’re going to have a wonderful life together, darling,” he said, his green eyes finding mine in the sparkling light.

  I nodded politely like my mother taught me.

  Eoin paused no more than a second or two. “So, eh, what’s your name then?”

  Darren

  The sharp click-clack of heels on the grease-covered floors of my garage were an unfamiliar sound. It took a woman calling out a tentative “hello” for me to finally realise the source.

  Rolling out from beneath the undercarriage of my mother’s car, I found my date for the night clutching her black velvet purse tight to the chest of her black mink coat as she surveyed my work space with an upturned nose. Outside the open large bay door, night had fallen and a few flurries of snow fell on a pile of rusted motorcycle parts next to the sign for Kelly’s Garage. I hadn’t meant for it to get so late, but it was Ma’s car so it had to be done, and it had to be done tonight.

  “Over here, Trish,” I said with a hasty wave. “Thanks for meeting me here. I’m just finishing up.”

  Without waiting for a response, I returned into the darkness beneath the car. Some people felt safe and comforted with a blanket by the fire or in the arms of a lover in bed or submerged in bubbles with a glass of wine. My place was down here with dirty coveralls and a wrench in my hand.

  Hidden beneath the undercarriage, I watched Trish’s five-inch heels tiptoe around the splotches of oil toward me.

  “Darren?” she asked, sounding confused.

  Pausing with my wrench halfway cranked, I dragged myself back out from under the car just enough to reach out a hand. “Nice to meet you.”

  After an awkward moment of silence, I saw Trish’s hand, covered in bejewelled rings and with fire-engine red nail polish on her fingernails, extend toward mine before hesitating and pulling back slightly. “Umm...”

  It was only then that I realised I was still wearing my filthy work gloves. Clenching the index finger between my teeth, I tugged the glove off and tried again. “Sorry about that.”

  Trish didn’t seem to find my bare hand any more appealing to touch and shook my hand with the enthusiasm of shaking a dead trout down at the Dublin fish market. Maybe they were a little greasy.

  “Nice to meet you,” Trish said as if her mom was going to flick her ear for being impolite if she didn’t say it.

  “I just need a couple more minutes and then we can go to the restaurant,” I said, returning to my work. “Grab yourself a beer while you wait, if you’d like. They’re over in the cooler by that big red toolbox.”

  Trish’s pointy heels did not move. “The restaurant takes last orders at ten, you know.”

  I switched on my head lamp and nodded. “We’ll make it,” I assured her.

  “It’s 9:15,” Trish added. “And the place is twenty minutes away.”

  “No problem. Almost done.”

  The front axle of my ma’s car snapped earlier that morning when she hit an unexpected pothole on the way to the store to grab groceries for Sunday lunch tomorrow. Knowing about my date tonight, she insisted there was no rush in getting it fixed when the tow truck had dropped it off around noon. In not so many words, I told her that was goddamn bullshite—family came first over everything.

  Especially Tinder.

  “There’s a chair over there in the corner, Trish, if you want to take a seat,” I said, my voice echoing back to me in the tight, cramped space. “Just toss that gas tank to the side.” I grunted as I struggled to keep the new axle in place.

  “Umm, I’m okay,” Trish finally said. “So, umm, how long have you worked here?”

  I took a moment to swipe a bead of sweat from my forehead despite the frigid temperatures outside. “Since I was fifteen,” I answered. “So…nine years about.” I didn’t bother telling her I owned the place; I didn’t bother telling anyone.

  “You worked here through college then?” Trish asked.

  Hidden beneath the car, I twisted my arm around in the shallow space to scratch at the back of my neck. “Actually, I didn’t go to college,” I admitted.

  “Oh.”

  I sneaked a peek from my work to see Trish’s heels fidgeting back and forth on the concrete. I reminded myself to act interested.

  Clearing my throat, I asked, “So did you go to college then?”

  “Trinity.”

  I blinked up at the grease- and salt-covered undercarriage. “Oh. Well you know what they say, Trinners are winners.” I winced as my lame joke fell flat.

  My mind searched for something else to ask her, but the more I focused on the wrench and the axle and the work, the more I couldn’t seem to recall a single detail from Trish’s Tinder profile.

  “So, umm, it’s snowing pretty good out there, eh?”

  “Darren,” Trish’s tone of voice reminded me a bit of my constantly disappointed teachers right before I dropped out of school, “perhaps you could finish this work tomorrow? It really is getting quite late.”

  “Alllllmost finished,” I replied, scooting around to get a better view.

  Trish’s toe began to tap. It sounded like a snare drum for a firing line down here.

  “I know you’re really going to love this little place,” I lied. “It’s one of my favourites.”

  I didn’t have “favourites”. You can’t have “favourites” when you don’t ever go out. I had a “favourite” chair in my garage, a “favourite” drawer in my “favourite” toolbox, and a “favourite” beer cooler with my “favourite” beer.

  “It’s nearing 9:25,” was all Trish said in response.

  “Just need a minute or two more. Sure you don’t want a beer?”

  Trish was silent.

  I paused my work beneath Ma’s car and stared up into the darkness as the silence grew and grew.

  I’d had good intentions of making this date, just like all the others. It had even been a family affair. I bought a new tie Ma said would look nice, asked Michael for a recommendation for the restaurant, and even practised some small talk with Noah. Eoin, the little snot, offered to teach me how to kiss and I, unsurprisingly, did not take him up on that.

  But just like all the other failed dates, I got unlucky.

  It was bad luck that Ma’s car broke down. Bad luck that I had to spend half the day tracking down the part when it should have been stocked everywhere. Bad luck that traffic was bad because of the snow and ice. That was all before I even got my hands on the car itself.

  Then I stripped a lug: bad luck. I misplaced the right wrench: bad luck. The batteries on my work lamp died and I was all out of AAAs: bad luck.

  That’s all it was: good ol’, nothing-to-be-done-about-it, shitty bad luck.

  “Um, Darren, do you have a backup plan if we miss the restaurant?” Trish asked.

  “We won’t miss the restaurant,” I called out beneath the undercarriage. “We’re going to have a lovely date, I promise.”

  Again there was no reply.

  “We’re going to sit in a dark, cosy corner booth,” I said as I twisted the wrench, getting back to work again. “There’s going to be candles lit when we sit down and we won’t leave till they’ve burnt out, their wax dripping down over the crisp white tablecloth.”

  I tried to imagine myself there with Trish, with someone kind and sweet and warm beside me. I tried and all I saw was the dark smear of grease inches from my nose.

  I went on. “There’s going to be live music at the restaurant, violins
and saxophones and guitars even, but we’re not going to hear any of it, because our ears will be filled with each other’s whispers of tiny, insignificant things that are each more wonderful than the last.”

  I tried to hear a perfumed whisper in the empty, silent space beneath the car. I tried to hear little secrets and favourite songs and silly dreams and hopes she’d never dared to say aloud before. I tried to hear anything, even the band in that candlelit restaurant.

  I heard nothing but the metallic screech as I tightened a rusted bolt.

  “Don’t worry, Trish, we’re leaving soon,” I continued as a familiar claustrophobia that had nothing to do with the hot, dim tightness of the space beneath the car quickened my heart rate and made the wrench slip in my suddenly sweaty palms. “When we’re there at the restaurant, we’ll start a little way away in that intimate corner booth, a little tentative at first. But then our knees will brush up against one another’s. My fingers will find yours on your thigh and I’ll interlace mine with yours. I’ll scoot closer and then you will, too. Maybe it’s me who says we should go back to your place. Maybe it’s you. But we’ll be together, close...closer...”

  I could have that with someone again, I told myself as I worked, intense and focused. I could have that with Trish even.

  But I couldn’t feel her sheets against my back, only hard metal. I couldn’t sense her calm breathing next to me, only the stillness of rubber and concrete. The only warmth I could grasp in that moment was not the warmth of waking up with someone in my arms, but my own harsh, shallow breath against the cold axle.

  I worked and worked and worked, because it was all I could do to keep myself from panicking. I stayed down there under the car, because it was bright compared to the darkness I would face out there. I only stopped when my hand slipped and blood ran down my wrist from a fresh cut.

  “Damn it,” I hissed, using my heels to pull myself from beneath the car. “Let me just put a bandage on this and then just a minute or two more.”

  I blinked in the light of my garage. Trish was no longer standing by the car. I stood and craned my head around the empty space. Outside, her car was gone. With a frown, I wandered over to the little office at the back of the garage and shifted aside an old carburettor to see the dusty analogue clock blinking harsh red numbers.