I turned anyway.
Noah stood under the pub’s sign, lamplight cutting his face into planes. He hadn’t bothered buttoning his coat. The whisky was still in his hand, the glass catching fairy lights like a tiny, breakable planet.
“You shouldn’t have followed me,” I said.
“You shouldn’t have run then.”
“Run?” I laughed, and it wasn’t a nice sound. “Your bloody anthem starts blaring and you think I should stay there and subject myself to it?”
He flinched, minutely, like I’d flicked a finger at a bruise. “I’d have switched it off if I could.”
“You can’t switch off things you put into the world,” I said. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? You press ‘release’ and then the rest of us just have to live with it.”
He took that, let it hit, but didn’t parry. His breath fogged in front of him. Somewhere behind us, someone whooped, and the chorus faded into the next verse like a bad idea you kept indulging. Kind of like this conversation with Noah.
“I wrote it because I loved you,” he said, finally.
The worst part about Noah Byrne is that sometimes he meant what he said.
“I know.” The wind flicked hair into my mouth, and I shoved it away. “That’s why it hurt.”
A beat. Two. We stood there like stupid statues while the village went on being itself around us—a car door slamming, a dog pulling its person down the lane, the wind shaking the trees.
“You look tired,” I said, because apparently I prefer small talk to open arteries.
He huffed. “I’m fine.”
“Liar.”
His mouth curved, exhausted. “You always did call me on my crap.”
“Perk of being the one who knew you before you were … whatever it is you are now.”
He looked past me to where the dark fields began, his voice flattening. “I’m still me.”
“Mm.” I crossed my arms to keep fromreaching for him. “Tell that to the version of you that signed with a man I told you not to trust.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Neither is life.”
“Skye—”
“No.” I lifted a hand. “We’re not rehashing old history on the footpath outside The Royal Unicorn while someone murdersFairytale of New Yorkinside.”
The radio had moved offSkyeand lurched into a Pogues cover that sounded like two cats fighting in a bag. I took it as divine commentary.
Or maybe it was the ghost that was rumored to still haunt the pub from time to time.
Noah scraped a hand over his jaw. His knuckles were red from the cold. “I came here because I needed…because it was the only place that made sense.”
“And by ‘place’ you mean?—”
“You.” His eyes were steady. Stupid man. Stupid, brave, honest man. “I meant you.”
That guitar string of emotion plucked painfully, and it vibrated through me, the reverberations of what once was echoing through me.
“Good night, Noah.” I swallowed against a lump that had formed in my throat, unable to speak anymore lest I start crying and knowing how I’d explain all of the emotions that whirled inside me.
