She sounded so much like Toni that I smiled. “And how was your day?”
“It sucked. Can I go home now?”
“You know Sophie has football practice.”
“I’m old enough to stay by myself.”
I waved to Sophie. “Not according to your mother.”
Sophie ran over and thrust her book bag at me. I slung it over my shoulder and herded the girls toward the bus stop.
“I bet when you were my age you were allowed to be home alone,” Lily said.
“I was never alone. I had to stay with my little sister.”
“Well, I don’t. That’s your job.”
“I’m supposed to stay with both of you. Come on.” I smiled. “I’ll let you use my phone to watch TikTok videos during practice.”
“Does Mummy know you bribe us?”
“Only if you tell her,” I said cheerfully.
—
We were not, after all, late.
Sophie ran off to join her team at practice. Lily eyed her usual perch on the Ping-Pong table and pulled a face. “It’s wet.”
“This is Ireland,” I said mildly. “It’s always wet and raining. Or just finished raining. Or about to rain.”
She almost smiled, I swear. “Can you dry it off?”
She was twelve, more than old enough to dry her own seat. It wouldn’t kill her to get her uniform wet. On the other hand, she wastwelve.Her body was changing, her emotions were all over the place, and soon she would learn—if she hadn’t learned already—that no one was as good and nothing was as simple as she’d once believed. Being a tween basically sucked.
I swiped the table with the sleeve of my sweater and handed her my phone.
The older boys—Tim’s team—were back on the other side of the pitch. Tim was on the sidelines. I raised a hand in tentative greeting, but his eyes were on the boys, sidling down the field in awkward squares of four.
“Keep your distance,” he called. “That’s it. Now, pass,pass.”
Under his windbreaker, he wore shorts. His calves were thick and muscled, his knees reddened from the cold. There was a thick purple scar along one of them. An athletic surgery, I assumed. I looked away.
Sam’s sister Grace sat on a park bench, her book neglected in her lap as she watched the boys drill.
And there was Sam, his tall figure slouched next to a rack of bicycles. My pulse picked up pleasantly. Hey, just because my heart was broken and my faith in men and my own judgment was destroyed didn’t mean I was immune to the lean-and-brooding look.
He sauntered over, hands in his pockets. “All right there?”
“Hi. Yeah. Great,” I babbled. “How are you?”
His eyes, the blue green of the Irish sea, crinkled at the corners. The air smelled like wet pavement and, faintly, of car exhaust. His poet’s hair, waving around his lean face, was misted with silver droplets.
“Can’t complain. I brought you this.” He pulled something from his pocket.
A paperback, worn and well-read. “Brendan Behan. Plays?”
He nodded. “Consider it part of your introduction to Dublin.”
