A year to the day I celebrated Marty's twenty-fourth birthday with him, I write and send him a postcard from the resort.
Dear Marty, Happy 25th Birthday! The sunsets here miss you and your Marty Party. I promise you. Everything will be okay. Jenna x
I kiss his name twenty-five times.
The Second 365 Sunsets
Chapter Forty-Seven
Marty
My sixth postcard to Jenna is another one from Dublin and it boasts a picture of the Molly Malone statue, a landmark I have walked past a thousand times but never looked at closely. Until, that is, one October afternoon, when I’m standing opposite it while waiting for the first date I've arranged via an app I hesitantly downloaded a week before. As I wait, I find myself studying the bronze statue. Her side profile is frighteningly like Jenna's - demure nose, full lips, and yes, a cleavage that demands attention. Needless to say, I'm distracted and thus a great disappointment to my date who is a softly-spoken young lad from Belfast who has sparkly grey eyes and curly blond hair on his forearms, but an alarmed reaction to my sobriety and an aversion to eye contact that I am probably wrong to inwardly scorn. I'm walking back to the bus stop when I see the postcard of the statue in a tourist shop and I write and post it immediately, Jenna's address long etched into my mind.
DEAR JENNA, I KNOW I’M MISSING YOU BAD WHEN I SEE YOU IN STATUES OF FISH-WIFE PROSTITUTES. I REALLY BLEEDING HOPE YOU TAKE THAT AS A COMPLIMENT. IF NOT CONSIDER IT PUNISHMENT FOR PUTTING US THROUGH THIS SEPARATION. I LOVE YOU, MARTY.
My seventh postcard to Jenna is one I buy, write and post in Paris in March the following year. I'm there for a three-month pastry course Dermot arranged and it helps pass a long, cold winter. The city is just as beautiful as I have heard, and the people I meet there aren't hard on the eye too. Despite my minimal French andmaking very little effort to meet people, I fall into dating easily while there, but it's still a shock of an adjustment when I find myself in a French woman's bed and she is undressing me. She couldn't be more different to Jenna – she has long dancer's legs and a frame so slender I’m scared to touch it - but she's passionate and enthusiastic about me in a way I'd forgotten lovers could be. She's also firm about what she wants - a depressingly short list - and firmer still about what she doesn't like - a catastrophically longer list. We enjoy a handful of nights together, but then she explains she's been dating someone else and there's more of a connection so she's going to pursue him instead. I am shocked and sad at first - the ease of comfortable, predictable sex treated me well - but an hour later as I head home on the Metro, I'm laughing to myself, realising how quickly I would have become bored. I remember what I said to Jenna about vanilla and I curse the fact we didn’t have more time to explore other flavours together.
DEAR JENNA, I DON’T KNOW IF YOU’D LOVE PARIS OR NOT BUT I’D GIVE MY RIGHT NUT TO FIND OUT BY WALKING ALONG THE SEINE HOLDING YOUR HAND ONE DAY. I STILL FUCKEN LOVE YOU, MARTY.
The eighth postcard is the one I'm most anxious about sending, because it's from London. I'm here on a foodie trip with my uncle as he finally caves to my nudging him about opening a second restaurant. He has the funds, and I have the energy and the ideas for it, now he just needs to visualise the potential. We head to London to try and get inspired.
Every minute I’m lost in London’s grey, grizzly bustle, I’m thinking about how close I potentially am to Jenna. I don’t just think about it, I feel it. Every time we visit a new restaurant or notice a landmark, I'm checking the map on my phone to see how far away I am from her address which is starred on the app, as it has been for over a year. It's only because we're so busy meeting restaurant owners in all corners of the city that there's no time for me to jump on the Tube and take myself to her street. Instead, I send her a postcard of the London Eye.
DEAR JENNA, IT FEELS BOTH GOOD AND BAD TO BE CLOSE TO YOU. THE ONLY THING KEEPING ME AWAY FROM YOU IS DERMOT DRAGGING ME AROUND LONDON’S CULINARY OFFERINGS, MYSECOND FAVOURITE THING ABOUT THIS CITY, AFTER YOU. I REALLY HOPE YOU’RE OKAY. I LOVE YOU, MARTY.
In the summer I finally have the money to move out of my parents' house and rent a small studio apartment on the other side of town. It’s cramped but cosy, gives me the freedom I've been craving for so long, and is a welcome refuge, albeit one that unsettles me because I’m not naturally good at being alone. I think momentarily about telling Jenna my new address, as we agreed, but my parents aren't going anywhere, and she hasn't sent me any letters or notes yet anyway, so I don’t do it.
I try to be proactive about filling the silence and emptiness of living alone. Three years to the day that Arnie died, and three days before my twenty-sixth birthday, I get a dog from the Dogs Aid shelter in Dublin; an undeterminable mixed mutt with short stumpy legs and pointy, expressive ears, and I call him AJ after the two people I love and miss most. I question the name at first, wondering if it is too morose and depressing, but within weeks I know it suits him well and I enjoy hollering it out loud whenever he fails to keep up with me on walks, distracted by the possible scent of food somewhere. AJ keeps me company, covers me in sloppy kisses and gives me begging eyes whenever I have food in front of me; his love for me is almost as good and grounding as the love I felt from them.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Jenna
The rest of summer isn't terrible. I soak up the good weather when we are blessed with it, join an outdoor CrossFit gym to try something new and I end up going for coffee and sometimes beers with the men I meet there. Some of them catch my eye, and I see I catch others' attention, but sadly they don't quite align.
When September brings a modest but decent enough offer on my book, there’s now a deadline to complete the first draft. I welcome the extra pressure and pour all my energy into it. I find some purpose in my life and welcome the ease that brings even though the work itself exhausts me, not least because it requires me to get closer and closer to the core of what I feel – what I still think I feel - for Marty.
Triumphant after another successful season in Crete, my brother keeps me company again during the cold winter months and before I know it, we are once again on the train up to Scotland to be with Dad and Carol for Christmas. It’s a welcome break from work that I use to rest, read and daydream about what Marty might be cooking for Christmas dinner. As soon as we get back, I open up my book’s draft and start work again and I practically stay like that – head in a book or over my laptop – until late March when I send the most nerve-wracking email to my new editor with a 140,000-word draft attached.
In late May, I board the plane to Crete with another man's hand in mine. It fits well, not perfectly, but well enough. Everything about him fits well enough. From how we met - the only people swimming in London Fields Lido on a sunny but chilly spring morning - through to how well we slotted into each other's empty lives. Chris is a good kisser and a proficient lover. He makes me laugh in a waythat may not surprise or bedazzle me, but it does placate and reassure me. He is the comfort I need after two years of heartache.
But on the first sunset there, as we sit at a table he reserved specifically for sundowner drinks after I had told him misty-eyed about how beautiful the sunsets were, I can't stop my eyes from travelling over to the stack of sun loungers. My pupils then practically burn a hole in the spot where Marty and I sat two years ago, where I sank my teeth into a beautiful broken nose. As the bottom curve of the sun kisses the horizon and Chris reaches for my fingers, I feel my heart break all over again when I look down and see his hand is not Marty's.
I retreat into a safe place inside myself for the rest of the holiday, moving through the motions Chris expects and it doesn't kill me to perform because he is a kind man whose company I enjoy and I hope he will be a friend in years to come. I break free on the fourth day, excuse myself for a walk alone to the resort’s shop, buy a postcard and write it while drinking a Greek coffee that is still too strong and bitter for me.
Dear Marty, Happy 26th Birthday! The sunsets still miss you. And I still promise you. Everything will be okay. Jenna x
I kiss his name twenty-six times.
The Third 366 Sunsets
Chapter Forty-Nine
Marty
The ninth postcard I send to Jenna is from Dubai where I'm visiting Maeve who is there as part of a three-month contract with an influencer agency. Sitting by the swimming pool in her hotel on a warm November day, I don't hide when I'm writing the postcard to Jenna.
“You still love her,” she says, looking over my shoulder.
