Make a break-up playlist that slaps
Crash a wedding (bonus points if you catch the bouquet)
Go to therapy
Buy a new battery-operated boyfriend (or three!)
CHAPTER 5
Robert
Seeing Rhiannon Morrigan day drinking in the Anchor wasn’t on my bingo card for this week. And if the three of them weren’t so fucking loud, it would have absolutely made my day. She’s wearing a wedding dress and a pair of trainers, looking like a wild-haired, pink-cheeked goddess, while getting pissed on cocktails with her sisters.
The noise in the bar has gone up substantially since they came in, disturbing the quiet peace I was enjoying, researching my next article for the paper, “Women in Collision Sports: Power, Pain, and Perception.”
It’s a “group project” because apparently my boss thinks it’s fun to make me work with my biggest competition at the paper. It’s like a sport in and of itself. Pete, the opposition in question, is a bloodhound—he’d sell his own mother if it would get him a lead.
The piece we’ve been tasked with is a broad rugby-slash-sport feminism story, where we’ve largely been given free rein. It’s currently a tug-of-war to see which direction the story takes us as that piece of shit Pete loves a good gossip piece. It’sharmless on the surface, but with Pete, you can’t ever be too careful.
He has a tendency to go for the jugular every time.
Thankfully he’s not here, or he’d be over to that table of triple-threat rugby players before you can say sambuca.
A tall, imposing man leans over the bar next to me, bumping my stool in the process, which makes my breath stop short. I’m usually more aware of my surroundings. Being so deeply lost in thought that he got right up in my business irritates my nerve endings.
As my heart rate comes back down from the stratosphere and into the normal range, I realize it’s Rhiannon’s best friend, Matty Murphy. He’s just walked in and already has a face on him like a slapped arse. He reconsiders ordering and makes his way to his friends first.
One of the upsides to living in a small town like Larne is that everyone knows everyone else. It’s also one of the biggest pains in the hole.
Thankfully, the nature of my job means that while people might hate me—including the bride’s older brother and her father, too—they likely don’t know what I even look like to hate me in person. Even so, I curl my shoulders and tuck my head. I’m not here for a story. I’m happy enough to keep my head down and wait for the beacon that is Rhiannon Morrigan to become less… nuclear.
Being a local, print sports journalist isn’t the gig I set out to have when I graduated from Queen’s University Belfast, but it’s the one I’ve got. And now that I’m feet-to-the-fire close to losing it because I charged headfirst into a scandalous battle with rugby royalty, aka Rhiannon’s father and all his rugby buds, I suddenly give a shit about my job. A huge shit. Because I like having food and electric and diesel for my car.
Last thing I need is a confrontation with the Morrigans, correction,anotherconfrontation with them. As much asrugby royalty sells, I need a little time-out from that particular family of interest.
I suck in a deep, solid breath at the reminder that I’m damn near invisible in this town. I may be infamous in print, but out here? I’m a plainclothes nobody. Just how I like it, especially on bad brain days where the demon’s claws are just a liiiiittle too sharp to manage.
My phone vibrates in my pocket, and being the lovely son, brother, and friend that I am, I ignore it. Right now, I’m the physical embodiment of that Homer Simpson GIF where he retreats into a hedge. I don’t want to be seen.
Keep your head down, be a team player, and stay the fuck out of trouble.My boss’s words ring loud and clear in my head with every urge to look over at the trio of women who could easily fuel a dozen stories without even trying.
Iwantto sit here in one of my favorite places, zone out, and drink a pint or two.
But that’s not how my brain works. That familiar tingle of a potential story, or something salacious, tugs on my not-yet-recovered nerves.
