“We don’t like seeing you alone, Nick. And youarealone.”
He’s a bastard. And I hate him.
“No one deserves to be alone, Nick. Especially not you. Isn’t that what you said to me a few years ago?”
They’re both bastards. I hate them both.
“I say a lot of stupid shit…”
“True. But sometimes you also say the right thing. It doesn’t happen very often, but it does happen.”
Great. The one time I do something good, it comes back to bite me.
“And we remember that night,” Ryan adds.
That night. The night of this whole disaster. The night I took that wrong turn, leading me down a path where I lost the only thing I had.
The night I left Casey in that fucking pool, I called my brothers to come and pick me up at the side of the road. I lost my mind, almost threw everything away just to stay. To tell her that I was the biggest dickhead she’d ever met, and that, if she’d wanted me to, I’d have beenherdickhead. No one else’s. Because the moment Casey Madigan appeared on that rugby pitch with her dad for afternoon training, in her team kit that was a little too big for her, with her huge, beautiful eyes and her quick tongue, I realised I never wanted to lay my eyes on anyone else. She was only seventeen, and I was twenty-three, but I already knew. Some things are obvious right away, even to an idiot like me; but sometimes being an idiot leads you further from that thing, makes you refuse it, try to destroy it before you can build anything from it.
And that’s exactly what I did.
We were friends, partners in crime, midnight runaways.
We were everything, but, to me, it seemed like nothing at all.
A lie, that’s what we really were. A beautiful lie that we kept telling ourselves, because the truth was too terrifying.
“What should I have done? Stayed? Thrown away the only opportunity I had? For what? For nothing, to delude her with a life she could never have had with me? If I’d turned down that offer, it would’ve been the end for me, and you know it.”
“You’d have found another way, Nick,” Ian says.
“I tried and tried for years, and nothing ever happened. And when I got that phone call…I thought it might be the only way to make something of my life, other than a career as a kids’ birthday party clown. I was twenty-five, with no experience behind me – and, Christ, she was only nineteen! She was still just a little girl!”
“But from what it seems, that ‘little girl’, as you put it, already knew what she wanted.”
Ryan sticks his whole arm into the wound with his unparalleled tact.
“I can’t believe I’m talking to you guys about this.”
“Well, we’ve grown up now. I think we should…open ourselves up a little more. Don’t you think?” Ian gives a half smile.
“And let’s be honest: we want you out from under our feet. And you’ll never leave us alone unless you have a life of your own.” Ryan continues his display of affection.
“So what should I do? If there’s anything Icando…”
“He’s finally starting to see reason,” Ryan claps his hands. “We’ve already come up with a plan.”
“I’m listening.”
“Step one: get rid of that fucking surgeon.”
Ian bursts out laughing, and I start to regret ever setting foot in this house, and telling Ryan everything out loud. I wish I’d let him kill me when he had the chance. Then I could’ve avoided all this.
“Do you really think that’s necessary?” I ask, not sure I want to hear the other steps.
“It’s fundamental. Trust me. You’ve got no hope with a doctor getting in the way.”
“And how do we get rid of him?”
