“Yeah.” Ifeeldifferent too, truthfully, exposed and eye-catching in a way that’s a little scary but not entirely bad. Still, I grab my cardigan before we leave the cottage, ignoring the face Imogen shoots in my direction.
We’re headed to the one pub in the village—or at least, I think that’s where we’re going until we stop halfway down the main street, directly in front of what looks for all the world to be a functioning hardware store.
“Imogen,” I say carefully, the cluster of us standing on the sidewalk like sheep in the twilight. The streets are blue and quiet, the shops all closed down for the night. “Like, clearly I’m not an expert on the drinking customs in Ireland, but—”
Imogen laughs. “Yeah, yeah,” she says, pulling the door to the hardware store open. “Come on.”
We follow her into the bright, empty shop, past a sleepy cat lounging on the counter beside an antique cash register; he eyes us imperiously as we edge down a narrow, crowded aisle full of flathead screws and garden hoses and socket wrenches. When we reach the very back of the store Imogen pulls open what I think is the door to the stockroom, but which actually reveals the tiny foyer of—
“Whatisthis place?” Ian asks, looking around in naked delight. The space is small and wood-paneled and dimly lit, black-and-white photos of Irish folk heroes covering the walls alongside a giant banner emblazoned with the green and gold of Kerry’s Gaelic football team. It’s packed to the rafters with what must be everyone in town, old men incaps alongside young couples, clumps of local girls in low-cut sweaters flicking through the glowing touchscreens of the jukebox and noisy dudes in jerseys clustered around the dartboard in the back. It’s hot inside, a narrow door propped open at the end of the hallway that leads to the restrooms and a damp, slightly fetid breeze coming through every now and then. “Is it like a speakeasy?”
“Nope,” Imogen reports, “the store is totally real. Two brothers inherited the building like twenty years ago, and they couldn’t agree on what to do with it, and it was breaking up the whole family and causing all this drama at Sunday dinner every week. So finally they decided to do both.”
I glance at Gabe, I can’t help it—two brothersandbreaking up the familyfeels achingly familiar—but he’s peering up at the intricate woodwork on the ceiling, expression inscrutable.He’s not your responsibility anymore, I remind myself, turning purposefully away as he and Sadie get swallowed up by the crowd in the pub, his dark head just visible over the broad shoulder of a middle-aged woman in a Fair Isle cardigan.
“What are you all drinking, hm?” Ian asks, one hand splayed low on my back as he cranes his neck to see the taps behind the bar. “I’ll get the first round.”
“Whatever you’re having,” I tell him. He looks at Imogen, who asks for a cider, then catches the bartender’s attention with a subtle lift of his chin.
“He’s very gentlemanly,” Imogen says, once Ian is out of earshot.
I smile at her. “He is, right?” A thing I’ve always loved about Imogen is how generous she is with new people, how quick she is to like them. She is, unequivocally, the kind of friend to whom you can say,I am bringing two extra people to your Irish cottage, please say it’s okay, and when she says it’s okay she actually means it. Not everybody is like that.
“He is,” Imogen agrees. Then, looking at me more closely, “What?”
“What?” I echo. “Nothing.” A red-faced guy in his forties lumbers down off his barstool beside us, and I nudge Imogen into the empty space. “Here, sit.”
Imogen does, but she’s frowning. “Not nothing,” she announces. “That’s yourI’m not telling you the whole storyface. Is there something secretly weird about him?”
“About Ian? No! Ian is perfect.” I glance around to make sure nobody’s listening, but we’re protected by the clang and clatter all around us, the din of the crowded bar. Bass from the jukebox thuds in my brain stem; I’m expecting something stereotypically Irish, or at the very least Mumford and Sons, but I think this is actually the Weeknd. I can see Ian gabbing happily away with the bartender, the guy handing him a tasting glass of some dark beer to try. I love watching Ian in bars and restaurants; he always seems older than other people our age, no self-consciousness to him at all. “I just... okay. Do you think it’s strange that he and I still haven’t...” I trail off. “I mean, you know what I mean.”
Imogen makes a face at me like,use your words, Molly.“Boned?” she supplies when I completely fail to fill in the blank myself.
“Imogen!” I laugh, but it comes out more like a barking cough, as if I’m trying to force the panicky embarrassment out of my lungs like a ball of phlegm. “Yes. I mean, no, we haven’t. We’ve fooled around and stuff, but like—” I wave my hand vaguely. “Is that weird?”
“I don’t think it’s weird at all,” Imogen assures me, sitting back on her barstool. “You’ve only been dating a few months, right? Why would that be weird?”
“I don’t know.” I sigh. “I’m being stupid. I always figured how it worked was, like, once you did it with one of your boyfriends then you did it with all your boyfriends, right?”
“I mean, that definitely doesn’thaveto be how it works,” Imogen points out. “You aren’t actually required to have sex with anybody, no matter how many people you’ve dated.”
“No, of course not.” I shake my head quickly. “I know that. But I didn’t think it would be this huge deal to me, either.” I shrug. “I’m just waiting for the perfect moment, you know? I want to make sure I don’t screw everything up like I did last time.”
“I mean, sure,” Imogen agrees, though she doesn’t actually sound convinced. “I get that. But I also think if you’re with the right person then the whole perfection thing doesn’t really matter, right? Like, you can just be yourself, past screw-ups and all.”
“No, that’s not what I meant,” I counter immediately. “Ican be myself with Ian, I just—”
“Can you?” Imogen interrupts. “I’m not saying that as a dig, I’m just asking sincerely.”
“Yes,” I insist. “I just—”
I break off abruptly as Ian reappears with our drinks, edging through the crowd with three pint glasses balanced in his clever hands. “You guys okay?” he asks, eyes cutting back and forth between us like he suspects he just missed some kind of punch line.
I smile. “We’re great,” I promise, popping up on tiptoes to peck him on the jaw.
Imogen takes my lead, launching into a story about the night she and a bunch of the ag students living in the convent sang karaoke here all night regardless of the fact that karaoke is not one of this bar’s offerings, and the next hour speeds by in a warm, colorful blur. We feed euros into the jukebox and order every variation of fried potato on the menu; I keep waiting for Gabe and Sadie to wander back over and join us, but they never do.
Soon Imogen’s boyfriend Seamus shows up, though, an all-smiles Irish boy who looks like he might possibly be a long-lost Weasley brother: “Molly from America!” he says, enveloping me in a bear hug that smells like cigarettes and whiskey. “My girl’s been talking about you nonstop since she found out you were coming.”
