Niall pulls out his phone and types frantically for a bit. “So, like I expected, you were the hotter one.”
We sit in silence for a bit, watching the disc golf game just at the edge of the woods. They weren’t lying about having the place to ourselves. I haven’t seen a single person outside our group since we unloaded the car.
Niall leans over to me. “I know it hasn’t been long, but I think your therapy sessions are working.”
“Oh?”
Niall nods, tipping the bottle of wine to my glass. “You realize you told a full story about you and Michael, looked up and shared photos with me? And you were fine Danny. I don’t think you could have done that a few weeks ago.”
He’s right. I didn’t feel the familiar twinge, or overwhelming wave, of sadness when looking back at Halloween. The memory was…nice.
“And,” he says, grabbing my hand, “I think you’ve been having the nightmares less lately.”
“I noticed that too. Dr. Chandler has been focusing a lot on the nightmares, and what could be triggering them. She thinks it was guilt I was placing on myself, for not being with him when it happened. That I was trying to tell myself that, if I had been there, I could have stopped it from happening.”
Niall’s thumb circles the inside of my palm. “But I’m guessing she said something to convince you otherwise.”
“Well, I guess. She says anything could have changed the trajectory of that night. Or we both could have died that night if I had hung back with him.”
“Christ! Did she actually say that?”
I nod, this time trying to fight back tears. “But I think it worked, at least a bit. It made me realize that the circumstances were out of my control, and there was a possibility it could have been even worse for me.”
I close my eyes, trying to recenter and bring the conversation back to something positive. I feel Niall’s finger swipe under my eye. So much for holding them in. I open my eyes and loll my head towards Niall. His eyes are also glossy.
“Well, I for one, am happy you didn’t hang back. Although I’m not sure that I like the reason why you went home early.”
“Fucking some other guy?”
He laughs. “Fucking some other guy.”
Luckily, before the conversation goes further, the sound of a stampede is coming our way.
“Uncle Niall! Danny! We’re hungry!”
***
We’re all laying around stuffed, barely able to move. It turns out that Niall and I didn’t need to prepare as much as we did, as all the kids brought crazy amounts of food.
“Hey Danny Boy.” Samuel perks up in the chair across from me.
“Nope,” I say, “we’re not doing that.”
“You ever do any writing?”
“It’s been a while. Well, outside of academic stuff. I used to write a bit of fiction, a couple of half-hearted attempts at novels that only have a couple chapters. Tough to find the time.”
I think of Michael’s manuscript sitting in the Dublin flat. “I actually have Michael’s…the friend of mine who died? He had a novel almost done. Has a few gaps and the ending needs to be figured out. I brought it with me because I have this feeling like I need to finish it for him. To finally get it over that last hurdle and share it with the world. Obviously in his name. I’m no monster. Niall’s also been reading it.”
“It’s quite good,” Niall says, sipping his wine. “There’s a couple of scenes I think could use some tweaking. But the story itself is fantastic. I also can’t figure out how it should end though.”
“We could workshop it in class,” Delilah says, prepping her skewer with three large marshmallows. “We’re ahead of the syllabus a bit. I know I’d stay after and help. Oh! It could be extra credit.”
I laugh. “Pretty sure everyone is doing just fine in class and have no need for extra credit.”
“But we wanna help Danny,” Samuel says, reaching into the cooler to grab another beer. At some point he had lost his Iron Man mask, the rest of his costume consisting just of a matching shirt. “You’ve been through a lot. And I think we’ve all been through it together.”
There’s a lot of nods and beers held up in the air. We all take a drink.
