Page 20 of Faithless Vows

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I walk into The Bayside Club, and the place is already busy with the dinner crowd. A few couples wait near the host stand for their tables, and behind it, Tony, the manager, stands in his dark suit, going over the reservation book with the maître d’. The door swings shut behind me, and he looks over. When he sees me, he says something to the maître d’ and comes around the stand with his hand out.

“Mr. Byrne,” he says as we shake. “Good to see you again. Congratulations on the wedding.”

“Thank you, Tony.”

He gives me a crisp nod. “Of course, Mr. Byrne. If you’ll follow me.” That’s Tony, all starched collar and clipped manners, not a word more than he needs. He starts through the restaurant, and I fall in behind him, past the main dining room and into the lounge, where every stool at the bar is taken and men crowd the counter waiting for drinks. At the far end of the lounge, Tony opens a door and holds it for me. I hear my da laughing before I see him.

Inside, a long table runs down the centre of the private room, with at least a dozen place settings, and a sideboard against one wall holds liquor bottles, glasses, and an ice bucket. My da and Seamus are beside it, a bottle of whiskey open between them, with a fair bit already gone from it. Apparently, Seamus had been at the warehouse when one of our new recruits put a forklift through a dock door, and he’s trying to tell my da the story, but he keeps having to stop because he’s laughing too hard. When he gets to the look on the lad’s face after he realized what he’d done, my da laughs so hard he misses the glass and splashes whiskey onto the sideboard. That only sets Seamus off worse. They found it a hell of a lot funnier than I had. I was the one who had to deal with the broken door afterward, and I’d wanted to throttle the little shit who’d done it. They both turn when I come in, red-faced and still snickering, and it’s clear they’ve been at it for a while.

“There he is,” my da calls. “The man of the hour.”

I cross the room to them, trying not to smile at the state of the pair of them. My da turns over a third glass and fills it, but Seamus gets to it before he can pass it over, pressing the drink into my hand and clapping me hard enough on the shoulder to damn near knock me sideways. “My future son-in-law,” he says, grinning.

“Thanks, Seamus.” I touch my glass to his, then lift it toward my da. “Da.”

My da picks up his own glass and taps it against mine. I take a drink, and Seamus leaves his hand on my shoulder. “Well, lad?” he asks. “You ready for my girl?”

My da snorts. “He’d better be.”

“I am,” I say, and I mean it. It feels like I’ve been waiting forever to marry Alannah. The closer the wedding gets, the more I just want to get to the part where she’s my wife and our life can start.

Seamus gives my shoulder a firm squeeze. “Good lad,” he says. “I knew you were right for my Lana.”

My da gives his old friend a look over the rim of his glass. “Christ, keep on like that and we’ll have to call this a wake instead of a stag dinner.”

Seamus laughs and lets go of me. “Then where are those appetizers you ordered?”

“Didn’t eat lunch, did you, Seamus?” my da asks, straight-faced, though the corner of his mouth is already starting to curl.

Seamus gives him a wounded look. “A man asks one question,” he starts, and I nearly roll my eyes. With a few drinks in them, the two of them always get like this, worse than lads, taking little digs at each other over nothing and neither one willing to let the other have the last word. I can see Seamus getting ready to fire something back, but the door opens before he gets the chance.

Paddy Nolan walks in first, Sully O’Malley close behind him, and two waiters come in on their heels with oysters on ice and shrimp cocktail. Seamus’s wounded look vanishes the second he sees the trays. While the waiters set them on the sideboard, the men come over to shake my hand and congratulate me before helping themselves to drinks. After that, the rest of the men start arriving, the room filling with faces I’ve known my whole life. They shake my hand as they come in, clapping me on the back, and it doesn’t take long for the congratulations to turn into ribbing. Most of them are married, men who’ve already been where I am now, and they seem to be enjoying the chance to bust my chops. Advice gets passed around, mixed in with the jokes, the same handful of lines every married man seems to think he invented: happy wife, happy life, don’t go to bed angry, and flowers work better than apologies.

My da lifts his glass, raising his voice over the rest of them. “And never argue with a woman wearing your ring,” he calls. “You’ll lose before you open your mouth.”

Laughter breaks out around the room, and half the men, the married ones at least, lift their glasses in agreement like he’s just handed me the secret to surviving marriage.

The door opens again, and Tony steps inside with a line of waiters behind him, trays in hand. “Dinner’s ready, gentlemen,” he announces.

That gets everyone moving to the table to find seats. The waiters move around the table, setting plates of steak and potatoes in front of each guest and placing baskets of bread, still warm from the oven, down the middle. I cut into my steak and find it cooked exactly how I like it, and I’m glad my da chose The Bayside for tonight instead of one of those stiff downtown places he usually prefers. I’ve never had a bad meal here. Tony runs a tight ship, and no one working under him gets away with being sloppy. Once we start eating, the ball-busting dies down for a bit. Bread gets passed, glasses are topped off, and the talk shifts from giving me grief to work, with my da making sure everyone has his orders straight: who’s covering what while I’m away on the honeymoon I still haven’t told Alannah about.

“Two weeks in Italy,” Paddy says, shaking his head in mock disbelief. “Christ, Cormac, you’re going soft.”

My da just smiles and spears a piece of steak with his fork. “The boy’s earned it.”

Seamus leans back in his chair, swirling his whiskey, his eyes on me. “Well, just make sure you come back, yeah? We’ll need you.”

I spread my hands, like the answer should be obvious. “Where the hell else would I go?” A few of the men chuckle, and I watch Seamus grin into his glass. Before anyone can turn it into another round at my expense, Dermot scrapes his chair back and gets to his feet with his drink in hand.

Groans go up around the table before he even opens his mouth, but Dermot pretends not to hear them and raises his glass. “To Ronin,” he calls over them. “Marriage is the end of a man’s freedom.”

Someone mutters, “Sure as hell is,” and the laughter starts up again. Dermot points his glass at them. “Shut your gobs. I wasn’t done.” He waits until they quiet down, then looks at me. “But it’s also the start of something better, if he’s lucky,” he finishes.

The men lift their glasses, and we drink. Dermot sits back down, looking pleased with himself, and Liam stands next. He’s one of my da’s closest men, and with a few drinks in him, the old man can get sentimental. He talks about my da raising me right, about watching me grow from a lad into a man he’s proud to stand beside, and says I’ll do well with Alannah beside me.

When he’s done, he comes around the table, glass still in hand, and pulls me into a one-armed hug. I clap him on the back before he lets go. Liam’s a good man, and I know he means every word.