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Conor
The grey walls of the bank loan officer’s dingy office suited me. I liked the uncomfortable chairs with the threadbare cushions. The view out the window of the brick wall of the building next door was just fine to me. I didn’t mind that the flip calendar was from the wrong month two years past. I had no problem at all with the stained carpet worn so thin in places it was beginning to show through to the rough planks of wood underneath.
This was what I expected from the life I had ruined. It was rather nice, life meeting one’s expectations.
“He’s going to laugh in our faces,” Mason whispered to Rian and me.
Mason kept running his palms over his thick thighs. He’d put on the only suit he owned, which I supposed he only had in the first place for crashing weddings and plucking out a bridesmaid for the night. “There’s no way he’s going to extend our loan.” He glanced at the frosted pane glass in the closed door. “Not with what we have to show for the last month.”
“There were those days after Aurnia painted the alleyway,” Rian said. It was to his credit that he cared about Dublin Ink enough not to put mushrooms in his tea that morning. He even managed to find a white button-down that wasn’t covered in pencil stains. “That’s got to count for something.”
“Not when we nosedived after that,” Mason said, breathing heavily at the tall cobwebbed ceilings. He turned to look at me. “How do you suppose we should explain that to him, Conor?”
I alone was in a t-shirt, the last of the ones I’d thrown in a duffle bag before leaving the apartment to Aurnia. I hadn’t bothered to check for stains or tears. It was, like I said, my last one.
I kept my attention fixed on the empty rolling chair behind the desk and shrugged. “It’s in a bad location. What more is there to say?”
Mason’s fingers curled into fists. We had come close to blows on more than a few occasions recently. It would be very like us to finally explode at the bank. We were fighting, thrashing each other on the floor, within an hour of meeting each other at that tattoo competition.
“‘What more is there to say?’” he hissed as Rian already began to raise his arms to keep us apart. “Did you really just say that? I swear to God, Conor, I—”
Mason was interrupted by my phone ringing. I hadn’t been answering it lately. I didn’t have any real desire to talk to anyone. Checking the caller ID was a chance to avoid a confrontation with Mason. Besides, my knuckles were too sore from the punching bag the other night to really want to bash in his cheekbone.
It was Diarmuid.
“We were talking,” Mason growled. “Don’t you fucking answer that when I’m—”
I raised a finger and took the call more to piss him off than for any other reason. I thought he was going to shatter the flimsy armrests of his chair as he cursed my name.
“Diarmuid, what’s the craic?” I said and added, though Diarmuid hadn’t asked, “Yeah, no, I’m not in the middle of anything.”
Rian gave me a “did you really have to do that” look. I ignored him, too.
“I’m sure you were expecting a call from me,” Diarmuid said, his voice far from happy, far from casual.
I was absolutely not expecting a call from him. As far as I knew I was to catch up with him at the end of each month to make sure things were on track with Aurnia. It was only the twelfth of November.
“Um, I—”
“Really I would have expected you to call me when something like this happens,” Diarmuid said, “but I suppose you’ve got your hands full. So…” Diarmuid sighed. He sounded tired. Irritable.
“It’s just that I thought things were going so well,” he said. “When I came and visited, I really thought she’d gotten to the point where she was ready to leave this kind of shite behind her.”
I glanced nervously at Mason and Rian, who quickly noticed the look on my face.
“What is it?” Mason mouthed.
I shook him away. I had no fucking clue. A sinking feeling in my stomach told me it wasn’t good.
“Um, yeah,” I said, clearing my throat, “I was just as surprised as you, Diarmuid. Things seemed to be on the right track.”
Blurry images from several nights ago during the rainstorm flashed in my head. Deceit wasn’t exactly a strong suit of mine. I wore my emotion right there on my sleeve. Just ask the long line of customers who’d been on the receiving end of my wrath. Just ask Aurnia.
Mason and Rian turned fully in their chairs to look at me, the beginnings of worry in their eyes. Could they see it in mine, too? I turned my gaze to my shoes.
“Well, I’m just glad she called you when they were processing her at the station,” Diarmuid said.
I bit back a curse. What have you done, Aurnia? What have you fucking done?
