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Mason
I should have known something was wrong by the number of cars outside the shop.
Dublin Ink wasn’t exactly in what one would call the trendy part of town. Nor what one would call the desirable, nice, clean, safe part of town. Most the people in our neighbourhood didn’t own cars. They pushed shopping carts, they pushed kegs of beer, they pushed needles into their arms. So the cars lining both sides of the street should definitely have been a warning. I didn’t even think for one minute that they were customers (and the reason was not because it was nearing ten at night).
It was silent as we approached, Conor and Aurnia insisting to come over for a “nightcap”. Silent enough to make me wary as I slipped the key into the lock. Silent enough to check over my shoulder at the line of cars, dark beneath the burnt-out streetlamp. Aurnia was chewing at her fingernails, eyeing warily the inside of the tattoo shop. Conor was staring up at the starless night, muttering what I could only think was a prayer of some kind. Rachel was the only one looking at me. She gave me the middle finger.
Dinner had been a disaster. A shite show. A fecking train wreck.
Rachel and I fucked at The Jar and it seemed something might change, but nothing changed. We pulled apart like we’d done something wrong. Something dirty. Like we’d made a mistake.
So I lost it at the restaurant. I couldn’t stand it any longer. The one step forward, three back. The desire, the need. The shut doors. The questions without answers. The hate when we were maybe, just maybe moving toward love. Another Miss Last Night. Another Miss Not Rachel. Another Miss Not, Never Would Be and It Was Driving Me Insane Rachel.
“Are you going to open the door or not?”
Rachel stared at me. Arms crossed. She’d seen me lose it. Had she known it was her fucking fault? All her fucking fault.
“I’m not used to so much hostility when I return home,” I grumbled.
“You’re not used to the woman you go home with knowing you,” Rachel retorted.
I returned the favour of the middle finger and then went back to the key in the lock.
Slowly I turned the key. I pushed the door open. I stepped inside. Then not slowly at all, actually all at fucking once, the lights went on, balloons descended from the top of the stairs, and two dozen people jumped up from behind the old furniture, shouting, “Surprise!”
“What the fuck?!” I said.
Rachel said, “Good God.”
Conor groaned. “I knew I should have had more whiskey.”
Aurnia whimpered, “No one answered.”
The mood of the room plummeted as the four of us remained frozen in the entryway. All of us stared at the big banner hung on the opposite wall that declared in big bold letters that Aurnia had obviously painted herself: Happy Engagement/Marriage/Wedding Party Rachel and Mason! Balloons bounced round our feet and then stilled. Hands extended up into the air in excitement lowered awkwardly. A few people cleared their throats.
I suppose it was obvious on Rachel’s face and mine that this was not a time for celebration.
“The whole cab ride back I tried to get ahold of someone to tell them to cancel it,” Aurnia explained in a small voice. “I’m sorry. I really thought I could convince you two. To, I don’t know, try again… You know, because of me and Conor and… I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
I glanced at Rachel, who was staring at her feet. She lifted her eyes to mine and there wasn’t the anger that had been there just a few seconds earlier. I drew Aurnia to me and ruffled her hair.
“Squirt, you wanted to throw a party and that is never something that should be apologised for,” I said, holding her cheeks, squishing them together. “I assume you have booze?”
From the kitchen I heard Declan shout, “Enough to tranquillise a zoo.”
“And a drug or two?” I asked Aurnia next.
Her response was to shift her eyes to Rian hunched over his canvas in the corner of the room. That was answer enough.
For the past two weeks Rian had been obsessively drawing the same mysterious young woman with that thick, dark hair and eyes that wouldn’t leave you. He drew her on every conceivable surface: paper, canvas, the margins of the magazines littered about for waiting customers. I even found her face in the tattoos he did. He insisted she was real. But he also insisted that she visited him in his dreams. And that her soul tasted like autumn on the tip of his tongue, so…
“Music?” I asked.
Diarmuid, Aurnia’s JLO, said, “I brought some records.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Good music,” I clarified.
