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Donal dropped my hand at the sound of his mother’s voice. I affixed a pleasant expression on my face as I turned toward Kathleen.
A canny smile crinkled her eyes as she marched into the kitchen. “What are you two up to in here, hmmm?”
“Nothing, Mom.” Donal rolled his eyes like a surly teenager, and I smothered a smile.
“Looks like someone was doing the dishes, but I’m going to take a wild guess that it was Tess and not you.” Shooting a reproving look at her son, Kathleen gave my arm an appreciative squeeze as she leaned between us to open a cabinet. “I’m not about to waste the good stuff on your father, but now that they’re gone”—her eyes twinkled as she drew out a bottle of Redbreast 12 Year Irish whiskey—“who wants a drink?”
My hand shot up at the same time as Donal’s.
Kathleen’s lips quirked as she uncorked the bottle. “That’s what I thought.”
Donal got down glasses, and his mother poured out three servings. After we’d each claimed one, she raised her glass. “May your troubles be less and your blessings be more and nothing but happiness come through your door.”
“Sláinte.” Donal’s eyes locked onto mine as he lifted his glass to his lips.
“Now then,” Kathleen said cheerfully, “who’s up for a game of Boggle?”
CHAPTERSEVENTEEN
DONAL
“So these two guys are walking down the street,” I said when Tess answered the phone.
She made a noise of irritation. “Don’t do this.”
Somehow or another, we’d gotten into the habit of talking on the phone almost every night. Don’t ask me who started it. I couldn’t remember.
(Me. It was me. I started it.)
Since we both tended to stay up late working, we usually started by texting each other in the evenings. Until eventually one of us would call the other and nag them about working too late and needing to get some sleep. At first, it was me doing the chastising, because Tess really didn’t seem to sleep enough and it was genuinely a little concerning. But then she started doing it back to me and pointing out what a hypocrite I was, because I was usually up working as late as she was.
The funny thing was, when I’d originally suggested we should try to be friends, I hadn’t actually expected it to work. Seriously, me and Tess? Getting along? Yeah, right. Maybe on a cold day in hell.
I’d simply figured if we aimed for friendly we might get lucky and land someplace shy of constantly wanting to murder each other. At least that would be an improvement, right?
Miraculously, we’d talked almost every day since the get-together at my mom’s and hadn’t fought once. That wasn’t even the craziest part. The craziest part was that talking to Tess had become the best part of my day.
I flopped back on my bed, enjoying myself a little too much. “The two guys decide to go for a drink, and one of them says, ‘Great idea. I heard about this new place that makesthebest fruit punch you’ve ever had.’”
Tess let out a tortured sigh. “We’ve talked about this. You know how I feel about long-winded jokes.”
“Shhh. Let me finish telling the story. So the first guy agrees to go to this new place, although he thinks it’s a little weird—I mean, who goes to a bar to drink fruit punch, right? But the two guys head over to this bar anyway. They go up to the bartender, and the second guy says to him, ‘We’ll take two glasses of your best fruit punch, please.’”
“Why did I even answer the phone?” Tess muttered. “I should have known better.”
I ignored her and carried on. “The bartender gives them this really long look. Just when they’re starting to get nervous they’ve done something wrong, he finally says, ‘If you want punch you’ll have to go stand in line like everybody else.’”
“Why are you like this? What’s wrong with you?”
“The two guys look around…” I paused for a breath, drawing out the suspense. “Butthere’s no punch line.”
There was a protracted silence on Tess’s end of the line. “I hate you.”
I tapped the icon to request a video call. A second later, Tess’s face appeared on my screen. “Ha! I knew you’d be smiling. You love my jokes.”
“That was a terrible joke.” She tried to glower at me and failed.
“Yeah, but it made you smile, so it fulfilled its purpose.”
