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But maybe all he had to do was win that amount another eleven times and it would be enough to get him through his first year. Or if he got a part-time job, he might not even need so much. But to get the deposit and fees paid . . . it would change everything.
Or maybe he could go to Dublin. Go to DCU where Áine had once said she planned to go. And maybe then he’d be good enough for her.
She looked at him like she knew he was thinking of her. It made his breath hitch, sealing off his throat for a moment.
His friend on the left nudged him, “Someone’s mad to ride you.”
“Fuck off,” Fionn whispered back on the exhale.
But wouldn’t that be nice.
***
In the hours after the ceremony, Fionn’s humour had much improved from the seduction of alcohol and sliver of hope the future wasn’t all bad. What ignited it further was the elbow fromhis mate when Áine Meaher came into the back bar in an outfit that had more than his own head turning.
“Scrubs up well,” one had said to another with too much misogyny to ever have Áine think twice about humouring what they had to say.
Fionn was sure of that.
Lassoed then by something similar to divine intervention, Fionn’s lanky legs began to carry him towards the bar where she leaned against the counter, a twenty euro note balled in her fist as she spoke into the barman’s ear.
Fionn saluted two fingers at the barman, who might or might not have been a distant cousin of his. He pointed at Áine whose back was to him to pay for hers too.
“Will you be getting blackcurrant in that?” Fionn asked her with a tone full of humour he wasn’t sure would stay intact once she turned.
Áine looked over her bare shoulder to him. A shoulder he’d the sudden urge to kiss or at least touch. Then she smiled against her own resistance, delivering him what he hoped in making the joke at all.
“You’re as bad as the guy pulling it,” she jested.
Fionn asked her what the barman had said despite having a near enough idea given her choice of drink. Then as if subliminally telling him he’d done enough to not be forgiven, but at least the chance to ask for it, she diverted the conversation to their daily used pleasantries,
“Fionn.”
He smiled with his eyes closed for all of a second. “Áine.”
The barman returned with their drinks.
“Eh, did you just pay for mine?” she asked.
A freezing sensation overcame Fionn for fear in offering without asking made him as bad as the barman in her eyes. “Would you rather I didn’t?”
To his relief, it didn’t bother her at all.
What wasn’t to his relief was the following question.
“You’re not embarrassed to be seen with me tonight?” She nodded toward his friends.
Most of them were too drunk in their own conversations to care that much about what he was up to.
Fionn answered with as much conviction as he could muster. “No, I wouldn’t say that. I don’t think I’d ever have said that.” He wasn’t sure himself how much truth there was in his statement when it was clearly him who had made a point of not talking to her in school. It was stupid, now school was finished and the hierarchy, and popularity felt instantly irrelevant.
Feeling the anxiousness of his poor behaviour swarm his belly he chose deflection, “You look nice.”
“But not enough to kiss.”
He suppressed a laugh and chugged some of his pint.
Straight for the jugular.
