Page 51 of Our Song

For years I wondered what would have happened if I hadn’t rung Tadhg the day before I went to New York.

Would I have kept in touch with him over that summer, with emails and postcards and maybe even letters?

Would we have been friends again in the autumn?

Would we have been in a band together again?

Would Fiachra have been right about me getting over him?

Would everything have turned out very differently?

But I did ring him.

And that changed everything.

I followed Fiachra’s advice after the Alternative Ball.

Tadhg rang me twice the next day but I let it go to voicemail both times.

He left a message asking if I’d left early because he hadn’t been able to find me.

He asked if I was okay. I texted back to say I was fine – I’d just crashed and wanted to slip away without big goodbyes.

I said I was going to have to focus on studying for the next few weeks.

I wished him luck with his first exams. And then I stayed out of his way.

I bumped into him once or twice around college, but fourth-year exams were, of course, a pretty good excuse for not hanging around to chat.

As far as Tadhg was concerned, I was spending every minute of every day with my nose buried in books of literary theory.

We sent each other a few cursory texts but that was it.

The weeks went by. Katie nobly avoided Tadhg as well (‘What sort of example will I be to my future pupils if I can’t devote myself to studying?

’ she told him when he suggested a meet-up).

She agreed that it was better for me to stay away from Tadhg until I was back from America, by which time my heart would hopefully have moved on and we could be normal friends and bandmates.

I knew she was right, I knew Fiachra’s plan was a good one in the long-term.

But in the short-term, I missed Tadhg very, very much.

I missed hanging out with him. I missed making him laugh.

I missed him smiling at me. I missed everything apart from the moments of aching misery and the time between those moments when I feared they were coming.

And then …

And then it was my last few days in Dublin, and the thought of going thousands of miles away and not seeing Tadhg before I went suddenly became unbearable.

What if the plane crashed and I died without seeing him again?

What if he was hit by a bus over the summer and I never saw him again?

I knew it was ridiculous. And I knew I had to see him. Just once. How bad could it be?

So on the morning of the day before my flight, I rang him.

‘Hey,’ I said. ‘It’s me.’

‘It’s you!’ He sounded tired, but also happy to hear from me. At least, I hoped he sounded happy.

‘Shit, did I wake you up?’ It was around eleven o’clock.

‘No, no, I was up.’ There was a pause. ‘Well, just about.’

‘Were you out late?’

‘Yeah. Ow. Sorry, I’m very hungover. Simon from my class had a party last night.’

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘I was going to see if you were free to meet up later today, but if you’re not able for it—’

‘No!’ he said. ‘I’m able. Or I will be after I have a fry and a can of Coke. When exactly are you off to America?’

‘Tomorrow,’ I said.

‘I thought so,’ he said. ‘Well, then I’ll definitely be able to meet later.

’ There was a pause. ‘You know I’m staying in Rosie’s flat while she and her boyfriend are away?

You could come over here this evening. We could get a takeaway and play some music.

Have one more go at our song. I mean, if you’re free tonight. ’

‘I’m free,’ I said. At least, I’d make sure I was free. The packing I’d been planning on leaving until as late as possible would now be done in the afternoon.

For someone who had been audibly hungover that morning, Tadhg looked pretty good when he opened the door of Rosie’s flat on Heytesbury Street that evening.

‘How’s the head?’ I said, as I walked in.

He grimaced. ‘It’s okay now. Though I should probably go easy on the booze this evening.’

‘Good,’ I say, holding up a tote bag. ‘Because I could only afford to get us two cans each. And I’ve got to be up early to catch a plane tomorrow.’

‘Shit, Lol,’ he said. ‘I can’t believe you’re going to be thousands of miles away for three whole months.’

‘You won’t notice,’ I said. ‘You’ll be teaching at rock camp for most of it.’

‘I’ll notice,’ he said, taking the cans out of the tote bag and putting them in the fridge in Rosie’s kitchenette. ‘Do you fancy getting falafel from the Hot Chilli? It’s just round the corner.’

Half an hour later we were sitting at the tiny square table of Rosie’s kitchenette, eating a truly delicious, if very messy, takeaway.

The table was wedged into a corner with only two free sides so we sat at an angle to each other.

It’s a good thing I’m leaving the country to forget about him , I thought, wiping tahini off my cheeks, because I hope he forgets me looking like this .

He had paid for the falafels (‘You brought the cans!’) and for a stupid treacherous moment I found myself imagining what it would be like if this was our life, the two of us living in an apartment like this, me buying the drinks and him buying the takeaway, me not worrying about being covered in falafel because I knew he loved me anyway.

I pushed the thoughts out of my head and said, ‘So. One last mini band practice?’

‘One last mini band practice,’ said Tadhg.

He sat on the couch and I sat in an armchair. Then he handed me his guitar and I played the opening chords of ‘Anyone But You’.

We ran through all our songs that night.

It was almost as if some part of us knew it was the last time we’d play together for a long, long time.

We drank our first cans, then Tadhg made some tea and we kept playing.

We did some covers. We did songs that didn’t have full lyrics yet.

We opened the second cans. We even played our song, though we didn’t make a serious stab at figuring out any new bits of it.

‘We’ll give it another go in September,’ said Tadhg.

God, after tonight I wasn’t going to see him again until the end of September. It was ridiculous. But that reminded me I had to wake up early tomorrow and get on a plane. I looked at my watch and realised it was ten o’clock.

‘Shit,’ I said. ‘I should go soon.’

‘Let’s do one more song,’ said Tadhg.

We did ‘Midnight Feast’. Even then I knew the lyrics were bad, but I also knew it was a good song. Maybe we could write new lyrics in the autumn. And as I played the last chord I thought, I’ll miss this over the summer. I’ll miss him. I’ll miss him so much.

I played the last chord as loudly as I could. Then we looked at each other and smiled.

‘I’ll help you clean up the dinner stuff,’ I said.

When the table was cleared and the dishes washed, Tadhg picked up his beer can.

‘Huh, there’s more left of this than I thought,’ he said.

I picked up my cider. ‘Same here.’

‘We might as well finish them,’ he said.

And because I was literally leaving the country the next morning so he couldn’t possibly think I was after anything, I didn’t insist on leaving straight away. I said, ‘Sure.’

We sat down at the kitchen table and clinked our cans off each other.

‘Cheers,’ I said, taking a swig of cider.

‘We’ve written some good songs this year,’ said Tadhg. ‘And almost written one great one.’

‘It really is good, isn’t it? As a song. It’s properly good. At least,’ I acknowledge, ‘it will be when we finally finish it. If we finally finish it.’

‘We’ll finish it,’ said Tadhg. ‘We’ll still be in a band together.’

I sipped the cider. I wondered if you could get cider in America. ‘It won’t be the same without Brian and Jo. And without us both being in Trinity.’

‘No, it won’t.’ Tadhg drank some beer. ‘But we’ll still be in Dublin. The others are okay with us playing the old songs. And we’ll write new ones. And record them. We can record our song!’

‘Steady on,’ I said. ‘That would be a miracle.’

‘Nah, we’ll do it,’ said Tadhg. ‘I have faith in us. You’ll come back from New York full of inspiration.’

‘I hope so,’ I said. ‘I mean, I can’t wait to go to New York. Obviously.’

‘Obviously,’ said Tadhg.

‘But I’ll really, really miss playing music for the whole summer.’

Then I thought, surely I could risk a little bit of honesty, seeing as we weren’t going to see each other for over three months.

I said, ‘And I’ll miss you, I suppose.’

‘I’ll miss you too,’ said Tadhg. ‘No supposing about it.’

‘Yeah?’ I laughed.

‘Yeah,’ he said. We drew a little closer to each other, across the corner of the table. ‘You know I love playing music with you.’

‘I love playing music with you too,’ I said.

It was still okay to be honest, wasn’t it?

‘And hanging out with you too, of course,’ he said.

‘Well, of course,’ I said. ‘Same here. Hanging out with you, I mean.’

Still okay. We both laughed. Now we were even closer.

‘I’m going to miss you so much,’ he said. And closer. ‘Because you’re brilliant, Lol.’ Closer. ‘You’re so fucking brilliant.’

And then we weren’t laughing anymore.

We were kissing.

Afterwards, I agonised over who had kissed who first, but in my heart of hearts I was always sure that we both kissed each other at the same time, months and months of tension finally breaking.

Tentative for just a second, and then anything but.

We stood up, still kissing; I heard Tadhg’s chair fall backwards to the floor.