Page 24 of The Wandering Season
The siren song of coffee lured me from my sleep the following morning. Niall had won the honor of fetching breakfast that morning, and I wasn’t surprised he’d beaten me to the task. I didn’t need a NASA-grade fitness tracker to tell me I’d slept like crap. Jonathan’s texts were swirling in my brain, and I had no idea how to react to them. Did I message him my return flight info so he could get me from the airport? Did I play it cool and wait for him to text again? Or . . . did I tell him to go pound sand?
All the options had their merits, but I was in no headspace to consider them with any sort of coherent thought before the caffeine had the opportunity to enter my bloodstream.
Niall had procured another assortment of pastries, more reasonable than the quantity I’d purchased, but by no means lacking.
“A blessing on your house,”
I said by way of greeting. My tone sounded something akin to Lurch from The Addams Family, and I helped myself to a glass of tap water to help rehydrate from the abysmal night’s sleep.
“And good morning to you, sleepyhead. It’s already half past eight. You’re usually an early riser.”
He placed a mug brimming full of coffee before me, having figured out the coffeemaker that I hadn’t wanted to bother with on our first morning. I muttered another blessing and took a sip of the deep-black nectar.
“I usually am. Terrible sleep. Not Imogène this time though.”
His brow furrowed in concern. “Something you want to talk about?”
I shook my head. “Nah. It’s personal stuff. Denver stuff. I don’t want to drag down your vacation with it.”
“I happen to care about your ‘personal stuff.’ Even the ‘Denver stuff.’”
He put a hand on mine, and my breath grew shallow.
I had to be more guarded with my feelings if I wanted my heart to remain intact. I didn’t pull my hand back, but I focused my eyes on my plate. “I appreciate it. I really do. I just—”
Words failed me as I scanned my brain to articulate everything spinning all at once.
“Let me guess: it’s to do with the breakup?”
I nodded. “Yeah, he texted in the middle of the night. I couldn’t sleep as it was, and his texts didn’t help. He had no idea I was here.”
Niall stared into the contents of his coffee cup for a few long moments. “So he wanted to have a bit of a postmortem on things? I’ve had one or two of those chats myself. If it doesn’t end with me wearing a pint of Smithwick’s down my front, I usually call it a win. “
I fidgeted with the handle of my coffee mug. “Not really. He actually wanted to pick me up from the airport and talk things over.”
“Closure and all that?”
“He wants to talk about maybe trying again.”
I exhaled now that the words were out there. This was exactly the conversation I didn’t want to have with Niall, but I was a bit relieved to have it all in the open.
“And do you want to?”
His tone was impassive, but his face was less successful at the endeavor.
“No. He’s absolutely the wrong man for me—the conversation last night proved that. I just feel stupid for wasting four years of my life with someone who obviously never understood me and never cared to.”
“That would sting, yes, but better four years than forty, no?”
“I know in time I’ll agree with that, but for right now, I just need to be angry.”
I picked at my croissant for a moment, searching for some insights in the flaky pastry but finding none.
“Fair enough. He’s a right dolt and deserving of your wrath, I’d say.”
I shoved the pastry away. “It’s not him I’m angry with. Not entirely. I’m mad at myself for not seeing who he was.”
“I know we’ve only known each other for a short while, but I’ve truly never felt about a woman the way I do about you. You’re at a crossroads in your life right now, and that’s unsettling. But the grand part about a crossroads is that you have the opportunity to make some choices.”
“If only having the opportunity to choose and the moments we have good choices at our disposal lined up neatly, life would be a much easier place. It’s easy to say ‘go west’ or ‘go east,’ but I put everything into my business and I want to see it through. Not to mention the financial aspect. I can’t just decide to go and reinvent myself anywhere.”
“Maybe not anywhere, but you have Blackthorn as an option. Me. We’d have a grand time turning Westport into a sleeper foodie haven. First Blackthorn, then the rest of the town. You’d have a ball.”
I couldn’t bring myself to meet his gaze. It would have been too hard to remain steadfast. “Niall, I’ve known you two weeks. It’s crazy to think this way. Sure, it might be fun, but what if it all goes south?”
“What if Blackthorn is swept away in a hurricane? What if a bovine plague wipes out the cows and Ireland’s butter and cheese export dries up altogether? What if the euro crashes and we end up in another financial crisis? You can ask those questions until the end of time, Veronica. But what if—just hear me out on this—none of that happens? What if it all turns out and we build a beautiful future together and we all live happily ever after?”
“You’re speaking in fairy tales, Niall. That doesn’t happen in real life.”
“Speaking in fairy tales is a risk of being born in the land of leprechauns, and I won’t apologize for it. But you bet your life it does happen. I refuse to believe we live in a world where happily ever after doesn’t happen. Sure, it’s not wrapped up pretty in a bow. And it takes a bloody lot of work to keep it up. Every day you have to wake up and choose to make that a reality over and over again. And some days you won’t want to. You’ll want to roll over in bed and push the snooze button on it all. And that’s when you’ve got to get up, fry yourself some eggs, and try even harder than you did the day before. But happily ever after is possible, if you want it badly enough.”
Tears welled up, but I refused to let Niall see them fall. Of course a man who had grown up in a literal castle would believe in fairy tales. For him bold knights, elegant ladies of the manor, and lowly serfs weren’t abstract concepts. They were all part of the history of the building where he’d taken his first steps. He knew the history was far more brutal than the children’s stories would ever dare to intimate. But there was still a tinge of the romantic and the fantastical in such a place.
I left the cottage and wandered alone for what might have been hours, rambling down every cobblestone street and dirt path in the place, hoping to outrun the dread in my gut. The dread that I was making a huge mistake even taking Jonathan’s texts. That I was a fool to think The Kitchen Muse was anything more than a cover for my own cowardice.
That Niall was right about everything, and I was making a huge mistake.
Living in Ireland with Niall could be an incredible life. But I would have to be bold enough to make that choice.