I wasn’t sure what I was expecting to find when I walked into Johnny’s bedroom, but my brother passed out on his bed wasn’t it. He was lying diagonally across the foot of Johnny’s huge bed, but his feet were still planted on the floor.
Slipping inside, I quietly padded over to the bed and stared down at Joey’s sleeping form. His lips were slightly parted and his breathing was deep and even. I sagged in relief. For a moment, I’d feared he was dead.
My gaze flicked to where he was still clutching Johnny’s phone. Reaching out, I gently pried it out of his hand, careful not to wake him. I was terrified of what would happen when he did wake. Where would he go? Would he come home? Go to Aoife’s? Go back to Shane Holland and his scumbag friends?
I honestly didn’t know and the uncertainty worried me more than my father’s disappearance. Because I cared about Joey. He was important to me. For most of my life, he was the most important person in it. The thought of something happening to him was unbearable. It was too much to take, and I honestly didn’t think I could take a whole lot more of anything.
I remembered how it was last year. The fighting at home had been terrible – the mood exceptionally arctic. Dad was spending all of his time at the pub, and Mam was rotating between working herself into the ground and falling apart in her bedroom.
You see, Dad had been having yet another affair with one of the barmaids, an affair that had come out in glorious fashion a few short months later, and Mam knew. She knew and instead of throwing him out, she took to the bed. Sean hadn’t yet turned two, and was a handful. Between cutting his back teeth and screaming through the night, all of us were exhausted.
Things were getting worse for me at BCS, and Joey was losing his temper more often. Talking back to teachers, getting into brawls at school and even bigger brawls at home, until one day, he had a new group of friends. Friends who were too old to be hanging around with a school boy. Friends who had no business showing up to the school for drop offs.
After that, Joey began to withdraw. He turned secretive and disconnected. He didn’t care about anything. Not school or hurling. He was just disappearing.
Until one day at school, one of the girls from his class, the pretty blonde who always watched him, a girl I was sure Joey had never spoken more than two words to, chased him outside to the school yard and stopped him from climbing into that car. I knew this because I, too, had followed at a distance. The girl had caused an unmerciful scene in the carpark and had waved her phone around at those older boys in the car. And then she did something that had shocked me. She fisted his school jumper in both hands and dragged his face down to hers, kissing him right there, without thought for suspension had they been caught.
I never did find out what Aoife said that day, but whatever it was, it caused Joey to walk away from the car and climb into hers instead.
After that, things slowly started to change for him. He started to come back to us, piece by piece. Because Aoife gave him something that day, something to cling to. Hope for the future.
And then my father took that something away from him again.
He took his hope.
I saw it in his eyes when he visited me at the hospital; the light bulb Aoife had switched on inside of him had been slowly dimmed out to the point where he was back to darkness.
If he could just sleep it off, sleep whatever he had taken right out of his system, then maybe he would wake up with some clarity. A clear head and the ability to do some calm, rational thinking. Maybe he could –
‘Shan? My mam called and I need to go home.’ Claire’s voice cut through my thoughts and I swung around to find her standing in the doorway. Pressing my finger to my lips, I begged her with my eyes not to make a sound as I slowly crept out of the room.
‘Sorry,’ she whispered when we were both standing in the landing with the bedroom door closed behind us. ‘I didn’t realize he was asleep.’
I didn’t respond until we were at the top of the staircase and far away from the door. ‘It’s okay. Neither did I.’ On shaky legs, I descended the steps, feeling the burn in my lungs as I moved. Since leaving the hospital, I’d spent the majority of my time holed up in my room. All the walking today had taken it out of my body. Niggling pains and aches were resurfacing and without the prescribed pain relief I had forgotten to take before I left my house, I was feeling every one of them. ‘What were you going to tell me?’
‘I need to go home,’ Claire replied in a huffy tone. ‘My Mam’s been calling non-stop.’ She rolled her eyes for emphasis. ‘She says if Gerard doesn’t bring me home by ten, she’s locking me out of the house.’ Huffing out a breath, she added, ‘It a quarter to ten now.’
‘Would that be such a bad thing?’ Gibsie waggled his brows, joining us in the hallway. ‘You could always stay with me.’
Claire rolled her eyes again. ‘It’s an empty threat, she would never lock me out, but he needs to take me home,’ she continued, wisely refraining from going back and forth with Gibsie. ‘And I was wondering if you wanted to sleep over?’
‘Sleep over?’ I squeezed out.
‘Yeah.’ Claire nodded. ‘I mean, it’s totally fine if you’d prefer to go home or whatever.’ She scrunched her nose up at that, making it very clear that she thought me going home was anything but fine. ‘But I can get my mam to call your mam if you’d rather stay with me?’
‘I won’t be allowed,’ I admitted with a sigh. Going home was the very last thing I wanted to do right now, but I couldn’t exactly not either. ‘They’ll hit the roof if I don’t go back.’ I thought about all the trouble we were going through with the authorities, and while nobody had said I couldn’t spend the night at a friend’s house, I knew it wouldn’t go down well with Mam. No, because she would spend the whole night wide-awake, stewing in her own panicked paranoia until I returned. ‘It’s probably easier for everyone if I just go home.’
‘With all due respect, Shan, fuck them.’
My eyes widened.
It was beyond rare to hear Claire curse and never about parents.
‘Fuck. Them,’ she added with a meaningful stare.
‘Yes! Fuck them,’ Gibsie cheered. ‘You tell her, babe.’
‘Shush, Gerard,’ Claire said before turning her attention back to me. ‘You are sixteen years old, we are on our last week of Easter break from school, and you should be having normal teenage-girl experiences like staying over at your best friend’s house. Instead, you’ve spent the first week of break lying in a hospital and dealing with more crap than anyone our age should have to. So, you do you, Shan. If you want to stay with me, then dammit, you stay with me.’
‘Darren will get upset.’ I didn’t agree with a lot of what he said, and I wasn’t pleased that he felt he could order me about, but I knew Darren’s heart was in the right place. And I didn’t want to hurt him. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. That was the problem.
‘Darren will get over it,’ Claire shot back, rolling her eyes. ‘He’s your brother, not your keeper. You had one of those and look where it got you. Look what he did to you!’ I grimaced and Claire cringed. ‘Okay,’ she soothed. ‘Maybe I worded that wrong and was a tad insensitive given the circumstances, but you know what I mean. I’m saying this because I care about you, because I love you, Shan, and I’m done with watching people push you around. And, quite frankly, you should be done, too. Stop worrying about everyone else and think about yourself for a change. Live your life.’
She was right, but it was hard to break the habit of a lifetime. Especially when the consequences had always resulted in pain.
I was programmed to do as I was told. It was a basic survival skill that I had honed to perfection.
It was what had kept me alive up to this point.
‘What about Joey?’ I asked, glancing nervously at the staircase behind me. Excitement mixed with a huge dollop of anxiety rose up inside of me; the prospect of not going home tonight growing more tempting by the second. ‘He’s asleep and I don’t think I should leave him –’
‘He can stay here,’ Johnny announced, joining us in the hall. ‘You both can.’ His blue eyes locked on mine. ‘If you want?’
‘Whoa there, stallion,’ Claire said, waving a hand in the air. ‘Steady up. I said she needed normal teenage experiences, but don’t go jumping the gun here.’
Gibsie snickered. ‘Boom.’
‘I’m not jumping the bleeding gun,’ Johnny shot back, tone defensive. ‘My folks are in Dublin, and I have an empty house. Her brother’s already here. She’s already here.’ His cheeks turned a deep shade of pink as he shrugged. ‘I was offering the obvious solution.’
‘Solution.’ Claire arched. ‘Uh-huh. Yeah, if that’s what you’re calling it.’
‘I was,’ Johnny replied with a frown.
‘Yeah,’ Claire scoffed. ‘You were jumping the gun.’
‘No, I bleeding wasn’t.’ Johnny looked to me for help. ‘I swear, I wasn’t.’
‘I believe you,’ I offered up.
‘Sure,’ Claire drawled. ‘Keep telling yourself that.’
‘Why don’t we all stay here?’ Gibsie piped up. ‘Call it a solution, or a compromise, or a slumber party, or whatever the hell ye want. We can even order a pizza. Just stop addling my brain with all the back and forth.’
‘I can’t,’ Claire said with a heavy sigh. ‘Not since Mam found out that you –’ She snapped her mouth shut. Her face turned a deep shade of red and she gave Gibsie a look that said ‘and you know why’ before hurrying on, ‘I just can’t.’
I was surprised to see that Gibsie actually blushed, too.
‘Well, well, well,’ Johnny mused, voice dripping with sarcasm. ‘Looks like someone else –’ he paused to make air quotations, ‘jumped the gun.’
‘I most certainly did not,’ Claire huffed, folding her arms across her chest. ‘The only thing I jump, Johnny Kavanagh, is a skipping rope.’
‘Uh-huh.’ Johnny arched a brow and mimicked her earlier words back to her. ‘You keep telling yourself that.’
‘We don’t all think with our genitals,’ she countered.
‘Considering my genitals were recently sewn back on with a needle and thread, I’d say that’s very true,’ he shot back huffily.
‘Needle and thread,’ Gibsie snickered. ‘Nice visual, lad.’
‘Shut up, Gerard!’ Johnny and Claire both growled in unison.
‘You know, if you’re looking for a stallion, you can always saddle me up,’ Gibsie tossed back.
‘Shut up, Gerard!’
‘Shutting up, Claire-bear.’
‘I think I’ll stay here,’ I blurted out, partially because I wanted to defuse the situation and partially because I wanted to help my friend. Whatever was happening with her and Gibsie, Claire was deeply private about it. She would talk when she wanted to. Until then, I wasn’t going to push it. After all, I owed her years’ worth of not pushing for information.
Johnny visibly relaxed. ‘You’ll stay?’
I nodded slowly. ‘If you want me to?’
‘I want you here,’ he told me, never taking his eyes off mine. ‘I want you to stay with me.’
Oh god.
My heart.
These words.
This boy.
‘Are you sure?’ Claire asked, giving me a look that relayed she was both grateful for my intervention and disappointed by my response.
‘I’d rather stay and make sure Joey’s okay.’ I turned to Johnny and my heart-rate spiked. Liar, liar. You want to stay with him. ‘If you’re sure that’s okay?’
Johnny was grinning triumphantly at Claire but quickly sobered his features to a somber nod when he noticed me staring. ‘Absolutely,’ he replied. ‘I want you.’
Gibsie snickered. ‘Boom, boom.’
‘Here,’ Johnny quickly amended, casting a warning glare in Gibsie’s direction. He looked back to me. ‘I want you here with me.’
My heart-rate jumped clean off the Richter scale. ‘Thank you.’
‘Fine,’ Claire huffed, pulling me in for a hug. ‘But you call me if you need me, okay?’
‘Okay,’ I replied, not bothering to tell her that I no longer had a phone. Knowing Claire, she would go right out tomorrow and spend all of the money she earned from babysitting to buy me a new one, and I didn’t want that kind of relationship with anyone.
As depressing as it sounded, I would much prefer to be alone than to be with people purely because they pitied my circumstances. I wasn’t entirely sure who I was as a person yet, or where I fit in the world, but I did know that I needed my friends to like me for me and not because they felt sorry for me.
‘I’ll see you soon, okay?’ Releasing me, she walked over to Gibsie who was standing at the front door with it held open for her, only to stop in her tracks. ‘And you –’ Turning back to Johnny, she gave him a scathing look. ‘Jump skipping ropes, not bones.’
‘Won’t be jumping those either,’ Johnny shot back sarcastically. ‘Needle and thread, remember?’
‘Yeah, well, just keep your penis in your pants,’ she replied, flustered. ‘And don’t get any notions – that’s all I’m saying.’ Having said that, she spun back around and practically floated out of the front door with Gibsie hot on her heels.
The door closed behind them and I was alone for the first time in what felt like forever with Johnny Kavanagh.
‘Hi, Shannon,’ he said with an awkward half shrug, giving me his full attention.
Feeling shy, I tucked my hair behind my ear and smiled back at him. ‘Hi, Johnny.’
‘So…’ Sliding his hands into his pockets, he looked around briefly before locking eyes with me. My heart sped up as awareness of our surroundings consumed me. I could feel it in the air; the electricity crackling around us. ‘What do you want to do?’
Everything.
‘Whatever you want to do.’ Remembering I was still clutching Johnny’s phone in my hand, I closed the space between us and thrust it against his chest. ‘I’m, ah, thank you for helping my brother.’ My cheeks burned when he reached up to take it and his fingers brushed against mine. ‘And me.’ Taking a step back, I clasped my hands together in front of myself and exhaled a pained sigh. ‘For helping me, too.’ It was pained because I was so socially awkward, I could hardly stand it. ‘And for letting us stay here,’ I added, taking another uncertain step, this time to the side. ‘So, uh, yeah, thanks.’
Johnny stared down at me with a look of puzzlement. ‘Are you okay?’
I nodded eagerly. ‘It’s good.’
He smirked. ‘It’s good?’
‘Me,’ I corrected with a heavy sigh and dropped my head. ‘I’m good.’
‘What are you thinking?’
I shrugged and kept my gaze trained on my runners. ‘I don’t know.’
Johnny sighed heavily. ‘What am I going to do with you, huh?’ Snaking a hand out, he clamped my waist and pulled me flush against him. My head snapped up of its own accord, my breath escaping my lungs in a rush. ‘Keep that pretty head of yours up, Shannon like the river.’ Tucking a strand of hair behind my ear, he grazed my cheek with his knuckles. ‘It makes it kind of hard for me to know what to do when I can’t take your measure.’ He traced my chin with his thumb, heated blue eyes locked on mine. ‘I can’t read you if you don’t look at me.’
‘Okay,’ I agreed and then backpedaled. ‘Wait – huh?’
‘Your eyes,’ he said, tone gruff. ‘I need them on me.’
I blew out a shaky breath. ‘You do?’
Johnny nodded slowly, tightening his hold on my waist. ‘How else am I supposed to know what you’re thinking?’
‘I don’t know,’ I breathed, chest rising and falling a little faster now, his close proximity wreaking havoc to my internal wiring. Unable to stop myself, I reached up and placed my hands on his chest, resisting the urge to knot my fingers in the fabric of his hoodie. ‘You could just ask me?’
‘I did ask you, but you wouldn’t tell me,’ he corrected, tone gentle and coaxing. ‘I asked you what you wanted to do, but you wouldn’t tell me that, either.’ My pulse galloped wildly when he leaned closer and lowered his forehead to rest against mine. The featherlight contact was too much and not nearly enough all in one breath. ‘I need you to take the lead here, Shannon,’ he whispered. ‘You need to tell me what you want from me.’ I could feel his heart hammering hard in his chest. The rhythm seemed to match mine. ‘Because I’m not making any mistakes with you.’
Kiss me, Johnny.
Kiss me.
I want you to kiss me!
When I didn’t respond, because quite frankly, I couldn’t get the words I had formed in my head to come out of my mouth, Johnny smiled and took a step back.
‘Come on,’ he said with a small, rueful shake of his head. Taking my hand in his, he led me towards the sitting room. ‘There’s no rush.’ His movements were stiff and slow without his crutches. ‘You can tell me when you’re ready.’ Pushing the sitting room door open, he gestured for me to go ahead of him. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’
Feeling lightheaded, a little breathless, and a lot disappointed, I released his hand and walked inside, feeling the absence of his touch all the way down to my toes.
‘You can sit down, Shannon,’ Johnny said when I hovered near the couch. He walked stiffly over to the window and drew the curtains, cloaking us in semi-darkness before moving for the television. ‘It’s okay.’
Wordlessly, I dropped onto the couch and kept my gaze trained on the roaring fire, soaking up the heat and peace and quiet.
‘What’s your favorite pizza topping?’
I looked up at him. ‘Huh?’
‘Pizza,’ he repeated as he pulled his phone out of his pocket and tapped at the screen. ‘What’s your favorite topping?’ Standing in front of the fire, he flicked on the huge TV and then turned back to face me with his phone pressed to his ear.
‘Uh, pineapple,’ I mumbled. ‘Why?’
He gaped at me in horror. ‘Are you serious?’
‘What?’ I blushed. ‘It’s delicious.’
Suppressing a shudder, he began to speak into the phone. ‘Hey, can I place an order for delivery?’
‘Wha– wait, you don’t have to do that –’
‘Pick a film,’ he mouthed, gesturing to the remote on the coffee table, before continuing calling out his food order to the person on the other line.
Stunned, I picked up the remote and did exactly what I was told, scrolling through the bazillion channels he had and settling on the first film I found.
‘The food will be here in half an hour,’ Johnny announced when his phone call had ended.
‘You didn’t have to do that,’ I whispered, mortified. ‘Buy me food, I mean.’
Johnny stared at me for a long moment before blowing out a breath. ‘Yeah, we’re not doing this anymore.’
‘Huh?’ I stared at him, wide-eyed and petrified. ‘Wh-what do you mean?’
‘I’m going to buy you dinner, Shannon.’ Closing the space between us, he lowered himself down on the couch and turned to face me. ‘Sometimes we’ll eat here and sometimes we’ll go out, but it’s going to be a regular occurrence, so don’t overthink it, okay?’
I had no clue how to respond to that so I just nodded. ‘Okay.’
‘Tonight, it’s a shitty pizza,’ he sighed. ‘Because I can’t drive and all the good spots in town are closed early on Mondays, but I’ll do better next time.’
‘I don’t need better,’ I said softly. ‘I like pizza.’ But I love you.
‘Maybe not, but you deserve better,’ he said quietly.
‘I can’t give you anything back,’ I blurted out, feeling heat creep up my neck. ‘I can’t buy you dinner or pay for the cinema,’ I added, thinking back to the film he took me to see. ‘I want to.’ I dropped my head, too exposed in this moment to keep his gaze. ‘But I just can’t.’
‘If you had a million quid in your arse pocket, I wouldn’t have you pay for me,’ Johnny interrupted, tipping my chin up with his fingers. His blue eyes bored holes in mine as he spoke. ‘And you can call that a s*xist or an old-fashioned way of thinking, but in all honesty, I don’t give a shite. If we’re eating together, I’m feeding you.’
‘It is a bit,’ I offered quietly. ‘Old-fashioned, I mean.’
‘Yeah?’ Johnny shrugged. ‘Then you can blame my Ma for that.’
‘I’d say she did a pretty good job,’ I breathed, shivering when he stroked my chin with his thumb.
‘Yeah?’ He smiled and leaned closer. ‘How good of a job, would you say?’
‘I’d give her full marks,’ I whispered. ‘Definitely ten of ten.’
His eyes blazed. ‘And I’d give you full marks.’
‘Me?’
‘Always you,’ he whispered, eyes flicking to my mouth. ‘I love this.’ His thumb traced the tiny dimple in my chin. ‘It’s fucking adorable.’ His gaze flicked back to my mouth and he dragged his bottom lip between his teeth, biting down hard, before releasing it on a groan and leaning back.
I stifled a groan of my own, devastated to lose his touch.
Tearing his eyes off mine, Johnny turned his attention to the television mounted above the fireplace. ‘Love, Actually?’ A ghost of a smile crept over his face. ‘Really?’
‘That was the first film I found,’ I said, flapping my hands around nervously. ‘You can change it if you want.’ Tucking my hair behind my ears, I bunched up my sleeves only to watch in dismay when they rolled back down. ‘I won’t mind.’
‘No, it’s grand,’ he chuckled, settling back on the couch. ‘Have you seen it?’
‘No.’ I shook my head and followed his lead, settling back on the seat. ‘Have you?’
Johnny nodded, still smirking. ‘Gibsie made me go see this with him at the cinema back when it first came out.’
This time I smiled. ‘Are you serious?’
‘Deadly. We looked like two spanners sitting in the cinema surrounded by couples.’ Reaching behind us, he pulled a blanket off the back of the couch and draped it over my legs. ‘He was going through his Keira Knightly phase at the time and was so pissed when he realized how little she appears in this.’ He laughed softly, clearly thinking about something amusing. ‘He got so into it that he fucking wept during the part with the necklace–’ he stopped himself before he could finish. ‘Sorry.’ He gave me a sheepish smile. ‘I almost gave the plot away.’
‘Why did you go with him?’ Smiling back at him, I slipped my hands under the woolen blanket and snuggled deeper into the couch. ‘If you’re not into these kinds of films?’
‘Because he’s my best friend,’ he replied, chuckling to himself, as he stretched his legs out on the coffee table. ‘And he’s done worse for me.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like breaking out of hotel rooms in the middle of the night to come see me.’ Johnny turned to look at me then. ‘Like bringing me to see you today.’
‘Thank you,’ I breathed, feeling something shift inside of me, pulling me towards him. ‘For coming back.’
‘Shannon, I…’ He stopped himself short and released a heavy sigh. ‘Come here,’ he said instead, lifting his arm. ‘Let me keep you warm.’
Desperate for physical contact, I closed the space between us and burrowed into his side. His arm came around me and a shiver rolled through me when I felt his lips brush the top of my head. ‘Let’s do this,’ he whispered, turning the volume up on the television.
We didn’t say anything else after that.
