Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 82767 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82767 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
After holding her and kissing the top of her head several times, I slipped out of bed as she showered, and went half-dressed next door to my own room where I showered and dressed. We met downstairs for breakfast, smiling awkwardly at one another, and occasionally laughing for no reason. She was entirely adorable, and it was all I could do to stop myself taking her back upstairs. But I had a promise to keep. I had said I would show her around the city, and that was what I intended to do. Anyway, she had got a map from the front desk, and was poring over it trying to work out where we should go first.
We set off on foot and explored the center of the city. I pointed out the main tourist attractions, and she asked me lots of questions about the history of the place that I hadn’t really thought about since I had been at school. Mid-morning, we sat down on a bench in St. Stephen’s Green to have a coffee and watch the ducks squabbling over some bread.
“Will you show me your city?” she asked, slightly shyly.
“I am!” I laughed. “After this, we can take an open top bus tour if you like. That will give you the answers to your questions better than I can.”
“No, I mean, your city. Dublin as you see it,” she said.
“Which one? The rugby-playing, private school, fast cars side? Or the seedy side?”
“Both,” she shrugged. “I want to see it like you do.”
“Okay,” I nodded reluctantly. Somehow this seemed more intimate than anything that had happened that morning or the previous night, and I felt a little daunted. I got up and took her hand, and we took a taxi to the neighborhood I had grown up in. I directed the driver where to go and pointed out my parents’ old house, a Georgian square set around a perfect patch of green grass and trees. We had lived here before they had moved out to the suburbs.
“I can’t imagine what it must have been like to grow up here,” she smiled.
“I hated it. Too many snooty neighbors. Every chance I got I was off to my grandparents’ place. They had a farm out in the countryside – remember those mountains you saw? Wicklow. They had a horse farm there. I would ditch school and head down there on the train. My ma and da would come and drag me back again,” I laughed at the memory.
Next, my old school, set within acres of parkland, at the top of a tree-lined avenue. I got the driver to let us out by the gates.
“It’s incredible,” Effie breathed. “Like something out of a movie.”
“A horror film, maybe,” I laughed.
“Yeah, let’s face it,” she said. “Some people say that high school is the best time in your life. It’s a lie. I think now is the best time, or pretty damn close.”
Next, we took a bus, and I showed her where I had lived with Kevin and Mick. Half of the high-rise flats here had been abandoned, and they had started to demolish them to make way for new buildings. I was glad to see they were going to be pulled down; they were no place for people to live good lives. Still, the area was fairly grim, and I didn’t want to hang around long. We walked past the pubs I had played in, the betting shops we had sheltered in, the houses I knew to avoid because they were really brothels, and the alleyways where god-knows-what had gone on. It was strange to be seeing it from her perspective, and easier for me than if I had made the journey by myself. She held my hand as we went, and I found myself remembering good times as well as bad, funny things that had happened, memories of when it had all been a big adventure, before it all went so wrong.
“I had forgotten some of that,” I said, after laughing about some friend who used to visit us. “I don’t know how I could have forgotten it, but I had.”
“You probably blocked it out,” she said. “It feels wrong to remember good times when you are trying to process something awful.”
She was right. I had been looking back at this part of my life as though it was all bad. I was seeing everything in black and white. And now I could see that it wasn’t so simple, and it made me feel better about how I had occasionally hankered after this life that I had left, and resented the privilege that I had in my life in Boston.
“It was shit most of the time, but we had each other’s back, you know? We just laughed. All the time,” I smiled at the memory and felt something heavy lift off me.