“My big idea is to count down the hours until five o’clock,” I said, pointing at the bottles against the wall on the counter in the kitchen, “so I can kick off this evening’s festivities.”
There was a flicker of disappointment in his eyes. “All right,” he said, postponing that argument for another day. “Don’t drink and swim.”
“Pffft, too cold for swimming,” I said, brushing off that idea. The sound of some idiot proving me wrong outside came in the form of a screech of joy.
“I left you some cash, and one of the rental cars is downstairs,” he said, making his way to the door. Augustus and Taneshia were just standing there, waiting. “Don’t wander far. Your disguise is okay, but a sharp eye could still pick you out.”
My disguise was dyed hair and being starvation thin, a little thing that had happened during my time in Scotland, and which I hadn’t exactly striven to change since I’d come back to the US. Scotch helped. Scotch, and skipping a lot of meals. “Aye aye, captain,” I said, and saluted.
He bit back his response, but I could see the worry in his eyes. “Just …”
“Dude, you’re the one going into danger,” I said, shooing him with a hand motion. “You be safe. And don’t forget to call your girlfriend. You promised her you’d check in on the regular, and I don’t want her to be madder at me than she already is for keeping you down here for months on end.”
“Yeah, okay,” he said, easing through the door with something that felt like lingering regret. “Just … take it easy, okay?”
“You too, bro,” I said, way too casual. Seeing him walk out the door was like a gut punch, but I waved him off anyway. “Be safe. Augustus, Taneshia … watch out for my big, worrying bro-mother, will you?”
“We got this,” Augustus said, and he and Taneshia were off.
“I’ll see you when I get back,” Reed said.
The door slammed behind him with alarming finality, and a nervous pit in my stomach that had started to subside over these last few weeks and months that we’d been here, all together …
It started to grow again—this gnawing, aching feeling within, like a black hole aiming to consume me.
5.
How was it that the minutes leading up to five o’clock could feel so impossibly long?
They were piling up, the minutes, but not accumulating nearly fast enough. I was sprawled out on the couch still, engaging in a kind of torpor to preserve my energy and ignore the hunger pangs that rattled through my body. I kept eyeing my bottle of scotch, just sitting there on the counter, calling to me with its beautiful siren song. It was right there, for the taking, minutes and miles away.
With a sigh, I turned back to the TV screen, where a clock presented itself.
4:47 Eastern Time, it read in the bottom corner of the news icon. Thirteen minutes to glory.
“I wish someone looked at me the way you look at a bottle of scotch,” Eilish said, ever helpful.
“Sometimes I wish you stayed as quiet as a bottle of scotch,” I said. I actually didn’t. I’d had way worse voices than her in my ear for the last few years, and now that they were gone …
Well, Eilish wasn’t a replacement for them, as such, but man … it was nice not to be totally surrounded by silence here.
“Why don’t we go out tonight?” she asked, a hint of wheedling in her tone. “You’re sporting the bottle-blond look, no one’s going to recognize you. There’s that nice Italian restaurant down at the terminus of this road—what do they call it again?”
“It’s called 30A,” I said, watching the clock. Twelve minutes.
“Right. They make it sound so damned iconic,” she said, annoyingly chipper. I’d be a lot happier myself in twelve minutes. “30A. It just sounds cool. Anyhoo … we could go to the Italian place, or that breakfast-y all-day spot down by Publix—”
“Waffle House?” I turned my head to look at her. “They have burgers and such, you know.”
“I’m not really interested in the ‘and such,’” she said. “Ye ask me, you order something non-waffle from a place called Waffle House, you’re just asking for trouble. Besides, those waffles—they’re amazing. I don’t think we have anything like them in Ireland—”
“Your whiskey’s not bad,” I said. But it wasn’t scotch.
“Uhm … I was talking breakfast-food wise,” she said, a little nonplussed by my reversion to alcohol every other thought. “So … what do you say? Or we could get some of those marvelous sub sandwiches at Publix—I know you have a hankering for that Cuban from time to time—”
I rolled at my eyes at her transparent attempt to get me to engage with the world. “You can take the car and pick something up if you want. I’m just going to chill here tonight.”
“Uhm, ye’ve chilled here every night for the last umpteen many, to borrow one of your favorite words.”
I shrugged. It appeared I was running out of enablers. “I’m a fugitive, trying to lay low. Going out to Publix or Waffle House or local Italian places on the regular seems like laying high.” I frowned, trying to make sense of what I’d just said. “Or … something.” Laying high sounded dirty, and there’d been no laying, high or low, for me in entirely too long.
Which was fine. Because scotch was strong, and ever ready, and he would see me through.
“But—but–” Now she was into the spluttering. “But you like Publix, don’t you?”
Here I didn’t shrug, but only because, yes, I did like Publix. It was my favorite supermarket ever. “It is ‘Where Shopping is a Pleasure,’” I conceded. “But I don’t want to go out tonight, Eilish.” I looked at the clock on screen. Ten minutes.
“I don’t know if I can stay in again tonight,” she said, making eyes toward the door and the balcony.
“So hang out outside,” I said. “Chill by the pool deck. Literally, since it’s like fifty degrees. That’s gotta be like a balmy summer day for a fine Irish gal like you.” Nine minutes. “You could probably even work on your complete lack of tan.”
She made a hard scoffing noise. “You should talk.”
“No, I should shut up, watch the news, and count the minutes until five o’clock.” Because damn, this watched pot was steadfastly refusing to get to boiling.
The bridge mess was … well, a mess. Whoever Fire-guy meta was, he’d prompted the wrecking of a huge span of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. The news was all in a tizzy about it, probably because catastrophes meant ratings—I tried to imagine a scenario where I somehow got bonus pay for things going to shit and realized, with the agency still under my ownership, I kinda did.
Eilish fell into a silence that was beautiful and lasted until 4:56. Four more minutes.
“It’s my first time in America,” she said, now crossing straight into whine-baby territory, “and I just don’t want to sit around the bloody condo all the time.” She hit me with pleading eyes. “We could go walk on the beach. You could even bring your drink.”
I just stared at her, my patience hanging by a strand. “You want me to walk on the beach with an aged Lagavulin in my hand?”
She nodded. “I won’t mind.”