Page 2 of Wild Irish

The tenor continues to belt out his depressing words. “Whiskey is the cure for a broken heart.”

There’s no cure for a broken heart. Only ways of numbing the sorrow.

I can still see her face, hear her words like they were spoken yesterday, “Sometimes I think you feel guilty that it’s me who’s sick and not you.”

Of course I did. Cystic fibrosis is a genetic disease, one that at the moment of my conception I had a twenty-five percent chance of getting. It wasn’t fair that it skipped me, while slowly killing her.

“Don’t let my illness stop you from living, Delaney. Find your happiness.” She’d given me the look, the one that always made me feel like she felt sorry for me. Like I was the one who had to go through daily treatments and weekly hospital visits.

Those were her last words to me.

And so, I’m here.

Living.

Or at least trying to.

One month – no rules, no regrets. Just the damn list to guide me. That was the promise I made to her. It’s just taken me six months to get the nerve to do it.

Well, six months and a kick in the ass from life. Four years of university hadn’t prepared me for how difficult the job market would be. But I’d managed to work my way up from office coffee girl to senior assistant in two years. Until last week, when I was let go due to budget cuts.

The icing on the cake was finding my fiancé Matt in my apartment with another woman. He’d acted like it was somehow my fault for coming home early.

Bastard.

I rub the back of my neck, the lack of sleep catching up on me. I figure out the time change in my head. It’s almost six here, which means it’s close to noon at home. I’ve been awake for over thirty hours, and I’m exhausted.

I couldn’t sleep on the plane.

If my nerves weren’t enough, I ended up sandwiched between a fussy toddler, and a man who smelled like feta cheese and body odor. The combination was enough to have my stomach rolling the entire trip.

I should have gotten a hotel in Dublin and slept off my jet lag before attempting to drive across the country, but I’m on a limited budget, and Maeve’s list is long.

Thirty things in thirty days.It seems impossible.

My first stop is Knocknarea. I have no idea where it is, other than the west coast, but I plugged the directions into my phone, and I’m praying I get there soon, because I still haven’t figured out where I’m going to stay. I’ll have to sleep in my car most nights, but tonight I’d really like a hotel.

I yawn and rub my eyes, wondering if I should just pull over and sleep for a couple of hours. I don’t have the chance to decide, because a red blur comes barreling around the corner straight towards me.

Shit.

The driver doesn’t slow down, just keeps coming at me, taking up more than half the road.

I panic and crank the steering wheel to the left. But I misjudge how much room I have, and the car skids with a sickening scraping sound across the old stone fence.

Oh. My. God.

I want to squeeze my eyes shut and wait for the impact of the car.

Every muscle in my body tenses.

Instead of crashing into me, the convertible lets out a blaring honk as it passes with more room between us than I’d originally judged.

“Asshole.”

That’s when I hear it –bang. Like a gun going off around me. I feel it in the center of my chest, an explosion at the front of the car. Then the wheel is ripped from my hands as it takes on a life of its own.

I slam on the brakes, but in my hysteria, I hit the accelerator.

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