Page 8 of An Irish Summer

“Like what you see?” Lori asked, watching me look around. I hope my face didn’t give anything away. I wasn’t surelikewas the right word so much asprocessing. Truthfully, it reminded me a little of my undergraduate dorm, only somehow more run-down. The carpets were shredding at the edges, the wood paneling was chipping off the walls, and there were a few bugs in the light fixtures.

“Yeah,” I said, hoping I sounded convincing. “Looking forward to seeing the rest of the place.” That part wasn’t a lie, at least. I was dying to see my room, mostly because if I didn’t lie down in the next ten minutes I was liable to fall asleep standing up.

“Let’s get to it, then,” she said. “The grand tour awaits.” She motioned out of the room, bangles clanking loudly up her arm as she did so, and I obeyed.

“So, the rooms you’re seeing now are the guest rooms. We have four-person to twelve-person dorms, all mixed gender, and a small handful of private rooms. There are communal bathrooms on each end of the hallway, and all guests and staff have access to this laundry room.” She swung a door open and I peered in at the stacks of old washers and dryers, trying not to wince as their cacophonous thumping flooded the hallway. It was a far cry from the in-unit arrangement I had in Boston, which I tried not to think about.

“And just down here we have the gym,” Lori said as we rounded another corner. A few foggy glass windows framed the “gym,” which was hardly more than a few old treadmills and a sparse stack of free weights. I never thought I’d miss paying nearly two hundred bucks a month for an unnecessarily bougie Pilates studio, but I never thought I’d be living in a hostel in Galway, either, so there was a first for everything.

For a second, I wondered if Jack and Helen had actually ever been here.

“And over here,” Lori said, pulling me back into the present, “we have another common area, this one with table tennis, a projector, and loads of board games.” She talked as we walked, swinging open doors and greeting staff and guests along the way. I kept my gaze ahead of me, offering only shy smiles when someone forced eye contact, too overwhelmed by the space itself to register new faces. “The common areas are a great way to meet people, so I’m sure you’ll be spending a lot of time in them. Best to jump in right away!”

I offered a wordless nod, trying, and failing, to appear grateful. I hadn’t even put down my luggage and was already expected to socialize? Play board games? I was more of a one-martini-at-happy-hour-with-Ada-then-home-by-eight kind ofgirl. I was still processing the state of the communal laundry room, so I had a feeling it would be a while before I jumped in on the group game night.

“And up here,” she said as we climbed a narrow set of crooked stairs, “are the staff rooms. Yours is room two, right here on the left.” She opened the door with a brass key, and I stood motionless in the doorway.

Helen had told me the room was cozy, but I hadn’t realized “cozy” was code for “minuscule.” The single bed shoved into the corner of the room reminded me of the one I slept on during my week sleepaway camp, nothing more than a wooden frame and a paper-thin mattress. The only other furniture was a small desk beneath a window and a wooden wardrobe to match the bed frame. I fumbled along the wall for a light switch, only to learn all I had was a floor lamp with a pull string.

“This is...” I started. “Thanks, Lori.” I was too tired to say anything else. And the tone in her voice on the tour was too proud for me to ever let it slip that her sister had massively oversold the property, even if it was the truth. All I wanted to do was flop face down on the bed and close my eyes, hoping that when I opened them, I would be back in Boston. On my fourteen-inch mattress with my ambient fairy lights.

“I hope it suits you,” she said, raising her eyebrows in my direction. Had I given something away? Could she tell I was deeply out of my element and, quite frankly, terrified?

“It’s great,” I said, reminding myself not to complain about free rent to the woman putting a roof over my head. I could do that with Ada later.

“If you need anything, just— Oh, Collin! Come in here for a minute, would you?” She called to someone in the hall. I fought to suppress a groan. The last thing I needed was to be introduced to anyone right now. I was disheveled, certain the bags under my eyes made me look like I’d been in a boxing match, and I wasn’t exactly in the friendliest mood.

“No need to trouble anyone,” I started, desperate to be left alone, “I wouldn’t want to—”

“Chelsea, this is Collin.” She held her hands up like she was on a game show, framing Collin like the grand prize. And for the second time since I walked into this room, I was paralyzed.

Collin wasn’t much taller than me, which meant his eyes were that much closer to mine. They were such a clear green they looked like marbles, and I had to swallow twice so my mouth didn’t dry out completely. His sandy hair matched the faint freckles that dotted his cheeks, becoming scarce as they crept to the angles of his jaw, which made sense to me. I too would be wary of approaching something so sharp.

“Aye, pleasure to meet ya, Chelsea.” He extended a calloused hand, and I tried not to notice how it felt in mine. I was busy contemplating how I felt about the sound of my name in the Irish accent, and I didn’t have the brain capacity at the moment to do both.

“Collin is kind of our jack-of-all-trades,” Lori explained. “He’s mostly the hostel tour guide, you know, taking visitors around the country, but he also does a bit of bartending and sometimes some farm work off the property.” Collin’s wide smile at her description was lopsided, but his teeth were surprisingly straight.

“She oversells me,” he said, nudging Lori. “I’m mostly a pain in her arse.” She laughed, perhaps a bit too loud, wiping nonexistent sweat from her brow.

“Ah, and he’s humble,” I joked, though I wasn’t sure why.

“She’s clever, this one, is she?” he said to Lori, still looking at me.

“She is,” I answered, running a hand through my hair before planting both hands on my hips. I was too tired for however it was he was looking at me, and it was dangerously close to seeping into my tone.

“Really, Chelsea, if you want to see more of the country, he’s your guy,” Lori said. More of the country? I hadn’t even seen anything beyond the route from the airport to the hostel, and my eyes were closed for half of it. And I didn’t need a guy, tour guide or not, so she could squash both of those ideas, really.

“Duly noted,” I said, trying to be polite. “I think I’ll just focus on seeing the hostel, for now. You know, settling in and all.”

“Right,” Lori said, a blush creeping onto her cheeks. “I suppose you want to unpack and lie down for a bit. If you’re feeling up to it later, please join us for a drink at the bar next door. If Collin’s on tonight, he’ll pull you a mean pint of the black stuff.”

“I’m always on,” he said, and I had a feeling he wasn’t talking about the bar.

“I would imagine anyone with that job would have to be. It takes a lot to pull a lever and fill a glass with Guinness, doesn’t it?” Why couldn’t I stop myself? They were just on their way out... why couldn’t I have let them go?

Collin’s loud, low guffaw eclipsed Lori’s, bouncing off the walls of my tiny room. “Don’t let any of the locals hear ya saying that,” he said. “They’ll boot you right on out of here.”

At this point, that might not have been the worst thing.

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