Page 95 of An Irish Summer

His smile was becoming so familiar to me I couldn’t imagine a time in the past when I hadn’t known him. Which only made me hate imagining a future without him even more.

“How do you always beat me down here?” I said.

“I get impatient waiting.”

“Are you ready, then?”

“The question is, are you?”

Our eyes locked together like magnets. I was both woefully unprepared and as ready as I could ever be, and the sensation made me feel like I was already on the edge of a cliff.

I nodded instead of speaking and followed him out the door, breathing in the warm air of a late summer morning. I was close enough to my flight home that I could check what the weather would be in Boston when I got back, but I had to force the thought from my mind before I threw up.

The Cliffs were a shockingly short drive away, and we were in the parking lot before I knew it. It seemed odd that such an iconic landscape had a parking lot, but I supposed that was a necessary evil.

Before we got out of the truck, Collin turned in his seatto face me. This move pulled his T-shirt halfway around his body, making the eucalyptus leaves visible just under his collar. I was instantly reminded of how his tattoos felt under my fingers, some of them raised just enough to feel in the dark. I wondered if I’d ever forget.

“This is a big moment,” he said, completely genuine and completely unaware of my inner turmoil. “You only get one first go at the Cliffs, so you have to be in the right frame of mind to really embrace their effect.”

“Is this the speech you give before you let the guests off the van?” I said.

“Of course it is,” he replied with a smile. “Only difference is I don’t quite give a shit whether they listen. You, on the other hand...” He trailed off. “Well, it’s important.”

“So, guide me,” I said. “It is your job, after all. How do I get in the right frame of mind?”

“If you’re asking a question like that, I reckon you’re already there. The Chelsea of two months ago didn’t want my advice, remember?”

I thought back to that first night in the bar, and I wondered if seeing the Cliffs for the first time would be like seeing Collin for the first time. Only then, I had no idea he would become so significant, and now, I had a feeling I would never be the same after this afternoon.

“I couldn’t forget even if I wanted to,” I said. “After that night I thought you were going to be the biggest pain in my ass all summer.”

“And now?”

“I know I was right,” I teased.

“I walked right into that one, there, didn’t I? Come on,” hesaid, opening the door. “You’re open to the magic of the Cliffs, which means you’re ready for the magic of the Cliffs.”

I followed him from the truck up a small hill, with my heart in my throat. This was our last adventure before I left, and the thought was almost too much to bear. So instead of dwelling on it, I tried to memorize the sound of his breathing, the rippling muscles in his legs as he climbed the hill, the space between his shoulders, and the smattering of ink over his forearms. I already missed the security that came with having Collin Finnegan at the wheel, and how it had nothing to do with jobs, money, or material things.

When we got to the top, however, even those feelings melted away. The stress and the hope surrounding the interview, the heartbreak of leaving Flo and Collin, the sense of self that had been dissolving and rebuilding itself since I first got to the Wanderer. The feelings I’d been wrestling with for months were whisked away by the wind, replaced only by a sense of wonder I hadn’t felt since I was a child.

The jagged coastline sat seven hundred feet under the cliffs, which stood proudly against the wide-open sky. A narrow dirt path lined itself along the edge, so onlookers could wander at what felt like the edge of the world. From where we stood, they looked like specks of color splattered against a painting. The cliffs themselves towered over the ocean, rock formations like stacks of earth built up or worn down since as far back as anyone could remember, and further back than that.

“Proper sight, aren’t they?”

“Do people usually answer that when you ask?” I said, hoping he could hear my voice above the wind. “And if so, what do they say? And how do they manage to string words together at all?”

He laughed, swinging an arm around my shoulders and leading me in the direction of another small hill, which I figured would provide an even better view. “Nothing insightful,” he said. “Most everyone is stunned into silence. Or they try to say something meaningful, but it comes out like something they read on a brochure before they got here.”

“Holy shit,” I said as we reached the top of the second hill, hardly listening to a word.

“Or that,” he said. “Take it all in, Chels. The Cliffs will always be here, but never with quite the same magic as this time. Let the moment happen to you.”

His words washed over me with the sound of the waves, but for once I wasn’t tempted to look at him. I couldn’t take my eyes off the landscape before me, even if I felt like crying.

The cerulean ocean stretched to the horizon on one end and crashed against the cliffs on the other, settling into gentle rolling waves in between. The only interruption in the endless blue was that shade of green I realized I might never see again outside of Galway, blanketing the expanse of cliffside just before it dropped fearlessly into the sea.

Standing on the steep edge of the cliffs served as both a literal and metaphorical precipice, and I was thankful I could blame my teary eyes on the wind. I understood why Collin waited to take me here. Had we done this at the start of the summer, I would have been standing here as the version of myself I’d been on arrival. Cynical, cranky, full to the brim with self-pity.

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