Page 97 of An Irish Summer

“Collin—”

“I just want to make sure you’re really happy there, you know?”

“Do you think I won’t be?”

“I think you haven’t once sounded happy when you’ve talked about Boston,” he said, and I froze, keeping my eyes locked on the horizon even though I could feel his on me. “You don’t talk about Boston with any joy, not like the joy I’ve seen you feel here. At Blackrock, cheering on the hurlers, dancing at the ceilidh. I’ve seen you come alive, and you don’t so much as smile when you talk about going home.

“So, I want to think you’ll be happy because I’ve fallen in love with you, Chelsea. I want nothing but the very best for you, but I’m not convinced the very best thing for you is to go back.” He paused, taking a deep breath. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t support you. If you really think this is best for you, then I will always support that.”

Any hope of blaming my tears on the wind was long gone. With every word he spoke my heart turned further in on itself.

“I’m sorry,” I said after what felt like an eternity.

“You’ve nothing to apologize for,” he said before I could continue. “You made it clear this was your plan from the start. You were always going to leave. It’s my fault I let myself get carried away.”

“You aren’t the only one,” I said.

“I just wish we could have been carried away a little while longer.” A few more tears slid down my cheeks, and I tried to wipe them away before he could see. “We have a few days left, right?”

Pain radiated from my chest. “Just one,” I said, still afraid to meet his gaze, even though I could feel the confusion in the way he was looking at me. “I got the interview for that job, my dream job, really, that I thought I was underqualified for. They want me in on Friday, so I’m leaving tomorrow.”

Eventually, he cleared his throat. “That’s grand, Chelsea. I’m chuffed for ya. You’re going to smash it. And I guess that means we better get you back to get packed, huh,” he said, brushing off his hands as he stood, like suddenly he was like the picture of nonchalance. Like we hadn’t both been ripping our own hearts to pieces on a sweeping, dramatic cliffside. Like we hadn’t backed ourselves into a corner. I didn’t know what I’d expected him to say, but I couldn’t believe this was it.

What Ididknow was that I couldn’t falter now. Despite the pain, I had to follow through. My dream was still my dream, wasn’t it?

I followed Collin back down the hill and to the parking lot, equally speechless as when I arrived, only for entirely different reasons. The sinking feeling in my stomach dropped lower and lower until it threatened to drag me straight into the ground. I knew sometimes doing the right thing meant doing the hard thing, but in that moment, I wasn’t sure I was doing the right thing at all.

“So, those are the Cliffs, then,” Collin said as we neared the truck, dragging me back into reality.

“They’re magical, Collin. They really are.”

“I’m not sure if they’ve changed you or brought you back to yourself, but I’m glad you got to see how special they are before you left. They’re the proper final piece to your Irish education.”

I managed a hoarse, humorless laugh. Leave it to Collin to still have made this a lesson. And just like every other adventure we’d been on, everything I learned only tied the string between me and Ireland tighter, rendering it nearly impossible now to undo the knot.

“This isn’t goodbye, is it?” I asked when he finally turned to face me. “I’ll see you again before I leave, won’t I?”

“It’s possible,” he said, “but I’m quite busy with a tour tomorrow. Supposed to be decent weather, so trying to make the most of it. But I’m sure we’ll bump into each other.”

Perfect.A whole summer reduced to a chance goodbye in a corridor.

“Grand,” I said, getting into the truck. With nothing else left to say, I felt the chasm left behind by Collin and the rest of the Wanderer open inside me before I was even packed.

Chapter 19

Still reeling from the pain of my final afternoon with Collin, I wondered if it would be easier to leave everyone else without saying goodbye. Slip out unnoticed in the morning and send a text from home, dodging sad hugs and thinly veiled judgments and pleas not to go.

My daydream was cut short by the crushing reality that the only thing worse than saying goodbye would be leaving without doing so. Flo would kill me, and I needed to thank Lori, and Lars, so I flopped on my bed beside a pile of clothes, sent two texts, then immediately returned to packing to distract myself from the impending responses.

Before I’d even finished emptying the wardrobe, Flo appeared in my doorway. She was out of breath and wiping greasy hands on her apron, surely having run from the kitchen the second she saw my text. For someone who loved cooking, she jumped at any chance to put off doing it.

“So this is it, then?” she asked. “Lori said you’re leaving first thing in the morning.”

“Afraid so.” I shrugged, and she was hugging me before I could even drop my shoulders.

“Good luck, Chelsea. They’d be crazy not to hire you,” she said. “Anyone would.”

“Thanks, Flo. For everything, I mean. I’m really going to miss you.”

---