Page 79 of Go Luck Yourself
My stomach swoops at all this talk of Coal. Once negotiations are over, the other winter Holiday leaders will expect repayment to begin, and we won’t have enough joy for it, and Coal will be the one who’ll have to face them. I haveone jobto help him, and I can’t even do that right.
Loch’s cheeks are pink again. “He’s the only one you really talk about. Well, him and that girl of yours, Iris.”
“She’s not my girl,” I quickly correct. Then, “What did last night tell you about me?” Still abrupt, pinched throat making everything tight and desperate.
“What?” he asks, airy.
“You said you can tell a lot about someone by the way they paint. What did it tell you about me?”
Loch pushes to his feet.
I flatten my hands on the cold butcher block. Hold my breath. Like any movement will break whatever spell this is or yank me back to soberness and I am in a fuzzy, gilded, vodka-induced haze and I don’t want to leave.
But he crosses to the sink, pours two glasses of water, and places one in front of me as he sits again.
He drinks. Watches me over the rim.
“It’s more telling that you called yourself theSpare Claustoday,” he says.
Blood rushes to my face. “It’s a tabloid headline—”
“Na. It isn’t. See, I’ve read the tabloids, and I—”
“I’m sorry.” It topples out of me. Half genuine. Half wanting him to stop this course of conversation. “For the tinsel incident. I really am. I never intended to hurt your reputation or give your uncle further cause to undermine you.”
Loch’s face gentles. “Now that’s a sincere apology, boyo. But we’re talking aboutyounow. And I never once saw the press refer to you asspareanything. Is that how you see yourself? Or is that how your brother treats—”
“No. Fuck no. Coal would never.”
“So why’d you call yourself that?”
I take a gulp of water though I want more vodka because this will sober me up and the only way I can answer his question is to be drunk.
“I am the spare.”
Loch scowls. “Nah, you aren’t.”
“No. I—I’m the backup. The background. The one who’s been so focused on other people getting their happy ending that I have no idea what I want my own to be. And now Coal’s set. He’s got his boyfriend and Christmas and he doesn’t need me anymore, not like he used to, so I could doanything,and I’m floundering becausewhat the hell am I supposed to do.I built my life around making sure other people were happy. I even went to Cambridge and kept going in this shitty track out of some childish dream that it’d earn my father’s—”
That catches me. Not in embarrassment; I’m caught in realization.
I squint at Loch. “You’re in the art history track.”
“Yeah?”
“Why?”
“I like it. I got the scholarship, so I went.”
“But—you also have a business degree.”
“Ah. That.” Loch stretches out a kink in his neck, and again, I’m hit with the need to take a picture of that neck, the way the musclesexpand, retract, even under his black turtleneck. “That was my own attempt at winning my father’s approval. I do na regret it—it’s sure as hell helped me manage things that Malachy drops. But I realized, after my da died and Malachy snatched the throne, that the only thing I could control was my own happiness. I dinna want to give up on St. Patrick’s Day, but I wanted to have a… balance.” He shrugs. “I am na always great at it. Siobhán and Finn will testify to that. But I’m at Cambridge now forme,because it reminds me that I do have power outside of Malachy.”
I stare at him long after he stops talking. That’s a mentality that I’ve never been able to grasp, one I’ve been seeking for years. To do something for no other reason than Iwantit.
“I have no idea what to do,” I whisper. “I have no idea what I want.”
Loch watches me unravel at the island and I press a fist into my forehead as the room spins.
