Page 86 of The Rebound
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Jess spends her last two days in the café, helping me with interview prep in between redesigning Beth’s marketing plan and ordering a ridiculous amount of coffee and cake. Because the thing is, Jess can be serious when she wants to be, even if she does flirt with Beth when she thinks I’m not looking.
I don’t see Luke, who I learn is on a clinical placement in Galway. Otherwise, the only people we see are the trickle of usual customers. But there are more the second day, all of them sending curious looks toward our corner, and I wonder if word of Jess has become the latest source of village gossip. Beth certainly seems to think so, asking a little too casually if we’d like to sit at the bench by the window where there’s more natural light. Jess proclaims it a brilliant idea and then compliments her earrings.
I let her get away with it, needing the help. She’s in a good mood, already planning our lives when I return, despite my frequent reminders that it’s just an interview. She doesn’t like that. But the self-confidence I’d adapted so eagerly when I first moved to New York now seems alien to me, even more so now among the realistic (or as Jess would say, pessimistic) Irish attitude of what will be will be. But her presence is calming, bolstering even, and I find that, even though she’s sitting right in front of me, I’m already starting to miss her.
When it’s time for her to go, I don’t want her to leave. And maybe that’s another reason I was so against her coming here in the first place. I didn’t say goodbye the first time. But now I have to, and though she seems more than convinced it’s only a temporary one, I’m still not sure. How can I be when each passing day it feels like the goalposts are moving farther and farther out?
She leaves for the airport at five a.m. on a gloomy June morning, the day before my interview.
And then she’s gone. Just like that.
The house feels very quiet without her. If we had a grandfather clock in the hall, I would hear it ticking. If I were in the desert, I would see tumbleweed drifting. But it’s only me alone, sitting on my childhood bed, in my childhood room, and wishing desperately I could follow her. I stay there nearly all day, reading over my notes, and I know when evening comes I should go for a run to clear my mind but the rain pours as if to officially welcome in the Irish summer, so instead I wander down to where Tomasz slouches in the front room, mindlessly watching two soccer players dive over each other.
“Your friend gone?” he asks when I curl up on the opposite end of the sofa.
“Yeah. Thanks for putting up with her.”
“Of course. We put up with you.”
“Funny.”
“You and Louise seem better.”
“We’re just waiting for the right moment. Then we’ll be at each other’s throats, don’t worry.” I hesitate as he leans forward, muttering at the referee's decision. “You didn’t say something to her, did you?”
“Me?” He sounds amused. “I say things all the time. Doesn’t mean she listens to me. You think I asked her to be nicer to you?”
“Yes.”
He shakes his head. “She likes that you’re staying longer.”
“You mean she likes that I’m going.”
“Why would she want you to go?”
I almost laugh. “Because all we do is fight. Even when we’re being nice.”
“That’s just because she doesn’t know how to talk to you,” he dismisses. “And then you were so keen to leave again when she hasn’t seen you properly in years. She misses you, Abby. Isn’t it obvious?”
“Missesme?”
He looks at me like I’m the confused one and turns back to the television. “You’re her sister, of course she does. She likes having you here. She’d never admit it but…” He shrugs. “I’m glad you took her on that hike,” he says. “You should do that more often.”
I watch him watch the game. “Tomasz?”
“Hmm?”
“Would you like a beer?”
He smiles gratefully and I stand, going to the kitchen.
The noise from the television is faint here and through the window above the sink I can see into the Baileys’ backyard and the light streaming out from their own house.
She misses you.
I won’t pretend that one of the reasons I stayed away for so long was Louise. Every time I came home from college there would be some sort of fight and when I got the internship at MacFarlane she acted like I did it just to spite her. Things got a little easier when she met Tomasz, when, because of the money I gave to Mam and Dad, they got the house here. That’s when the emails started—the polite, infrequentI am well, how are you?messages we used to send when we remembered to. I thought she felt she had to, like she might have owed me after what I did, even though I never wanted her to feel that way.
