Page 73 of The Matchmaker
“I do,” I say. “I know it. Because I can’t do this. I give up. We have nowhere to host the festival, but that doesn’t matter because no one’s coming. We’ve barely sold a handful of tickets, and no one is picking up their phone or answering their emails or paying any attention to us at all. Because we don’t matter to them.”
My throat starts to burn, and I swallow, trying to force down the ball of pressure that feels like it’s trapped there.
“No one’s coming,” I say, my voice rising with each word. “No one’s booked in and no one’s coming, and I don’t know what to do. Because I really thought people would care. I thought if they knew what was happening, they’d come out and support. Because we’retrying. We’re really trying. We were going to have fireworks and music and dancing. We were going to have so much dancing. And it wasn’t just going to be about the pub or about attention. It was about us. About the village and showing the world who we are. It was going to be about people falling inlove. They were going to fall in love and meet their soulmate here and years from now, when people asked them how they met, they could say Kelly’s. They could say Ennisbawn. And no one would want to get rid of us then. No one would think we were unimportant. But we’re not going to have any of that because everyone who thought I couldn’t do this was right. I can’t.”
The rain has stopped completely now. A hint of blue sky appearing between the clouds.
A little too late. Just like everything else in my life.
“It doesn’t matter what you know or don’t know,” I tell him. “Kelly’s is my home. And if you think I’m going to be able to forget that you’re one of the people playing a part in destroying it, even if you don’t want to, then you haven’t been listening to me. You haven’t been listening at all.”
Callum stares at me, his jaw set, and his eyes intense. His clothes are plastered to his skin, his hair to his head, and I know I don’t look much better. But I don’t have the energy to care.
“I’m going home now,” I tell him. “And then I’m going to have a very large glass of wine and do some stress baking. Tell your brother I give up. He can do what he likes.”
“Katie—”
I don’t wait for him to continue, turning back to the road and spying his green van parked up ahead. Behind that, flashing her lights, sits Gemma. I’d been so focused on the excavator, I didn’t even see her before, but from the look on her face, I know she’s been sitting there a while.
“You want to come to mine?” she asks, and I nod, wiping the curls from my forehead.
She already has a towel in the passenger seat for me, and I grab it as I climb inside, pressing it to my face.
“Hi, Noah.”
“Hi.” He doesn’t look up from where he sits in the back, his thumbs flying across his phone screen.
I sniff, wiping my nose for good measure as Gemma pulls out onto the road. I don’t look at Callum, who’s still standing at the entrance to the lane, watching us go.
“The barn,” she begins, but I just shake my head.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I say, and Gemma, bless her heart, leaves it at that.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Adam takes one look at me when I walk into work that evening and sends me home again. I’m miserable. I’ve never given up on anything before. Mainly because I haven’ttriedanything before. And that realization just sends me spiraling even more. I go straight to bed with a bottle of wine and one of Granny’s books and fall into an exhausted sleep somewhere between glass three and chapter nine.
The next thing I know, the sun is shining, and my phone is vibrating somewhere nearby.
I’m a little hungover, and it takes me a few seconds to figure out where it is, slapping blindly around the blankets before I find it.
“Hello?” My voice is groggy, and I check the time to see it’s a little after eight.
“I had nothing to do with it.”
“Gemma?” It is Gemma. But this Gemma doesn’t sound like Gemma. She sounds nervous and hesitant and thoroughlynotGemma. “Nothing to do with what?”
“The video.”
“What video?”
There’s silence on the end of the line and, as the last vestiges of sleep finally leave my brain, I sit up, propping myself against the headboard. “What video?” I repeat.
“You haven’t seen it?”
“Seen what? What are you talking about?”
Our doorbell chimes through the house before she can reply. That’s a first. We’re knocking people around here. Peer-through-the-window-and-wave people. I didn’t even know the bell still worked.
