Page 149 of Fifth Avenue Fling

We Irish love to talk about the weather. We take it very seriously.

“Ack, sure, a wee drop of rain won’t do us any harm,” he says, not looking up at me.

“Aye,” I mumble and continue with the varnishing of the cabinet because what else am I supposed to say?

I look out the window at the grayish sky, where a sliver of sunshine peeks between clouds.

Here, I work hard to distract myself. It’s difficult when we only get a few orders a day, but if I manually tire myself out, I might sleep at night. My only purpose each day is to exhaust myself to the point of numbness—no longer thinking, no longer feeling.

No longer realizing that I’m stuck in the same place I was four years ago, living with my mam and gran, doing the same old routine day after day. I’ve had zero inspiration to create new inventory. Even yoga has become an empty ritual, void of any satisfaction.

My only social life is when Mam drags me along to funerals or one of my brothers asks me to collect them from the pub because they’re too drunk to drive.

I’m still part of the Queens yoga group chat. Sometimes when I read the messages for a fleeting second, I forget where I am, and I’m teleported back to New York.

Then I remember and feel a sharp stab of pain before the emptiness sets in.

I have no tears left. He drained them all.

Now I’m hollow.

I get up, go to the furniture store, come back, have dinner with Mam and Granny Deirdre, watch TV, and try not to stalk Killian online.

Sometimes I think I should have accepted his offer. After my feelings for Killian fade away, when he’s just an entertaining story, I’ll kick myself for not taking the green card.

Orla begged me to stay until she was blue in the face, but the only way I could stay was to accept Killian’s charity. Those last few days in New York were a blur. Killian and I went from one hundred to zero in twenty-four hours. An emotional roller coaster—one minute, I’m soaring high above the clouds in a fancy helicopter, and the next, I’m plummeting back to earth at breakneck speed.

I went from seeing him every day to never seeing him.

I didn’t even tell him I was leaving New York. What was the point? After the fight in the office, he didn’t reach out. He didn’t care.

Inhaling the familiar scent of sawdust and wood, I take a deep breath and tell myself to get a grip.

This, too, shall pass.

I mean, we were only together for a few weeks, for Christ’s sake, and I’m twenty-five. The world is my oyster. Plenty more fish and all that jazz. When I’m Granny Deirdre’s age, I’ll remember it as a really sexy time in my life, that’s all.

My Fifth Avenue fling with a billionaire, something to laugh about in the pub.

This, too, shall pass.Yet no matter how many times a day I tell myself that, the dark cloud follows me.

The bell at the front of the shop rings to warn us someone is in the shop. Usually, Mam is out the front—yes, I’m working with my mum again—but she’s on her break.

“I’ll get it,” I say to Tommy and stroll up to the front of the shop.

As I approach the woman waiting at the till, my smile is met with a discontented scowl.

“Hi, how can I help you?” I greet her cheerfully. I fucking hate sales. Almost as much as cleaning.

“I’ve got a problem with the phonebook table I bought from here,” she says curtly. “I’ll need to return it.”

“Oh. What’s the problem?”

“It’s too big for my hallway! It won’t fit!”

I keep my smile steady. That’s hardly our bloody fault.

Why does she even need a phonebook table?

---