Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 82767 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82767 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
By the time we reached our third pub, there were only three of us left, Orla and a couple whose names I never got. We went up a steep flight of stone steps to reach the roughest of all the places we had been in, but Orla ordered drinks and found a seat right next to the band that we had to squeeze into, reassuring me that this was one of the best pubs in Dublin. The band was great, and I soon lost myself in the music. We were singing along with the band and having shouted conversations in which Orla would give me random information about people who entered or left the bar. She was so funny that I couldn’t stop laughing, and she only broke her running commentary to join in with the songs she particularly liked. Every other singer would declare to be her favorite, and in between each song, she would beg the band to play her request, which they did.
I found myself making eye contact a lot with one of the singers with the band, a tall blond with startlingly blue eyes. He smiled at me while Orla was shouting something in my ear, and I smiled back, enjoying the thrill of the silent communication and the clear admiration in his eyes. He leaned over and asked me what I would sing. I told him I didn’t sing, and I didn’t really know any Irish music. He heard my accent and asked me if I know any folk songs at all, any country music even. I said that I had grown up listening to my parents’ Bob Dylan albums, and before I could protest further, the band had struck up a Dylan tune and I felt like I was a fly on the wall, observing myself singing with this beautiful guy, our two voices filling the room before other people began to join in. It was hugely liberating, and I felt a twinge of sadness that I could never be so free or uninhibited back home.
It wasn’t long before I found myself getting carried away by the rhythmic beat and the lilting voices, and I told Orla I wanted to dance. The singer heard, and he stood and pulled me up with him and we danced, some kind of jive that I didn’t know but which felt so right with the music. He rarely broke eye contact, and his pale blue eyes were intense and beautiful. He was a great dancer and led me into it perfectly, spinning me until I was almost dizzy, then pulling me close. There was no real stop between songs; one just flowed into the next, and he held onto me and we danced to the next song, too. Every now and then I would join hands with some other dancer and then find myself back in his arms, his hands on my back, his hips against mine. I was lost in the whirling and the music and the haze of bodies. We moved away from another and then came together again time after time as I whirled away from him and then back. I closed my eyes and completely surrendered to the music, and when he pulled me back to him, I felt his mouth hard on mine. Except I recognized this mouth because I had laid awake at night thinking about it.
It was Keegan.
Chapter 26
KEEGAN
MICK HAD BEEN deep in conversation with some guy who had come into the bar, clapped him on the back and launched into a detailed discussion of some rugby match they had both seen. We had both been into rugby when we were young, before we got distracted by less wholesome pleasures, and I was surprised that Mick had returned to this old passion. I followed along for a bit, but soon felt out of my depth and sat back, letting them carry on. More and more people entered the pub and joined the throng at the bar, separating me from them, but I didn’t mind. You were never really on your own in a pub like this; it was why it was so popular. I must have had a dozen brief conversations with strangers, some of whom it turned out I had some connection with through school, Mick, or my family. A few times I considered leaving, the fatigue of the past few days catching up with me, but the warmth of the room, the laughter, and the music were soothing to me.
The band had grown as more people had arrived with instruments. They weren’t a band as such, but rather an ever-growing group of individual musicians. Some of them had probably never met, and yet they were playing together expertly, the old songs that everyone there knew all the words to. This was what I had missed about Dublin. There were a number of good singers with them, but the most popular songs would have the whole pub singing along, and even I found myself tapping my foot and mouthing the words. I thought back to when I was a teenager and would have had a guitar with me, learning the tunes by ear and copying the older men. There was a lull in the music, and then one by one they struck up a Bob Dylan number. Not that unusual a choice; everything was fair game in here. One of the lead singers had his arm around two of the girls near him, and they were singing together. Their voices soared out across the room and a few people turned around, then voices joined in from across the bar. The girl had had her head bowed under a wavy mane of copper hair, and when she raised her head, I did a double take – she was the image of Effie. I scolded myself. Why was that woman in my head so much? I thought of her in that green dress for the opening event. It was a million miles from the girl in front of me in skinny jeans and a black T-shirt, her eyes dark and her hair a wild tangle.