The next time I meet Jack I will apologize if I have given the wrong impression, but I am not available. The only relationship I am interested in is friendship. It’s not like he will miss me too much. There must be loads of other women who want him. For a second the unwanted image of Fiona grasping Jack’s hand fills my head.
Then I push it firmly out of my mind and continue on my way to the toilet.
Eighteen
Jack
I lied. I didn’t have a damn place to be early in the morning. Surgery days are Tuesdays and Thursdays. This way I keep my surgery days when I need a steady hand and a clear head separate from my drinking days. I only have to be at work by mid-morning tomorrow.
I stalk out of the restaurant with my cock lighting up the inside of my pants. I’ve never wanted a woman the way I want her. With Lana it was mostly a deeply protective instinct. When I think back now it was purely brotherly for ages. In fact, until we were both adults it never even crossed my mind to think of her sexually. Even then it was tenderness and in a wildly romantic way. I dreamed of kissing her in the rain. I thought of myself as her knight in shining armor.
With Sofia I want to rip her sensible clothes off her and rut with her in the corridor of restaurants. I don’t know what it is about her, but I’m mad for her. She says she’s not interested but I know she wants it too. She feels the same pull. I have no idea where this crazy-mad desire comes from, but fucking hell it’s stronger than me.
I hail a cab and give him the address of the pub. I shift in my seat to accommodate my erection. I lean back and think of Guy. Fuck, I had to stop myself from punching him one. Who the fuck does he think he is? Pompous prat. He should take care of the sister he’s married to. The next time he gets in my way I won’t be so polite. Actually, I’ll wrench his head off his interfering neck.
The usual suspects are already clowning around at the bar.
“Hey, Tommy,” I say dropping down into the last space around the table.
“Aren’t ye a great little bastard?” he sings, more than half gone.
We drink steadily for the next couple of hours, but for the first time I don’t get numb. I keep thinking about Sofia. The way she had looked up at me with tears in her eyes. It touched my heart. I can’t even describe how beautiful she looked at that moment. I don’t fucking want to be here. I want to be touching her, kissing her, pleasing her. Inside her.
Owning her.
Making her crave me.
The bell rings to indicate last orders. This is the time when the guys buy three rounds each so we can keep drinking long after drinking hours, but I stand up. Fuck, I’m unsteady on my feet, which means I’ve had even more than I thought.
“Where you off to?” Yann shouts drunkenly.
I raise my hand in a kind of farewell gesture and turn away. Weaving my way out of the pub, I push the door open. As I take my first lungful of freezing air, a man detaches himself from the shadows and comes up to me. I blink to clear my vision. Either I’ve drunk so fucking much I’m hallucinating, or Guy is standing in front of me.
“How did you know where I was?” I slur.
“Everybody knows where to find you on Tuesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, Irish,” he says disgustedly.
Whoa: white fury. My scalp burns. He picked the wrong guy. On the wrong fucking night.
“I’m not here for a fight,” he says.
“Well, you’re going about it the wrong way then.”
“My wife likes you, Irish, so I’m willing to accept that there might be a nice guy hidden somewhere inside the stupid drunk, but here’s fair warning. I’m not going to let you hurt Sofia.”
All my anger vanishes at his words. I blink stupidly at him. He thinks I’m going to hurt Sofia. What the fuck? “I’m not going to hurt her,” I say, but it comes out so slurred even I can’t make it out.
He shakes his head as if I revolt him and stabs his finger into my chest. My hand itches to grab his hand and break his fingers, but I resist the crazy urge. This is Sofia’s brother-in-law.
“Look at you,” he sneers. “You can barely stand. You’ve got everything, talent, looks, money, brains, fame, and you’re just going to piss it all away in some low-life pub, aren’t you?”
I slap his hand away. “Who the fuck do you think you are? God? This is my fucking life. If I want to piss it all away, what’s it to you?”
“I’ll tell you who the fuck I am. I’m Sofia’s protector. You get that. Sofia’s father, brother and uncle all rolled into one. You hurt one hair on her head, and I swear I’ll destroy you. You have no idea what you’re dealing with.”
I start laughing. “Oh yeah?”
His jaw hardens and I see his hands clench into fists at his sides. “Don’t play with her, Irish. She’s not like other women. She’s been through hell and back and if you’re planning on leading her up the garden path, you better think again because I’ll be damned if I stand by and watch a drunk like you soil a beautiful soul like her.”
“I care about her,” I shout.
He eyeballs me. “You don’t care about anybody. How could you? You don’t even care about yourself. You’re an accident waiting to happen. One of these days, some guy’s going to bury his knife in your chest, and it’s going to be the end of Jack Irish. And pity anybody who loves you.”
He’s a big guy, but I’m a street fighter, and even pissed out of my head, I can take him down. It will be a piece of cake, but I don’t. He’s saying and doing the things I should be doing for Sofia. She needs people like him to take care of her. I have a begrudging respect for him for taking the stand he has.
I collapse against the wall behind me. “Yeah, sure. I’ll stay away from her.”
“Yeah. I thought so,” he mutters bitterly and turns away.
I want to call him back. I want to tell him I really care about Sofia, but he’s right. Even totally smashed, I know he’s right. I’m no good for her.
A man like me shouldn’t even look at a woman like her. Someone like her needs a kind man. A man who is capable of love. Not someone without hope. Not the walking dead.
I look through the window into the pub. At all the other drunk men. They are laughing and talking loudly. But for the first time I see their unhappiness. Every one of them is a lost soul. Sure, they don’t have my millions, but I am as lost as they are.
God, how did I come to be in this place?
I stand up unsteadily and stumble into the darkness.
Nineteen
Sofia
After my decision to have Jack in my life only as a friend I get some peace. Not as much as I’d hoped, but some. A part of me takes a step back and starts to think of him as an unattainable object. Like the Princes in the fables my mother read to us.
I spend my days with Mika and Irina and I go for long walks alone at dawn. A couple of times I go without shoes on the snow, but so long has passed since I did that with Master Yeshe I can no longer bear the cold and have to abandon the practice. That must have been a special time when I was a different person.
As I walk in the woods or fields leaving my footprints in the pristine snow, my heart never stops feeling heavy at the thought of giving Jack up. Sometimes I look towards the heavens, remember how far I have come, and try to feel grateful for everything I have. There is a little piece of wisdom Master Yeshe told me to tell myself when things got too difficult to handle.
This too will pass.
Every time my thoughts wander incessantly back to Jack, I repeat the four words like a mantra and to a certain extent it helps.
Finally, an eternity later, Thursday comes around. Just the thought of seeing him again makes my stomach twist, and I try to prepare myself for it by practicing all the different scenarios the meeting could take and the things I could say to him in each setting.
As we leave the house Lena takes my hands in hers and smiles at me encouragingly, her eyes are so pure and so full of love it actually makes my heart stop pumping so hard.
&n
bsp; No matter what happens I’ll have Lena.
Jack
It kills me not to turn up at the center on Thursday. It bothers me so bad I have to cancel all my appointments and take a last minute flight out of England. Ten hours later I land in sunny Nassau. My clothes start sticking to me even before I reach the air-conditioned taxi.
“Where to?” the driver asks.
“Surprise me,” I tell him.
He laughs and puts his foot on the gas. The taxi lurches away from the curb. I love islanders. Say that to a British cab driver and he’ll look at you as if you’re mad. We drive by old colonial Georgian buildings in pastel colors, over two bridges, and stop in front of a dock. The driver turns to me grinning broadly, his teeth gleaming whiter than a toothpaste advert.
“The boat will take you to Sivananda Yoga Ashram Retreat.”