Beyond the Sea

I ended up staying with Aoife for most of the day. We watched Youtube videos on her laptop, and I styled her hair into a French plait.

Siobhan was packing the party food into her car as I was leaving. She offered to give me a lift home, and I gladly accepted, helping her carry the containers into the house when we arrived. I opened the front door and sucked in a surprised breath. The house had been transformed. I’d never seen it look so grand. It was sparkling clean, with classy, expensive looking decorations hanging along the staircase and around the entry to the living room.

“Thanks so much. You did a great job,” Noah said, handing two young women some cash. They looked like cleaners. Not only had he hired Siobhan to do the catering, he’d also hired people to clean and decorate the house. He really was pulling out all the stops.

The women left, and I shared brief eye contact with Noah as I placed one of Siobhan’s food containers down on the counter.

“Your food has arrived. I hope you’re expecting a lot of people because there’s enough to feed a small army.”

“It’s a good thing I invited the Swiss Guard,” Noah quipped, and I rolled my eyes. I was still leery of him, despite my unexplainable attraction. There was no other way to describe it. I found Noah deeply alluring. Although that didn’t mean I liked him as a person. I considered his character questionable to say the least.

“So, what do you think of the house?” he went on. “I’ll admit, it’s all fur coat and no knickers, but I don’t think any of the guests will look close enough to notice.”

I shot him a curious glance.

“External extravagance,” Noah elaborated. “Lavish exterior but bare bones underneath.”

I shook my head, bemused by his description, though it did accurately describe Ard na Mara. It’d been given a spit shine, but it was still old, scuffed and uncared for underneath it all. “Well, those cleaning ladies did a good job.”

“Vee’s going to shit her pants when she sees it. It’ll be just like the good old days.” Despite his statement, there was a lack of nostalgia in his voice. Instead he sounded oddly vengeful, which confused me.

“Did your parents throw a lot of parties?” I asked.

“A few,” Noah answered just as Siobhan entered carrying a stack of food containers. “Let me help you with those,” he said, taking them from her.

“Thank you,” Siobhan said. “I hope I made enough. I’ll start setting everything out for you.”

“I’m going to get ready.” I met Noah’s gaze briefly before I left the kitchen and headed for my bedroom. I found my blue dress and dug out the make-up Aoife loaned me before I left her place. “You’ll want to look your best for Kean,” she said excitedly, and I understood her enthusiasm. When it came to the boys in this town, Kean Riordan was a catch.

I tried to imagine what it would be like to have him as a boyfriend. I’d go to his rugby matches and cheer him on, then afterwards he’d take me on dates where we’d eat cheeseburgers, sharing an ice-cream sundae for dessert as we gazed dreamily into each other’s eyes.

I visualised it in my head, but as I grinned wide at Kean, his happy, smiling face faded away, replaced with Noah smirking at me as he caught my hand in his, brought it to his mouth and licked ice-cream off my finger with his tongue.

Ugh! No. Stop it. I banished the visual from my head and focused intently on getting ready so that I wouldn’t be in danger of succumbing to any more unsettling fantasies.

I let my hair out of its bun. I’d put it up wet this morning after my bath, so now it had been moulded into soft waves. Next, I put on a thin layer of foundation, some powder and highlighter, then mascara and liquid eyeliner. Thanks Aoife! I studied my reflection in the small mirror and was pleased to see how much older I looked. I could pass for mid-twenties easily. Not that I needed to but … boys liked it when girls wore make-up, right?

I slipped into my dress and black tights, pairing them with my Doc Marten boots. Then I sat down to read a few pages of The Quran. Yes, I was still working my way through the books Noah gave me. Just because he might be a bad person didn’t mean my thirst for knowledge should suffer.

The annoying thing was, I found myself agreeing with him more and more. For each thing I agreed with and believed in reading these books, there was another point that I disagreed with unequivocally. I’d taken to scribbling down notes, creating a collection of the ideas that struck a chord in me, while doing my best to disregard the rest.