Beyond the Sea

“Oh, don’t even bother,” she waved away my protest. “Even I fancy him a little bit, and my heart belongs to Jimmy.”

“I’m not sure how to feel about that,” Jimmy said with a light chuckle.

“If I don’t get offended by your obsession with Emilia Clarke, then you can’t be pissed at me for thinking Estella’s step-uncle is hot.”

“Don’t call him my step-uncle,” I begged. I didn’t need to feel any weirder about my crush on him.

“Well, technically that’s what he is, since Vee is your legal guardian,” she pointed out. “Besides, everyone has a creepy uncle. It’s like a rite of passage. Lucky for you, Noah is the sexy kind of creepy.”

I shot her a look. “I’m not sure there’s such a thing as sexy creepy.”

“Of course, there is. Why do you think so many people still fancy Ted Bundy?”

I eyed her sceptically. “Do they though? Ted Bundy wasn’t even that good looking. He just had one picture that made him look sort of hot, and that was all down to good lighting. Besides, what he did to those women was inherently unsexy, so …”

“I agree with Estella,” Jimmy piped in. “Creepy and sexy do not coincide. The former negates the latter.”

“Thank you,” I said, sending Aoife a pointed glance. “See? I’m right.”

She smirked. “Well, then why are you so hot for your step-uncle?”

“One, stop calling him that, and two, I think it’s a little unfair to compare him to a serial killer.”

“Okay, true, I’m not saying he’s an actual psychopath, but he does give me psychopath-adjacent vibes.”

“You find psychopath adjacent vibes sexy?” I arched an eyebrow.

She gave a sheepish look. “A little bit, yeah.” I shot her an incredulous expression, and she made a dramatic hand gesture. “Oh, come on, don’t tell me it doesn’t give you a thrill to think he might kill you after he’s had his wicked way with you?”

“There’s something seriously wrong with you,” I said, shaking my head. At the back of my mind though, I had to admit she had a teeny tiny bit of a point. An irrational point, but a point, nonetheless. What was it about danger that was so seductive?

“Again, I have to side with Estella,” Jimmy added.

“Thank you!” I exclaimed.

Aoife chuckled, like she enjoyed riling us. “Don’t worry,” she sing-songed. “You’ll be safe. You’re that one girl in the movie who the murderer won’t kill because he has an unexplainable soft spot for her.”

“Sorry to be a buzz kill but real-life murderers don’t have soft spots,” Jimmy said.

A shiver trickled over me. I knew Aoife was just messing around, but what if she was right? What if there really was something wrong with Noah? I’d seen him lose his temper with Vee once or twice, but then again, Vee’s unhinged behaviour often warranted such a response.

“We’re not talking about this anymore,” I said, pointing my finger at Aoife. “I already have a hard enough time sleeping. I don’t need to make matters worse by believing I’m sharing a house with a murderer.”

I marched down onto the beach and sat on the sand. Aoife sat beside me and threw her arm around my shoulders. “I’m only playing with you. I’ve just never seen you with a crush before, and I can’t help teasing.”

“Yeah, well, even if I do have a crush, I won’t be doing anything about it.”

“Why not?”

“He’s too old for me for a start.”

“No, he isn’t. He’s only what? Twenty-four? Twenty-five? And you’re going to be nineteen soon. A few years is nothing. It’s not like he’s some Leonardo DiCaprio type.”

“Maybe,” I said, not wanting to argue with her further. Aoife was like a dog with a bone sometimes, and once she got an idea in her head, she didn’t let up.

Jimmy came and sat down on the other side of her, and we shared the bottles of lager I’d stolen. Faint music drifted down from the house, but I tried to ignore it and focus instead on the rhythmic sound of the waves crashing against the shore. I both loved and hated this place, because although Ard na Mara was full of tension and unhappiness for me, the sea was a nearby reprieve from all that. I found solace in its vastness, in the strange calm it managed to instil.

Aoife, Jimmy and I drank two bottles of Budweiser each. I felt loose and tipsy as we sat on the beach for over two hours, talking and joking around. When it finally came time for them to go, I waved them off and started making my way back up to the house, hoping the party was over. I stumbled a little on a rock and had to pause a moment to steady myself.

I was almost to the house when I stopped dead in my tracks. Noah stood in the middle of the garden. I barely saw him except for when he took a drag of his cigarette and the orange glow illuminated his face.