Free The Last Bride in Ballymuir by Dorien Kelly

came back with a cup of coffee.
“Drink this, have your food, then we’ll get to the other.”
    Michael finished his cigarette, stubbing it
into a black plastic ashtray with an advertisement for some beer on
its sooty face.
    “ Pint of Guinness, Rory,” a
woman’s voice called from the door.
    Michael watched in the mirror as Evie Nolan
fluffed her fingers through damp auburn hair and tugged at a
clinging dress that seemed to have started an inevitable climb
upward. He knew the instant she spotted him; the predatory gleam in
her eyes cut through his numbness. They watched each other in the
mirror as she approached.
    “ Well, you’re here early,”
Evie said, pulling a bar stool so close to his that they touched.
At his blank expression, her eyes grew harder. “You were to meet me
here, remember?”
    He did. Now. The bartender
set a platter of food in front of him, the greasy scent of the
chips tickling his nose.
    “ The pint, Rory,” Evie
snapped as the man turned away.
    “ It’s settling out, same as
always.”
    Amused, Michael watched as the man slowed his
pace to a snail’s on the way back to the taps. After bolting down a
bite of the thick sandwich, he asked Evie, “‘Meeting friends
tonight?”
    Her glance flicked over him. “Just one.”
    She ordered food and they ate without much
talk between them. At one point or another, his whiskey glass was
refilled and quickly emptied. Time passed but his mood stayed as
dark as ever. Eventually they played a few games of darts, came
back, and drank some more.
    Michael’s concentration
began to slip. The pub was starting to fill, but it wasn’t just the
noise and laughter rising. Evie’s hand kept traveling insidiously
up his thigh. With unwelcome results, too. He frowned at her and
she gave a smile as content as a cat with cream. She’d probably
been teasing men since she’d first popped breasts. He knew it—hated it—yet
parts of him didn’t care. Not one damn bit.
    “ I want to dance,” Evie
said, leaning closer. Even over the
thin whitish curl of his cigarette smoke he
could smell her cloying perfume.
    “ There’s no
music.”
    She stood and tugged him off his stool. “Doesn’t
matter.”
    He supposed it didn’t, and if this small
thing would make her settle down and leave him be, he was all for
it. But then she towed him to the long, narrow hallway between the
men’s and women’s washrooms.
    “ Here?” he asked giving a
dubious glance at the close quarters.
    Wrapping her arms around his
neck, Evie launched herself against him. Unprepared, Michael staggered back against the wood paneled wall. As
her mouth anchored over his, he discovered
that he hadn’t managed to drown his sense of discretion, either. He reached back to untwine her hands from
his neck, and wrenched his mouth free at
the same time.
    “ Don’t tell me you’re not wanting this,” Evie said nudging her
breasts up against him.
    He clamped his hands around her upper arms
and tried to fend her off. He’d have better luck holding an eel.
“There’s wanting, and then there’s doing.”
    She worked her way in closer. “Then you do
the wanting, and I’ll take care of the doing.”
    Persistent, she was, and too busy with her
seeking hands and attitude. But he’d been raised never to insult a
woman. “That’s a fine offer, but—”
    He was cut off by the sound of someone
clearing her throat with loud intent. He glanced up and saw Vi
bearing down on him. Inconsistent as it was, he was delighted to
have her come tidy up this bad moment for him. He wasn’t drunk, but
he was staggering tired.
    Giving the clinging Evie a
scathing glance, Vi said to him, “You might
think of having that removed.”
    “ I’ve been trying to.
Stubborn, though.”
    “ This isn’t a laughing
matter.”
    “ There you’re wrong, sweet
Vi,” he said. Miss Nolan was laughable indeed when measured against
the rest of his woes. He unreeled Evie and patted her on her round bum. “Go on. Time for a