A bell over the door tinkled as she walked inside to find a small, dark pub with old crimson wallpaper and several round wooden tables. The place was filled to the brim with people, beers in hand. They looked over at her as if they could tell right away she didn’t belong here, that she wasn’t just a tourist, but an American.
Keira felt a little overwhelmed by the culture shock.
“What can I get yee?” a male voice said in a thick accent that Keira could hardly understand.
She turned to the bar to see an old man standing behind it. He had a wizened face and a tuft of gray hair sprouting from the center of an otherwise bald head.
“I’m Keira Swanson,” Keira said, approaching him. “From Viatorum magazine.”
“I can’t hear yee! Speak up!”
Keira raised her voice over the live folk music and repeated her name. “I have a room booked here,” she added when the man just looked at her with a blank frown. “I’m a writer from America.”
At last the man seemed to understand who she was and why she was there.
“Of course!” he exclaimed, a smile spreading across his face. “From the paper with the fancy Latin name.”
He had a warm aura about him, very grandfatherly, and Keira felt herself relax again.
“That’s the one,” she confirmed.
“I’m Orin,” he said. “I own the St. Paddy. Live here too. And this is for you.” Suddenly, a pint of Guinness was plonked onto the bar in front of Keira. “A traditional St. Paddy welcome.”
Keira was taken aback. “I’m not much of a drinker,” she laughed.
Orin gave her a look. “You are while you’re in County Clare, my lass! You’re here to let your hair down just like the rest of the locals. And anyway, we have to toast your safe journey! Thanks be to the Virgin Mary.” He crossed his chest.
Keira felt a bit shy as she accepted the Guinness and took a sip of the strong, creamy liquid. She’d never tasted Guinness before and the flavor wasn’t particularly agreeable to her. After just one sip she was certain she wouldn’t be able to finish the entire pint.
“Everyone,” Orin called out to the patrons in the pub, “this is the American reporter!”
Keira cringed as the whole pub turned around and began clapping and cheering like she was some kind of celebrity.
“We’re so excited you’re here!” a woman with frizzy hair said, leaning in a little too close and smiling a little too widely for Keira’s comfort. Then in a lower voice she added, “You might want to wipe off your Guinness stash.”
Feeling her cheeks burn with embarrassment, Keira quickly wiped the suds from her top lip. A second later, another of the pub’s patrons had wedged her way forward, barging elbows with others on her way – not that anyone seemed to mind. Her drink spilled a little as she stumbled. “I can’t wait to read your piece!”
“Oh, thanks,” Keira said, shrugging. It hadn’t occurred to her that the people here would want to read what she’d written about them. It might make the whole cynical angle a little harder for her to pull off.
“So what made you want to be a reporter?” the man next to her said.
“I’m just a writer,” Keira said with a blush, “not a reporter.”
“Just a writer?” the man exclaimed, speaking loudly and looking for the attention of the others around him. “You hear that? She says she’s just a writer. Well, I can barely hold a pen so you’re a genius as far as I’m concerned.”
Everyone laughed. Keira nervously drank small sips of her Guinness. The Irish hospitality was very welcome but it was also a culture shock, and she found herself cringing, thinking of the myriad ways she could bash this place in her piece.
“I’ll show you to your room,” Orin said finally, once she’d managed to drink almost half the pint of Guinness.
She followed him up a creaking, narrow stairway and along a corridor with a threadbare carpet that smelled strongly of dust. Keira walked silently, taking it all in, constructing cutting sentences in her head as she observed the dated decor. The walls were decorated with framed, faded photographs of local soccer teams from the past and Keira smirked when she saw that the majority of the players shared the same surname, O’Sullivan. She took a discreet picture of the black-and-white soccer team and pinged it off to Zach with the caption: Mr. O’Sullivan must have been a prolific breeder.
“Here you go,” Orin said, opening a door and showing her inside.
The room was awful. Though large, with a double bed and a huge window, it was decorated horribly. The wallpaper was a sort of peach color, stained in places as if from years of grubby handprints. The bed had a thin duvet on it, which was quilted but not in an endearing country-house way, more in a thrift store castaway way.
“This is the room with the desk,” Orin said, grinning with pride, gesturing to a small wooden desk under the window. “For your writing.”
Keira blushed. She was inwardly horrified at the thought of staying in the grimy room for an entire month, but she managed to squeeze out a grateful, “Thank you.” So much for thinking she’d be able to slum it for a month!
“Do you want a bit of time to settle in before meeting Shane?” Orin asked.
Keira frowned, confused. “Who’s Shane?”
“Shane Lawder. Your tour guide. For the festival,” Orin explained.
“Of course,” Keira said, remembering in Heather’s notes she’d said there would be a tour guide. “Yes, please, I’d like to meet Shane.” She had no desire to spend another minute in the room, so she dumped her bag on the bed and headed back down the creaking staircase.
“Shane!” Orin cried as he took his position back behind the bar.
To Keira’s surprise, it was the fiddle player who responded. He put his instrument down – though the group of musicians he was playing with carried on as if nothing had happened at all – and came over.
Beneath his scraggly beard, Keira could tell he had a chiseled jawline. In fact, if it weren’t for his hair, which desperately needed cutting, and scruffy clothing, Shane would be quite handsome. Keira felt guilty for thinking such a thing, especially since things with Zach were on such rocky ground at the moment, but she thought of Bryn’s motto: Ain’t nothing wrong with looking.
“You don’t look much like a Joshua,” Shane said as he shook her hand.
“Oh, didn’t anyone tell you?” Keira said. “Something came up so I was sent instead. Sorry about that.”
Shane gave her a cheeky look. “What are you apologizing about? I’d much prefer to spend thirty days with a fine-looking lady like you. No offense to this Joshua fellow, I’m sure he’s attractive enough, but he doesn’t sound like my type. You know, being male and all.”
Keira gulped. She hadn’t expected Irish men to be quite so forward. But she reminded herself of Zach and repeated the mantra in her head that she was just looking.
As Shane took a barstool beside her, Orin put a Guinness in front of each of them. Keira groaned silently. She couldn’t handle this much alcohol!
Shane took a deep sip of his drink, then spread some documents onto the bar.
“The Festival of Love is thirty days long,” he explained. “Most of the activities don’t start until the evenings so I’ve prepared an itinerary of places we can visit while you’re here, so you can get a better feel of the country as a whole. We’ll start with the Burren for the mountain scenes, then the Cliffs of Moher to look at the ocean, then we’ll head over to the next county, Kerry, to the beautiful old stately home in Killarney, then onwards to Dingle.”
“I thought you were just guiding me through the festival,” Keira said. “Not the whole country!”
“You’ll go crazy if you don’t get a bit of space from Lisdoonvarna during the day,” Shane explained. “The sheer amount of groups of people coming and going, it gets a little much.”
Keira laughed silently to herself. She seriously doubted Lisdoonvarna was anywhere near as hectic during the festival as New York City was on any normal day.
“There’s a lot of drinking,” Shane continued. “Some of the parties go on until the early hours of the next day. I say some, but really it’s most.”
Keira thought of the rowdy stag party she’d shared the flight over with and wondered whether she was going to get any sleep over the next month at all.
“This looks great,” she said, glancing over the itinerary. “But I will need some time each day to write. It can’t be all fun and games.”
Shane smirked at her. “You only just got here and you’re already thinking about work?”
“I have to,” Keira explained. “This is a really big deal for me. I don’t want to screw it up.”
“And not screwing it up equates to not letting your hair down?”
Keira wasn’t in the mood to be challenged about her life choices. She’d had just about as much of that as she cared for from Zach and her mom.
“It just means setting aside time each day to write,” she refuted, sounded a little huffy.
Shane’s expression remained in an amused kind of smirk. He took a languorous swig from his pint. “You’re one of those straight-laced types, aren’t you?” he quipped. “All work and no play.”
Keira gave him an unimpressed look. “I don’t know how you can presume to know anything about me,” she said. “You’ve known me for all of five minutes.”
Shane just kept smirking. He didn’t reply, as though the argument was already settled.
Keira tensed up. He was handsome, that was true, but if he carried on like this he was going to get on her nerves. She didn’t know if she could handle thirty days of teasing and drinking and not getting any space to write.
Maybe this assignment was going to be harder than she’d expected.
*
Keira finally managed to excuse herself at midnight. She’d lost count of the number of Guinnesses Orin and Shane had sunk, but luckily for her they’d stopped cajoling her to keep up with them. Still, her head was spinning somewhat as she climbed the stairs to her room.
She shut the door, but the pounding sound of the music and merriment downstairs didn’t cease. Keira felt fraught, like she was wound far too tightly. She checked her phone, but found that there was no message from Zach. He would definitely have had the time to read them by now. Which meant he was giving her the silent treatment. How mature, Keira thought.
At least she’d received responses from both Nina and Bryn, asking a myriad of questions. She texted Nina – who would be editing the piece – to tell her that her itinerary was filled to the brim and not to expect any work for a while. To Bryn, she texted a brief description of Shane’s physical features and some flame emojis.
He’s a pain, though. One of those arrogant guys who thinks it’s endearing to tease you.
Bryn’s reply came quickly. It IS endearing.
Keira laughed and put her phone away. The music downstairs was certainly going to keep her awake for some hours, so she may as well put in some time on her laptop. She took it from her bag and began writing an email to Elliot with some of her initial ideas for approaching the article. Thanks to all the Guinnesses, she found herself able to adopt an even snarkier tone that she’d anticipated.
If you’ve ever wondered what decades’ worth of stale Guinness smooshed into a carpet smells like, then look no further than St. Paddy’s Inn in Lisdoonvarna, County Clare. As an exotic American, my arrival here prompted an outpouring of suffocating Irish hospitality. I say suffocating, because turning down the offers of copious amounts of alcohol was simply not an option, hence the aforementioned stale Guinness smell that permeates every inch of this gritty, dark dive. In fact, the place is so saturated with Guinness the carpets, curtains, and wallpaper are all tacky to the touch. Let’s just say I won’t be surprised if the water of my morning shower (in the dated, cramped en suite) comes out black and frothy…
She continued in the same snarky tone. She knew it was mean to bash the B&B and the friendly people she had thus far met but she just couldn’t help herself.
She finished up and hit send. Elliot replied almost immediately with a praising email.
Keep this up, Keira. It’s gold!
Just then, Keira’s phone rang. It was Bryn. Keira sighed, realizing she wasn’t going to get any more work done tonight. She folded down her laptop and answered the call, climbing into bed as she did so.
“What’s up?” she asked her sister.
“I just had a failure of a date,” Bryn explained. “So I thought I’d call you for the lowdown on this hunky tour guide.”
Keira laughed. “Well, he has too much hair. And his fashion sense sucks. But he would scrub up nicely.”
“I think you should go for it,” Bryn said.
Keira gasped, surprised by how forward Bryn was being, even for her. “What about Zach!” she laughed.
“What about him?” Bryn replied dismissively.
Keira groaned. “He’s my boyfriend,” she reminded Bryn. “And even if Shane got a haircut and a whole new wardrobe I wouldn’t be able to spend more than five minutes in his company before throttling him.”
Bryn laughed. “That’s going to make the next few weeks a bit difficult, isn’t it?”
“That and the fact that my room is above a pub that seems to have no closing time and a live folk band twenty-four/seven.”
“That sounds amazing,” Bryn refuted. “Jeez, Keira, you work so hard you can’t even see what an exciting situation you’re in! You’ve just told me the party never stops with a groan.”
“You sound like Shane,” Keira replied. “If I don’t want to drink, dance, and be merry I don’t have to!”
She and Bryn finished up their conversation, and Keira found that in spite of all the noise coming from downstairs, she was hardly able to keep her eyes open. So she settled down under the thin cover and rested her head against the lumpy pillow. There was still no response from Zach to any of her humorous texts. She tried calling him but the phone just rang and rang.
She checked Instagram and saw photos of Zach at Ruth’s wedding. He was looking gorgeous in his suit, but his expression was so lonely. He seemed awkward standing there alone, and she felt bad not to be there with him. Maybe her mom had had a slight point. Turning up at weddings alone clearly was very embarrassing.
As she began to fall into slumber, Keira began dreaming that she was there at the wedding with Zach. Only it wasn’t Zach, it was Shane, shaved and in a sharp suit. He looked more handsome than she’d even anticipated.
Keira woke herself with a start. Things were already complicated enough without her developing a crush on her tour guide!
She pushed all the thoughts from her mind and, finally, fell into a deep sleep.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Did you sleep well?” Orin asked the second Keira descended the staircase early the next morning, emerging into the pub part of the B&B.
She rubbed her bleary eyes. “Yes, thanks.” The lie came so easily. Much better to pretend she loved her rickety bed, thin duvet, and lumpy pillows than to complain and have Orin fuss about it. She could write about it later, after all, and get some cathartic release that way.
“Take a seat and have some breakfast,” Orin said, leading her to a table and placing a coffee in front of her. It was swiftly followed by a bowl of oatmeal. He sat in the seat opposite. “I’ve made it the Irish way. I hope you like it.”
He was grinning rather widely.
“What’s the Irish way?” Keira murmured suspiciously.
She took a sip of the coffee and was surprised by how delicious it tasted. Whatever the Irish way was, it was good! Then she spooned some of her oatmeal into her mouth and almost cried out in delight. She’d never tasted anything so creamy, so utterly fantastic.
“Wow, what makes this taste so great?” Keira said, as she munched on another spoon of oatmeal. “Are the cows fed organic grass and milked by the hands of maidens?” she joked.