The Gallaghers of Ardmore Trilogy

by.”
    So she laughed, wiggled free enough to get him walking again. “I’ll count on it.”

 
     
     
     
TWENTY
     
     
    M OST OF IT was a blur. Faces, voices, movement. He lost track of how many pints had been pushed into his hands, how many times his back had been slapped. He remembered being kissed, repeatedly.
    Many had shed tears. He was mortally afraid one of them had been himself.
    There’d been singing—he was pretty sure he’d done a solo. Dancing—he vaguely remembered rounding the floor with his chief electrician, a burly man with a tattoo. At one point, he thought, he’d made a speech.
    Sometime during the chaos, Darcy had pulled him into the kitchen, poured some soup into him. Or stuck his head in the bowl, he wasn’t quite sure which.
    But he recalled trying to wrestle her to the floor, which wouldn’t have been such a bad idea if Shawn hadn’t been in the room at the time. And if he hadn’t lost the bout to a woman he outweighed by a good fifty pounds.
    Jesus Christ. He’d been stinking drunk.
    It wasn’t that he’d never been drunk before. He’d gone to college, for God’s sake. He knew how to get drunk and party if he wanted to. The thing was, this one had snuck up on him, and he didn’t enjoy being quite so hazy on the details of his behavior.
    There was, however, one little item that came through clear. Waterford-crystal clear.
    Darcy guiding him up to bed, him stumbling, and yes, still singing, an embarrassingly schmaltzy rendition of “Rose of Tralee.” During which he stopped long enough to inform Darcy that his mother’s aunt’s cousin’s daughter had been the Chicago Rose in 1980-something.
    Once he was prone, he made a suggestion that was so uncharacteristically lewd, he imagined another woman would have kicked him back down the stairs. But Darcy had only laughed and remarked that men in his condition weren’t nearly as good at it as they thought they were, and he should go on to sleep.
    He’d obliged her, and saved himself what would have been certain humiliation, by passing out.
    But he was awake now, in the full dark, with approximately half the sand of Ardmore Bay in his mouth and the full cast of Riverdance step-toeing inside his head.
    He lay there, hoping for oblivion.
    When his wish wasn’t granted, he imagined the pleasure of sawing off his head and setting it aside to cure while the rest of him got some sleep. But to do that he’d need to find a damn saw, wouldn’t he?
    Deciding a bucket of aspirin was probably wiser, he eased himself up. Every inch was a punishment, but he managed to bite back a groan and keep at it until he could sit on the side of the bed.
    Through bleary eyes, he stared at the glowing dial of the bedside clock. Three forty-five. Well, it just got
better and better. Gingerly, he turned his head and saw that Darcy slept on, peaceful and perfect.
    Bitter resentment mixed with the sand in his mouth. How could the woman just sleep when a man was dying beside her? Had she no sensibility, no compassion? No goddamn hangover?
    He had to fight the urge to give her one rude shove so misery could have company.
    He gained his feet, grinding his teeth when the room swam sickly. His stomach suited up, joined the other branches of his body in mutiny, and churned queasily.
    Never again, he vowed. Never again would he drink himself drunk. He didn’t care if he delivered triplets in a tornado. The thought of that made him want to smile, the wonder of holding that small, raging life in his hands. But all he could manage was a grimace as he hobbled toward the bathroom.
    Without thinking, he switched the light on, then heard the high whine that was his own gasping scream. Blind, tortured, he slapped at the switch, came perilously close to whimpering when the blessed dark descended again.
    He could only stand, his back braced against the wall, and try to get his breath back.
    “Trevor?” Darcy’s voice was low, her hand gentle as she laid it on his arm. “Are you all right?”
    “Oh, I’m just dandy, thanks. And you?” The words ground out of a throat currently lined with heavy-gauge sandpaper.
    “Ah, poor darling. Well, if you didn’t have a head after last night, you wouldn’t be human. Come on, then, lie back down and let Darcy fix you up.”
    Perversely, now that she was awake and prepared to soothe, annoyance added to the ugly mix brewing inside him. “You and your horde of sadists fixed me up already.”
    “Oh, it was terrible. I’m