Cillian
The exhaustion, stress and heartbreak of the last few days catch up to me all at once. I sleep through most of the flight.
When I do wake up, we’re about fifty minutes from Los Angeles. Which means I’ve slept for nearly twelve hours straight.
It leaves me with a strange feeling. Like I’m awake but not quite.
Like I’m in someone else’s body, living someone else’s life.
Nothing about my current situation feels like it belongs to me. Nothing connects.
I think about Da, about Ma, about Sean, about Kian.
I think about my room back at the mansion.
But mostly, I think about Saoirse.
I ought to hate her. And maybe I do, a little bit.
But not the way I should. Not with that clawing sense of betrayal that makes a person feel like they’ve got no option but to move on, no matter what.
I know myself well enough to know that there will be no moving on for me. Not in the ways that truly matter.
“Sir?”
One of the flight attendants approaches me with a tray of beverages.
“We should be landing soon,” she says. “You missed both in-flight meals. Would you like me to bring you something to eat?”
“Hell yes,” I reply. “Also, get me the strongest drink you’ve got on this plane. And then bring me another one.”
She raises her eyebrows, but then nods. “Right away, sir.”
I might’ve come on a little aggressive. But goddamn, I’ve never needed a drink more.
When she brings them over a couple of minutes later, I down the first drink before she takes so much as a step down the aisle.
I take my time with the second, hoping that it’ll numb the heavy feeling in my chest.
I know it won’t, of course. But what else can I do except try?
I barely feel the landing as we touch down. I wait until everyone else has shuffled off ahead of me before I disembark in a daze, realizing that I have absolutely no plan.
I drift through the slightly alien interior of LAX. Everywhere I look, the wrongness of this place screams at me. This isn’t Ireland by any stretch of the imagination.
“Dorothy, you’re not in Kansas anymore,” I murmur to myself as I make my way through airport security. I get a few weird looks when I laugh like a maniac afterwards.
The night is dark and gritty as I step outside the airport, but it takes me only a few minutes to find a cab. I get in without so much as a bag in my hand.
“Yo, man,” the cabbie says without really looking at me. “Where to?”
I think for a moment. “Take me to a pub,” I decide. “The kind of pub you’d find in Ireland.”
“Ireland?” he repeats dumbly. He scratches his beard with a kind of vacant look in his eyes. I get the feeling he’s not exactly a rocket scientist.
“As in the country, mate. Green, clovers, leprechauns. That kind of shit.”
My mood is worsening by the second. I’ve never felt farther from home.