In the Unlikely Event by L.J. Shen

Present

Mal

It’s not that I didn’t anticipate her reaction.

But it still shocks me, because while Rory is swimming (or drowning, I don’t know) in the eternal question of whether she can respect and forgive herself at some point for what she’s done to Shiny Boyfriend, I mourn the fact that she hasn’t yet broken up with him.

I’m locked outside my room now, Rory inside and refusing to speak to me. I can still taste her sweet, earthy pussy on my tongue, along with the chocolate.

This situation is ridiculous, which, of course, I don’t point out.

I make it a game. I put trays of food at her door, like she’s a prisoner. I knock every now and again and ask her if she needs anything.

Alas, Rory is a tough prisoner.

At bedtime, I get a call from Ryner telling me Rory and I need to pack our suitcases and head to Greece. Why? Let me tell you why. Because Richards is on his way from Thailand to Spinalonga Island.

“Spinalonga?” I hold the phone between my shoulder and ear, right in the middle of dying lollipop sticks pink above the sink. The artificial color drips everywhere, including on my clothes, but I still dip the sticks in paint meticulously, because those sticks need to be bright pink, glittery, and ready for usage.

As for me? I’m living the rock-n’-roll life, clearly, thankyouverymuch.

“The leper colony. He read a book about it.” Ryner tsks on the other line.

“You mean he watched a video,” I deadpan.

Ryner laughs humorlessly. “Probably, man. Probably.”

“Did you tell him there aren’t any lepers there now?” I ask.

Something is obviously going on with Ashton Richards, and no one is saying anything, because everyone has a horse in the race to produce his new album.

“He’s not listening. He’s gotta check into rehab.”

“No shit.”

But I don’t further promote the idea of Richards checking in, because that’d kill the entire Rory Project. I’d have to finish the songs and hand them to Jeff. Which means Rory would run back to America before we sort our situation. That’s simply not a possibility I am willing to entertain.

“I still think we can chain him to my sofa and make it work,” I say.

“Yeah? Go pick him up, then. I’ll throw you a nice bonus when this is all over.”

“Ryner.” I squeeze my fingertips into my eyelids, smearing pink dye all over my face. “I can’t leave Tolka. It’s in our contract. You know exactly why.”

We go back and forth a few more minutes before Ryner asks me how Callum is doing in that smug way that implies I have a lot to lose if I say no. I ask him who the feck Callum is, and he tells me he’s Rory’s boyfriend.

I know that, but I like to pretend he means so little to me, his name hasn’t registered. I know what Ryner is doing here. He’s reminding me that Greece is a great opportunity to whisk Rory away from Callum, who is planning to come here tomorrow, on New Year’s Eve, and save their relationshit.

I mean, ship. Relationship. Not like I shat all over it or anything.

Look, I want to be better than knowingly sabotaging their relationship.

Actually…no. That’s not true. It sounds like something honorable to say, but the truth is, I don’t want to be honorable about this duel. I would kick and bite and break every man-rule to have Rory. Throw sand in his eyes. Anything to win.

’Tis the truth, and the worst part is, I still sleep at night like a baby. (Though I don’t know why they say that. Babies are horrible sleepers. Sleeping like a knocked-out drunken sod sounds more accurate.)

Once Ryner and I come to agreement, I slide Rory a napkin with the news under my bedroom door and slip out of the house to say my goodbyes before I leave Tolka, even if it’s just for twenty-four hours.

When I’m back, Rory is all packed, sullen and ready to go. It looks like she’s been crying the entire time since I fucked her with a candy bar.

I feel awful, but I’ll feel worse if she ends up with Prince Preppy Pants. He will bore her to death, and I don’t want her death on my conscience.

I drive us to the airport in complete silence. It’s only when we get comfortable in our first-class seats on the plane that Rory opens her mouth again. I think she is about to tell me I’m a cunt, but she surprises me.

“How did I get my scar?”

I spit my soda all over my lap. A sincere burn in hell would have been nicer than this loaded question. I frown to buy time, but my heart rate accelerates.

“You’re asking me?”

She nods, staring me down.

“Didn’t you say you were born with it?” In my head, I envision myself running with a cart through aisles in the supermarket, desperately shopping for more time.

“That’s my mother’s version, and I’m starting to doubt it. Ms. Patel from the newsagents told me there’s a horrible story behind my scar. Your grandfather walked in before she had a chance to tell me.”

“Ms. Patel also believes in ghosts and that people with blue eyes see everything in a blue hue.”

That’s a flat-out lie, actually, but I’d rather jump off this plane using Rory’s knickers as a parachute than hurt her the way the truth would.

It is not that I don’t want to tell her the truth, but when so much of it is about to be unveiled, it is best to wait, to ease her into a situation, then sit her down properly.

“I still want to know what the rumor is,” she insists.

“Yes, of course, I suppose. Thing is, I’m not exactly attuned to small-town gossip.”

I don’t add that most of the gossip in Tolka relates to me.

“But your grandfather knows,” she persists. “Why would he keep that from me?”

“To protect you?” I pick up a travel magazine and pretend to flip through it.

In my head, there are red sirens blaring everywhere. FUCK, FUCK, FUCK. Mini Mals are running around, yanking their hair out.

She’s onto us! Somebody do something!

“I’m going to ask him.” She taps her knee with her fingers, munching on her lip.

“You do that.”

She stares at me skeptically. I think she knows I know, and it’s killing me not to be completely honest with her. I wish I could telepathize to her that I will explain, soon. That there are stages. That she doesn’t know everything about me yet, and before she makes up her mind, she needs to really understand.

We all pitied the American girl with the backpack and the camera and the broken dream.

I screwed her and kissed her and promised her marriage and took all her secrets, while not giving her the only truth she ever cared about and came all the way to Ireland for.

Rory clamps her mouth shut, then opens it again.

“You won’t tell me whose birthday it was, and you refuse to tell me about the rumors surrounding me. You won’t talk about Kath’s death. Can you at least show me a song so I can take a picture of it for my project? It’s coming together well, by the way. Thanks for asking.”

I know it must be a nightmare for her to live in Tolka.

People either hate her for being the girl Kathleen was forsaken for or pity her for being the girl who made that thing with Glen happen. Between me being a massive, purple dick and Richards being Richards, Rory—the only person who takes this project seriously—is helpless.

I lift my arse from the seat and take my notebook out of my back pocket, handing it to her. She opens it to a random page, her green eyes gliding over the text, line by line, as she moves her lips in the shape of the words.

He calls you love.

I call you darlin’.

You say you’re happy.

I think you’re drowning.

We promised each other so many things.

Now I don’t even think you know what they mean.

Call the press.

You’re a mess.

You make me so fucking depressed.

Trying to make everything right, shiny, pretty, and tight.

So tired of waiting for you to see the light.

He calls you love.

I call you darlin’.

You say you’re safe.

I think you’re spiraling.

If you want the truth, kiss me hard.

Or at the very least, lower your guard.

She gives it back to me and looks away to the window. The sky is wooly and gray.

“I’ll find my truth, Mal. I will.” She ignores the words she just read.

My chest tightens. I seriously underestimated Shiny Boyfriend’s grip on her. Or maybe it’s not him. Maybe it’s the idea of him. The idea of me. Maybe dating an idiot who spent the last decade making a living writing hate songs about her doesn’t sound too hot.

We look in opposite directions.

“My truth shouldn’t be conditional,” she whispers.

I take a deep breath. “Neither should your promise.”

By the time we land in Crete, Richards is back from Spinalonga and throwing a party in his presidential suite. Earlier, he tweeted that he was in town, and a bunch of starfuckers brought down the hotel’s glass doors, leaving them shattered on the lobby floor. Then Richards sent some of his staff out to pick up the hottest groupies and invite them up to his suite, making them dispose of their phones at the entrance.

Rory and I walk in on him getting a blow job from a lass while fingering her friend’s arse. Which, naturally, makes Rory roll her eyes and squeeze hand sanitizer into her palm, passing it over to me. I shake my head.

“Not gonna wash my hands until the next time they’re on you.”

“You mean, never?” she asks dryly.

I give her a little smile. Sometimes we say things because they sound right. That’s what she’s doing right now. I think we both know there will be a second time, and soon.

She shivers, and not from the cold, because she hasn’t been particularly cold since she came to Ireland—something I hope she notices. Knowing full well that Richards’ cooperation is what my entire Rory Project depends on, I saunter in, grip the jerk’s shoulder, and yank him from his blow job. The girl is still bobbing her head with an O-shaped mouth when I shove Richards onto the plush leather sofa by the wall, crowding him with my arms crossed over my chest.

“Party’s over. We’re getting back to work.” I kick the sole of his sliders.

He mimics my movements, knotting his arms together, pouting. “Ever been to Thailand, Mal?”

“Can’t say I have.”

“Well, I just came back, and let me tell you, it’s a magical place. I had a lot of time to think about shit.”

He was in Thailand exactly twenty minutes, during which he rode an elephant, made an embarrassing video, and decided to visit Greece on a whim.

“I broke up with my girlfriend—who is a duchess, by the way—and now I’m all about finding the one.”

“Do you think you’re going to find her in a stranger’s asshole?” I ask evenly.

Rory nearly coughs out a lung behind me, a combination of laughter and horror.

“Look,” Richards rolls his pretty-boy, bluest-blue eyes, “you got this writing-songs part under control. You told me yourself that the songs are all done and read—”

This time I cut him off by kicking him in the shin before he’s able to do some serious damage. He shuts up.

“Your boss paid you extra to do this documentary project,” I remind him. “He paid me. He paid Rory. You’re screwing up her work, too. You can burn through money and blow and women all you want after we’re done with this. You have all the time in the world.”

He laughs bitterly. “No one has all the time in the world.”

I don’t want to start explaining figures of speech to him. He is not my spawn. So I just look at him, waiting.

“Anyway, Ireland depresses me,” he whines, throwing an arm over his face like a teenage girl who just found out her crush likes the cock, too. “You live in the middle of fucking nowhere, dude. No offense, but you actually do. It’s, like, scientific.”

“Do you know what the word science means?” I ask, just as Rory slides into the conversation diplomatically.

“If we put a good dent in the project, we can all go somewhere else for a while.” She claps her hands together and appears by my side. “A vacation.”

“Really?” Richards drops his arm, his eyes lighting up.

This feels a lot like we’re his parents, promising him a trip to Disneyland if he makes good grades. Only there’s no way we could conceive someone like him, because I’ve met goats more sophisticated than this man.

I hitch one shoulder up, not correcting Rory’s soon-to-be-broken promise.

Richards frowns. “Sex Slave chick needs to give it to me in writing. I don’t want her to run off with her boyfriend and fuck it up for us.”

I turn around to Rory, but she is no longer standing next to me. I think she got a phone call. Probably her boyfriend whining because he can’t see her after all.

When I turn back to Richards, he’s jumping to his feet, buttoning his jeans, and tucking a joint into the corner of his mouth. He slaps my back.

“Thanks, man. I appreciate you coming to get me. I was getting this weird vibe, you know? Like you didn’t like me very much. Like we didn’t gel.”

He says the word gel like I say the word cunt.

I remove his hand from me. “Couldn’t be farther from the truth.”

Rory

Double shit with a side of crap.

Callum is here. In this building. Checking into a room with the receptionist.

Summer’s work, I’m sure.

After Mal slipped me the napkin with the new developments and our sudden Greek trip, I beckoned Summer for an emergency freak-out. I told her about the chocolate bar incident, which prompted her to slap Mal with the pet name Mal-Teaser. I also heard her plugging her vibrator into the charger and am pretty sure she was swiping left and right on Tinder, trying to find a playmate for the night.

“Please don’t do something stupid.” I closed my eyes and threw my head skyward, praying silently.

“Oh, honey, that’s rich,” she said, “considering you just out-stupided an avocado after less than a week in Ireland. I’m trying to make things better for you. Trust me, okay?”

I didn’t know if I should. I still don’t.

I love Summer, but she has very precise, very definite ideas for my life, and I don’t necessarily agree with them all.

She must’ve told Callum where I was, redirecting him from his pending trip to Ireland to Greece. And he, the charming boyfriend that he is, decided to surprise me. When I got a text from him, I couldn’t stay in the room watching the face-off between Mal and Ashton. I ran down to the lobby, threw my arms over Callum’s neck, and pretended to be elated to see him.

As I should be.

“Missed you, love. Have you lost a little weight?” He frowns, chuckling. “Looks good on you,”

He leans down and gives me his customary peck on the mouth. The kiss seals my guilt on my lips, like a closed envelope.

Mal kissed those lips yesterday afternoon.

Right after shoving a chocolate bar into them that had been shoved between my other pair of lips.

“Let’s get you settled!” I grab his hand.

I already know I’m going to tell Callum what happened. And I already know he is probably—rightfully—going to break up with me. What I have yet to find out is whether it’s possible to live with myself after doing what I did to Callum.

I tug him toward the elevators, frazzled, and punch the button five hundred times, turning back to him with a giant, fake, plastic smile.

“Yay!” I wave my fist around. “Reunited. Again. Awesome.”

Just shut up, you idiot. You’re making it worse.

“Rory.” Callum’s voice is laced with worry, his eyebrows pulled together. “Are you drunk? You know I don’t take well to public lewdness.”

“Totally sober.” I let out a nervous laugh.

The elevator doors slide open, and, of course, Mal is standing on the other side, looking devilishly gorgeous—for a homewrecker, that is.

“I was looking for you.” His expression softens until he notices Callum behind me.

His whole face changes again. It’s painful to watch. He looks…disappointed. Not that he has any right to be.

“Malachy,” Callum greets him from behind me, stepping into the elevator. I step in as well, swiping the electronic card over the screen and pushing the button for Callum’s floor.

“Shiny Boyfriend,” Mal answers, his voice dripping ice.

“How’s the writing going?” Callum asks.

I jump into the conversation before Mal gets the chance to offend Callum.

“Well, Richards is flying back to Ireland, so Mal can see to his arrival. You and I can stay here.”

I just want to save face. Truth is, in approximately ten minutes, I am going to deliver some harsh truths to Callum, after which neither of us will have the ability to stomach my existence.

Tonight is New Year’s Eve, and the party Ashton was planning with Mal back in Ireland has been canceled. It would have been a great opportunity to take pictures, but clearing the air with Cal is of higher importance.

“That’s a wonderful idea.” Callum smiles down at me, and my heart breaks into a trillion pieces.

You did this. You basked in Mal’s warmth, not even realizing he was burning everything around you.

“It really is,” Mal agrees, shifting toward me. “There’s only one, tiny obstacle standing in the way.”

“Which is?” I narrow my eyes.

“Reality,” he deadpans. “Richards and I have decided to stay here until Monday, too. You know, change of scenery and all. Great way to get the creative juices flowing.” Mal grins down at me wolfishly.

Must.

Not.

Kill.

The.

Gorgeous.

Poet.

My jaw locks so hard it’s about to snap, and it occurs to me that Mal is just crazy enough to tell Callum what happened before I get the chance to. Mal is probably reading my mind, because the way he looks at me says trouble.

“Well, we’ll get out of your way, Malachy. Rory and I certainly have a lot of catching up to do.”

Callum turns to me and drops a kiss on my head, no doubt thinly veiling his sexual intentions.

“No truer statement has been spoken in this elevator.” Mal smirks, looking skyward, shaking his head.

Bastard.Why can’t I like the sane one? Why?

I turn my head to flash Mal a warning look, but he refuses eye contact with me, staring straight ahead.

The elevator dings, and Mal gets out, walking right behind us, even taking Callum’s suitcase and rolling it along the corridor. “Before I forget, there’s been a change of plans,” he says. “Richards is throwing a party tonight in his penthouse after all. Stars are coming from all over Europe. I think Alex Winslow is cutting short his vacation with his wife and kids in the south of France just to say hi. It’s going to be wild, and therefore not a place for a sweet lady like our Rory.”

He knows there’s no chance in hell I’m going to leave the hotel now. This is the stuff Ryner dreams about. The kind of crazy, old-school, rock-star party full of familiar faces, where people swing from chandeliers and write songs in the corner of the room and create plaster molds of penises and drive Rolls Royces into swimming pools.

We stop at Callum’s door. I look up at him and play with my nose hoop. He shakes his head with a smile.

“Let’s stay and go to the party. Who cares where we are, as long as I’m inside you?”

Mal is standing in front of us, watching the entire exchange. I want to throw up. I don’t know why Callum said what he just did, but that makes me feel even worse than I did a second ago.

I rise on my tiptoes, giving Callum a chaste peck on the cheek.

“Let’s get inside,” I whisper brokenly.

I slam the door in Mal’s face, leaving him out. Physically. Figuratively.

Leaving him with the lies.

With the secrets.

With the weight of his affair with married Maeve.

And the guilt of keeping Kath’s death from me.

With our sins.

When I turn from the door to face Callum, I drop the charade.

“We need to talk.”