In the Unlikely Event by L.J. Shen

Present

Rory

Mal conceded to two more days in Greece, but hell if he wasn’t Bitter Betty about it. We’re making the best of it by staying in bed all day, catching up on more sex, more seafood, and more of the sun on our balcony.

We talk about the songs he wrote about me (“How could you not know?” “How was I supposed to? You told me you were never going to sell them. Besides, listening to a hit song and assuming it’s about me? How bigheaded do you think I am?” “Well, your head is a little disproportionally large, but I’ve heard all movie stars are like that, so I suppose you’re in good company.”), listen to music, and use every napkin we get with the room service to sign more contracts between us.

In the unlikely event that we have a fight…we promise not to walk out on each other.

In the unlikely event that we have three boys and no girls…we promise not to have everything in the house blue and watch footie all weekend.

In the unlikely event Mal moves to New York…I promise not to allow him to wear tweed jackets and become the cliché tortured artist.

All those things seem important, but they’re still hanging in the air like stars, unreachable and far away. We don’t talk about what counts. About his secrets. About the mysterious calls he takes every few hours in the hallway.

We don’t talk about the fact that I don’t want to move to Ireland, because my life is in America, and he doesn’t want to move to America, because his heart is in Tolka.

We don’t talk about Kathleen.

Or Father Doherty.

We don’t talk about my nightmare.

At some point, Mal slips to the hallway to take another phone call, and I pick up my phone to text Callum and ask him how he is.

After I’m done with the message, I slide into my unopened text messages to face the Summer music. It’s more like a scream, if I get the vibe right, and what I see makes me want to throw up.

Summer: Please answer.

Summer: I guess he told you.

Summer: I NEVER meant to sleep with him, Rory. You have to believe me.

Summer: And I knew he loved you so much. Please, please forgive me.

Summer: Omg, stop! You were going to break up with him, anyway. You told me so a million times. In my mind, you weren’t even, like, fully together. It was always Mal you wanted. Pick up.

My mouth is slack when Mal returns to the room, looking around.

“Shall we pack up?” he asks with his fists balled at his waist. I force myself to look up and ignore the way my heart shatters like windows.

Boom, boom, boom.

“Three more days.” I muster a weak smile, playing dumb again.

That’s what Ashton said. Three more days. And he actually sent for Mal to come work with him today for an hour, to justify our stay here. I joined Mal to take pictures, and we broke the news about our wedding to Ashton, who was elated. But then again, he was also very, very high. I’ve a suspicion he would have been just as excited if I told him I’d bought a new keychain of the Temple of Hephaestus at the local market.

Yup. Ashton looked higher than an airplane. I remind myself yet again to tell Ryner he needs to send Ashton to rehab after this project is over. It’s obvious things have gotten way out of control.

“I need to go back,” Mal repeats his usual mantra.

“You do? Awesome. I’ll meet you there in three days.”

I read Summer’s last messages again and again and again. I’m tired of being kept in the dark. Mal stares at me with wild, white anger that I haven’t seen on him before. Heat rolls off of his body in waves that crash at my feet.

“Fine,” he spits.

“Fine.”

He grabs his suitcase, which is already packed and zipped, and blazes to the door. I’m still in bed when he stops, sighs, and comes back, looking wasted and empty. It’s like those ten steps away from me drained him completely.

“Please,” he says quietly.

I know what he is asking.

He is asking me not to make it any harder for him. To come without question.

I think about Callum sleeping with Summer.

About letting Mal do unholy things to me while I was still with Cal.

About cheating and being cheated on. I never thought either of those things would happen to me.

But I also know they happened for a reason.

They say once a cheater, always a cheater.

But I think sometimes things do not appear broken, but they are, and through the crack, bad things slip in.

I’m screwing up my something whole because Mal is in a desperate situation. I’m starting to see I’m not being fair to him.

“Mal,” I breathe.

He slowly looks up. I see bad things have already slipped into his broken interior.

“Have you ever been in love?” I ask.

A huge smile breaks on his face. It is true and big and real, and it can keep me burning forever. I know as long as I see this smile every day, I will never be cold.

“Funny you should ask. Yes, yes, I have been. I still am. It started eight years ago, in the most unlikely event, and it has no expiration date.”

I stand and walk over to him. I cup his stubbled cheek.

He shakes his head. “Just trust me, Rory, when I say we need to go—not because I think you should give up on something for me, not because you owe me anything. But because I’m only half-alive when I’m not in Tolka, and you deserve the full experience, not just part of me.”

His mouth meets mine, but he is not kissing me. Just tracing his lips along mine as he speaks to me.

“I love you, Princess Aurora Belle Jenkins Doherty of New Jersey, you little heart slayer.”

“I love you, King Malachy Doherty of Tolka, my bigger-than-average-but-not-uncomfortably-so soul crusher. Now, let’s go say goodbye to Ashton before we leave.”

The first thing to tip me off that something’s wrong is the smell. It smells like urine and rotten meat. I push the door open while Mal loiters at the door, texting.

Brandy and the rest of Ashton’s crew are nowhere in sight, probably downstairs drinking at the bar, and I tiptoe my way toward the master bedroom, where he probably is.

Bingo.

I find Ashton asleep, with the robe open—fully naked, of course—taking a nap with a pool of piss all around him. I swear to God, I’m going to blow up this entire project and have him thrown into rehab right here and right now, no matter how much money Ryner is going to lose. I walk over and shake his shoulder gently.

“Wake up. You need to get into the shower right now and pull yourself together.”

I look around and find traces of crushed pills and cocaine on his nightstand. Mumbling “screw it,” I gather all of them and walk over to the bathroom to flush them down the toilet.

I come back into the room and do the unthinkable. I grab Ashton’s cellphone from his nightstand, place it on the floor, and smash it with my foot. That way, he won’t be able to score anything in the near future.

Not that he’ll get the chance. This is rock bottom, as far as I’m concerned. He is coming back to Ireland with us, and I’m locking him inside Mal’s house until this thing is finished. He is going to record this album sober and experiencing withdrawals.

“Ashton!” I shake his shoulder more aggressively now. “Wake up.”

Nothing.

Mal comes into the bedroom, tucking his phone into his back pocket.

“Why does it smell like the wanker pissed all over the room, including the ceiling and neighboring countries?”

“Because he did.” I turn to him, rolling my eyes. “He won’t wake up. Can you get me a bottle of cold water from the mini bar, so I can pour it on his face?”

Mal frowns and approaches the bed. He ignores Ashton’s nakedness, and runs his hand under Ashton’s nose. His face turns ashen.

“Darlin’, do me a favor and wait outside, okay?”

“What? Why?”

“Because.” My husband turns to me, his purple eyes full of misery. “He’s dead.”

The ambulance is here within two minutes. The police arrive shortly after. I don’t know how they find out, but all the major gossip websites send local journalists to cover the story, and Ryner, who is going through a mental breakdown with a side-dish of a heart attack an ocean away and lands himself in the hospital, commands us to go back to Tolka, not talk to anyone, and stay there until further notice.

After a brief interview with the police, we are released and driven back to the hotel. We pack our things, still in shock, and leave Brandy and the rest of the staff in tears behind us. There is nothing I want to do more than stay and console people and figure out what happened, but I know how badly Mal wants to go back home, and now is not the time to defy Ryner.

On the plane, we stare at nothing and stay quiet.

Mal is the first one to break the silence.

“I feel like shite for treating him the way I did, you know.”

“He really liked you.” I swallow.

I kissed the guy this week. His mouth was hot and alive, his heart beating against mine. Hell, I talked to him just a few hours ago, and he was funny and sweet and easygoing—not a care in his madman’s world. I don’t know why I’m so deeply devastated by the loss of his life, but I just want to crawl into myself and cry.

“I hate that we could have prevented it,” I mumble.

“We couldn’t.”

“He was high all the time. We let it happen.”

“You obviously haven’t met an addict before. There was nothing you or I could have done to prevent him from using. This is not on you, Rory.” He kisses my shoulder.

I feel my eyes coating with tears again. “Then why am I so sad?”

“Because you’re a good human. Because essentially, he was one, too.”

We don’t talk about the project, about the album, about the absurdity of us reuniting to work on something that will never materialize. Now that the project is officially dead—along with its star—something fundamental has snapped and shifted in the world we created together. We no longer have ground on which to operate. I don’t have a deadline in Ireland.

I tap my phone where it rests on my knee, pushing away Summer’s nonstop unanswered calls and Mom’s book-long messages begging me to come back home before something terrible happens.

“You’re crying.” Mal squeezes my shoulder.

I realize I am.

I shake my head. “I’m sorry. I’ve just never dealt with death up close before. My grandparents were dead before I hit three, and even though Glen died when I was a teenager, I didn’t know him and never witnessed it. It sounds ridiculous. I’m almost twenty-seven, yet up until now, death seemed like this vague, abstract idea. It was there, but not really. Now I feel it everywhere.”

Mal takes my hand in his and kisses it.

“It is,” he agrees.

“You probably miss Kathleen all the time,” I say.

“I do,” he admits, pausing to think about it. “But then I also think, when you lose someone when they’re young and in their prime, it reminds you how fragile life truly is. It reminds you that you were not put on this Earth to work. You weren’t put on this Earth to do the dishes or pay your taxes on time or, I don’t know, count your weekly alcohol units or goddamn calories. We’re not here to win awards or make money. What flashes through your mind in that fraction of a moment, when you realize this is it for you, that you’re about to die, is the kiss you stole from your first crush under the old oak tree. The cartwheels on the beach on a perfectly sunny day with your brothers. The first time your niece said your name, and you knew you were a goner—you were going to give her every single thing she asked for, including but not limited to your limbs. Losing someone when they’re young is like surviving a fatal disease. Life gifts you a second chance of not fecking it up. It can either dim you or make you shine brighter. It’s a great reminder that what we have is rare and fleeting and not to be carelessly wasted. You want to honor Richards’ legacy? Live.”

“That’s why you didn’t want to make it big.” I sniff. “You always wanted the family life. Your little corner in the world.”

And he almost got it, too, with Kath. But then she died. A part of me wants to go back to Ireland and start making babies with Mal right away. I’ve never admitted to anyone what crossed my mind when I got back home from Ireland after my first trip there.

How a part of me—and not a small one—was regretful that I took that morning-after pill. Because that would have been a great excuse to drop everything and go be with him. I’d have done what my mother hadn’t. I’d have tried to make it work.

Mal rubs his thumb across my cheek, frowning.

“Now you get it, Princess.”

The next couple days are a blur.

Mal and I have long, emotional, grueling sex. We talk for hours, wrapped around each other. I cry a lot, and he listens—a lot. Mal makes elaborate plans to tell his family about our marriage, and I do the same with my mother.

In reality, however, I don’t pick up the phone, and he doesn’t arrange any conversations with his family. He visits them every day, but never allows them to pop into the cabin. I’d say he avoids having them meet me like the plague, but even the plague gets the royal treatment compared to the way he handles his family when I’m around.

One morning, I hear whispers rising from the front door while I’m still in bed.

It’s Mal—clipped, asshole, this-is-not-the-man-I-married Mal.

“…poor timing. I’ll ring you in a bit.”

“When exactly is a bit?” asks an old woman’s voice, brittle and wary.

“Eternity and beyond, Mother.”

“That’s what it feels like, since she came along.”

A hushed, heated reply comes from the other side of the door. They’re fighting.

“No. Absolutely not,” Mal rumbles. “I’ve got this under control. Just go.”

Sometimes Mal disappears. When he does, I spend my time arguing with Ryner on the phone instead of facing the Summer and Mom music.

“Just send me the goddamn material. I’m throwing a special tribute for him, okay? Oh, and in case it escaped you, you work for me!” he screamed at me one day shortly after he was discharged from the hospital.

“He hasn’t even been put to rest,” I noted. “Which begs the question—is it a tribute to the late Ashton Richards you’re working on, or a tribute to your pocket and record label? Seems to me, you’re milking the best out of this horrific situation.”

“I just had a heart attack.” He sulked. As if this, in itself, was a reason to grant all his wishes.

“True, and I don’t want you to have a second one, which is why I’m asking you to let it go. Don’t pay me for the project. Let Ashton rest in peace.”

I’m not going to let Ryner capitalize on his death. All he cares about is selling a few posters and releasing half-finished songs to earn a few bucks.

“Welcome to unemployment, sweetheart. You’ve really done it this time,” Ryner then shouted into my ear.

“Thanks for the warm greeting. I’ll be sure to make the most of it.” I hung up.

I caught Ashton Richards in private moments, while he was suffering from a horrific addiction that led to his death. I don’t see why anyone should witness it. He was obviously desperately chasing happiness, but never quite reaching it.

Mal doesn’t say Ashton’s death wrecked him, but then he doesn’t talk about it much—just listens to me when I do—and he is adamant about not going to the funeral in the States.

Though that could also be because he has a secret lover/family/life here that he keeps disappearing off to. I say this completely lightheartedly, but of course, there’s a void in my stomach that opens an inch every time I wake up and his side of the bed is cold.

Every day I think to myself, This will be the day he opens up to me about the situation.

Every day I am wrong.

Then, a week after we’re back in Ireland, Mal announces he’s ready to go busking again. He needs to unclutter his mind, he says.

“You can tag along. Take pictures of Dublin.”

“I think I’m good.” I give him the thumbs-up.

I finally have a plan. I managed to track down Father Doherty’s new address in an old-school phone book—the kind of fat, yellow thing grandparents usually use to stop doors or as a makeshift coaster. Father Doherty lives bang in the middle of the village, and it’s time to pay him a visit, have him shed some light on my situation.

Mal, of course, can see through me. We haven’t spent an entire month together the whole time we’ve known each other, yet he can somehow read me better than anyone else.

“You sure?” He furrows his brows.

I nod. “Positive.”

“Hmm.”

“What?”

“Nothing has been positive about you these last days, so I find your choice of words somewhat alarming.”

“It’s been a rough week.” I saunter over to him, linking my arms around his shoulders. “One wedding and an upcoming funeral. I just want some me-time. Maybe I’ll finally call my mother back and catch up with her.”

Mal’s face twists at the mention of my mother, but he nods and kisses my forehead. I don’t know why he acts like he has an open beef with Debbie Jenkins, but if he’s flinching every time I mention her out of solidarity, he’s doing a fine job being empathetic.

“Want to talk tonight?” He skims his lips along my temple.

“About what?” My heart speeds up with hope.

“About everything.”

“Will you finally tell me what’s going on?”

He bends his head down, closing his eyes. “Yes,” he croaks. “God, I don’t want to, but yes.”

I walk Mal to the door, kiss him goodbye again, and wave him off, the Stepford wife that I am not. As soon as I see his car racing down the graveled path, I slip into my Toms, grab my army jacket, and run down to the village on foot.

The weather is crisp and chilly, but no longer freezing, and I’m high on adrenaline from knowing how close I am to the truth. I can feel it at my fingertips, tingling, waiting for me to grab it.

This time, I’m going to corner Father Doherty until he relents. He must. A man who serves God for a living can’t lie, can he?

Besides, I have the perfect thing to lure him into telling me the truth.

It’s simple, really.

My mother is holding out on me.

Father Doherty is holding out on me.

They’re keeping the same secret, obviously.

If Doherty thinks I already know something I don’t, he’ll open up.

My calves burn, and my breath rattles somewhere between my chest and throat. I am running out of oxygen, but I’m not slowing down. This is what I’ve been waiting for. Not just Mal, but also the truth.

The truth about Callum.

The truth about my father.

About my mother.

The story of me.

I slice through the streets of Tolka, passing the newsagents, the pubs, the quaint inns, the spilled flowerpots, and Gaelic-graffitied brick walls of the alleyways—the beautiful, pastoral lie covering the rotten secrets I am about to unveil. And I don’t stop until I’m at the door of the address I found.

I clutch the little note to my chest, the paper so thin and inky my jacket and fingers are stained, and manage a few knocks on the door before my legs give in and I collapse on the stoop.

The door swings open, and I straighten up, clearing my throat.

“Hi, is Father D…”

I stop dead when I see the person in front of me. Because that person? It’s not the old man with the bushy eyebrows.

It’s the person Mal never told me about.

Purple eyes like Mal’s.

And features so eerily identical to mine.

Kathleen’s features.