Never.

I understood the finality of death then and took my newfound knowledge to heart, closing off a little of myself, in an effort to prevent such terrible hurt from ever happening to me again.

Foolish, foolish girl.

****

My mum has always loved to cook. She still does, and just like that very first night when Neil joined our family for dinner, she embraced him as a son whenever he was on leave from the army, with huge home-cooked dinners. It was a given that he would come to see us, but now when Mum cooked in her kitchen, a hi-ball glass of gin and tonic stood at the ready to see her through. I cannot fault my mother. She was still a good mum and devoted to my brother and me with all her heart, she just wasn’t as “present” or aware of my activities following the tragedy, as she normally would have been.

I had the open road of freedom dumped in my lap at a time when I needed censure.

As a confused and grieving teenager, I embraced the opportunity. Hell, I grabbed onto it with everything I had and then some.

By the summer I was seventeen, I had experienced just about everything you wouldn’t want your teenage daughter doing. Yes, that was me. Parties, alcohol, smoking…boys. I sampled just about everything, and came out of my experience a little older, somewhat wiser, and a lot insecure about myself, and with no idea about what I wanted for my life. Well, I knew one thing I wanted.

Neil.

I still wanted him.

And Neil had been right about one thing.

The boys were all over me as I matured. I think he would have wished I was more selective in who I allowed to be “all over” me. Actually, I knew he wished I were more selective. I noticed the hard looks from him whenever he was home on leave, evaluating my boyfriend of the moment, his dark eyes ever watchful. The fact that he paid any attention to me at all was both wonderful and the bane of my existence. He was taken, you see. Neil had a girlfriend that just wouldn’t let her claws out of him.

He would never look at me as a woman while she was wrapped around his cock. That was what I believed anyway.

I had run through a slew of guys since he first went off to war, while Neil had stuck with Cora and been her loyal man. Why, I do not know. I couldn’t stand her and knew she messed around with others blatantly behind his back whenever he was deployed. I often wondered how he couldn’t see right through her. Or if he did see, and didn’t care. I figured his mates had been telling him what she was doing when he wasn’t around. Ian had to know and should be telling him, I reasoned. Was Neil with Cora just for the sex? Ugh. I hated to think about them together, and at the same time I tried to forget about him. Forget that he would never belong to me. Forget that our time could never come. Forget about ever having the man I loved all for myself.

The following summer after I finished school, was when we crossed over into a new and strange territory together. The “ringing” of our proverbial bell came to pass, as it were. The spark that started a flame, that started a blaze, that started a forest fire, which would leave burns and scorch marks in its wake? This became part of our landscape.

Neil came home on a leave from the army that summer. When I was still eighteen, and he was twenty-five. That was the time when it finally happened for us…

3

I saw Neil in the pub when I went in after classes one evening.

Despite my destructive choices, I’d somehow managed to escape without too many bumps and bruises along the way. I don’t know how I never got arrested, or pregnant, or worse, but I was very, very grateful for my good fortune. Or mostly, I realized my random luck for the miracle it truly was.

Somehow I’d finally gotten my act together enough to figure out what I hoped would be my “calling” in life. It appeared I had been blessed with a knack for languages. And my studies in French and Italian were helping me to figure out what I’d like to do with my skill. I’d applied to go abroad as an au pair, working my way across Europe, with families who needed care for their young children, while I honed my studies in the local language. First on my list was Italy, then France, and maybe if things worked out, eventually I’d get to work in Spain and Germany too. I desperately wanted away from home and to be on my own. So this was my naïve plan to make that happen.

Neil had been on a leave for nearly three weeks when he showed up at the pub alone one night, looking like a beautiful golden god in his jeans, black T-shirt and black Doc’s. Simply clothed, but perfectly gorgeous in his skin, miles of soldier-hardened muscles filling out the clothes as elegantly as a male model would. Emphasis on the “male.” Neil was all male strength and power, and commanded respect just by how he moved in a room, military service notwithstanding. The size of him didn’t hurt others’ impressions either. He was a large man, tall and muscular where it counted, yet he was noted by all—male and female—both for his physical presence and his strong character. Watching him converse with acquaintances who wanted to catch up and express their admiration for his service in the army, I saw easily how people held him in great esteem and respect. In contrast, his young life had been so very different—so devoid of anything resembling the praise he was receiving from the citizens in the pub—that I was happy for him. It was right and proper that everyone noticed Neil McManus, because he very much deserved it.

The subtle confidence in his manner, the purposeful movements as he talked to people, the sound of his voice, all made me insane with wanting to be close to him, to put my hands on him. I craved the right to be able to touch him and have it be welcomed. I would have sold my soul to the devil to see him looking at me with something other than big-brother-is-only-here-to-keep-you-from-harm, little girl.

I had been drinking for an hour at least when he pulled up beside me and ordered a beer. The troubles with my boyfriend of the moment, Denny, had put me in a foul mood. He’d called me earlier, begging me to come down to the pub and meet him so he could “make it up to me.” Whatever that meant, since we were so finished. Yeah, finding Denny shagging some blonde tart in the alley behind the pub, had pretty much put the death knell in our relationship, and I knew I’d never trust him again.

I don’t even know what I was thinking by going there to meet him anyway.

Denny was all kinds of trouble and he’d scratched that itch in me to be a rebel, I suppose. He was a young man with a dad who had a bit of brass. Enough to keep him flush with money and a flashy motorbike, and all things superficial that didn’t really matter at all.