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“Happy New Year, Arlo.”

***

The chill on the tip of Bren’s nose told him they’d been asleep for longer than he thought. His heart hurt with unsaid things as he looked into the snow-laden sky. How could he have told Arlo it was hard to pay attention to some speeding atoms when he was sitting right there next to him—two sets of speeding atoms hurtling through time.

He wasn’t thinking about visa applications or his failure to sign one stupid piece of paper. He couldn’t think about those things. Not tonight.

He eased himself up off the loveseat and wrapped his arms around his lad. A.J. clung to Bren’s neck in his sleepy state. If there was a better use for his new muscles than this, Bren didn’t know it.

They’d made it down the stairs when Arlo stirred against his chest, pulling himself closer.

“Stay with me.”

The words were so soft that Bren barely heard them above the crackle of the feebly flickering embers.

Bren hitched him closer and pressed a kiss against the curve of his sleep-cooled cheek.

“Always.”

37

Shivers cut across Bren’s shoulder blades as a frigid raindrop slid off the collar of his rumpled uniform. It had been spitting since last night, so why hadn’t he thought to bring an umbrella?

He pulled his beanie further down on his forehead and bent against the wind. The cold in Saskatchewan had been miserable, but at least it didn’t soak through your clothes like this—and there wasn’t any Arlo here to warm him up either.

Ireland sucked.

Another shiver ran up his leg as he trudged through a puddle outside Niamh’s. It would have been nice to stop in for something to warm him up on his way home from school but she’d see the look on his face and ask questions.

He shouldn’t have been here, trudging through the piss-cold rain in the middle of January. He shouldn’t have spent the day surrounded by soggy lads reeking of adolescence. Small comfort that he was able to pass the time thinking about how little he actually cared about anything at this point. He’d tried caring and look where that had got him.

Bren kicked a stone and it skittered across the rain-slick ground before bouncing against a car tire and landing in the gutter.

Mam had always told him that there was nothing he could do that would ever make her stop loving him, and he’d always thought that was a two-way street.

Why couldn’t she have just trusted him enough to apply for a full year’s visa from the get-go instead of doing it in six-month blocks? That way, he wouldn’t have cocked up his second-semester application.

“Hey, Bren?”

He turned as a hand fell on his shoulder. He couldn’t have heard that right.

Tadhg stood with his arm extended even after Bren turned, rain beading against the nylon hood over his head.

“Can I talk to you for a sec—”

A fissure erupted on Bren’s hand as the punch connected with Tadhg’s jaw so loud it echoed down Main Street.

Tadhg stumbled back, clutching the spot that Bren was sure he’d bruised his knuckles on. He shook the pain from his fist and was about to pull back to make sure Tadhg’s face was symmetrical tomorrow, just as Neptune’s door jingled open.

“Alright there, lads?” a garda officer asked.

Fucking grand. Now he was going to have to call Mam away from work so she could pick him up from the gardaí station. Why not? Just keep piling the shite on until he drowned in it.

“Just messing around. I accidentally caught his elbow with my face,” Tadhg said, a lump already stretching the skin across the right side of his jaw.

The guard looked at them like he didn’t know whether this warranted the paperwork or not. Bren didn’t have the faintest fuck what Tadhg was up to, but if it would keep Mam from finding out about it, he’d play along.

“Yeah, sorry ’bout that,” Bren said, trying to laugh through the bile that rose in his throat.