Escaping to Ireland

Liam

The jack-off from the party was getting on my last nerves.

My mother standing next to me as if Vinessa was trash on the curb was getting on my last nerve.

The tie around my neck choking me was getting on my last nerve.

But none of that mattered; as soon as I saw Vinessa swaying and then down, she went. I caught her head right before it could hit the ground. My mother, who had been smirking, started calling for any doctors. The tool named Benny crouched down and started snapping his fingers in her face.

"Man, she's out," he said, snapping some more before I could push his arm away from her. "Used to happen all the time at school..." he was mumbling.

"Vinessa," I said, cradling her to me. Her breathing was slow. Marge was outside with the first group of people that had come out with the commotion.

She bent down next to me. "Vinessa. Can someone get me some water? Or an ice cube." A guy stepped up holding a liquor cup, and Marge ran an ice cube across Vinessa's forehead. It felt too long until Vinessa's eyes opened. 

We moved her to a sitting position, a shiver ran up her back, and I took my suit jacket off to drape over her. She turned, looking up at me. "I would really like to go home now," she said, her voice sounding far away. She looked around at all the guests who had come outside to watch the woman who had fainted.

My mother was standing next to us as I helped Vinessa up, she brushed my hand away at first, but I helped her stand.

As we passed by my mother, Vinessa stopped and looked at her. "I brought a bouquet of flowers for you. Liam put them in a vase in the kitchen." She said, straightening her shoulders and walking away from my mother without any assistance from me.  

She didn't speak a word as the valet brought my vehicle around for me.We were halfway to her house, and when she spoke. "That was an interesting night."

"And how you are saying that? I am thinking interesting as in horribly good interesting."

She cracked a smile. She looked pale, and I wanted to take her to the doctor. "Could we take you to that Benny's dad to be checked out?"

She shook her head. "It wouldn't help. Fainting has always been part of my life story. I just haven't experienced it for a while. That's how Marge knew what to do. When I was younger, it was worse."

"That has happened before?" I asked her, shocked by this.

She shrugged. She had removed her high heels and brought her knees to her chest; she looked so small sitting there looking out the window. She still looked elegant, with the dashboard lights bouncing off of her. "They call it an irregular heartbeat. Or at least that's what all the doctors could come up with."

"But you ran over ten miles that second day you were here."

She wrapped her arms around her tighter, my suit jacket getting rumpled up in the process. "Exercise, primarily running, helps. I haven't had a spell for quite some time. My mom used to call them spells when I was younger. She would tell me I was just special and that there was too much magic in me wanting to get out. Of course, when I was older, I figured out that magic wasn't coursing through me; I learned what helped and what didn't help."

"Surprise visits from ex-boyfriends don't help, I'm guessing," I murmured, thinking out loud.

"Benny?" she looked over at me, surprised.

"Did you not date him?" I asked her and her eyes fell to her hands, and I knew the answer was yes.

"He shouldn't have been happy to see me... But that's Benny for you, I think you could stab him, and he would ask you to do it again."

"And why would he not be happy to see you? He looked as if he saw his first love standing in front of him."

She rolled her eyes at me. "I was his first love, probably. I was also the first girl to break his heart. As he would tell you, I pulled an Irish Exit on him, I dashed out on him to America without as much as a goodbye. As you can tell, he has gotten over that." I mumbled.

"And the fainting was because of him?" I was too curious and wanted to know more about these spells.

"No." She looked out the window and didn't say anything else.

I pulled up to the cottage, she started talking when I reached for my handle.

"I thought, or my mom implied that she had known about the cancer for a while. As in, my dad left her because of cancer. But Benny tonight said it had come on suddenly. He thought she had 3 months to live, and she lived a whole year. I have held onto so much hate for my dad because I thought he knew. I thought he was a coward that walked out on his dying wife."

"And you are mad at her because your dad is dead?" I asked her, remembering she had told me both of her parents had died when we were on the plane.

She looked over at me, her eyes filling with tears... "Liam, my dad isn't dead."

Tears slipped down her face, and I was nervous she would faint right there on me; I didn't know what could trigger her to head straight down. She sat there twirling her thumbs as I waited for her to explain to me what she meant by the fact that her dad was, in fact, not dead. She suggested that day on the plane that her dad was dead to her, but she didn't know that the stranger she had been talking to would become a frequent constant in her life. She had given up on her dad because she believed that her hero since she was a little girl was a horrible human being. As she told me the story, the picture of how Vinessa turned out to be the escape artist of relationships started to make sense.

"Can I ask you something?" I asked her after she had finished telling me about her dad not being dead. "How many boyfriends did you have in secondary school?"   

"One."

"Benny?"

"You know he was cooler back in high school; all the girls swooned over him." Vinessa hadn't become the serial dater until after she thought her dad had left her mother behind to die. "I don't know what to do."

"With what?" I asked her; at some point, her small hand had ended up in mine.

"My dad. He's reached out, and every time I would just ignore him." I would never want the wrath of Vinessa; apparently, instead of getting mad and yelling at the person, she would just shut down and leave you outside trying to look in the window. I would want her to scream and get mad at me; I wouldn't want her to lock me out completely.

"Where is he now?"

She shrugged. "I haven't heard from him in a year or so. Granted, I have moved back to Ireland for half of it. And I have done a terrible job keeping in contact with Susan."

"Come on now. You did get a pretty good one-liner in on my mother."

She threw her hands in her face. "Why would I do that?"

"Why does it matter since you were trying to get away? You were trying to sabotage the night, and your own spell came to your rescue..."

She let go of my hand, her emerald eyes looking mine in the face. "Liam, I am a mess. I have more daddy issues than I ever knew, and I'm a selfish person who thinks about herself. You and I need to stay strictly business from here on out."

I shook my head, letting her think that I agreed with her.

But there was no way I was letting Vinessa do an Irish exit on me because even though I didn't want to admit it, it would destroy me.