Chasing River

“And that’s why Greta keeps telling you to fuck off.” I grab a glass and start pouring. “I’ll go see Ma and Da tomorrow morning, if you’re good with opening. Unless you want to go instead?” While our da can’t tend bar and lift things anymore on account of his bad leg, he still takes care of all the books.

“No bleeding way. Ma’s still on my back about messing things up with Irene.” Rowen’s focus roves the bar as he pours the rich stout with the expertise of a man who’s been doing it since he was fourteen, long before the law said he could. That’s the thing about a pub like Delaney’s.

We run our shit the way we want to run it.

For the most part, anyway. Delaney’s has been a landmark in Dublin for far too long to take too much grief from anyone. Sure, we’re not the oldest. A place down near the Jameson Distillery that’s been pouring pints since 1198 has us beat. But almost two hundred years on this quiet street buys us a good amount of freedom.

The building’s old. Some would say dingy. The exterior is stone and under a mason’s watchful eye. The narrow windows covered by black iron gates cut most daylight out. The inside stinks of hops and smoke still lingers in the red-velvet cushions of the bench seats, six years after smoking was banned from all of Ireland’s establishments.

But the charm is in the history, and this place has plenty of that. We use whiskey barrels for some tables, while others are made from the wood of run-down buildings in the countryside left abandoned during the Great Famine. The stools are worn but stable, and anyone who knows to look would see the names of infamous republican rebels and politicians carved into the underside, all patrons of Delaney’s in their time.

Bronze statues of Michael Collins and Éamon de Valera stand proud. The walls are covered in framed plaques with stories of the many nationalists who fought for a free Ireland, including my father, my grandfather, and ancestors dating back many Delaney generations.

It’s a pub rich in Irish heritage and familiarity, and I’ve always found comfort here.

I’m halfway through pouring the second pint of Smithwick’s when the tap starts spurting air. “Shite. Can you flip a keg for me?”

Rowen’s eyes flicker to my back. The wounds are starting to heal, but they still throb when I strain them too much. “Right. Finish this off for me.”

I take over on the Guinness tap, keeping the glass at a nice 45-degree angle, and Rowen disappears into the back. My eyes wander. At least half the tables are full at any given time here. Mostly with locals, but when tourists get a clue and realize that the city’s best watering hole is actually not in Temple Bar, we welcome them with open arms. It’s near the end of a workday on a Friday, and I know we’re about to get slammed with the after-work crowd.

“Testing . . . Testing . . .” A voice sounds over the stereo system, followed by a hard thumb tap. “It seems me instruments aren’t working well today. Nothing a good, strong pint can’t rectify. Right, River?”

I catch Collin’s weathered smirk and throw him a thumbs-up. He’s been playing his guitar and singing Irish lyrics at Delaney’s since I could barely climb on the bar stools to watch, taking half his payment in beer. He won’t start until he has a full pint sitting next to him.

I turn back to my task, prepared to grant him that wish as soon as I’m done with this other order. Nervous green eyes stare back at me from the other side of the tap.

The moment they capture me, the moment I see that face, I know it’s her.

Fuck.

She found me.

How the hell did she find me?

“Your T-shirt,” she says as if reading my mind, nodding to the fresh Delaney’s shirt I slipped on this morning. The other one was shredded. She clears her throat and adds, in a nervous, soft voice, “I saw someone wearing it and I remembered the stag. I figured I’d come by.”

We occasionally give our staff shirts away to customers. Usually it involves a bet that they can’t drink their pints faster than us. Of course we lose intentionally, giving them more reason to wear the shirt in public. It’s free advertising. I can’t believe something as stupid as a T-shirt led her here. She was completely out of it and yet she noticed that?

Questions are spinning inside my head as I stare at that stunning face, panic rising in my gut. How long are you in Dublin? Were you hurt? Why the hell would you track me down?

What did you tell the gardai?

My eyes instinctively dart to the door. No uniforms from what I can see.

“Um . . .” She frowns, her attention dipping to the tap. I finally notice the Guinness spilling over the rim and pouring into the trough below.

It’s the exact time that Rowen shows up to slam the tap off and stares at me, gob-smacked. “Wise up, River!”

“I’m sorry. I distracted him,” she says. Rowen’s gaze shifts between the two of us, settling on the scab over her bottom lip. It’s bad, but not bad enough for stitches from what I can see. Purple-bruised skin peeks out from the sleeve of her flowery pink blouse. That’s my fault. I hit her hard when I took her down. Not that I had much of a choice.

“Right.” Rowen leaves for the other side of the bar so he doesn’t have to watch me as I dump the entire pint and start over. I can’t serve an imperfect Guinness pour to a customer. But few things piss him off and I know inside that head of his, he’s screaming sacrilege. If there was anything our father taught us to believe in besides an independent Ireland, it’s that wasting beer is downright blasphemous.

I grab another glass and start over, feeling her eyes on me the entire time.

“So . . . River.” She has a soft voice. Her accent is a hundred times more charming than that of the American girls I usually meet. Maybe that’s because they’re usually drunk and yelling by the time I start talking to them.

And now she knows my name. Bloody hell. Won’t take long for them to find me with that, should she share it.

“Yeah.” I set the glass down on the counter to settle while I move on to another one, trying to quell the panic still burning inside. “My mother couldn’t make it to the hospital in time and ended up having me in the backseat of the car, near Castletown River.” I’ve told the story of my unusual name so many times it rolls off my tongue.

“That’s sweet.”

“Right . . . sweet.” I smirk despite everything. “Better than being named Castletown.”

She smiles, pushing back a strand of her long hair—a pretty warm brown, like the cinnamon bark Ma likes to stick in her tea sometimes. I don’t remember it being so long, but then again I don’t remember much except her wild, green eyes—the color of a crisp cucumber’s flesh—and how soft the skin on her legs was, when I slid my hands along them, checking for shrapnel wounds.

She’s more beautiful than I remember.

Beautiful in that wholesome all-American girl way that the movies teach us about. Perfect, symmetrical features, wholesome skin, straight, white teeth. Long, dark lashes that help trap my gaze. I can’t even tell if she’s wearing makeup. She’s definitely not wearing too much.

Of course I’ve met enough American tourists to know that that’s a Hollywood illusion, that they come in all shapes and sizes and degrees of brazenness, just like people around here. This girl, though . . .