Long Time Coming

A group of guys stood around one table, too cool to sit, as they drank from their beer bottles and pint glasses and as I squeezed past a roar of laughter rose up from their group, drowning out the karaoke wailer, and one exclaimed in a far more musical Irish accent, "Feck off! I wouldn’t go near—oh shit, sorry love, am I in your way?"

"No, it’s all right. I was just trying to get to the bar."

"Hell, never let me stand between my two favorite things."

I raised my eyebrows.

"Women and alcohol of course." He looked me up and down, discreetly, but definitely looked.

In the split second before I moved on I took in his dark eyes over which arched thick eyebrows, the barely-there moustache along his top lip, the smudge of goatee below the bottom one, his lightly-stubbled chin and jaw. A simple cross on a leather band hung in the V of his chest left exposed by the neckline of his white shirt, the cuffs of which he’d rolled up his forearms almost to his elbows. I had to tear my attention away, remind myself I was here to order a drink and wait for Marie. Not to eye up the local talent, although obviously not that local given his accent.

Still, it would have been an impossible task to not look over my shoulder as I walked away, fighting my way through the thickening crowd.

He caught me and winked.