no problem with women drinking pints. He just wasn’t used to it. ‘Grand.’ When he returned with the drinks, he asked, ‘How come you’re so skint?’
‘Sticky income. High rent. The usual.’ She flashed him a grin. Her two front teeth overlapped each other slightly. It gave her an odd pout that he found vulnerable and sexy.
‘But don’t you have cards?’ he asked. ‘While you’re waiting to be paid?’
‘I only use cash. Keeps me accountable.’
What did that even mean? ‘What about the Bank of Mum and Dad?’
She laughed. ‘My dad’s a painter and decorator. My mum is a cook in a nursing home. They’re nearly as skint as I am.’
‘So this job of yours …?’
‘Set designer. For theatre, movies sometimes, TV, you know?’ She paused. ‘It’s what I studied in college, but it’s hard to get a … so I – I guess I intern.’
‘They don’t pay you?’
‘Not always, not for – no, not for when I’m learning. But this is what I want to do with my life, my career. I love it, so I’m okay with taking the financial hit. At least for now. I was meant to have made it by thirty and I’ll be thirty in November, you know …’
He nodded. Oh, he knew.
‘But it’s okay, I have my side-hustle!’ She was upbeat again. ‘I do house-painting and decorating. Except a lot of people don’t trust a woman to do a good job.’
‘That’s crazy!’ He threw a lot of outraged energy into his words. Hey, he could talk the woke talk, when required.
‘But when they beat me down on price, they suddenly find they’re good with a woman doing their decor.’ Another of those crooked grins.
‘So you hang wallpaper and go up ladders and hammer stuff?’
‘Nails? Yep. And I’m handy with a staple-gun. Love me a chainsaw.’
Should he be impressed? Like, he was. But would saying so sound patronizing?
‘My dad’s been doing it for forty years,’ she said. ‘I learnt from the best.’ Then, ‘What about you? You look … You’re someone, aren’t you?’
‘Hey, everyone’s someone.’ That was what he always said. Humble Liam.
‘You’re a bit famous?’
‘Well …’ He let the moment linger so the facts could assemble in her head.
She stared at him with narrowed eyes, until the silence became embarrassing. It shouldn’t hurt. She was more than a decade younger than him, a different generation.
‘I was a professional runner for a long time. Competed mostly in the States. Then I ran an ultra-marathon in the Sahara.’ He really needed her to remember him.
‘Oh, yeaaaah.’ He watched as the memories dropped into place. ‘You gave all your sponsorship cash to the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre. You’re that guy, right? Wow. Hey, I’m sorry. For not recognizing you straight away.’
She was so sweet. The anxiety that had kept his chest in a chokehold for the longest time loosened.
‘That was such a cool thing,’ she said. ‘Three years ago?’
‘Five.’ It was actually seven, but he needed to hold on to it, to keep him relevant.
‘And you still run?’
‘My knees blew out. The Sahara was my last big run. I went for broke, tried to make it count.’
‘And you did! Raising all the money for such a good cause! But it must have hurt, your body stopping you doing what you love?’
‘Mm.’ Everything had been easy for him until then. He’d trained hard, met the right sponsors, enjoyed moderate success. ‘In the early days, everything just got better and better. Then it sort of … plateaued, and it all started to fall away. I stopped winning, a sponsor dropped me, then another, until I was left with nothing. Being part of a slow ending is so fucking … painful.’ It was a well-rehearsed speech. ‘You know, it would have been easier if someone had just come in and said, “That’s it, Liam. This is as good as it gets. You can stop right now or you can live through the next three and a half years of ever-decreasing returns and destroy your soul in the process.”’
‘But we don’t get those choices, right? Things end,’ she said. ‘It always hurts. And now? You have a new passion?’
‘I cycle. It’s an obsession, almost. I’m part of a club. Last summer I cycled to Istanbul.’
‘Class! And how do you, like, fund yourself? Did you have cash left from running?’
‘Long gone. To be honest, there was never that much in the first place. No, I – I, ah, around the time I stopped winning races, I got married. She, Paige, has a –