Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between(16)

“May the road rise to meet you…” she’d whispered as she read one of them on that first visit, standing in the front hallway with Aidan, the smells of Mrs. Gallagher’s pot roast drifting in from the kitchen.

“And the wind be always at your back,” he finished, stepping up beside her. “Except when my mother is cooking, in which case you have to hope the wind shifts somewhere else entirely.”

They’d only been together a month or so at that point, and she’d been caught off guard by the feel of the place, so crowded and close, and so different from Aidan, who was clumsy and loud, far too big for a house so cluttered.

Even then, he seemed ready to break free.

Now, as they near the side door, they can hear a swell of voices from inside, and Clare glances at Aidan, but it’s impossible to tell what he’s thinking. Above them, a cluster of light-drunk bugs make pinging noises as they bump up against the glass bulb, and a car rushes past on the quiet street, a few people whooping out the window.

“If you hadn’t put so much pressure on him…” Aidan’s mother is saying from inside, her voice rising in a way Clare has never heard before. There’s a clatter of something metal being set down hard, and then footsteps moving across the kitchen, which is just on the other side of the door.

“And you don’t care that he lied to us?” his dad shouts back. Clare looks at Aidan with alarm, but his eyes are fixed on the straw mat at their feet, the words CEAD MILE FAILTE stamped across it: A HUNDRED THOUSAND WELCOMES in Gaelic.

Usually, that’s the way it feels here. His parents might be a little intense, but they’re also generally friendly and polite. They have high expectations for their kids, and their house rules are a lot stricter than at Clare’s (whose parents are so trusting that she’s sometimes relieved she doesn’t have a sibling, on the off chance the kid wouldn’t have turned out to be as responsible as she is). But the Gallaghers have always been more than welcoming, offering drinks and snacks, making room at the table, asking about her classes whenever Clare comes over—which isn’t very often, since Aidan usually insists they go to her house.

“Your parents play music and make tacos and tell jokes and watch shows other than the news,” Aidan explained when she asked why they didn’t go to his place more often. They’d been dating about six months at that point—which felt like a lifetime to Clare—yet she’d only been to his house a handful of times. “Besides,” he’d continued, “your parents actually like you. And me.”

“Your parents like you,” Clare had said uneasily, but Aidan only shook his head.

“Do you know what my dad does? He trades in futures.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“It’s a stock thing. I don’t really know, either. But it’s kind of ironic, right? All he cares about is my future. He doesn’t care about who I am now. All he wants for me is Harvard and grad school and a big job with a suit and tie.”

“Maybe that just means he cares enough to—”

“No,” Aidan said, cutting her off. “All it means is that he’s used to betting big. But he doesn’t realize I’m a bad bet.”

“You don’t know—”

“Yeah,” he said, “I do. Trust me, I know. I don’t want any of that stuff. I wish he’d just realize I’m a lost cause already and move on to Riley. She actually wants to go to Harvard. That pretty much makes her the automatic favorite in the Gallagher household.”

“Come on,” Clare said. “You know he loves you both.”

“I don’t know about that. He definitely likes the idea of me. And he likes my potential. But I don’t think he actually likes me all that much.”

Clare wasn’t sure what to say to that. “What about your mom?”

“Well, she works in an antiques shop,” he said. “So if we’re sticking with the whole futures analogy, that probably means she liked me better when I was little.”

“You were probably a lot less trouble then.”

He flashed her a grin. “I’ve always been trouble, baby.”

Clare couldn’t help laughing. “You know, if you spent some more time over there, maybe they’d get to know the actual, present-tense you a little better.”

But Aidan just smiled. “I think I’d rather spend more time here with the actual, present-tense you.”

Now, as they stand listening at the door, Clare glances down at the words on the mat again, feeling like they must be at least a few thousand welcomes short at the moment.

“That’s not the point,” Mrs. Gallagher is saying from inside, and to Clare’s surprise, Mr. Gallagher roars back at her: “Of course it’s the point!”

Aidan leans back from the door, lifting his eyes to meet Clare’s. “Still feeling breezy?” he asks with a grim smile, and then, before she can ask what they’re talking about, before she can figure out what’s going on, he turns the knob and pushes open the door.

As soon as he does, his parents both fall abruptly silent, whirling to face them. Mr. Gallagher—an even taller, thicker version of his son—is red-faced, his hands balled into fists. And beside him, Mrs. Gallagher—small and slight and as freckled as her kids—stares at them with glassy eyes.