Love & Luck(2)

The tour guide pointed her umbrella at me. “Did you really just fall down that big hill?”

“Looks like it,” I said brightly, the thing I actually wanted to say brimming under the surface. No. I’m just taking a nap in a manure-coated dress. I shifted my eyes to Ian. He appeared to be playing dead. Convenient.

“You’re sure you’re okay?”

This time I injected my voice with a heavy dose of now please go away. “I’m sure.”

It worked. The guide scowled at me for a moment and then lifted her umbrella, making clucking noises to the group, who begrudgingly shuffled forward like a giant, single-brained centipede. At least that was done with.

“You could have helped me out with the tour group,” I called to Ian’s motionless form.

He didn’t respond. Typical. These days, unless he was cajoling me to come clean to our parents about what had happened this summer, he barely looked at me. Not that I could blame him. I could barely look at me, and I was the one who’d messed up in the first place.

A raindrop speckled down on me. Then another. Really? Now? I shot a reproachful look at the sky and pulled my elbow in next to my face, cradling my head in my arm as I assessed my options. Apart from seeking shelter in one of the souvenir shops built into the hills like hobbit holes, my only other choice was to hike back up to the wedding party, which included my mother, whose rage was already sweeping the countryside. There was absolutely no way I was going to put myself in the line of fire before I had to.

I listened to the waves smash violently against the cliffs, the wind carrying a few snippets of voices over the top of the hill like the butterfly confetti we’d all thrown a few minutes earlier:

Did you see that?

What happened?

Are they okay?

“I’m not okay!” I yelled, the wind swallowing up my words. I hadn’t been okay for exactly one week and three days, which was when Cubby Jones—the boy I’d been sneaking out with all summer, the boy I had been in love with for what amounted to my entire teen life—had decided to crush my heart into a fine powder and then sprinkle it out over the entire football team. Ian’s football team. No wonder he couldn’t stand to look at me.

So no. I was most definitely not okay. And I wasn’t going to be okay for a very, very long time.

Maybe ever.





The Wild Atlantic Way


Me again, buttercup. Here to give you an extraordinarily important tip as you enter the planning phase of your journey. Read carefully, because this is one of the few hard-and-fast rules you will find in this entire book. You listening? Here goes. As a first-time visitor to Ireland, do not, under any circumstances, begin your trip in the capital city of Dublin.

I know that sounds harsh. I know there’s a killer deal to Dublin on that travel website you’ve been circling like a vulture all week, but hear me out. There are a great many reasons to heed my advice, the main one being this:

Dublin is seductive as hell.

I know what you’re going to do next, sugar. You’re going to argue with me that there isn’t anything particularly seductive about hell, to which I would counter that it’s an excellent place to meet interesting people, and those fiery lakes? Perfect for soaking away stress.

But let’s not get sidetracked.

Bottom line, Dublin is a vacuum cleaner and you are one half of your favorite pair of dangly earrings—the one you’ve been missing since New Year’s. If you get too close to that city, it will suck you up and there will be no hope for unmangled survival. Do I sound like I’m being overly dramatic? Good. Have I used one too many metaphors? Excellent. Because Dublin is dramatic and worthy of metaphor overuse. It’s full of interesting museums, and statues with hilariously inappropriate nicknames, and pubs spewing out some of the best music on earth. Everywhere you go, you’ll see things you want to do and see and taste.

And therein lies the problem.

Many a well-intentioned traveler has shown up in Dublin with plans to spend a casual day or two before turning their attention to the rest of Ireland. And many a well-intentioned traveler has found themselves, a week later, on their ninetieth lap of Temple Bar, two leprechaun snow globes and a bag full of overpriced T-shirts the only things they have to show for it.

It’s a tale as old as time.

My firm recommendation (command?) is that you begin in the west, most particularly, the Wild Atlantic Way. Even more particularly, the Burren and the Cliffs of Moher. We’ll get to them next.

HEARTACHE HOMEWORK: Surprise! As we traipse across this wild island of ours, I will be doling out little activities designed to engage you with Ireland and baby-step you out from under that crushing load of heartache you’re packing around. Assignment one? Keep reading. No, really. Keep reading.

—Excerpt from Ireland for the Heartbroken: An Unconventional Guide to the Emerald Isle, third edition





“YOU WERE BRAWLING. DURING THE ceremony.” Whenever my mom was upset, her voice lowered three octaves and she pointed out things that everyone already knew.

I pulled my gaze away from the thousand shades of green rushing past my window, inhaling to keep myself calm. My dress was bunched up around me in a muddy tutu, and my eyes were swollen drum-tight. Not that I had any room to talk: Ian’s eye looked much worse. “Mom, the ceremony was over; we—”