Page 7 of Irish Legacy

“Of all the money that e’er I had, I have spent it in good company.”

Quinn didn’t move. Her breathing stopped. The wood of the stool dug hard beneath her thighs, her fingers curling tight around the cold glass in front of her.

It was just a woman standing in the shadow of a stone fireplace, shutting her eyes against the room and letting a voice roll out of her chest that sounded like it had been sitting there waiting for half a century. The low notes cracked slightly at the edges.

The sound shook the floorboards, settling straight into the tight ache in Quinn’s chest.

By the third line, something old and buried shifted in Quinn’s head. A dry, baking heat. Sunlight reflecting off terracotta tiles on a Sunday afternoon back in Ojai, long before the callbacks and the publicists and the suffocating noise. The scent of pine shavings hit her before the image even cleared. Her grandfather sitting on the back patio with a block of coarse sandpaper in his rough hand, hair dusted gray, eyes squinting against the glare as he worked a curve into a piece of scrap timber.

He’d never sung the words. He’d just hummed the melody over and over, pacing it to the steady rasp of paper against wood, keeping time until the sun went down behind the hills. Quinn had sat on the cool cement step watching his hands, six years old, never thinking to ask what the tune was called, assuming it was just something he’d made up out of the sun and the dust.

It wasn’t his at all. He’d carried it out of this damp little valley in 1954, tucked safe inside his skull, and kept it warm in the California heat for forty years.

Trish leaned her head back slightly as she moved toward the final verse, her throat exposed in the golden glow of the firelight. The heavy curls shifted over her shoulder, uncovering the sharp, clean line of her jaw. Her chest rose on a deep, steady pull of air, filling the silent space before she let the last lines fall.

The final note hung in the rafters long after she closed her mouth.

The pub erupted. Cheers and stamping feet rattled the floor. “More, more!”

Trish waved a hand, dismissing the noise entirely. She practically fled the hearth, weaving through the clapping patrons until she reached their low table. She dropped onto the empty stool and wrapped her hand around her waiting pint, taking a long, punishing swallow.

“You should sing more,” Emma told her. “You’ve an amazing voice.”

“You really do,” Quinn said.

Trish lowered her glass. A faint pink dusted her cheekbones. She shifted her weight on the stool, staring hard at the wet ring her glass left on the wood, entirely unable to meet anyone’s eye.

The pub’s volume swelled back to a steady, overlapping roar as people turned back to their drinks.

Quinn adjusted her posture on the stool. The seat was too low. She shifted her weight, and as she moved her denim-clad knee brushed the fabric of Trish’s pants under the table. Just a fleeting brush of denim against linen, nothing deliberate, the kind of accidental contact that happened a dozen times a night in crowded rooms.

Trish’s head snapped up. She looked straight at Quinn.

A flare of awareness broke through those dark eyes, a sudden sharpening of attention, and for a fraction of a second Trish’s gaze flicked down to Quinn’s mouth. The drop was an unmistakable reflex, the exact movement Quinn had cataloged through years of being watched, being wanted.

Then Trish looked away, her hand lifting her pint again, as if the last five seconds hadn’t happened at all.

Quinn let her eyes drift shut for a second as the next voice rose, unaccompanied again, filling the warm, peat-scented air of the pub. This one had a slower, heavier pull to it, the kind of traditional lament that made her think of rain on slate roofs and old men staring into pints. She didn’t know the words. Didn’t need to. The melody wrapped around the tight mass of exhaustion still lodged behind her ribs and pressed.

She was drunk. Not falling-down, not yet, but the Coronas had stacked up easily, each one sliding down smoother than the last. Four? Five? The numbers blurred somewhere after Natalie had bought the second round. Her limbs went heavy. Her thoughts softened at the edges, jet lag finally surrendering to the alcohol. Everything in the room carried a faint, pleasant haze.

Trish sat right beside her. Heat radiated off the other woman’s thigh. The heavy chestnut strands of Trish’s hair brushed her own shoulder when she shifted. Quinn kept her gaze fixed on the singer across the room, a middle-aged man with a voice like gravel under tires, but her attention refused to stay there. It kept sliding sideways to the solid presence next to her. The faint scent of soap and something woodsy, maybe the peat fire clinging to her clothes. The way Trish’s fingers rested loose around her pint glass, thumb idly tracing the condensation.

A hard thud of adrenaline hit Quinn’s chest. She told herself it was nothing. Just the drink talking. But the quiet, grounded weight of Trish beside her was the first real thing she had touched in months. Not the polished, expectant women in LA who already had their scripts written. This woman hadn’t glanced at her with recognition once. Hadn’t asked for a selfie or a quote for her Instagram. Trish had simply served her a beer like she was any other traveler passing through.

The thought made Quinn’s stomach pull tight.

She moved her leg slowly. Deliberately. The denim of her jeans brushed Trish’s trousers again, then settled there, pressing their thighs together in a line of steady contact from knee to hip. No accident this time. Quinn went entirely still, waiting for the flinch, the polite shift away.

Trish stayed exactly where she was.

The song rolled into its chorus, and half the room joined in, voices rising in rough harmony that somehow didn’t clash with the solo lead. Everyone knew it but her. The words washed over Quinn without landing, her focus narrowed to the single point where their legs touched. Heat bled through fabric. Trish’s muscle stayed relaxed, accepting the pressure. Quinn wanted to turn her head, to check for that same awareness flickering across Trish’s face, but she kept staring straight ahead, jaw tight.

This close, the lamplight caught the chestnut threads in Trish’s hair, illuminating the faint lines at the corners of her eyes.

The final notes faded. Applause broke out, hands slapping tables, a few whistles. Quinn clapped along, the sound distant in her ears.

A handful of people stood, stretching, gathering coats. Trish pushed back from the table. The sudden rush of cold air against Quinn’s thigh erased the quiet dare of the contact. Her hand flexed on her empty glass.