When Love Comes to Town by Tom Lennon Page A

after,” Gary added, again rubbing his hands together.
    Neil hesitated.
    “C’mon, you can’t say you’re studying.” Gary grabbed hold of Neil’s arm and dragged him toward the door.
    “I’m wrecked,” Neil protested.
    “We’re all wrecked,” Gary replied.
    “There’s room for Becky as well, if she wants to come,” Trish added.
    Neil thought quickly. “No, see, the thing is, we said we’d meet some friends of hers.”
    “Ah, we’re not good enough for him anymore,” Gary joked, relinquishing his grip on Neil’s arm. But Neil could see his pal looked slightly peeved. Give him a taste of how I felt for so long , Neil thought, keeping his fake grin cemented onto his face.
    Trish looked at her watch. “C’mon, Gary, we better hurry if we’re going.”
    “Well, tell your new friends we were asking for them,” Gary said as a parting shot.
    “Sorry, your names are?” Neil shouted after them when they reached the gate. Gary held his middle finger up in the air.
    Neil closed the door and dashed upstairs for a shower. It was time to head to Becky’s.
    As always, they went upstairs to Becky’s cluttered bedroom. Neil lay across her bed on his side, propping his head up with his elbow and letting his feet dangle over the edge. She continued to pack her rucksack while he gave her a detailed account of his exploits the previous night. There was a slight hint of I-told-you-so in her nods as he informed her that the crowd in the pub, for the most part, was exactly like the crowd you’d find in any city-center pub. She told him not to worry about Sugar Daddy, insisting that if he was that mad about him, he was hardly going to jeopardize his chances by saying anything out of place.
    “So how did your own night go?” he asked eventually, remembering Becky’s date with Brian.
    She turned and beamed at him. “Great. I followed your advice and treated him just like he was a friend. No heavy stuff at all.”
    Neil had warned Becky not to behave the way Yvonne Lawlor had behaved with him, telling her that it would scare any bloke away.
    “He’s really upset that I’m going,” she added in delight.
    “Course he is.”
    “All I have to do now is forget about him,” she sighed.
    Neil smiled. He sat up straight when Becky’s mother came into the bedroom carrying an assortment of Becky’s clothes. They exchanged a friendly greeting. But Neil always felt awkward with her. Like his own mother, she didn’t understand his relationship with her daughter.
    After her mother left the room, Becky surprised him. “A couple of the slags in my class know I’m having an affair,” she told him.
    Neil didn’t know what to say.
    “We were spotted by Tara what’s-her-face and a friend of hers, and as luck would have it, her friend just happened to live on the same road as Brian,” she muttered, rolling her eyes up in resignation.
    But the arrival of two of Becky’s friends prevented Neil from saying anything. He grinned in embarrassment as the two girls started to discuss their sex lives in front of him. Even Becky looked slightly embarrassed. A couple of veiled, giggly references were made to the size of various bloke’s sex organs. Blokes that he knew. It crossed his mind that maybe Becky had told her friends that he was gay and that was why they were treating him like one of the girls. Then he remembered that the conversation had been equally crazy on the other occasions that he had met them. When the pair of them started to discuss the art of giving blow jobs, he began to feel uncomfortable, made up some feeble excuse, and left the house.
    The afternoon sun glared down on Booterstown Avenue. Neil started to wish he had gone to Brittas Bay with the others. He reached the church, checked that no one was looking, then ducked inside. Silence. The church was empty. He shivered slightly in the coolness. Goose pimples rose on his bare arms. Why was he here? He walked up the center aisle and looked at the tabernacle.