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We dressed in the tightest distressed jeans possible. My ass had grown a couple of inches and filled out the jeans while straining the zipper until I had to lie flat on the bed to get them up around my full hips. “Now that’s done.” I could stand now I had to walk in them.
“How do I look?” I asked holding my breath and turning to profile as Ashlee was putting on a second coat of pink lip gloss. She turned and smiled at me.
“You look hot. That ass is sure to get men drooling.” I rolled my eyes.
“What is it about women’s butts that make men stare?” I questioned not waiting for an answer. “No don’t tell me. Some men are ass men and some like breasts. Do these walking sex machines think of anything but that?”
“Not much else,” Ashlee said with a grin, “but there is one other thing.”
“I know,” I said, “the pussy.” We said out loud and then we broke into a laugh, and we caught ourselves and put our hands over our mouths because we were in the home of two elderly sisters and one of their husbands.
“You look great,” I said.
“Not as good as you,” Ashlee said. “You’re going to have all the men looking at you because you have that brown skin and you look different.”
“Don’t start that. You’re beginning to doubt yourself. That’s why I’m still single. I don’t have time to worry about whether men will like me or not. I have to complete this last course at the university and I’m out in the world all alone. At least you have a family you can borrow money from when you’re not borrowing mine.”
Ashlee was a pretty girl. She wore her blond hair short and to her shoulders. Most of the times it was straight but even her hair couldn’t handle this foggy rainy weather.
I threw on a leather jacket over my tee shirt while I thought about my job prospects and how long it would take to get one.
Ashlee had on her jeans, except the jacket wasn’t leather. She wore a blue jean jacket. I was still trying to tame my hair when she was ready to go.
We had rented a car at the local garage in Cork before we came to this little village. Ashlee had the privilege of driving the car. I knew I would kill us both if I got under the wheel snaking my way through narrow streets that didn’t have boundaries.
I had to tell her several times, “Slow down or we won’t get to that pub. They will find us on the side of this road if you can call it that.” I was relieved when we finally saw lights and cruised into the town and straight ahead was a cheerful looking pub with Christmas lights on in July.
We parked and stepped out of the car hesitant to get out. “I don’t know if I want to go in there,” Ashlee said standing looking nervous near her door.
“You had better come with me because I’m going in and you’re bloody well coming with me.”
“I never heard you use those words before,” Ashlee said. She knew I was serious.
I shrugged and said, “When in Rome... would you prefer me to say, “Get your fucking ass in there and shut the fuck up. Doesn’t it sound better the way these English people talk?”
“They are Irish and not English.”
“Whatever. I’m an American and you know we don’t know the difference and get your ass in gear because we’re going to have a great night whether you want to or not and I don’t want to hear you crying about Danny. I didn’t come all this way to stay in a cottage with you and entertain old people. It’s enough they look at me as if I’m in a circus.”
“That’s because they don’t see too many black people.”
“Everybody sees black people. They’re on the television.”
“They don’t have a television.”
“But they do and they’re watching at me like I just landed from Mars,” I said pointing at the group of young men and women standing outside the bar talking.
“Oh them. They’re just curious. They don’t get a chance to see a black woman up close and one with an afro,” Ashlee said.
“Just as I thought. We could have gone anywhere and I follow you to Ireland where there are no black people and I like an animal in the zoo. But I don’t give a fuck. It’s my last day and I’m not going to ruin it because you don’t want to face Danny and his wife.”
I walked around to Ashlee’s side of the car and took her hand. She looked at me. Her eyes wide with fright. “Do you want them to think that we’re a couple?” She snatched her hand from mine and continued walking in slow steps ahead of me. I knew that would get to her.
“Good. Now all we have to do is make it through that group of drunken men and we’re good.” As we walked a collection of six men surrounded us. Just looking at us. We smiled at them and they smiled back.
Instead of cat calling like you get in the states, one asked me, “Can I buy you a drink?” I glanced at him and shot him a large smile.
“Yes, but not now.” He swayed with a large dark beer in his hand.
“Can I escort you in?” The other asked Ashlee.
“We’re looking for Danny,” Ashlee said.
“Oh Danny. You’re the one from the states. He told us about you.” She put her head down. I wondered if he said that Ashlee gave him the best blowjob of his life. Ashlee was always bragging about how she knew how to get a man off in a second and then have him fuck her longer. And the way he was looking at her, Danny must have told him not thinking that he would see Ashlee again.
“Yes, you can escort me in,” Ashlee said as she took his arm. I followed the two inside the bar and then I looked around. The place was like an old world pub with dark wood and chairs and tables and a few booths in the rear of the bar.
When we entered, all eyes were on me because I was alone and because I was the only black girl in the place with body-hugging jeans, a leather jacket, and my tight afro curls pulled up on top of my head.
They didn’t know what to think of me I gathered from the look on the men’s faces. The women were easy to read. They resented our presences not because I was black and from the US and not because Ashlee was white and from the US, but because we were young women who had the eyes of their men.
I saw a man raise his hand and made a gesture to Ashlee’s date to come to the rear and bring us.
He sat in the booth alone with a pint of dark beer in front of him. It only took a few minutes for Ashlee to get over Danny and move on. She was holding the man’s hand and never bothered to ask him his name. I guess when you’re thinking of only sex and getting laid there is no use to ask names. They probably won’t see each other again if one of them don’t do something stupid like fly three thousand miles to have sex.
She had a way of moving on to the next man which confounded me.
On one hand she would travel over three thousand miles and spend good money to get to Ireland to see a man, and then get very comfortable with the first man that said hello to her. In a way I admired that because I was just the opposite.
I didn’t cozy up to men that easy and that fast.
As I came close my heart stopped and my pulse increased. This was a man that I would fly six thousand miles to have him inside of me. Green eyes, dark reddish blond hair, a rugged looking face with a square jaw. He wore a white tee shirt with the name of the bar O’Shea in green and gold lettering on the front.
He glanced up at me with a wide smile. With all the smoke swirling around I thought he was a smoker but looking at those teeth that was impossible. His teeth even and white gleaming in the dim light.
My eyes fell to his muscular arms adorned with tattoos as he held out his hand for me to sit. He was at the end of the booth but he asked me to sit on his right. I scooted in and sat at the end but forgot that Ashlee and what’s his name needed to sit too.
I glanced at him with his hand still extended, wanting me to sit near him. I moved over thinking the booth was larger than I thought, it wasn’t as Ashlee piled in next to me.
Sitting so close to him I couldn’t breathe from because of his warm throbbing body next to mine.
“My name is Liam,” his voice strong and polite. He looked to me. I was in awe of him. What a hunk? I expected him to have a heavy accent but he didn’t.
“I’m Tasha.” I held out my hand and he took it and pulled me closer to him. I was almost in his lap, and that was a great place to be, but I like to know a man before I get that personal with him.
“And I’m Francis,” Ashlee’s new man declared.
“My name is Ashlee,” she said introducing herself to only Francis. Her eyes never ventured anywhere but in his face.
Liam turned to me, “Are you here for the show? It doesn’t start until eleven.”
“No. We didn’t know that there would be a show.” I looked at Ashlee who had begun kissing Francis the minute she sat down after the introduction.
“It’s usually for the tourist. You are tourist,” Liam said.
“Yes we are don’t we look it?” He gave me a closed smile. Then the barmaid came over after Liam raised his hand.
“What will you have?” Liam asked looking at me and not at the waitress.
“I’m not a big drinker,” I said to him. He touched my hand.
“But you have to drink something. Have you ever had one of these dark beers?”
“I don’t think so, but I’ll try anything once,” I said trying to pretend I was willing to try anything once. He looked at Francis and Ashlee.
“I’ll let them decide when they come up for air,” Liam said. In a matter of minutes the bartender brought over the drinks. He placed them on the table and looked over at Ashlee.
“Ashlee? Is that you?”
Ashlee pulled away from Francis and wiped the back of her hand across her mouth and looked up and her eyes grew wide.
“Danny.”
“Ashlee, for fuck sake. What the bloody hell are you doing here?” Danny said with a confused angry and frightened look on his face.