Who: Seamus Finnigan and Katie Bundy What: The green-eyed monster rears its ugly head. When: June 1998 Where: Galway Rating: PG-13 (for swearing)
Seamus brought the last of the plates into the kitchen, setting the sponge to scrubbing them, and hurried back into the dining room. Well, as much as he could hurry with his leg. While he no longer needed the cane, he still had a bit of a limp. The healers said that would get better once he strengthened his leg. It wasn’t the first time Katie had come for dinner since his parents had returned from Boston, but he still didn’t like leaving her alone with Mam. The woman had threatened to show baby pictures the last time she’d been over. The ones of Seamus in the paddling pool.
Oh, bugger, he thought, catching sight of the album sitting on the table in front of his mother. Hopefully, she hadn’t shown it to Katie yet. Before he could inquire, Da piped up, “Why don’t you and Katie go for a walk, aye?” Seamus threw a grateful look to his father.
Katie liked Mrs Finnigan. Being around her was the first time she’d really been around a motherly figure since her own mother had died. Sure, there were innumerable aunts on the Bundy side of her family but none of them really approached parenting in the same way that she had seen with her own mother and Mrs Finnigan. That force feed you until you explode spit on a napkin to clean your face kind of mothering. She knew that it embarrassed Seamus but she personally loved seeing it.
She was reaching towards an album of photos when Seamus appeared. Even after all these weeks she was reminded of how grateful she was that he’d survived every time he walked into a room.
“The healer did say that I needed to walk,” Seamus said to ward off his mother’s protests. She opened her mouth and he braced himself, but Da came to the rescue again and put his arm around her and whispered in her ear. To Seamus’s horror, his mother blushed.
“You ready, lass?” he asked Katie. The quicker they got out of here, the better. The stairs took a few moments to negotiate with his leg, but soon they were on the street and he reached for Katie’s hand as they set off. He glanced over. “How far did you get? With the pictures?”
Katie gave him a sly look, “Wouldn’t you like to know?” she teased before relenting, “She didn’t get a chance to open it. We were talking about my upcoming questioning.”
He would’ve breathed a sigh of relief (and made a mental note to hide the photo album before Katie visited again) if she hadn’t then mentioned her questioning. Frowning instead, he squeezed her hand. “Well, they’re gonna have to hear from me, too, aye?”
“As I live and breathe, is that Seamus Finnigan?” a voice shouted from the other side of the street. Seamus looked up to find a familiar dark-haired girl darting out (and nearly getting run over) into the street.
“Bridget,” he managed before he was enveloped in a hug. The other girl hugging Seamus ripped his hand from hers so Katie stepped away before she got trampled. Katie wasn’t exactly the jealous type but she couldn’t help but notice that the girl hugging Seamus was beautiful and she was certainly better endowed than Katie was. She could feel the first stirrings of jealousy and she couldn’t say that she liked it (but then who did).
She gave Seamus and the other girl a little smile, “I take it she’s a friend,” she said to Seamus. Her voice dryer than her Aunt Rose’s scones.
Bridget finally let go of Seamus and stepped back. Sparing a glance at Katie, she laughed. “I suppose you could say that.” Then she turned her attention back to Seamus. “Tell me you’re finally done with that posh school of yours.”
Seamus shrugged. “I’ve got another year. Trying to become a...doctor.” Before Bridget could take the piss, he reached for Katie’s hand again. “Katie, this is Bridget Flaherty. Bridget, this is Katie Bundy.”
Bridget barely acknowledged Katie’s presence with a nod. “A doctor? Well, you always were good with your hands, laddie.”
Katie gave Seamus a look that he was probably coming to recognise as pure trouble before turning to Bridget and widening her eyes, “You don’t say!” she let her voice go high and breathless like everything that Bridget said was a surprise.
Seamus furrowed his brow. Why had Katie’s voice gone all odd? He couldn’t contemplate it too long though. “You never mentioned wanting to be a doctor,” Bridget was saying. “‘Though we didn’t do too much talking, did we?” She paused. “Least not with words,” she added with a laugh and wink. He laughed a bit and shook his head.
Katie raised an eyebrow at the girl, “Not a lot in common then, I take it.”
There was something that rubbed her very much the wrong way about what this girl was insinuating. She wasn’t stupid enough to think that Seamus had never had sex with anyone but the way this Bridget was throwing it in her face made Katie want to gouge her eyes out with a teaspoon.
Someone called Bridget’s name from across the street. She gave whomever it was a ‘Just a minute’ sign without even looking. “I’ve gotta go, Seamus. We should get a drink sometime.” Then she leaned in and pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth and darted back across the street. Once she crossed (again almost getting hit by a car), he waved goodbye.
“What did Mam have to say about you being questioned?” he asked Katie as if they hadn’t been interrupted.
“Really? A girl paws you, basically tells me how great you are in bed and you’re just going to go back to talking about your mum like nothing just happened?” Katie had no idea why she was so angry at Seamus right now she just knew that she would happily smack him silly if he didn’t say the exact right thing to her.
Seamus blinked. And then furrowed his brow, trying to work out exactly what was going on. He ran through what had just happened over the past few minutes. “Are - are you jealous?” It was the only explanation he could come up with.
“Hell yes, I’m jealous!” Katie forgot they were in public and her voice was louder than it should have been. But for Helga’s sake did he have to be so bloody thick?
He was slightly astounded. He’d never heard Katie raise her voice before. “But why?” he asked, brow furrowing even more. “She’s just a girl from around. I haven’t seen her since last summer.”
“Because what she’s been around is you! She just told me that the two of you had sex and apparently a lot of it,” she couldn’t believe that Seamus didn’t hear the same things she did during that exchange. Not to mention the way she’d looked at her like she was some little girl from the schoolyard or something.
This was ridiculous (and slightly flattering, a small part of him thought as he wondered if Katie and Bridget might get into a fight over him. But he wasn’t about to tell her that). “And I just told you that I haven’t seen her - at all -- since last summer,” he said, the volume of his voice going up a bit as well.
“She,” Katie pointed in the direction Bridget had gone, “Was looking at me like I was some little girl who couldn’t know what she shared with you. I’m not a little girl. I’ve gone through too damn much to be looked down on just because I haven’t had sex with you!” she had no idea why but by the end she was near tears. She was angry and jealous and frankly a little embarrassed for seeming so young to that girl.
“She doesn’t mean anything!” he retorted, running a hand through his hair. “We had some laughs last year. That’s all.” Noticing the tears, he growled in frustration. “This is ridiculous. What do you want me to say, Katie? She wasn’t my girlfriend.”
Katie bit her lip, no matter what she said she was going to sound ridiculous, “No, you just had sex with her.”
She wasn’t the kind of romantic girl who thought that her first was going to be with a guy who’d never been with anyone else. It wasn’t practical to think that way. But there was something that galled her about knowing that someone else, especially a girl like Bridget, had been with him before her. She didn’t really even understand why it bothered her so much to know that girl had (literally) had her hands all over her boyfriend. But it did bother her.
“Sweet bloody Merlin, woman!” His head tilted back and he stared at the evening sky for a few moments, scrubbed his hands over his face, and looked back at Katie. “Fine, let’s go. There’s a hotel around the corner. We’ll get a room and have sex. And then maybe you can stop worrying about a girl who doesn’t even matter to me!”
“Don’t be a jackass, Seamus!” Katie’s voice was finally a bit more modulated but still a good deal louder than it should be, “I’m not saying that we need to have sex for Helga’s sake! It’s just really, really hard to be around a girl like that and wonder why on Earth you’re with a girl like me. Yeah, I know, I’m pathetic,” Katie turned away from Seamus and bit her lip harder to keep herself from crying.
Jackass? He wasn’t the one behaving like a jackass. And now she wasn’t even looking at him. “Because I am with you!” he shouted. “If I wanted her to be my girlfriend, don’t you think she would be? Since I’m so amazing in bed and she couldn’t keep her paws off me.” He was only half-sarcastic with that last remark.
“You’re with me now, yeah. But what about when I go on trial? What about when school starts back up and your friends hate me? What then? Girls like Bridget are probably going to sound pretty damned good to you when you’re listening to your friends talk about how I’m partly to blame for the deaths that night. Never mind that I did what I could because I wore that bloody badge nothing else will matter Seamus. How many weeks or months until you decide that I’m too much?” all of this was said in a voice barely above a whisper and Katie was proud of herself because she still hadn’t started crying even though her eyes were burning and her throat was thick with tears.
Seamus was flabbergasted. How in the bloody hell had they gone from talking about Bridget and what he’d done with her to this? Once he found his voice again, he shook his head. “Yeah, I’ll get tired of you and go back to Bridget because she’s easy and has nice tits. Because I’m too stupid and shallow to actually mean it when I say that I want to be with you. It’ll be too difficult and I’ll bail on you.” He shook his head. “Nice to know exactly what you think of me, lass.”
Katie shook her head, “No. That isn’t what I mean. You aren’t the wrong one. I am. Why would you want to deal with every bad thing I bring you? I’m pretty enough but certainly no knockout. I’m smart enough but only because I work at my grades. I’m weak. I joined the IS because I needed to follow the rules and because my family wanted to. I didn’t do what I should have. I’m just going to make your life hard. Why would anyone want to be saddled with me?”
The tears that had been threatening finally spilled over and she swiped at her cheeks. She hated herself so much right now. Seamus was mad at her because she was weak and jealous and she honestly didn’t know why he would bother sticking his neck out for her after everything.
“For fuck’s sake, Katie, stop!” His fists had balled up out of sheer frustration. “When you say shite like that, like being pretty enough or smart enough, you make me seem like a shallow arse. Did you ever think that, I dunno, you let me be myself too? I don’t always have to make a joke or try to make you laugh.” He stared at the ground. “I cried in front of you,” he said quietly. “You think I could trust Bridget with that?”
Katie gave him a genuinely puzzled look, “Why would I want you to pretend to be someone else? I like you the way you are.”
A growl escaped from Seamus’s throat. She was bloody exasperating, she was. “And I like you the way you are! I don’t want anyone else. Just you. And if things are tough, we’ll deal with it. Together.” He sighed. “You remember when you asked me to kiss you? I thought you were talking about some other bloke. And I was jealous. ‘Course it didn’t help that you also told me you didn’t want to be my girlfriend.” He was shook his head; he was getting off topic. “I’m just saying that I know what it’s like to think you’re not good enough.” He scuffed the ground with his boot. “But you are.”
Katie gave him a watery smile and reached out for his hand, “So are you. I don’t want anyone else. And no one else would put up with me like you do. You fit me right, Seamus.”
Finally. She was making sense. “Then stop worrying about other girls, lass,” he said, lacing their fingers together and giving her hand a squeeze.
She squeezed his hand back, “I’ll try but I can’t make any absolute promises,” she told him honestly. She had a feeling that his wouldn’t be the last time they fought on a public street (or behind closed doors) but at least she knew that he was someone she was willing to fight for.
Seamus made a face. That wasn’t exactly the answer he was looking for. If she trusted him, she shouldn’t worry about other girls. On the bright side, she wasn’t shouting at him any more. Tugging her closer, he kissed her. Only to reassure her that he wasn’t interested in any other girl. “We could still go to that hotel, aye?” he teased. “I’ve never spent the night with a girl before. You’d be my first.”
Katie kissed him back and cuddled herself against his his chest, “And I will be. But not tonight. Your mum would kill us both and I’d really like to survive until my trial.”
“Well now that you’ve mentioned my mam and killed the mood,” he said with a shudder, “we might as well walk. I’ll even let you buy me ice cream to make up for everything.”
She gave Seamus a genuine smile as if to say that the ugliness from a few minutes ago was completely out of her mind, “And just what kind of ice cream am I buying you?” she asked swinging their hands a little as they walked
He shrugged. “I dunno. Have to see what they have. It will be a double though. Or maybe a triple.” Yeah, a triple sounded about right, he thought with an emphatic nod.
Katie let go of Seamus’ hand to slip her arm around his waist, “That’s my Seamus, always thinking with his stomach,” she said fondly.