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Pop Pop loved secrets, and he winked. “Oh yeah. Our boy’s up to something.”
Colm grinned wickedly. “You think so?”
Of course, Pop Pop, the astute man, had been around the night of karaoke. The night the light went on, so Colm suspected his grandfather already had a guess about what was coming. “Confession is good for the soul, Colm. Let’s have it.”
“You think I have something to confess?” he teased.
“Jesus. We don’t have all day. The happy hour crowd is going to descend soon, Son. While I know the lawyer in you likes to plead the fifth—” Dad joked.
Colm grinned. “Neither confirm nor deny, Dad.”
“Yeah. You made my life a living hell with that motto when you were a teenager. But I think you’ll feel better if you just come out with it. Who is she?”
Colm laughed. “Kelli.”
“Kelli who?” Dad asked, proving to Colm just how unlikely his feelings for the girl he’d known since he was five were.
Colm rolled his eyes. “Kelli,” he stressed.
“Paddy’s Kelli?” It made sense that Dad considered Kelli Padraig’s. The two of them had always been thick as thieves, while he and Kelli had solely existed in a barely tolerant of each other realm for most of their lives. Even so…he was getting damn tired of hearing her referred to as his brother’s.
“Yeah.”
Dad rubbed his chin, not bothering to conceal his surprise. “Huh. Well how ’bout that? Gotta admit, I didn’t see that one coming.”
Pop Pop clapped his hands together. “I can’t tell you how happy this makes me, lad. That girl is the bee’s knees.”
Colm took a sip of the Guinness his father had just set down in front of him. “Yeah. She is.” Then he looked at his dad. “And it took me by surprise too.”
“When did this start up?” Dad asked.
“Halloween.”
“Ahhhh.” His father nodded. “And now I understand your gratefulness for blackouts. I’ll have to tell your mom. She’s been curious about it since Thanksgiving.”
“Yeah. It’s been a pretty awesome November. It’s just…” Colm was happier than he’d been in a very long time, but even so, he was aware of the ax poised just over his head.
He needed advice, and he figured these two men were the perfect ones to give it to him. They’d both fought for and won the hearts of their true loves.
“You and Mom were friends before you fell in love, right?” Colm asked his dad.
Dad nodded. “Yeah. She was married to that abusive asshole, James, when she first started coming to the pub every Wednesday. We talked about everything under the sun. Then she got divorced and we fell in love, got married.”
“You’re forgetting she left for a year, Tris,” Pop Pop added.
“I like to purposely forget that part, Pop. Killed me when she was gone. But I understand why she did it. She needed time to figure out how to stand on her own two feet.”
“So you were in love with her before she left,” Colm clarified.
“I’m Collins through and through, Colm. Which means I fell fast and hard and forever…way before she left. But you know all this. Why the questions?”
Pop Pop stared him down. “For a man who considers love a curse, your interest seems odd. Unless…”
“Unless?”
Pop Pop didn’t push. Instead, he said, “I think it’s time for you to explain the it’s just part of your previous comment. What’s going on, lad?”
“Kelli has set something in motion as far as her future is concerned. Something she planned to do alone. Which means the timing on starting a relationship is…not great.”
