A Brighter Palette Page 6

  “None, I suppose.” Annie smiled at Siobhán and squeezed her hand. “Thank you.”

  Siobhán’s smile was bright. “Now, how about we go out for a drink? My treat as well.”

  “That sounds nice,” Annie said.

  “Good. I know just the place, so.”

  Chapter Six

  Annie had never been to the bar Siobhán took her to. But it appeared Siobhán was a regular. The hostess greeted Siobhán with a smile and a kiss on the cheek, and one of the waitresses waved as they crossed to sit by the sleek marble bar. The interior was cozy and elegant, with dim lighting and mellow music.

  “Come here often?” Annie asked, amused. She took a seat on the leather bar stool and hung her purse on the hook near her knee.

  Siobhán shrugged as she settled onto the stool beside Annie. “It’s been a while, actually. I dated a woman who tended bar here.” Annie raised an eyebrow, and Siobhán laughed. “She’s moved out of state. I wouldn’t bring you to a place where an ex currently worked. I think I’ve had my fill of making things awkward when it comes to my exes this evening, thank you.”

  Annie chuckled softly and reassured her. “It’s not a big deal. I run into my exes occasionally. Boston is a big city, but it’s not that big.”

  “I suppose that’s true.”

  “What can I get you, ladies?”

  Annie looked up and met the eye of the bartender. He was young and good looking, with hair almost as dark as Siobhán’s. “Oh, I haven’t even had a chance to look at what you have,” Annie admitted.

  He slid a cocktail menu toward her, smiled, and gave her a little wink. “Whatever the lady wants.”

  Annie refrained from rolling her eyes as she looked down at the menu.

  “Tullamore Dew. Twelve year. Neat,” Siobhán said crisply.

  “A lady who knows her whiskeys.” The bartender sounded impressed.

  “In my family, I woulda been disowned if I didn’t.” Siobhán laid on the accent thickly, and Annie smiled down at her menu. “Do you need another minute, Annie?”

  She looked up. “No. I’ll take a grapefruit basil martini, please.”

  “Coming right up.” The bartender turned away to fix their drinks, and Annie glanced at Siobhán. “That sounds like quite a story there. Would your family really disown you if you didn’t know your whiskeys?”

  “Nah. My uncle owns a pub. He is terribly fond of his whiskeys, but I may have exaggerated a bit.” Siobhán’s nonchalant shrug made Annie laugh. “Anyway, before the bartender came up, we were talking about how small the community is. I was going to ask if you stayed friends with any of your exes.”

  Annie nodded. “With a few. Usually the ones who I was somewhat friends with before we started sleeping together. And never the ones who broke my heart.” She tried to remember the last time she’d seen any of them in person and failed. Well, maybe they were more acquaintances than friends these days.

  Siobhán smiled ruefully. “I changed universities to avoid one of mine. And I had to retake a term’s worth of classes to do it.”

  “Really?”

  “I needed a fresh start,” Siobhán said. When she didn’t elaborate, Annie bit her tongue to keep from asking why. If she wanted to, Siobhán would share it. Annie couldn’t imagine any breakup that ended with uprooting her life at a university was a good one. Besides, they’d clearly stumbled onto a minefield during dinner when the subject of Laura had come up. Annie wasn’t about to risk it again. How many exes did Siobhán have? And how deep were the scars they’d left?

  “Here you go, ladies.” The bartender placed their drinks in front of them. “My name’s Chad if you need anything. And I do mean anything.”

  Siobhán rolled her eyes at Annie, but thankfully, someone called for him at the other end of the bar and he left with a wink.

  She took a sip of her drink and instantly forgave Chad the bartender. A little obnoxious? Yes. But he mixed a mean drink. And Annie could definitely forgive Siobhán for taking her to a place where her ex-girlfriend had worked. Clearly, the drinks were worth it.

  “This cocktail is amazing. I can see why you keep coming here,” Annie admitted.

  “That’s why I brought you here,” Siobhán said. “I rarely order cocktails, but I knew they had a good selection all around.”

  “Do you go out a lot?” Annie asked.

  Siobhán raised an eyebrow at her, and she hastily explained, “Not on dates. I mean, do you check out the nightlife in Boston a lot?” Annie waved her arm to indicate the kind of place they were in. “Bars, restaurants, that sort of thing.”

  “Fairly often. Although, I go to gallery openings and art benefits more. Places where I can network and meet the right people. It’s all part of the job.” She gave Annie a puzzled look. “Why do you ask?”

  “Oh, you just seem to know all the great places in the area, and, uh, your social media made it seem as though you were out a lot,” Annie said with a sheepish look, slightly embarrassed to admit it. “I was, um, stalking you online a little.”

  Siobhán laughed loud enough to draw the attention of people near them at the bar, then leaned in and lowered her voice. “Well, you are very difficult to stalk. You have everything set to private.”

  Annie grinned, relieved.

  “Oh, that reminds me. Shall we take a selfie and plaster it all over social media? It seems to be the thing to do when one is dating someone new.” She retrieved her phone and played with it for a moment.

  Chuckling, Annie agreed. “Sure, why not?”

  Siobhán shifted in her seat and wrapped an arm around Annie’s shoulders, holding the camera up and out so they were both visible on the screen. “Say cheese,” she joked.

  Siobhán took several shots, and when she showed them to Annie, she picked the second one. “That one, definitely.” Her smile looked more natural, and she liked the way Siobhán held her close.

  “That’s my favorite as well.” Siobhán shot her a small smile. “Now, I’ll have to add you on all the social media platforms so I can tag you.”

  “Dating in the twenty-first century is such fun,” Annie joked.

  “Well, it beats being a lesbian in the nineteenth century, I suppose,” Siobhán said with a wry smile as her fingers flew over her screen. Annie’s phone buzzed with notifications, and she quickly accepted Siobhán’s requests.

  “There was always the Boston marriage,” she countered.

  Siobhán frowned. “I’m not familiar with the term.”

  Annie brightened. “Oh, in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, there were some women—usually the suffragette types—who lived together. They had independent income and no children. I don’t know how many of them there actually were, and historians are kind of mixed on how many of them were lesbians, but it sounds like a few were fairly forthright about sharing a bed.”

  “Fascinating.” Siobhán looked up from her phone. “I’d like to learn more about that.”

  “I know Henry James wrote a novel about it because his sister was living with a woman. I read the book in college, but I can’t remember the name off the top of my head. It had something to do with Boston because his sister and her partner lived here. That’s where the term came from. You should read it.”

  “I’d love to! That sounds so interesting!” Siobhán set her phone down on the bar.

  “Really? I’m not boring you to tears with my history and literature talk?” Annie said drily.

  “No, not at all.” Siobhán took a sip of her drink.

  Annie’s phone buzzed in her hand, and she took a peek at the posts Siobhán had tagged her in. The sight made Annie smile. She’d expected Siobhán would seem completely out of her league, but they looked good together. Light and dark. Balanced.

  “Have you ever thought about doing something related to history for a career?”

  Annie shrugged and stashed her phone in her purse again. “The thought has crossed my mind, but it’s really more of a hobby than a career. I don’t wa
nt to teach.”

  “Hmm, well, strike that off the list then.” Siobhán hummed thoughtfully. “You mentioned that you were disillusioned with journalism by the time you got in the field. Why is that? I’ve been meaning to ask you about it.”

  She sighed. “Well, I grew up here in the Boston area and went to Northeastern. They have a great journalism program where you work for a newspaper while you go to school. I worked for a smaller daily newspaper—The Boston Chronicle—and I was so sure I was going to love hunting down the next big story and getting the big scoop, but it turns out, I hated it. I had real life experience by the time I graduated, but I was already disillusioned with the field by the time I had my degree.”

  “How so?”

  “I loved the writing itself, the field just ... wasn’t what I had imagined. For one, journalism isn’t like it used to be. Reporters are being asked to do more work with fewer resources and staff. You’re not just a reporter; you’re a digital storyteller. You have to be able to shoot photos and videos yourself and package them all into a finished project. And there’s this constant pressure to make the news more sensational, more attention-grabbing.” Annie looked down. “I had this idealistic idea of what journalism would be. I think I was naïve.”

  Siobhán made a face. “I would hate that.”

  “I kept hearing horror stories from friends too. One friend worked for a small town newspaper after graduation. He was trying to do good work, but people were hostile toward the paper for shining too much light on the ‘good ole boy’ networks. He was sued by a corrupt building official who was trying to cover his tracks. They settled after six years because the paper didn’t want to pay to go to trial, but it really turned him off on the field, and he quit shortly after.”

  “How horrible.”

  Annie nodded. “Stories like that didn’t exactly fuel my passion for journalism. Plus, I hated the lifestyle. You have to drop everything if there’s a big fire or a crime bust, no matter what time of day. After a few years of working for the Chronicle, I was exhausted, and I dreaded going into work every day.”

  Siobhán smiled sympathetically. “I can see how that would be draining.”

  “It was.” Annie took another sip of her cocktail. “If it’s something I love, I’ll work myself to the bone and make all the necessary sacrifices, but it was very difficult to do that for a career I didn’t even enjoy. If that had been the only thing, I probably would have learned to deal with it, but I’d lost my passion. I didn’t feel like I was contributing anything good to the world. But, it was hard to quit and admit I’d failed.”

  “There’s no shame in admitting when something doesn’t work for you.”

  “Oh, I suppose. But it was humiliating to admit that I didn’t want anything to do with the degree I’d invested so much time and effort into.”

  “How was your family about it?”

  Annie shrugged. “My mother was annoyed and said ‘you’d better not come to us begging for more money.’ My dad just frowned a lot and looked disappointed in me. That was the worst.”

  Siobhán’s frown was sympathetic. “Not very supportive.”

  “No, but they’d paid a good amount of money on tuition and room and board—not to mention a semester abroad in Ireland—so I can’t blame them too much.”

  “Mmm, yes, the American education system is appalling. I don’t know how you stand it.”

  “I think most of us feel like we have no choice,” Annie said drily. She leaned forward. “If you’ve stayed in Boston for this long, you must like it here though. The U.S., I mean.”

  “Oh, I do. I’ve thought about moving back to Ireland, but it’s definitely easier to be a lesbian here in the States. At least in Boston. You have some strange religious groups in various parts of the country, but there’s still less of a stranglehold on the general population than the Catholic Church has in Ireland.”

  “Even now?”

  Siobhán’s smile was bitter. “Abortion is still illegal in The Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, Annie. Women have to travel to England or Wales to have it done. And if they can’t afford that, they have to find a way to self-induce. Or carry it to term and put it up for adoption. I’ve never had to worry about it myself but friends ...” Siobhán shook her head. “It’s barbaric.”

  Annie winced. “That’s wretched.”

  “It is. The history of the way the church treated women in Ireland would make your hair curl,” Siobhán said. She stared thoughtfully down into her glass as she swirled the remaining amber-colored liquor in it before she took another sip.

  “I can imagine.”

  “Ireland’s a beautiful country, but it has an ugly side too. Most places do, I suppose, but it doesn’t make it better.”

  “The U.S. has quite an ugly side too,” Annie agreed. “I wish I’d learned more about that sort of thing in Ireland when I went for the study abroad though,” she admitted. “Unfortunately, I was young and way more interested in having fun.”

  “I wasn’t terribly socially aware when I was at university either,” Siobhán said drily. “I think you can be forgiven.”

  “Can I get you ladies anything else?” Annie glanced away from Siobhán to see Chad staring at them expectantly.

  Annie glanced down at her martini glass. There was only a sip or two left. “Sure, I’ll take another one of these.”

  “Me as well,” Siobhán said, holding up her nearly empty glass.

  “Tullamore Dew again?”

  “Please.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Sorry to bring the mood down tonight,” Siobhán said when he disappeared to get their drinks.

  “I don’t mind,” Annie said, surprised by Siobhán’s apology. “I’m enjoying myself.”

  “If you’re sure.” Siobhán sounded a little doubtful.

  Annie reached out and touched Siobhán’s forearm. “I want to get to know you. That’s not always going to be the light, easy conversations.”

  “True enough.”

  “Besides, I like how passionate you are,” Annie said. “About everything. It’s refreshing.”

  She’d dated too many bland, boring people in her life. People who were more concerned about getting along than having an opinion. Siobhán was a breath of fresh air.

  ***

  An hour and another drink later, Siobhán laid a hand on Annie’s arm. “I don’t know about you, but I’m about ready to head out. I don’t think I can wait any longer to get my hands on you.”

  Annie flushed, the alcohol and Siobhán’s proximity and raw sexuality making her head swim. Siobhán had been relentlessly—if subtly—flirting with her since they got their second drinks. “Me either.”

  Siobhán leaned in and spoke directly in her ear. “I may not even make it to the bedroom. I may spread you out on my couch and feast on your cunt right there.”

  Annie bit back a moan. Apparently, subtlety had gone out the window with Siobhán’s second drink. “Yeah. We definitely need to go now then.”

  Siobhán gave her a knowing little smile. “I’ll get the bill.”

  “I’m going to run to the restroom while you do.”

  “Better not come yet, love.”

  Annie laughed softly, but she felt a thrill run through her anyway. “I wasn’t planning to get myself off here, Siobhán.”

  “Good. That’s my job.”

  Annie stood, her knees a little wobbly, but she wasn’t sure if that was from the drinks or Siobhán’s potent words.

  She made her way unsteadily across the bar to the restroom and made quick work of her business there. Her hands were still slightly damp from the hasty towel drying she’d done when she emerged.

  She was so lost in thought about what would happen with Siobhán as soon as they got back to her place that she almost ran into someone in the hallway.

  “Sorry,” she said with a gasp, looking up to realize it was Chad.

  “No worries. You can mow me down anytime,” he joked.

&
nbsp; Flustered and unsure how to respond, Annie moved to skirt around him, but he blocked her path with his arm. “Hey, hold up for a second. I couldn’t help checking you out earlier.” He smiled, showing his dimples. “You said you didn’t have any plans tonight, so I was wondering if you’d like to go do something. I just got off shift.”

  Annie cleared her throat, annoyed by the interruption. She just wanted to get to Siobhán and go home. “Uhh, well, I’m here on a date already with that gorgeous woman I was sitting next to at the bar,” she pointed out.

  He frowned. “Sorry. You just didn’t seem like—” Annie braced herself for the inevitable “dyke” or “butch” comment. “—you were on a date,” he finished. “I thought maybe you were just good friends. I mean, it’s so hard to tell with women, you know?”

  “I could have stuck my tongue down her throat while we were sitting at the bar,” Annie said, the snarky response slipping out before she could stop herself. “Would that have helped?”

  He smirked at her. “Well, I mean, I wouldn’t mind watching—or more—if you two were into that. She’s pretty hot too.”

  Annie stifled a sigh. And there it was. The inevitable comment about a threesome. She’d had a few in her life and enjoyed them at the time, but she was tired that men always assumed she’d be up for one. And even if Siobhán were attracted to men, Annie couldn’t fathom sharing Siobhán with anyone. “We’re not into that,” she said shortly. “And I’m not into you.”

  He stepped back and ran a hand through his hair. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

  Annie did sigh aloud now. “Can I go now, please?” She brushed past him and saw Siobhán standing nearby. Her expression darkened as Annie approached.

  “What was that about?” Siobhán slid a hand around her waist.

  “Let’s just get out of here. I’ll explain it when we get back to your place.”

  Siobhán frowned but nodded in agreement. She guided Annie out the door, and they walked in silence the few short blocks to Siobhán’s apartment.