Gary could kiss her right there and blame it all on that something in a summer’s day. They’d been drinking by the lake: Eamon and Susie, and Gary and Jenny. They usually did their Sunday drinking inside in town, chasing the weekend into early houses and parties where someone says ‘I’ve to work in the morning’ and everyone leaves. But today, with the sun out, they took Gary’s green Corolla out to a quiet spot between the lake and forest, which wasn’t a forest really, just some trees planted there together by the council.

They sat out at noon in a line, Susie beside Eamon, Gary beside Jenny. They uncovered their skin like new ground for the hot sun to shine on.  They drank gold cans from the blue square of a freezer box. The car ticked, its metal doors were open like wings to let the radio play in wrinkles on the still water.

Susie could kiss him right there as they hugged and never go back to work again maybe. The four of them worked nights in a factory making those plastic things for the tops of syringes. They took the job out of school saying ’six months and I’m gone’ but not believing it. They got lost in the nights on the sodium floor. They forgot about the sun, looking out, from the canteen, into the car park marked in lines of streetlights at the frost or rain, or the silence that’s always somehow waiting at the gate.

After all those days without a drop of sunlight on his eyelids, he could kiss her right there for every time he almost did.  Those quiet pockets at the turn of hallways when nobody was watching. He could kiss her right there and take her away to the sea, and she could let him.

They’d been drinking through the afternoon.

‘I’d love to see the sea’, Susie said.

Eamon was rubbing sun cream into her making her white skin whiter.   She sat up and flicked her sunglasses back down onto her nose. There were birds chirp chirping in the green trees. A plane passed over and droned louder than usual with all that blue to sing in. The heat tightened in around their eyes.

‘I haven’t seen the sea in years’.

Eamon opened a can with a Tss. A bit of breeze threw the trees of balance and sprinkled the ground with cool squares of almost shade. Blades of grass frayed at their toes.

‘And what about work?’ Eamon said.

Piles of rocks jutted out from the shore where a small harbour had been cleared. A rusty line of barb marked out some farmer’s right to the squelchy ground.

She could kiss him right there and be new and in love like the young couple who were there that afternoon. They pulled up in the hottest part of the day. They might have been eighteen – dressed up for their first day in the sun – brown cheekbones falling from sunglasses. They looked around like they were looking for somewhere quieter.

‘She’s gorgeous’, Susie said.

‘She is’, Eamon said.

‘Eamon’, she said, then to no one in particular.

‘I wish I was that young’

‘You’re only twenty-two’, Gary said.

He could kiss her right there with Eamon watching from the woods, with just enough light thrown up by the fire for him to see. They’d built the fire earlier near where others’d left circles of charred stone and burnt cans on the grass. They were sitting around the fire as the blue night squeezed the red evening onto wisps of cloud and the trails of planes. They’d started into the spirits when Susie stood up.

‘Let’s go to the sea’ she said.

Eamon snorted through his nose and picked at hairs that’d curled into gold on his chest.

‘I wouldn’t mind’ Gary said.

‘Gary…’ Jenny said.

Susie grabbed Eamon by the wrists and started to pull him saying, joking maybe.

‘C’mon’

His skin was humming with browny red.

‘We can watch the sun come up tomorrow’ she said.

‘Will we fuck’ he said.

He flicked her away so she fell on the grass. No one did anything for a second. A swan skidded to a stop on the lake and unzipped its metal surface. She got back up, pressed blades of grass down with her small, white feet and dusted herself down carefully. She plopped into her chair and picked up a glossy magazine and started to flick the pages with her red painted fingers. The pages ripped where she grabbed them and made a noise like chopping.

‘I’m off for a piss’ Eamon said.

She could have kissed him right there for the night when they were younger when they almost did. It was after a youth disco, standing in the car park of St. Peters square.  Someone’d been stabbed in the neck with a screwdriver, blood spraying on the wall as Sweet Caroline played and everything. Everyone had to wait outside and Susie was shivering and he fancied her from seeing her coming out of the girl’s school, so gave her his jacket. They stood there and almost kissed as lads in hoods threw hollow eyes at the lights from squad cars.

She could have kissed him right there as she heard the sound of sticks breaking that could been a fox but was actually Jenny, dropping the sticks she was carrying as she watched their charcoal impressions come together as Gary pulled his jumper down over Susie’s head. Her lifting her arms up straight: him swiping a stray hair from her lips. And Eamon could see them too from among the smell of leaves. Arms tangling and shining with that sheen that night gives, heads hanging at opposite angles and lake behind them licking at the moonlit stones. They could kiss right there and get into the car and keep speeding west without stopping so fast the gear changes sound like the breaths you’d take when you’re kissing.