Reluctantly Charmed Read Online Free Page B

grateful for at least two days, thanked the floor for letting me step on it, the tea for letting me drink it, the door for letting me open it. It was exhausting, and at the end of it there was no check for five million euros (which, when you think about it, is a moderate sum when you potentially could request an infinite amount—an everlasting gobstopper amount). I’d tried to attract the man of my dreams by clearing space for him in my wardrobe and sleeping on one side of the bed, and had been a little bit shocked when he never materialized out of my wardrobe with a bucket of strawberry ice cream and a fistful of rom-com DVDs.
    I knew a bit about fairies—every Irish person does. When Ireland was a rural community, about eighty years ago, most people believed in fairies, in spite of the fact that almost nine out of ten Irish people were Catholic. In fact, it’s probably because Irish people are brought up with the Holy Ghost, the Virgin Mary, apparitions, and moving statues that it’s not such a huge leap for us to give fairies the benefit of the doubt.
    The majority of us still attend Catholic schools. This isn’t necessarily a conscious decision by parents to rear their children with a Bible in hand. It’s more dictated by convenience: Catholic schools are free and there’s at least one in every neighborhood.But it has guaranteed that every generation has grown up with a degree of Catholicism beaten into them. It’s safe to say that we’re “pick and mix” Catholics, though. We believe that the church at its core has a good moral message of love and compassion, but we can’t be bothered with the strict rules it imposes, like abstaining from alcohol on Good Friday (which has become the biggest day of the year for house parties, because the pubs are shut).
    We hang on to some of the Catholic traditions, though, and most of us will say a prayer when it’s necessary: for sickness, lottery tickets, or new babies. And I know I’m not alone in making a discreet sign of the cross every time I pass a church—it’s like giving God a little wink, wink, letting him know I’m still here and hedging my bets in case he’s still there. And so, while most of the fairy stuff has died out, there’s still a lingering interest, because the supernatural is so much a part of our culture.
    I knew about fairies from my granny. When I was small, Granny would regularly take me out to the garden to hunt down the fairies. She’d peer into the thickest, most overgrown part of the garden, the spot where they would have plenty of hiding places. “They love young people,” she’d say, pushing me forward, and I’d look hard, searching for a stripy sock or red jacket with gold buttons, straining my eyes until I was almost blind. But I never saw anything.
    Most of the stories I’d heard about fairies involved large quantities of whiskey. They were stories about fairies playing tricks on farmers, moving gates in fields and stealing cows’ milk. They were superstitious folklore, and they belonged to an older, backward Ireland.
    Nevertheless, on my way to work the next morning I stopped at Tesco’s and bought a plant—something yellow. I slid a saucer underneath it on my desk and positioned it as far away from thedeath rays of my computer as I could. And I whistled to it. Job done , I thought happily. Now I just had to publish the letter and first Step somehow.
    After a small amount of consideration, I posted them online. I say that nonchalantly with a flick of my hair and a cool exhale of a cigarette, as if I just randomly threw the words toward a computer and nestled back into a cloud of cushions. It didn’t happen like that at all; it was much more contrived.
    Matthew and I were in AlJo’s when he had the eureka moment. I wonder now if I led that conversation, steered it, but I’ve never been a great manipulator, so I doubt it. I’m an indecisive follower, the type of person who orders the same tuna, tomato, and lettuce