Riley O’Brien has spent seven seasons being professionally Irish without ever setting foot in the place. When a inherited pub in County Clare and half a million dollars force her to finally show up — heels, judgmental cat, and carefully curated fake accent included — she discovers the hardest thing about going home is that everyone there already knows you’re not.
Thirty days. One pub. And the very real possibility that the life she’s been laughing at for seven years might be the only one worth keeping.
Feck Off is Coming Soon. Get started by meeting the characters.
Riley O’Brien had always believed the universe operated like a particularly vindictive bartender. It let you run a tab for years on nothing but charm and carefully curated lies, then slammed the whole thing down on the bar the second you thought you were getting away with something. Only this time, it tossed in a fat tip, a set of keys to a pub, and a wink that said, "Good luck, you magnificent fraud."
She sat at her desk — the one wedged into the walk-in closet she’d long ago claimed as a studio — mid-sip of black coffee, strong enough to wake the dead, no foam, no pretentious questions about oat milk, when the phone buzzed with the international code that always made her pause. Beside her on the floor, Tibby — twelve pounds of black cat and bad attitude — didn’t even lift his head.
The 353. Ireland. Of course. The number that never failed to arrive with blarney.
The script on her laptop glowed accusingly: "And don’t get me started on people who think leprechauns are cute. They’re basically tiny, green trolls with bad fashion sense and questionable footwear." She smirked at her own words, the kind of sharp roast that had built her podcast empire. Feck Off: An Irish-ish Podcast was her baby — seven seasons of mocking everything from shamrocks to step dancing, all while waving her O’Brien ancestry like a green flag she didn’t really feel. It was hitting forty thousand downloads per episode and climbing — real numbers, the kind that had brands emailing and agents calling, though not yet the kind that paid for anything more than ambition and excellent shoes.
Morrissey drifted from the speaker beside her mug, his voice low and aching, wrapping around the lyrics like smoke. She loved that song the way some people loved bad decisions — it hurt in exactly the right places. Her playlist was her private chaos: The Smiths bleeding into Sinatra, then plunging into death-metal polka covers of Irish standards — fuel for episodes where she turned her half-hearted heritage into laugh-out-loud content. She set the mug down, popped a square of dark chocolate into her mouth, and let it melt against her tongue while the coffee cooled. Sharp bitterness, smooth sweetness — small protection against whatever the day might throw. Good wine, great champagne, real food she didn’t have to apologize for — that was her religion. Diets were clichés. Holidays were worse.
She answered the call, her over-dyed hair falling over one shoulder as she leaned back in her chair. The acoustic foam on the walls muffled the distant honk of Manhattan traffic below. The city outside her window was alive and indifferent — taxis and ten million people who had somewhere more important to be. It was home, or what passed for it — fast, fake, fabulous in its fraud.
"Ms. O’Brien? Patrick Flannery here, solicitor for the late Maeve O’Flaherty."
"She’s gone?" Riley asked, her voice quieter than she intended. The chocolate turned bitter on her tongue as reality sank in — Maeve, gone. The force of a woman who could roast you with a smile and make you thank her for it. The woman who had sent an XL wool sweater every Christmas despite knowing she hated farm animals and was a size medium at best. Their calls had been rare but memorable — Maeve sipping tea, Riley with merlot, trading stories that always ended with Maeve’s gentle nudge: "Come visit, love. The pub needs fresh blarney."
"Peacefully, last Tuesday. Still telling the postman how to do his job properly. A force, that one."
"She was." She always had been.
Mr. Flannery cleared his throat. Solicitors never rushed — they billed by the pause.
"Riley. She left you something rather specific. Something I can’t send across the ocean in an envelope."
Well that ruled out more sweaters. The commentary feeling shallow even as she made it.
"The Harp and Hound. The family pub in Kilmore, just north of Bunratty." The words arrived one at a time like they knew she needed the warning.
A pub.
The word landed like a cab driver’s rants on a Sunday — loud, unavoidable, and impossible to unhear. A pub. In Ireland. Left to her. Riley O’Brien, who had spent seven seasons making a career out of mocking the very culture that had apparently just handed her the keys to one of its relics.
