Did Finn really say she was shallow?
Finn definitely said basically that about her friends. And then she said something derogatory about Finn’s friend Ward and Watts Mountain in general, which Finn probably interpreted as a criticism of her parents.
Iris sat up with her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands.
What was wrong with her?
Was she a shallow, horrible person?
Iris tried her best to rewind the conversation and replay it accurately. She tried to discern what had actually been said and what had simply been misinterpreted. It was an impossible task alone. She really needed to talk to Finn
She reached for her phone. It was two in the morning. She’d have to wait.
Iris slumped back onto the bed, sighed loudly, and rolled onto her side.
Chapter Thirty-four
Finn figured that maybe she’d finally drifted off for a little while around five in the morning. Her alarm on her phone chirped at seven, so that she could pack and be ready to check out when Tommy returned for the car.
Since there was no way to draw up an official contract or invoice for shipping the car, they’d agreed that Finn would only pay half up front. Then she’d pay the other half of the fee when Tommy delivered the car in Georgia. It would take a few days for him to get there.
It was weird that she’d only just met Tommy but was now about to trust him with one of her most prized possessions. She had a good gut feeling about him. And she usually trusted her gut. So why was her gut all twisted up about Iris?
Finn was still so angry that she could hardly stomach toast for breakfast. Actually, it was hard to decipher whether she was more angry or hurt. Sometimes those things got all mixed together and one was like gasoline for the flame of the other. Not only that, but her gut was at war with her head. Her gut told her that Iris cared about her. Her gut told her that Iris didn’t mean what Finn thought she’d meant when they’d argued. But her head had a different opinion. Her head remembered all the words and wouldn’t let them go.
It was good that she had so much to coordinate for her return trip. Those tasks gave her head something else to focus on for a while. She wanted to focus on anything but the argument with Iris, because dissecting that was completely exhausting.
By noon she was at the Burbank Airport, waiting at her gate. The ongoing war that her gut was having with her head had ruined any chance of an appetite, so lunch was a bust. She choked down a granola bar and sucked on a bottle of water while she waited for her flight to board. She checked her phone screen about every thirty seconds hoping for some sort of text from Iris, but nothing.
So now for the hard question. Was she really going to get on a plane and leave California without calling Iris? There was no way that Iris could possibly know she was leaving. Iris probably assumed that Finn was at the driving class for the rest of the week, and that they’d talk at some point later in the week. Maybe even meet to talk in person. Only now there was no way an in-person chat was going to happen. Finn had taken care of that.
She was starting to have second thoughts. Had she acted too rashly? A one-way ticket was the ultimate one-sided argument, leaving no room for rebuttal.
The announcement for pre-boarding, for anyone traveling with small children, came over the loudspeaker. Exhausted parents crowded the gate with kids and car seats in tow. And then the announcement for passengers in zone one. Still no message from Iris. Zone two began to board, then zone three.
Fuck.
Finn held her phone in her hand and stared at it. She had to make the call. She knew she’d regret it if she didn’t. Sometimes a decision came down to doing the thing you thought you’d regret least.
She hit the call button and waited. Iris didn’t pick up. Finn decided that was for the best. She listened to the outgoing message. Just the sound of Iris’s voice twisted her stomach into knots and made her chest ache. She focused on sounding confident about her decision to leave, and hoped she could pull it off.
* * *
The phone vibrated on the glass tabletop and Iris jumped. Iris had chosen an outside table, hoping the combination of sunshine and coffee would brighten her mood. She’d been on edge all morning, jittery from lack of sleep and too many tears. She’d stopped for a coffee before showing up at the Warner Bros. lot. Soon she was due to read for the part that Judith had sent via email. This was a terrible day to do any reading. She was a mess and wasn’t sure she could focus well enough to stay in character.
She picked up her phone to see who was calling. Her heart sped up when she saw that it was Finn.
Finally, Finn had called. Iris had literally checked her phone every minute since the previous night hoping that Finn would text or call or something. Now that the phone was ringing she was afraid to answer it. She hesitated for too long and the call went to voice mail. Should she ring Finn? No, she’d listen to the voice mail first and gauge Finn’s mood before calling her back.
She sipped her coffee until the voice mail registered. Iris took a deep breath and then listened.
“Hi, Iris…I don’t really know what to say, or what you want to hear, but I didn’t want to leave without calling.” There was a long pause and lots of noise in the background. “I’m sorry things turned out the way they did.” Another loud noise. Was she at the airport? “My flight is boarding, so I’ve got to go…I guess…I guess that’s it. I don’t know what else to say. Okay, bye.”
Finn was leaving? Nausea threatened to overthrow her stomach. She sank back in her chair. Was that it? They’d had this amazing week, and after one stupid argument Finn was over it? Iris’s brain tried to synthesize all the thoughts spinning through her head. This just didn’t make any sense. The class Finn had planned to take was supposed to last for a week, right? What had happened besides their argument to make Finn change her plan so abruptly and completely?
Iris replayed the voice mail three times, as much to try to glean any hint of what Finn was really thinking as to hear Finn’s voice.
She decided to call Finn back. She had to talk to her and find out what was really going on. The thought of not seeing Finn made her feel sick and a little desperate. This was not at all how she thought things would go.
Finn’s voice mail picked up right away. That probably meant she had already turned her phone off. Iris hung up without leaving a message. She held the phone in both hands, summoned her courage, and hit call again.
“Finn, I got your message.” She took a breath, trying her best to sound calm. “Please call me.”
She couldn’t bring herself to say much more than that for fear her words would be choked off by tears.
“Excuse me.” A man slid into the chair across from her. He was nice looking, probably in his late twenties. He reminded her of her useless lab partner from college. Not dumb, but preferring to use his looks to get others to help him with notes and homework.
“Yes?” The last thing she was in the mood for was small talk from a stranger.
“Can you settle a bet between my friend and me?”
“Probably not.” She wasn’t in the mood for games either.
“Are you the girl from the Doritos commercial?”
“No, sorry.”
He shrugged and returned to the table where he’d left his friend.
How long was that stupid commercial going to haunt her?
She put on her sunglasses, turned toward the street, and tried to focus on finishing her coffee. The two guys eventually left, and an older couple, who looked like tourists, took their table. She heard them talking with an unmistakable southern accent and she almost burst into tears.
Her cell phone buzzed. She sniffed and checked the screen, hoping, by some miracle, that it was Finn. But it wasn’t. She exhaled slowly before she answered.
“Hi, Judith.”
“I’m so glad I caught you before the appointment on the Warners lot.”
“Why, what’s wrong?”
“Oh, nothing’s wrong. In fac
t, I’ve got great news.” Judith paused. “I got the call just now from the series filming in Atlanta. You got the part.”
“What?”
“You got the lead. Congratulations, Iris. This is going to be a great role for you. I can feel it.”
Judith sounded genuinely excited. If Iris weren’t utterly depressed about Finn, she’d be excited too. But she’d already decided she couldn’t take the part even if she got it. Now she had to break the news to Judith. But before she got the chance Judith started talking again.
“Yes, they apologized for taking so long to get back to us. I guess I was wrong about the production delay. I had taken a guess that it had something to do with rights to the book. Turns out they had to find a new director.”
“A new director?”
“Apparently, there were several complaints filed with the production company about Eric Gilet’s conduct on the previous series he directed. The showrunner and the casting director for this new series, both women, refused to work on the project until Eric was off the show.”
Iris was in shock.
“Iris? Are you still there?”
“Um, yes…sorry…I’m still here.”
“It’s surprising, I know. But not that surprising, right?”
“It’s an incredible surprise.” Iris shivered. From nerves or excitement? She wasn’t sure. “Who’s the new director?”
“A woman. I’ll find her name. I had it, but now her name escapes me. I’ll send it to you.”
“Thank you, Judith. Thank you for believing in me.”
“Hey, you deserve this. You’ve earned it.” She could almost hear Judith smile through the phone. “I’ll get back to you with details as soon as I have them. I just couldn’t wait to give you the good news.” The sound of shuffling papers came through the phone. “Oh, and I’ll let them know you won’t make it to the reading today. You’re booked. Okay, bye for now.”
“Good-bye, Judith. And thanks again.”
Iris clicked off.
She got the part. She was going to Atlanta, without knowing where she stood with Finn. Did fate love her or hate her? At this point, it was impossible to know for sure.
Chapter Thirty-five
The flight from Burbank to Houston was miserable. Finn spent the entire time cataloguing all the ways she’d failed. This was failure on an epic scale. This was colossal failure, the kind of failure that people don’t bounce back from. This was the sort of fiasco that would dog her once she got back to Georgia. She’d never escape it. There was no doubt that Ward and her parents had told everyone that she’d gone to California to follow her dream. Only to discover that the dream was a nightmare and she’d turned and run home at the first sign of trouble. This was not the sort of thing her father would end up bragging about at the corner store.
She needed to decide right here and now that none of it mattered.
That would be the only way to survive it. She simply needed to convince herself of two things—that the dream of stunt driving didn’t matter and that Iris didn’t matter.
That last part was going to be the toughest because she knew there was no truth in it. Iris did matter. Finn could hardly think of anything else except the hurt look on Iris’s face when she’d stormed out of the house. That’s all she could see every time she closed her eyes. Sure, Iris had said hurtful things too, but Finn didn’t have to turn tail and run like a coward.
Of course, that’s exactly what she was, an emotional coward. She knew that about herself. If she were an honest person she’d have warned Iris about that up front.
Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe Iris had just been in it for fun and nothing more. Now Finn was second-guessing everything, and it was all becoming a big pile of confusion inside her head.
The layover was short in Houston. She was going to have just enough time to grab a sandwich from one of the airport kiosks and search for her connecting flight. She turned her phone on as she wove through oncoming pedestrian traffic. She almost toppled over someone’s rolling bag who’d come to a stop to read the arrivals and departures screen. When she looked at her phone again she saw that she had a missed call and a message from Iris.
Call me, was the gist of the message.
The very loud Houston airport was not the ideal place to have a conversation that you weren’t sure you were ready to have in the first place. Finn needed a little more time to figure out how she was feeling. Hearing Iris’s voice set off cascading emotions, some of which she had no control over. She had the intense urge to reach through the phone and hold Iris. But she’d made sure that wouldn’t be an option by booking the first flight she could get and leaving. In hindsight, possibly not the most mature decision.
The plane reached its cruising altitude, headed for Atlanta. Finn tried to eat the very dry turkey sandwich she’d nabbed during her sprint though the terminal. In her haste, she’d forgotten to grab condiments. The sandwich was dry and flavorless just like her life was going to be without Iris.
Finn needed to think about other things.
She had other problems besides screwing up things with Iris. She needed a job. She realized that she’d been far too cavalier about the whole stunt driving thing. Even if she’d finished the course and stayed in Southern California, who knows how long it would have taken for her to actually get a paying gig on a movie. She’d have had to find other work in the meantime. It was clear to her now that she hadn’t really thought things through. The ease of living in the cabins, barely paying rent to her parents was a luxury hard to re-create and probably impossible to find in California.
Reflecting back, there were a lot of things she really liked about working for the limo company. Maybe she should consider becoming an Uber driver. In the short-term that would give her cash to figure out what was next. Maybe she’d start her own limousine business. Then she could fire asshole clients, instead of the other way around. She could supplement her monthly income by racing again with Ward. She had options, she just needed to be reminded of what they were.
The point was, she was ready to let go of the stunt driving idea, but not ready to give up on cars. Driving was her passion, and she wasn’t prepared to lose everything in her life that she loved simply because one part of the dream had been foolish.
Hiring out as a driver was an honest living. There was no shame in it.
Finn was in the window seat. As if to endorse her newly hatched plan, a ray of sunlight broke through the clouds and bounced off her tray table. Yeah, this idea had potential. For the first time in almost twenty-four hours, she was a tiny bit hopeful. She still wasn’t sure what to say to Iris, but she had two more hours of flight time to try to figure it out.
* * *
Iris sat down with her laptop as soon as she returned home. An email from Judith contained all the info about the series. She read through the details. Filming started in a couple of days. Probably since the production had been delayed they were anxious to get things moving. So was Iris. Although, unless she could sort things out with Finn she feared everything about the trip to Atlanta would simply be one big cross-country reminder of how screwed up things had gotten.
“Hi, you’re back already?” Maggie dropped her bag on the kitchen island.
Iris looked up from her seat at the dining room table.
“Yeah, I didn’t go to the audition.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s a good thing. I got the lead in that new series.” Iris had expected to be more excited.
“Wait, what? Really? Iris, that’s great!” Maggie hugged her.
“I know, right? I don’t think it’s quite sunk in yet.”
“So, what does that mean, exactly? I mean, you’ve never done a series before. Is all the filming for the show happening in Atlanta?” Maggie paused, her expression shifted from joy to sympathy. “Oh…Atlanta. Have you talked to Finn yet?”
“She left me a voice mail. And I left her a message, but we haven’t actually talked.” Iris sighed and s
at back down. Maggie sat facing her. “Mags, she flew back to Georgia this morning.”
“Whoa…what? Without even talking to you first?”
Iris nodded. She was determined not to cry, again.
“That’s really harsh, and unfair.”
Okay, now she was going to cry.
“Oh, sweetheart, come here.” Maggie scooted closer and put her arms around Iris. “Don’t cry. You two will work it out.”
“Do you think so?”
“I do, Iris. I really do.” Maggie went to the kitchen and returned with a glass of water and the box of tissues from the counter.
She wasn’t so sure Maggie was right.
“Thank you.” Iris pressed a tissue to her eyes for a minute until the tears ebbed. She sniffed. “Listen, I know that when they shot Stranger Things it took six months to do the first season. I could be gone for six months or longer. But I’ll still pay rent. I hope—”
“Hey, you’re my roommate through thick and thin.”
Maggie was the best friend and roommate a person could have.
“Mags, I love you.”
“I love you too.” Maggie quirked an eyebrow. “But not in a gay way.”
“Thank God.”
They both laughed.
Chapter Thirty-six
Trey was surprised to see Finn back so soon, but to his credit, he didn’t pelt her with questions. At least not for the first half-hour of their drive. Finn was starving so they stopped at an all-night diner on the way to Watts Mountain. Finn loved old school diners and now, forever, one of her favorite things would remind her of Iris.
It was nearly ten o’clock by the time she’d gotten her bag and located Trey. It was early enough on the West Coast that she could have called Iris if she’d wanted, but she still had no idea what to say. Maybe by the time she was back at the cabins she’d have something meaningful she could offer to explain her behavior. She was waiting on inspiration or insight to strike. Maybe once she had some food in her system she’d feel better.
Chasing Sunset Page 23