"I miss the idea of Finn more than I miss Finn himself. Having someone there to shoulder your burdens, always having that sure thing. That's really great. But I don't miss him. I mean, let's face it. The moment shit got tough around here, he bailed. He just kind of distanced himself emotionally after Mom and Dad died. I think he thought I was too clingy, and that's half the reason I cheated on him. I was trying to get his attention. The more I cheated, the less he seemed to care. We still occasionally had sex, but he stopped calling and making plans. When we saw each other, it was almost by accident. My grief and problems were an inconvenience for him."
Her bitter words were a surprise to me. It didn't jive with what I knew of Finn. He'd always made time for me when he was dating Ivy. He seemed sincere and loving. Had I built a completely mistaken image of him?
"Who's he dating now?" Ivy pondered.
It was meant to be a rhetorical question, but I answered anyway, unthinkingly. "I don't think he's seeing anyone."
She scoffed. "That's not the Finn O'Malley I know. That boy always has to have a girlfriend. He likes sex too much but has this thing about monogamy. He likes to think of himself as the good guy because he only sleeps with women he has relationships with, but they aren't relationships because that would require him to actually be emotionally vulnerable—which he isn't."
That did sound like Finn, unfortunately. Hadn’t he done that with me? Slept with me for the physical release and then turned me loose? Yes, he’d called after a couple of weeks. He’d texted and asked if we could meet, but I didn’t want to be hurt. Or maybe I wanted to reject him before he had a chance to reject me. I was confused about a lot of things including my desire to see him again.
"It sounds like you have strong feelings for him, still."
"No. Not at all," she protested. "Shit, anyone could date him. I wouldn't even care if you dated him."
It was so quiet in our room after she dropped that bomb that we heard the crickets chirping. It was quiet because I'd stopped breathing. And she noticed.
"Are you kidding me?" She sat up and turned toward me. "Do you want to date Finn?"
"No…I, ah," I stammered awkwardly.
"Holy shit. Do you still have that middle school crush on him?" She was incredulous but after a moment, I realized not angry.
"I was fourteen and in ninth grade," I responded weakly.
She flopped back on the bed and rolled her head from side to side in disbelief. "I knew you had a crush on him. He knew it too, but I thought you grew out of that."
"I just—he’s attractive. I mean, he’s interesting," I got out in an awkward jumble of words. "It doesn't matter anyway. Family first."
When I was ten, my mom took me aside and told me family came first. No matter what was thrown at us, you never, ever turned away from your family.
Ivy had always been good at that.
When I was in second grade, Eli Parsons, a snot-nosed, round-headed kid with a sharp tongue, asked me in the bus line if my face was flat because I'd fallen off the monkey bars and landed on it. I'd been too shocked and hurt to say something back, but when Ivy had seen me sniffling on the bus, I'd spilled my guts. She got on her bike, rode two miles to Eli's house, marched up to his front door and rang the bell. When he came out, she punched him in the nose and then got back on her bike and rode home.
Eli had to apologize, and he never said another mean word to me after that. Ivy's hand had swollen up, and she got grounded for a week because violence never solved anything, according to our mom.
"I'm so sorry," I'd whispered when I crawled into her twin bed that night.
"Nothing to be sorry about," she'd said, cradling her hand on her chest. "Actually I am sorry. Sorry that I didn't punch him in the eyes too."
She'd held me when I came home at thirteen after hearing my big crush Mike Van Elm preferred blondes. Sarah Jorgerson, who apparently also had a crush on Mike, told him I'd liked him. He'd pulled up the corner of his eyes and said he'd never date a chink.
And it was Ivy who gave me the perfect rebuttal to those stupid guys at parties who asked me if my vagina was slanted just like my eyes—an Asian version of whether the carpet matched the drapes. "If you don't know, you never will." I'd used that line more than I should've had to, I reflected. College guys were idiots. No wonder I was still single.
Ivy had taken the family first motto seriously until her addictions pushed her off the tracks. I would never forget how she stood up for me every single time.
She scrunched up her nose. "I don't care if you see him, but Winter, you deserve so much better than Finn O'Malley. He's one of those guys who seems nice on the outside but will tear you apart and won't even look behind him at the carnage. He doesn't have a heart. He's wrapped up in his own life, his own pursuits, and what is going on in your life isn't important. In all the years we dated, he never once said I love you."
She talked for another ten minutes on how Finn O'Malley was the worst guy I could ever date, but all I heard was I don't care if you date him.
5
FINN
"Have a good night?" I asked when Winter walked out of the strip club at three in the morning for the second night in a row.
"What are you doing here?" She peered into the dark night. Jimmy Risk had his parking lot dimly lit, possibly to disguise husbands paying a hundred for a table dance from girls they had no shot with.
I pushed away from the side of my truck and approached. What was I doing here? A good question with no good answers. All the ones that popped to mind were fairly creepy, from the I've been waiting to I just passed by this road leading north that holds only auto body shops and strip clubs to I wanted to spend a second consecutive night at a strip club.
I went with the solid truth. "I wanted to talk to you."
"We talked last night." Her tone was terse and unwelcoming.
For a moment I thought about walking away. There were plenty of female fish in the sea, so why was I stalking—following—this one? I had never had to chase anything or anyone in my entire life, but that night two months ago woke me the hell up. We'd talked, we'd commiserated, we'd comforted each other, and then we’d proceeded to have several hours of unforgettable sex. So no, I wasn't done with her. Not by a long shot.
I said, "You said things, but they didn't make any sense."
“You mean you didn’t agree with them.”
That was accurate. She’d said we were done, and I disagreed. Ergo, her words were nonsensical.
She pressed her lips together and took a step toward her car, but I moved with her until she realized I wasn't going anywhere.
She paused and turned halfway. Her fine features were in profile. The curve of her cheek she once thought wasn’t sloped enough and her snub nose that begged for a kiss were lightly highlighted by the streetlights. "You ever see the movie The Joy Luck Club?" she asked.
"No, I can't say I have. Should I?"
"In old Chinese culture, the man can take more than one wife. The more wives he has, the lower your status. In The Joy Luck Club, An-mei's mother had no status as the fourth wife."
It took a minute to process her statement. It was about Ivy but not in the way I'd expected. "The fact that Ivy dated me first makes you feel like a fourth wife?"
She waved her hand. "Second wife, fourth wife. Whatever. But yes, I'll always wonder if you should be with her, and I don't want to feel that way."
"I don't see you that way."
She threw her arms out. "What is it that you even want? To hang out? To fuck?"
She sounded frustrated, like me. "Yes to both. I want us to spend time together, as adults. You're twenty-two, and I'm twenty-five. That's a far cry from fourteen and seventeen, and I’m guessing both of us have changed. So let’s find out who we are. And in the meantime, yes, we should goddamn have more sex. I can't forget that night. And I don't want to. When I close my eyes, I still feel you coming apart in my arms."
She made a strangled sound and dropped her chin into h
er chest. Instantly I felt like an ass. I wanted to make her feel good, knew I could. I wasn’t alone that night. She had been insatiable. She couldn’t get enough, and neither could I. It made no sense for us not to see where a little more time could take us.
"Tell me what’s wrong so I can make it better."
"It wasn't supposed to be that way."
"What way?"
"I thought if we had sex, you'd feel better and I'd be able to forget you."
"A pity fuck?" I stepped back and dragged my hands through my hair, about to detonate at the idea of having the best night of my life be a pity fuck, when the last part of her sentence penetrated my dense skull.
"We had sex. It was done. A one-time thing."
I stuck my tongue to the roof of my mouth and took a breath, searching for patience. "I was fucked up after my dad died. Maybe I still am a mess, but after the fog cleared, I realized the best thing I had going for me in these last three months was you. So maybe I cut it too close, but I'm here, and I'm telling you I want to see you again."
Her face closed down, and the shyness, the embarrassment, and even the spark of memory was shuttered. "It's just not meant to be. Anyway, I need to go."
She moved to the car next to mine. When I’d seen the Donovan's seven-year-old car parked in the lot, I sat for twenty minutes for the next space over to open up. Then I lain in wait for Winter, so I wasn't letting her go until we'd hashed this out, which meant she was going to let go of whatever reservations she had and agree to go on a date with me.
"Ivy and I dated in high school, which is the equivalent of having a play date in kindergarten. It's nothing; meant nothing."
"And your first year of college,” she reminded me.
“Barely,” I muttered under my breath.
“When was the last time you had a girlfriend?"
Her question took me off guard, and it was on the tip of my tongue to lie. After all, what did it matter? But lying is something my old man did, and it destroyed my mom, who always, always found out. I loved my old man, but I didn't want to put that kind of haunted look in any woman's eyes. "Before my dad died, I was dating Verity Michaels. She was a friend of a friend of a friend. We dated about six months."
"Why'd you break up?"
"My dad died." I'd had too much going on in my head, and Verity and I’d had a very superficial relationship that consisted of sex and a few dinners out. She was grateful when I suggested we take a break, not wanting to deal with my sudden change in personality. "You want to tell me what this is all about?"
"Ivy says you're emotionally unavailable and that you like being the good guy, so you stick with one woman until you’re bored and then move on. She said in all the years you dated, you never once said ‘I love you.’”
A nerve in my forehead started throbbing at the idea of Ivy and Winter discussing me as potential boyfriend material. I hadn't been the greatest boyfriend to Ivy. At the time, in high school, baseball was the most important thing, followed by my family and my boys. Ivy was convenient. A girl to take to the prom and homecoming. Someone who was more than happy to accept my unrefined backseat, basement, and sometimes bedroom skills. When we both went to State, she drifted into a different crowd, and while I regretted that I didn't catch on to her downward slide and help her, I wasn't torn up that she'd begun cheating on me.
Then I realized I just characterized my dating relationship with Ivy. As a playdate in kindergarten. Oh fuck. Ivy had told Winter that all my relationships with women were superficial. By comparing a four-year relationship with a kindergarten playdate, I’d just confirmed with my own careless words exactly what Ivy said.
"I'm a different person today." How different, though, even I didn’t know. I hadn’t pinpointed yet what I wanted from Winter, but it was more than a one-night stand.
"Right." It wasn't a good enough answer for her because she moved to the driver's side door and opened it. "I'm so sorry about your dad. I know how it feels."
And she did. Maybe that was why that night resonated so strongly for me. Every comforting word Winter whispered came from her own well of grief that ran deep. But I'd seen Ivy not a month before that night with Winter, and she'd said similar things, and I'd just felt relief when I dropped her off. I didn't feel relief watching Winter's taillights drive away from me.
That I hadn't loved anyone I dated in the past wasn't far off the mark, but that didn't mean I wasn't capable of love.
It meant I hadn't met the right girl.
•••
I slept poorly and woke early, which was for the best. I needed to be at the build site before Henry showed up. Downstairs, the house was quiet. Even though I lived with four guys, two of them college students, we had some early risers. Noah, one of the former Marines I’d told Winter about, was training for an upcoming pay-per-view match. He could be out running. The other Marine, Bo, spent most mornings in bed with his girlfriend. Adam was a night owl who saw the ass side of most mornings and hit the sack around the time most people were climbing out of bed to start a new day at work. Mal…he was a mystery. Four years of college and three years of living together and I still didn’t know him or his schedule.
I checked my phone, but it was curiously blank. No texts from Winter. No messages from my mom. I probably needed to drive out to the farm to make sure she was okay.
I pulled the cast-iron frying pan out of the drawer and set it to heat on the stove. As the bacon fried, Bo’s girlfriend AnnMarie stumbled into the kitchen wearing a long gray USMC T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants.
“You have a good night?” I asked. Her cheeks pinkened. “That good?”
She ignored my comment and pointed to the pan. “Are you making that just for yourself?”
“If you make coffee and toast, I’ll throw in the eggs and bacon.”
“Deal.” She scooped coffee grounds into a filter. “We’ve missed you around here. Are you avoiding us?”
“Yes. Your boyfriend wants to throw me out of an airplane.”
“It was a joke,” she claimed. At my doubtful stare, she revised, “Maybe he was half serious, but he only suggested it because he loves you.”
I let that fabrication slide and turned to my bacon. “His love is painful.” After my dad died and I'd broken it off with Verity, I'd gone on a month-long binge of drinking and sex with women I barely knew, ending with that night with Winter. My well-intentioned roommates took this as a sign that I needed distracting. “I still have bruises from the last time we went paintballing.”
I pulled up my T-shirt and pointed to the left side of my abdomen where Noah had shot me twice. AnnMarie tsked sympathetically.
“I don’t see any marks.”
“They’re psychological,” I informed her.
She laughed and patted me on the shoulder. “Well, I’m glad you’re feeling better.”
I plated eggs and bacon while AnnMarie buttered toast and poured coffee. “How’s it going with you these days?”
“I’m glad school is almost over. I was thinking about getting a job. Bo said he was going to be busy doing more work for you.”
I made a face. “The Riverside project is keeping me too busy to oversee our flips, but I think Bo can handle them.”
“Don’t tell him I told you this, but he’s like a nervous girl on her first date.” She grinned, clearly delighted at seeing Bo suffer a little insecurity. He did throw off the aura of a guy supremely comfortable in his skin—kind of like I was before my dad died. I hadn’t ever suffered a whiff of anything unfortunate in my life. Placid and drama free.
Then it all blew up. My mom slept with Dad’s brother. Dad found out and had a heart attack. Now he was dead, and she couldn’t get out of bed.
It had made me rethink everything, including relationships. I was nearing my quarter century mark, and while I’d had plenty of girlfriends, Ivy and Winter were absolutely right. I hadn’t loved any of them. I hadn’t cared when the relationships were over, and I was often glad to see the back of th
e girl when she walked out on me.
But that didn’t mean I wasn’t capable of something serious. Right?
"Did I ever tell you I've never asked a girl out?" I informed AnnMarie.
“How is that even possible?”
I laughed a little self-consciously. "When I was in eighth grade, Shannon Blake came up to me after first period on the first day of second semester and said I was going out with her."
"And that was it?"
I shrugged sheepishly. "She was pretty cute. Why fight it?"
"How long did you date her?"
"Off and on for a couple of years."
"Wow, a long time. What happened next?"
"During the second week of tenth grade, I met Julie. She had a yen for pale skin and asked me if I glittered in the sunlight. I don't, as you know, but she kept lifting my shirt for a peek, and eventually she just took it off and kept it. We drifted apart. I think she was disappointed at my lack of sparkle. In my junior year, Ivy Donovan came up to my locker and said that since I was single it was time to date her. And I did, for over four years. After her was my chem lab partner Bethenney—three e's, two n's. She and I ended up playing on the same coed intramural flag football team. She made a pass, I caught it—literally. Then we went out until I graduated from State and moved back home."
"You've had all these girlfriends? And you didn't want to marry or anything?" She sounded bewildered. It never occurred to me it was unusual in any way.
"It was high school and then college." I raised an eyebrow. "I wasn't there to get my MRS degree."
"Still," she replied faintly.
Irritated, I tried to joke my way out. "It's my superpower." I winked. "Yours is taming wild men. Mine is never having to ask a girl out. They've always asked me."
She picked up her coffee and leaned back in her chair, eyeing me speculatively. “But now you've found a girl you like, and you don't know how to ask her out.”
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