LIV
In a development that shocks precisely no one, Finn and Tucker can’t agree on who I am to accompany back to their room. This is just one of the reasons I didn’t want to come here tonight; the role of wishbone became tiresome a decade ago. But the matter is settled when Finn, flushed with triumph, asserts his authority as our boss.
“Fine,” I say, as Tucker drifts away. I had hoped to be present when he discovers his missing half eyebrow, but tomorrow will provide ample opportunity to mock him. He’ll deserve it, too, for exploiting Finn’s phobia like that.
I address Reginald, who was quick to respond when I called earlier for help. “Pour some coffee into Tucker, will you? And don’t leave until he’s sober. I don’t want him deciding on a midnight swim and accidentally drowning himself.”
Reginald nods agreement and moves away with his eerily smooth gait.
“Hey, Tucker,” Finn calls after them. He waits until Tucker has turned. “The water’s really nice this time of night. You should go for a splash.”
When he cracks himself up, I bite my lips rather than smile. “You’re awful.”
“Awfully glad to see you,” he says, grinning.
No doubt it’s the liquor talking, but his easy affection gives my heart a pang. It’s been panging a lot today.
Since he’s been ignoring my cues to leave, I grab his hand and tug him gently toward his villa. The path takes us across a corner of the dance floor, which is starting to fill up now that the talent show has finished and the house band has taken over. They’re playing a slow, sultry song.
“C’mon, Liv. Let’s dance,” Finn says.
I hope Reginald isn’t the only one with an unreadable face. In the dim lighting, Finn looks dangerously close to the boy I fell in love with and my throat tightens with unwelcome emotion. Dang. I stayed away from the men earlier because I can’t afford to indulge in pointless hopes and dreams. And as it is, by being here, I’m already running the risk of becoming a subject of the Wakefield rumor mill. I need to get Finn back to the villa and bring this evening to a close.
“You’re drunk,” I say, trying to keep it light.
“And you’re observant.”
Somehow, I get him to move on without him taking me in his arms.
But we don’t get far before encountering yet another distraction. This time Finn tugs me to a stop at a vendor’s in the resort’s square. While he’s inspecting wind chimes and cups carved from coconut husks, I slip away to the nearby cafe. I bring him back a Blue Mountain coffee—black, laced liberally with sugar. He sips it appreciatively and moves on to a clothing booth.
Is it my imagination, or is he already looking clearer-eyed? If I’m lucky, he won’t need me much longer.
My optimism vanishes when he sets down his coffee. He picks up a bright Rastafarian cap with fake dreadlocks protruding from under the brim. Normally he wouldn’t be caught dead wearing such a thing, but tonight he smoothes it over his dark hair as the saleswoman smiles indulgently.
“What do you think?” he says, turning to me. “Should I buy it?”
“Definitely not,” I say, with an apologetic smile to the store proprietor.
“Cultural appropriation?” he says, slurring his Rs.
“I don’t know about that, but it doesn’t suit you.” There’s a clear mismatch between his clean-cut features and the vibe of the hat.
He smoothes the dreads. “I look like party guy. Chill.”
“I like uptight Finn just fine.”
His response is to seize another cap—a vibrant pink twin to his multi-colored one—and try to place it on my head. I laugh and dance backward, stepping quickly out of reach.
“Liv.” He clucks his tongue and shakes his head in exaggerated disapproval until I roll my eyes and submit. “There,” he says with satisfaction. He rearranges the fake hair to suit him and one clump falls over the swell of my breast. His gaze rests there for an indecently long time as I struggle to keep my breathing even. He lifts his eyes and for an instant, our gazes catch and hold. “Lucky dread,” he says thickly.
Then behind me, something catches his attention and he’s off.
Wincing, I pull the hat from my head and thrust some cash at the saleswoman for the cap Finn is still wearing. I hurry after him. He has arrived at the resort’s parrot cage and is trying to wake the sleeping birds with a series of squawks and calls.
“Shhh,” I say, through my laughter. “You’re going to regret this tomorrow when you have to look your employees in the face.” I catch his hand again, intending to tug him toward the villa.
“Protecting me from myself, Liv?”
That halts me in my tracks. Tucker says something similar to me all the time, and I dismiss it because it’s…well, Tucker, and he’s not exactly known for his empathy. But this is Finn, and though he might not be in full charge of his faculties, there was a note of long-harbored resentment there. But do we really want to open up this conversation? Isn’t it better to leave well enough alone?
Then I notice we have attracted the attention of a few people from the Wakefield retreat, and that I am holding Finn’s hand.
I casually let go of him. By the time I’ve coaxed him into the private part of the resort, it feels like the moment for frank discussion has passed.
But we’ve just navigated the gate when Finn pulls his hat off and blocks the path. “You should have come with me when I left,” he announces.
I swallow. I guess we are doing this now. “I couldn’t, Finn. You know that. My mama—
“Needed you. I know.”
I’m surprised at his tone. He knows how tough things were back then. That Mama already had a warning from the county and was one misstep away from having her house condemned and her beloved dogs seized. If I’d obeyed my heart, she would have lost everything that keeps her tethered to this world.
“I needed you too, ” Finn says.
“It sure didn’t seem like it,” I say with feeling, then hear the emotion in my voice. Okay. Apparently Finn isn’t the only one with dirty laundry to air.
“My fault. I was trying not to be a drain on you. But it didn’t help that we could never talk.”
Another mistake on my part.
“I’m sorry I didn’t take your money,” I say. At one point, Finn sent a messenger with a check, so I could buy a cell phone and we could connect more reliably. But when I was signing for it, the man oozed contempt as he gazed at our house, and my pride kicked in. “I just felt so ashamed.”
“Know what I used to wonder?” he says, without any indication he heard me.
I shake my head.
“Whether you’d have come if I pretended I was desperate. I know how much you like to take care of people. Maybe you wanted a project instead of a husband.”
“That’s what you think?” I am stung.
“No. That’s what I thought. But I was a dumb kid back then. Stupid and looking for reasons to be hurt. Nowadays I would say you’re a good person with a compassionate heart. You never give up on anybody, Liv.” He seizes my hand and pulls it to his mouth for a quick kiss. “That’s probably why the jewelry store hit me so hard.”
Ah, yes. The jewelry store. A day that started with such good intentions on my part and ended with me making the second stupidest mistake of my life.
After four months of our schedules not meshing, and Finn reporting himself to be too busy to leave Jacksonville, I had taken matters into my own hands. I needed to see him. I needed his arms around me to drive out the voices in my head—the ones growing ever louder that insisted he would never return.
My car hadn’t been working and Tucker needed his, so I spent precious cash to rent a vehicle. I’d blown off work in the diner—yet another decision I couldn’t afford—and left for Jacksonville before midnight on the Friday.
When I arrived, Finn’s house had been so imposing I’d been taken aback. This wasn’t the kind of place you went charging up to the door, hair awry because the rental’s AC wasn�
�t working, with huge bags under your eyes, in unpressed jeans that hadn’t been in style when purchased six years earlier.
But I had regrouped. For Pete’s sake, Finn had lived in my mama’s house to be with me. He was no shirker when it came to love. In return, I wouldn’t be a simpering coward.
So I sat in the rental, pulled out my hairbrush, and got to work.
I still wonder what would have happened if I’d been done fixing my hair before he emerged. But as it was, I resembled a half-tamed Ewok when he came out with a woman. A gorgeous blonde in her early twenties. Far from resembling the overburdened, overworked man I’d understood him to be, he’d been all smiles, all Finn-gentility as he helped her into the passenger seat of a white convertible.
“This isn’t what it looks like,” I told myself. “Finn is as true and honest as the day is long.”
But with my present state of dishevelment, I couldn’t make myself get out of the car to greet him, and as he drove away, I made the decision to follow him and ply my hairbrush at red lights.
“This isn’t what it looks like,” I said twenty minutes later, when he pulled up in front of a jewelery store. I said it again when he went inside, his arm around the woman’s shoulders as she chattered away excitedly. And when she leaned into his chest.
“This isn’t what it looks like,” I said from my vantage point at the front window, where I watched them proceed to the ring section. But by the time it became clear that the woman already had a sizable rock on her left hand, and that it was Finn trying on wedding bands, I’d run out of affirmative talk.
Tucker often rails against the system, and for the most part, I dismiss his rantings as paranoid and defeatist. How does it help to believe the world is rigged against you, or that you’ll never have a better life than the one your parents occupy? But every once in a while, when I’m at a personal low and someone revels in making me feel small, I feel my veins flood with incandescent rage. And it’s like my brain peels back to everything except my vital functions and the need to get revenge in a way that won’t cost me. So I’ll smile at the woman who’s been a bitch to me at the grocery checkout and squeeze her pears as I bag them. The passive-aggressive payback of a woman who feels powerless.
I can only conclude I was in a pear-squeezing mood that morning.
Most of what happened after that is vague in my mind. I recall returning to the rental and looking around for a weapon. I recall finding two and deploying them. I recall standing beside the convertible to await Finn’s reaction, and how his welcoming face quickly turned to shock, then anger, when he saw what I’d done. I remember the shouted words “friend’s fiancée,” “overseas,” and “proxy.” I remember knowing—being absolutely clear—that a good deal of his storm and fury came from embarrassment. Because the blonde looked on as he gave me a tongue-lashing, and she looked at me like I was a homeless person who intended to do her harm.
But this was all ten years ago, and I’ve worked hard to forgive myself. I’ve paid the personal price for my rage and stupidity.
I have also apologized.
When I say as much to Finn, he says, “But I haven’t?”
“Haven’t what?”
“Apologized. For what I said to you in the heat of the moment. It was unforgivable of me to use the c-word.”
Crazy. That’s what he called me at the end. He knew how much that label hurt when people applied it to Mama, and how much I hated knowing they were watching me, waiting to see if I’d be afflicted, too. Yet he’d still used it during the height of our argument. Of course, I’d just decorated his car’s white upholstery with two gallons of grape soda, but he’d gone there in front of his pretty friend.
He touches my cheek. “I still remember your face. I knew it was a low blow then. I’m truly sorry, Liv.”
I search his expression for a long time. He seems sincere. I don’t think it’s the booze talking, either. He doesn’t seem that inebriated. And all afternoon, on the beach, I’ve felt his attitude toward me softening.
I nod. I take a deep breath, and it’s like my lungs haven’t felt this open in a decade. “You’re forgiven.”
He releases me and falls back a step. “Just like that? After ten years?”
I have to smile. “Should we make it eleven?”
He laughs softly. “Guess not.” He shakes his head. “You’re amazing.”
We’re at the front of the villa and finally moving again, and I cast around for a change of subject. The mangoes glow a soft yellow in the moonlight. I duck my head and gently palm one. “These are going to be ripe in a few days. Do you get dibs on them?”
“I probably would, except I won’t be here.”
Another reminder not to fall under the spell of moonlight and regret. In forty-eight hours or so, I’ll be catching a red-eye home to Columbus. I’ll go back to my former life and probably see Finn, at most, once or twice a year, when he blazes through our office for high-level meetings. Now there’s a depressing thought.
“Right,” I make myself say briskly. “Does your kitchen have coffee? I can make you another one. Or I can call room service for you.”
“I’m good. My buzz is nearly gone.”
I nod. He’s been noticeably better in the last few minutes with his speech and his movements. Must be that male metabolism and all that male muscle.
“If you need to head out, I promise I won’t wander into the ocean,” he says.
I believe him. Finn doesn’t have Tucker’s impulsivity, or his self-destructive streak. “Okay,” I say, jerking my thumb in the direction of my room. “I’ll just—”
“Come up to the roof with me.”
I blink and let my arm fall. Maybe I was wrong about the self-destructiveness.
He has his hands in his pockets. “It’s past sunset but we can sit outside together, watch the ocean. It’ll be like old times.”
I should say no. This trip has given me more closure than I ever dreamed of and I should quit while I’m ahead. Not to mention that this isn’t the way to stay hidden in plain sight.
“I’m offering as a former friend, of course, and not your employer,” he says.
He’s infinitely more dangerous as a friend.
Our family doesn’t handle regret well. My mama’s psychologist likens her mind to a spawning salmon—one that has failed to appreciate the stream she was born into dried up long ago. When caught in regret, mostly to do with thoughts around losing my dad, or more current failures, she’ll spend endless hours flinging herself against reality. Eventually she’ll stop, battered and winded, resigned to making her home in the inferior river downstream. Then comes the fun part: dealing with the consequences of her prowling or hoarding.
But for me? Going down the regret route is more like enduring an alcoholic binge. I won’t sleep. I’ll get tangled up in thoughts around what ifs and if I only hads. For days after, I’ll fight a headache, feel dispirited and wrung dry. If I go with Finn, I’ll be asking for a humdinger of a regret hangover, I know this.
But I can’t make myself take a step away. I can’t make my mouth form the word No. And after a time, as Finn waits as patiently as his younger self would have done, I give him my hand and lead him inside.
CHAPTER 12
LIV
In the kitchen, Finn grabs himself a bottled water and pours me a glass of crisp Riesling. Then we climb the stairs in the darkened house to the roof, where Finn wrestles a rattan love seat to the western railing.
It’s peaceful up here. There’s enough moonlight to make out the calm ocean and the palm fronds dancing in the gentle breeze. I can hear doves cooing, and behind us, the gentle hum of the pool pump.
I’m also hyper-aware of the man sitting next to me.
After a time, Finn breaks the silence. “The sun goes down a lot faster here than in Stonybrook.”
“A lot of things are different.” I use my chin to indicate the pool behind us, and the lavish grounds below.
“Not the important things,” he says
, with a meaningful glance at me.
I decide to ask the question that’s been on my mind since noon. “So what changed from yesterday, when you were threatening my job?”
He hesitates, shrugs. “Spending time with you. Seeing you in action on the beach. You’re impressive, Liv. You always were.”
Our glances catch and hold.
In the bungalow in Ohio, there had been no TV in the house—no room for storing one, sometimes not even the money for electricity. And with the kitchen under siege from my mama’s possessions, plus my ongoing fear of fire, it was our habit to cook outside as much as possible. In the winter we used the barbecue, in summer, the backyard fire pit. We ate simple fare. Grits in the frying pan, potatoes from the coals, bean chili. Or soup from the wilted vegetables that Mr. White from the Ready Mart would let me take home.
These things had become such a way of life for us that even when Finn joined us and the money was easier, we continued in the same vein. In our evenings together, while my mama let the dogs gambol about, we’d cook and eat while talking over the day’s events—the antics of the kids I was babysitting, the fresh challenges of whatever job Finn had taken on, my mama’s progress on the current pile she was “organizing,” or an exciting lead she had on a prospective dog adopter.
Then, as the sun prepared to set, Mama would claim fatigue. She’d put the dogs in their kennels and disappear inside. And Finn and I would linger in the gathering dark, seated on a patchwork quilt on a lawn that smelled of dog. We’d kiss—quick pecks and long, open-mouthed explorations. We’d let our hands roam and become as carefree and as frolicsome as tumbling puppies. When the need for privacy grew too acute, we’d move to the shed in the back, where we’d come together in urgent and delirious couplings.
I’m smiling at the memory when Finn speaks. “For the longest time I couldn’t smell bug repellent without being aroused.”
Apparently our minds have been meandering down similar paths. “Yeah?” I say on a laugh. “Eau de lust?” I take the last sip of my wine. “For me it was roasted marshmallows.”
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