ANY DOUBTS I had whether Oliver’s shop would be a success—that maybe the constant stream of people on opening day was a fluke—are put to rest as soon as I walk in Friday afternoon.
Apparently there are a lot of nerds in San Diego.
The little bell over the door jingles as I step inside, and I’m stopped in my tracks, eyes wide at the crowd filling the small store. And not just kids, or hipster geeks like Oliver, but suits and soccer moms, people spanning pretty much every age bracket there is.
“Wow.”
“Right?” I turn to the voice on my right to see Not-Joe standing at the register. He flicks his blond hair out of his face before he reaches for a box cutter, using it to open one of the many cardboard boxes behind him. “Work at a comic book store. Thought I’d get to hang out all day, read a little. Maybe sneak out back for a blunt.” He shakes his head as I eye him and continues carefully pulling the contents out of one open box before breaking it down and moving onto another. “But dude, this place? Doesn’t slow down.”
“I can see that,” I say, impressed. “Doesn’t leave much time to browse the merchandise, does it?”
“Me?” he says, then shakes his head again. “I don’t read comic books. This might sound weird, but they kind of confuse me.”
I take in his blond dreadlocked mohawk, the constant, half-stoned glazed look, the white T-shirt he clearly washed with something red at one point. I mean, this is the guy that pierced his own cock. Not sure I’m surprised the comic books overwhelm him. “Not much of a reader?”
“Fiction, mostly,” he admits. “Some biographies. Philosophy, if I have the time. Travel books. A little romance here and there,” he adds.
I spy a worn paperback tucked just below the counter and feel my eyebrows disappear into my hair. I’m pretty sure it isn’t Oliver’s. “Wally Lamb?” I ask. “That’s yours?”
Not-Joe laughs. “Yeah, best book I’ve ever read about overcoming self-loathing and forgiveness. Finding yourself.”
Okay. “I’m . . . wow.”
Not-Joe shrugs before reaching for another pile of comics. “Plus, it was an Oprah Book Club pick, so you know. What Oprah says . . .”
“Right,” I say. “So where’s Oliver?”
“Last I saw him, he was in the back. Want me to go grab him for you?”
“No, no. I’m good.” I look around for a moment, debating whether I should let Oliver know I’m here, or just head out and try to catch up with him later. What I should do is go back to the house and get my head straight; at the very least I should call my brothers. Most of the wiring should be replaced by now, but there’s a sinking feeling in my stomach that that will be the least of our problems once they start taking panels off and looking deeper into the boat.
My meeting with the L.A. guys is in just a few days, and I’ve barely thought about what questions I need to ask, or even whether we have another choice but to say yes. This inability to focus on the entire purpose of this trip is exactly why Harlow was right and why we need to take a step back and cool . . . whatever it is we’re doing.
Fuck. Harlow.
With a sigh, I drop down into the couch Oliver has set up near the front of the store. Being with her doesn’t feel like our comfortable arrangement anymore. Even if Harlow hadn’t been the one to step up and say something about reining this in, I’d have had to. I watched her fall apart in my arms last night; even the most oblivious person could have seen there was nothing casual about it for either of us.
God, she was so fucking perfect. I’ve never met anyone like her, as strong-willed as me and yet, just handing me everything, letting me take her apart one touch at a time.
Pulling out my phone, I see that I have one unread message, but my finger stops and hovers over the text bubble. I should read it, I know this. And I’m such an epic hypocrite for suggesting that Harlow was at a stage in her life where she hadn’t figured things out yet. When here I am, thirty-two years old and feeling just as confused and unsure of the future as she is.
“Looks like you’re thinking pretty hard there, Hercules. Don’t sprain something.”
I jump at the sound of her voice and my heart takes off in excitement. “I didn’t see you come in.”
She takes a minute to step behind the counter and plug her phone in to charge. Then she plops down on the couch next to me, her thigh pressed right to mine.
“Are you on your way into work?” I ask her.
“When you asked me that,” she says, looking at me with a cute little smile, “did you use mental air quotes for the word ‘work’?”
“Yeah.”
“In fact yes, I am headed into”—she holds her fingers up and twitches them—“work.” She lifts my arm, looks at my watch. “I have half an hour before I need to be there to deliver a tray of mini muffins to a meeting and send some faxes.”
And so why are you here? I want to ask her, but I bite my tongue, knowing if the answer is anything other than “Because I was hoping to see you, dumbass” I’ll be disappointed.
It’s sort of strange to see this version of Harlow: prim and proper and dressed in her slim black skirt, heels, and bright orange silk blouse, long hair brushed and smoothed down her back. She’s funny and charming, composed, and so different than the Harlow I see in bed, the one who begs me to spank her, begs for harder and more. And though it might seem like I’m the one calling all the shots, she’s clearly been using me, using my body to forget herself and get off. It’s a little worrisome just how much I like the idea that I’m the only one right now who gets to see the secret, unraveled version of this golden, beautiful girl.
“Since we’re doing the just-friends thing,” I say, “I can tell you that you look really fucking pretty today, Ginger Snap.”
She blinks at me, surprised for a moment before she grins. “Thanks.”
“Because the last time I saw you this early, you looked like you’d just rolled out of someone else’s bed,” I say, completely bypassing the fact that I saw her just this morning. She doesn’t correct me and . . . well, good. I think we both know that particular conversation is a land mine, one definitely better left alone.
“Not one of my finer moments, so I’m going to breeze past that and agree with you. Definitely no more Toby Amslers in my future. I’m running out of fingers, so it’s time for me to be more selective in the screening process.”
“Running out of . . . fingers?”
“Fingers,” she says, holding up both hands and wiggling all ten fingers in front of my face. “This is an incredibly personal decision, and one that can be approached in so many different ways, but I always said I didn’t want to have sex with more guys than I could count on two hands. Eight fingers are accounted for, so I don’t have room for any more mistakes.”
It takes me a second to understand that this means Harlow has only had sex with eight guys.
Or rather, Harlow has had sex with seven guys that aren’t me.
And . . . I’m conflicted. On the one hand, I’m sort of surprised. It’s not that I had some sort of preconceived notion about any of this, but rather that Harlow herself seems to go out of her way to make people think her sex life is something it’s clearly not.
On the other hand, I think of myself as a pretty progressive guy, and as long as you’re not cheating or hurting anyone, you should be able to love or marry or fuck whoever you want. Still, as hypocritical as it is, there’s something about listening to Harlow talk about the others guys she’s been with that’s making it hard to just sit here and nod.
And Harlow, who for whatever reason seems to pick up on every little thing I do, notices.
“Hey. Whoa, whoa-whoa. What’s happening here?” She brings a finger up to tap my forehead, hard. “You’re all frowny and scrunched up. Are you making a judgey face at me?”
“What?” I say. “I am not making a face.” I’m actually glad I’m not because the face she’s making is a little terrifying.
“You totally are. Are you trying to slut-shame me, Mr. Good with Rope and Ridiculous Oral Skills?”
“Absolutely not. I would never call anyone—”
“Don’t think that just because I let you put your dick in me, that you get to pass judgment on what I may or may not have done. I like sex, just like you. And I’ll fuck whoever or however many people I want, ten-finger rule be damned. Just because society would prefer that I—”
“Harlow. I wasn’t saying that. Ten fingers. It’s all good.”
“Oh.” She searches my face and seems to realize I’m being sincere. Her forehead relaxes. “Good.”
“Good,” I repeat.
“Then what about you?” she asks.
“What about me?”
“How many fingers do you have left?”
I sit forward and look around, indicating that we are in fact sitting in the middle of a crowded store. “I don’t think this is the best place to have this conversation, Snap.”
“Well, what else are we going to do? I have twenty minutes to kill, and since we’re no longer banging . . .”
“Yeah,” I say, and lean my head back against the couch. “That plan seemed to make a lot more sense right after we’d actually had sex. I was a little less tense then.”
“Right?” Harlow shifts on the couch, lifting her long bare legs and draping them across my lap. “And speaking of, sorry I sort of melted down on you last night,” she says, and I feel something tighten in my chest.
Harlow might have been tied up in bungee cords last night, but it was like watching her bloom, and I don’t really want to hear her apologize for it. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything so real. In a matter of hours, things went from an easy, uncomplicated way to burn off some steam, to anything but simple. I like Harlow. Deciding we’re not going to sleep together anymore? Fucking sucks.
“You don’t have to apologize,” I say, and without realizing it, I place my hand on her knee, squeezing it. Her skin is warm beneath my palm and my fingers ache to move, to smooth up and over her thigh, distract us both again.
Fuck.
I move to pull away but she reaches out, taking my hand in hers while she casually studies it.
“No,” she murmurs. “Just saying I’m sorry if I made things weird.”
“You didn’t,” I assure her.
She looks at me and seems to be biting back a laugh. “Thanks. You’re so effusive.”
I nod magnanimously. “That’s what friends are for, right?”
“Is that what we are, then?” she asks. “Friends?”
“Definitely friends, maybe more? I don’t know, we were married once, after all.”
“The best twelve hours of my life, to be honest,” she says in her best Scarlett O’Hara impersonation, and straightens her legs across me, her thighs shaking slightly as her muscles stretch beneath my hands. “The days since have been nothing but a pale impersonation.”
Oliver walks in from the back, carrying a tall stack of books. “G’day. Nice to see you, mate.”
It occurs to me that I’m still sitting with Harlow’s legs in my lap, my hand resting a little too comfortably on her thigh. I blink back up and meet Oliver’s gaze. He gives me a knowing smirk, so apparently it hasn’t escaped his notice, either.
“Dude,” Not-Joe says, emerging from the bathroom with a stack of comic books in his hands. He holds them up for Oliver to see, and the two of them exchange a look. “Look what I found.”
Oliver groans, but I notice he doesn’t actually take the books. “Not again.”
“Again,” Not-Joe confirms.
My eyes follow Not-Joe as he gingerly puts the comics on the glass counter. “Are those Wonder Woman?”
“Yeah. Every fucking time I clean the bathroom. It’s always Wonder Woman.”
Harlow stands and I immediately feel the loss of her warm skin under my palm. When Oliver nods, she says, “You mean people go in there and . . .”
Oliver nods again, picking up an empty box and using a stapler to slide the sullied stack inside. “Bloody oath. Is nothing sacred?”
Harlow leans over, peering into the box. “Well. I mean . . . can you blame them?”
She looks up to three sets of saucer eyes, all of us staring, slack-jawed at her.
“Can we blame them for . . . ?” Not-Joe begins, and lets his question hang meaningfully in the air.
“Oh, come on.” She reaches over and plucks a pristine, plastic-wrapped copy of Wonder Woman from the shelf. On the cover of this particular issue, Wonder Woman is astride a giant seahorse, her lasso of truth suspended in the air above her, while a man in some sort of watercraft attempts to fire a weapon at her. All of this is supposedly happening underwater, though I don’t bother to argue the logistics of how one would lasso a person mere feet above the ocean floor, or how a laser—or whatever it’s supposed to be—would work in this scenario in the first place.
“Look at her!” Harlow says. “Even I’d have a little alone time with Princess Diana.”
“You knew her real name was Princess Diana?” Oliver asks, and I swear to God he looks like a dog whose owner has just beckoned him to the porch for dinner.
She shrugs. “Of course I did.”
Looking at me with fire in his eyes, Oliver says, “Finn, if you don’t marry this woman again, I just might.”
HARLOW HEADS OUT a few minutes later, kissing each of us on the cheek before she leaves and I pretend I don’t hate that all three of us got the same treatment. Eventually I leave, too, making plans to meet up with Oliver later that night. I take the long way back to the house, deciding a drive along the harbor might do me some good, and then I remember the unread text still sitting in my phone. The missed call from Colton. Apparently Harlow is an excellent distraction even when we’re not having sex.
In the end, I spend the rest of the afternoon driving up and back down the coast, pulling up to the house after sunset and only about thirty minutes before Oliver. I search the fridge and cupboards, pulling out a box of pasta and a handful of vegetables from the crisper. My phone stares at me from where it lies on the counter.
I do everything I can to avoid looking at it. I start dinner and unload the dishwasher. I watch a little TV, and even walk out to grab Oliver’s mail, hoping the fresh air will clear my head. It doesn’t.
Edgy and unable to handle it anymore, I toss the envelopes to the table and reach for my phone, deciding it’s time to man up and face the music. It could be good news, I reason. My brother would have called and kept calling if it had been something really bad. Right?
I check my email first. There’s a notice from the bank, some sort of stupid forwarded video from Ansel, and an email confirming my meeting in L.A. on Monday at 10 a.m. That last one does nothing to ease the sour feeling in my gut.
Finally I move to the messages, opening the single new text from Colton.
We are screwed, it says. We are absolutely royally FUCKED. I’m getting drunk.
THE KITCHEN IS filling with steam from a pot of overboiling pasta on the stove, when the sound of a door closing carries down the hall. “Honey! I’m home!”
I’m pacing between the counter and island, my stomach having bottomed out somewhere near my feet, when I hear Oliver drop his keys and kick his shoes off near the door.
Colton didn’t answer when I tried to call him back, but Levi did. Just like his message said, Colton is off somewhere getting plastered—and most likely fucked senseless by one of his many regular bed-bunnies—which would explain why he didn’t try to call me again.
According to Levi, engine one has thrown a rod, and the damage is so severe it’s actually penetrated the motor casing and rendered it unsalvageable. Worse than that, because of the extra strain being put on engine two, the oil sample came back full of metal shavings, meaning we are only weeks from its complete failure. A few days ago we knew we were in rough shape but assumed we could limp through another season. Now we know we are, just as Colton said, royally fucked. We’ve all put nearly every penny we make back into the family business, and without income, have barely enough left over to cover our living expenses for the next six months. We can’t take the boat out on the water until we fix it, and I have no idea how we’re going to afford to do that.
Oliver crosses the room, turning down the stove before walking to the sink to wash his hands. “You all right, mate?” he says, watching me with concern.
“Yeah. Just ruining dinner.” The next words are just sitting on my tongue: I’m fucked. My future and the future of my entire family has just gone up in smoke—and oh, by the way, how’s the store?
I can’t do that. But I know I need to talk, to hear myself say what’s going on and hear someone else tell me it’s not as bad as it seems, that everything will work out eventually.
Basically, I need someone to lie to me.
Normally, Ansel would be the best person for this job. He’s stupidly optimistic, and has this way of making every doom-and-gloom situation sound like a perfectly timed stroke of luck. Unfortunately, he’s not even in the same country right now, and there’s no way I’m calling him and taking up what little free time he has to burden him with my problems. He’s out.
Perry would be the next obvious choice, because she’s bored and has historically been a good listener. But, Jesus Christ, I can’t. I know I shouldn’t take sides but even I’m mad at her for what she did to Ansel and Mia, and none of us are really talking to her right now anyway. She’s out, too.
Oliver has enough going on, with the store opening and his long days on his feet. The last thing he needs is for me to unload how my business is ending just as his is taking off.
And if I’m honest, I don’t really want to tell any of them. It’s not that I don’t think they’d be concerned, it’s that I don’t want them to worry. I don’t want them to know how dire it all is.
Oblivious to my mental breakdown, Oliver crosses the kitchen and pulls a cutting board out of a drawer. “So you and Harlow,” he says, reaching for a knife.
“Harlow?” I say, distracted, her name coming out a bit sharper than I intend. “There’s nothing between me and Harlow.”
“Course there’s not. Just noticed how cozy the two of you seemed today.”
Even with everything going on, I still manage to roll my eyes. “She’s a pain in the ass,” I tell him, and it’s such a lie. With most women, the novelty of a pretty face would have worn off and I’d be ready to move on. But with Harlow, I find myself liking her more and more with each conversation.
“You sure you’re okay?”
I turn to see Oliver watching me closely. “Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”
He shrugs, looks like he wants to throttle me, but then he blinks and the expression has vanished, and I wonder if it was ever there. “Don’t know, really. Just . . . you never did tell me what you were doing out here. Everything good at home?”
“Great. Just here to meet with a few investors. Thinking about making some improvements during the off-season.”
I can see a flash of relief on his face. “Finn, that’s great. Look at us, look at our lives. Everything fucking coming up roses, mate.”
Right.
I blink away, looking out the window. There’s really only one person I want to talk to right now.
“Listen,” I say, shutting off the stove. “I just remembered I promised my dad I’d give him a call tonight. You’re okay eating without me?”
If Oliver is suspicious, he’s a good enough friend to not call me on my bullshit. “Yeah, of course. Think I’ll call Lola and see if she wants to hang out. You think you’ll be back?”
I reach for my wallet on the kitchen table and push it into my back pocket. “Not sure. Just save me a plate and I’ll heat it up when I get back. I just really need to make this call.”
Oliver is already nodding, dishing up his plate before he waves me off.
My hand is wrapped around my phone before I’m even out the door.
