I’M MOPPING THE floor. Why, when the house cleaner was at my parents’ house today, am I mopping their floor?
Because I can’t seem to focus on even the smallest task, and dropped an entire casserole dish of enchiladas on the tile.
Dad walks in, looks at me in my ripped jeans and his old flannel shirt, and then at the stained-red mop and the smear of sauce on the white tile, and doesn’t even say anything. He just walks to the fridge, opens it, grabs a yogurt for Mom, and kisses my head on the way back out.
I make a couple of decisions in the next twenty seconds. First, I need another job.
There’s a tiny chance I’ll be offered a full-time, paid internship at NBC starting in January, but just talking about my current situation with Finn briefly made me realize I’m just spinning my wheels. I’m useless there and no self-respecting woman of the twenty-first century with no other earthly responsibilities works twelve hours a week.
Second, I can’t bang Finn, but I also can’t spend every free second at my parents’ house. The reality of illness is it’s a fairly miserable, isolating business. Mom doesn’t want us hovering, and if she wants anyone, it’s Dad. It’s time to cut the apron strings.
Third, and maybe most important, I need to figure out what I’m doing for dinner now that I’ve shattered Plan A all over the kitchen.
When I’m on my hands and knees, scrubbing the last of the stain from the grout between the tiles, my phone dings on the counter with a number I don’t recognize.
You up for getting a beer or two?
I squint at the screen in the darkening kitchen, typing back, Who is this?
The guy you were just fantasizing about.
Colonel Sanders?
The reply comes immediately. Try again.
I giggle as I type, Ethan? I hit send and quickly type, No! Jake, I’m so sorry!
Finn’s reply comes up after about a minute: Funny.
Finn and I exchanged numbers in Vegas nearly three months ago and I’m strangely tickled that we’ve never used them until now. Are we going to a lumberjack bar? I ask.
I think the word you want is fisherman.
Whatever, I’m just impressed you’re doing the texting. I type back. I look down at my outfit and cringe, before deciding—fuck it. And this is perfect, I’m dressed like you.
I’ll be there in twenty.
I run upstairs, kiss my parents goodbye, and head out of the house, diving into my car and hoping to beat Finn back to my place. I don’t want him to know I wasn’t home. I don’t know why, but maybe it’s because right now—and shockingly—Finn Roberts is my happy place; just being around him makes me feel better, and part of it has to be that he never asks me, “How are you feeling? How is your mom? Hanging in there?”
She’s such a fighter.
She’s so beautiful.
So young.
I can’t imagine how this must be for you.
Strangely, Finn is the one who probably could imagine how this is for us, and it’s a relief to not have to face it when I’m with him.
I get home in record time; the traffic light gods were smiling upon me. I could change out of my grungy clothes, but don’t bother. If we aren’t banging, I’m not primping.
He’s such a gentleman that he texts from the curb that he’s here, and I meet him at his truck and jump in.
“I forget how to get to Fred’s,” he says by way of greeting.
“Hello.” After buckling my seat belt, I tell him, “Hang a right on Prospect and then a left on Draper.”
“Oh, yeah.” He maneuvers out of the spot and then follows my direction. “I think I’ll remember from there.”
“Especially given that it’s on Draper,” I say with a cheeky grin.
But he doesn’t smile back. In fact, Finn seems lost in thought. He fiddles with the radio and settles on NPR, so instead of conversation, we have a rerun of Terry Gross interviewing Joaquin Phoenix to keep us company. He drums his fingers on the steering wheel at a red light, looking out his window away from me.
“This not-having-sex thing sure is way more stimulating! I’m super glad we’re still cool just hanging out.” I lean forward to get a better look at his face, but I don’t even get a flicker of a grin.
“Just wanted to get out for a bit,” he mumbles cryptically. Oliver lives a block from the beach. Finn could easily “get out” and do about a hundred different things other than taking me to Fred’s, where we just went just a few nights ago.
He parks in front of the bar and meets me on the sidewalk, as usual gesturing that I lead the way. Mr. Furley calls out to me when we enter, telling Kyle to kick some “ratty-ass kids out of Harlow’s booth.”
“How dare they?” I hiss playfully to him.
“Kids these days,” he says, wiping down the bar. “Buncha little assholes. How’s Madeline?”
“She’s hanging in there.” I stretch across the bar and kiss his stubbly cheek before hopping down and grabbing the two bottles of beer he hands me. I give him my best Bogart: “Tanks, schweetheaaart.”
Handing one to Finn, I gesture for him to follow me to our corner, wiping a few stray peanut shells off the table as I slide into our booth.
“You sure have him wrapped around your finger,” Finn says as he climbs in after me, looking back at Mr. Furley behind the bar.
“Yep. He’s the best.” I take a long pull on my beer, watching Finn swallow as he does the same. God, I love his neck. It’s tanned, and defined, and dark stubble just barely shadows it, from his cheek . . . down his jaw . . .
I clear my throat. No sex. “So what’s up?”
Finn shrugs, and stares at the television nearest us, currently playing a Padres game.
At first the silence is comfortable: I have my beer, he has his beer. He has the Padres, I have a couple of adorably dorky senior citizens cutting a rug on the dance floor. But when they go sit down at their table, I feel the weight of the silence at ours. I don’t have the sense that Finn asked me to come out so he could sit and watch baseball alone.
“So, is Oliver working tonight?”
He doesn’t seem to hear me.
“Do you want me to order us some food? I’m starving.”
Again, he seems completely lost in thought. The music is pretty loud, but it’s not like I’m whispering. Hello, I never whisper.
“I think I’m going to go over to the music booth and see if Kyle wants to get freaky on the dance floor with me.” Nothing. “Maybe bang him on the bar. Or maybe a little action in the back room.” I lean toward him. “And obviously ‘back room’ is a euphemism.”
“Hey now,” Finn says, pulling his eyes from the television. Finally, a reaction.
“Okay, so what’s going on?” I ask him. “If you wanted a quiet beer session you could have brought Oliver.”
“I just wanted to think.”
“And that you could do alone, or on a run on the beach. So clearly you need to talk. Do you need a sounding board, or a brick wall?”
Finn looks at me like he has no idea what I’m talking about.
“Do you need me to help you think something through,” I clarify, “or do you just want to talk it out without interruption?”
“Are you capable of that?”
My face right now. “In fact, I am.”
Finn rises from the table, holding out his hand when I start to protest. “I’m going to explain. I want to talk it out, no interruption. I just need another beer first. Or three.”
He starts to walk away so I call out, “Have Mr. Furley bring me some tater tots, too.”
FINN IS ALMOST half done with his second beer when he finally starts talking. “When I said I was here on business, I was telling the truth. I know it sounds weird, because our entire tiny business is centered up on Vancouver Island.”
I nod, inexplicably giddy to learn why he’s staying in San Diego for so long. I feel sort of special that he’s talking to me about this, but I absolutely don’t let that show. I am poker-facing it like a champ.
“But it’s not an easy business, and it’s one of those things where if you have a bad year, okay, you can pull it out the next. But if you have two bad years, it gets harder. A couple bad years, a big commercial firm comes in . . . then the boats need fixing . . .” He runs a palm down his face and then takes a deep drink of his beer, finishing it and then grumbling a quiet, “Yeah, so.”
I’m suddenly not quite as giddy anymore.
I can tell he’s not going to lay the specifics of his business troubles on me and really, it’s fine because I suspect I would be only marginally more helpful than Kyle the DJ would be in this situation. But I stay quiet, not only because of my inexpertise, but because I know he isn’t done. I still have no idea why he’s here.
“So about, I don’t know, maybe a month ago, some people called up, said they had an idea for . . .” He cuts off and looks at me for a long pause. “For a show.”
“Like a fishing expo?” I ask.
Laughing, he says, “No. Like a television show.”
Oh.
Oh.
I lean forward, my elbows on the table. “And by ‘some people’ you mean . . .”
He blinks away. “The Adventure Channel.”
I feel my eyes go wide. “Holy shit, Finn. They want to make a show out of your family business?”
“Me, Dad, Colt, and Levi. All four Roberts boys.”
“And you’re here to start negotiations?” I’m reeling. The Adventure Channel is huge. Finn definitely has a face and body for television, but . . . he’s not exactly warm and fuzzy.
He shakes his head, saying, “No. See, one of our smaller boats was fucked a while ago, but before our main boat, the Linda, broke, I wasn’t really considering it that seriously. I came down here because both my brothers want to do it, and I don’t feel right making a unilateral decision about it without at least weighing the options.” He rubs his face again. “But I found out about an hour ago that the Linda is fucked, too. I mean, fucked. We have maybe five thousand in the bank, and are looking at a repair that’ll cost a hundred grand. Maybe two.” Looking over at me, he says, “Now I have to consider this show, or bowing out of the industry completely. I don’t want this, Harlow. It’d be a circus.”
“Have you talked to the network since you’ve been here?”
“Only a couple of emails. I came down early because of Oliver’s opening, and Colton was worried I was going to have a heart attack like Dad and wanted me out of town.” He glances at me. “I’m meeting with them soon in person. They’ve been sending me promo materials.”
My stomach bottomed out at the mention of Finn having a heart attack, but at his playfully hesitating look and the mention of promo materials, I can’t help my smile. “ ‘Promo materials,’ you say? This I need to see.”
With a grimace, he reaches into his back pocket and pulls out his wallet, fishing out a folded glossy 8×10 of the family sitting on a boat docked in the water. “Here’s one thing they’ve sent.” He hands it to me. “They’ve also made a logo and T-shirts.”
“Wow,” I say staring down at the picture. The lighting is professional, the colors rich. Each man in the photo is the perfect balance of rugged and polished. “This is the extreme fisherman version of a JCPenney glamour shot.”
He snatches it from my hand. “Okay, and you’re done.”
I manage to snag it back before he can return it to his wallet. “So these are your brothers, huh?”
“Yeah.”
Finn is in the middle, with his father and the youngest brother, Levi, on one side, and the middle brother, Colton, on the other. It’s clear they’ve received some direction: Finn’s dad looks welcoming, laid-back. Levi is beaming, an open book, whereas Colton is making sex eyes at the camera. Finn looks no-nonsense and world-weary. All four men in the picture are completely, ridiculously good-looking.
“Well, thanks for this. I might need to go home and masturbate for the rest of the evening.”
“You know, if a guy said that, it would be super creepy.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Poodle. Does the sexual double standard make you grumpy?”
He laughs dryly. “You’re a pain in the ass, Ginger Snap.”
“So, the Adventure Channel wants you basically for a dating show.”
“No. It’s meant to be a gritty peek into our lives as fishermen and—”
“Does it say that on the back of the Glamour Shot?” I flip it over, pretending to look.
“Harlow.”
“Finn.” I turn the picture back over and point to it. “Look at you guys. You’re, what? Thirty-two?”
“Yeah.”
“And Colton is how old?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“And Levi?”
He sighs. He’s bagging what I’m raking, clearly. “Twenty-four.”
“I bet there’s a clause in the contract they showed you that you can’t be in a committed relationship when filming begins.”
His eyes go wide. “How would you know that?”
“Are you kidding? My mom has been offered a spot on a reality show a few times. They always have something in there about relationships. So you don’t think this show is really about filming your bulging biceps on the boat and then getting you shirtless and hooking up with coeds?”
“You aren’t helping. I already don’t want to do this.” He steals a few of my tater tots. “But my brothers think it will be a trip. It’s like they don’t really understand how it will change their lives. Colt is always sleeping with someone different. Levi . . . I swear I think he’s a virgin.”
I look at the sandy-haired hottie in the picture. “Okay, you’re high. If this guy isn’t putting out left and right, there is no God, Santa, or Easter Bunny.”
He waves me off. “Whatever. I just don’t think we’d make very good television.” His argument is so weak, even he can tell. He winces at my gaping shock, looking away.
“You’re kidding, right?” I ask him. “A manwhore hottie, a virgin hottie, and the hottest older brother who’s clearly too busy for love? This is a television producer’s wet dream. This show practically writes itself.”
As if relenting, he says quietly, “They’re laying it on pretty thick. Two-season commitment to start, they bought my truck just as a good-faith gesture, and they’ll repair our main two boats and get us a new one.”
I let out a low whistle. “Wow. So you’re upset because a huge television studio wants to give you oodles of money? Poor baby. Why aren’t you jumping on this?”
He looks at me, and it’s his turn to be incredulous. “I like my life, Harlow. It isn’t cushy, and we’re always sort of scraping by, but I chose this for a reason. I like my little house on the water, and working on the boat and cracking jokes with my brothers and those days where we get an unreal haul. Those days make all of the slow ones totally insignificant.” He looks away, running his thumbnail down a groove in the table. “The idea of a crew coming on and filming us twenty-four hours a day for three days a week makes me nauseous.”
“What do Oliver and Ansel think about it?” I ask.
“They don’t know.”
“I know something they don’t?” I crow.
He shrugs. “It’s hard to discuss this choice with my best friends. I’m in the middle of this crazy decision, but in two years I may look back and think, Why did I even consider this? I don’t want to mull it over with people who will be in my life every day if I realize only later how pathetic it all seems. Does that make sense?”
So he’s not expecting me to be in his life in two years? Okay. This one stings and I tilt my beer to my lips, looking away. “Makes total sense.”
“Shit,” he whispers, seeming to register how that sounded. “You know what I mean.”
And in all honesty, I do. I haven’t told him about my mom, either. I don’t need Finn’s support, and I like that being with him is just an easy place for me to inhabit. Maybe he likes that, in the long run, my opinion doesn’t matter much.
I mentally shake off my minor offense and smile at him. “I know it probably sounds like a complete one-eighty from your life right now, but it could bring opportunities you’ve never considered. It would give your company name a brand, and—”
“Or make us a joke.”
“And,” I say, ignoring him, “they’re giving you a boat? I know less than nothing about commercial fishing but I bet those cost as much as a house in La Jolla.”
“Not too far off,” he agrees. “I don’t know. I’m not even sure the boat they buy for us would ever feel mine, either. It is, literally, selling out. But you haven’t run away laughing, so I guess it’s not insane for me to be putting some thought into it.”
“I think you would be insane if you hadn’t.”
He nods, and turns his attention back to the game. This time, I’m pretty sure he’s done talking.
