Chapter 7
Finn
Not only did Juliet get in my car when I arrived on Friday afternoon, she was on time. It was a miracle. Honestly, I hadn’t been entirely sure she would show.
She stood in front of the door of her apartment building with a duffel bag at her feet. It wasn’t raining for once. The day was crisp, sunny, and cool, and Juliet’s blond hair was windblown. She wore sunglasses with red plastic frames. Beneath the frayed hems of her jeans, she wore flip-flops.
My stomach dipped in excitement, but I hid my expression behind my Ray-Bans. I pulled my Mercedes up and opened the door to get out, to grab her bag, but Juliet was faster. She opened the door to the back seat, tossed in her bag without ceremony, and dropped into the passenger seat beside me.
“Hi,” I said, closing my door again and starting the car.
Juliet took out her phone—there was a diagonal crack across the screen—and tapped it awake. “Finn, you have to help me,” she said.
I blinked behind my sunglasses as I navigated out of the parking lot. “What happened to not needing my help?” I asked.
“I changed my mind.” She tapped her phone screen, frowning, talking like we were taking up a conversation that had just been interrupted. “I’ve been trying to read all these emails, and I don’t understand a fucking thing.”
I switched on my turn signal. “Put on your seat belt.”
She dropped her phone into her lap to obey me, then picked it up again. “There are so many emails about this wedding. Who has time to email about this shit all day?”
“Is that your question?”
She scrolled through her inbox. “Who is Hayley? There are twenty emails from her. I didn’t think Hayley was a real name.”
I merged onto I-5, then slowed in the Friday afternoon traffic. “Hayley is your sister’s best friend since high school. You don’t know any of Vicki’s friends?”
Juliet was quiet for a second, thinking as she rubbed her thumb over her bottom lip. “Maybe I’ve met her. I don’t know. Vicki and I didn’t exactly hang out in the same circles.”
“Okay, well.” I could see where this was coming from. Juliet was heading into a weekend with a crowd of people she didn’t know, and she wanted some background intel. “Hayley and your sister are close. She lives ten minutes away, and her kids are the same age. From what Alistair says, the two of them hang out all the time.”
“Oh, great.” Juliet rubbed her lip again. “So she should have been the maid of honor, but I got the job instead. Which means she already hates me.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. Then, after a silent pause, “Well, maybe.”
Juliet scrolled again. “Melanie?”
“Melanie is Hayley’s cousin.”
“So she hates me, too.”
“It’s possible,” I had to admit.
Another scroll. “Petra? Where do I know that name from?”
“Petra was Vicki’s college roommate,” I said. “She works for Nordstrom, so she used her corporate discount for the bridesmaids’ dresses.”
“The dresses I was supposed to help pick out, but have never even seen.”
“Those dresses, yes.”
“So she hates me, too.”
I frowned. “No, I don’t think so. Petra isn’t the hating type. She’s really quite nice.”
“You know her?” The words came out just a little bit sharp, and Juliet’s shoulders went tense.
I felt that tension deep in my belly, so I said, “I know all of them.”
“All of them?” She sat up, strung tight now. “How well?”
I shrugged. “Pretty well, since I’ve slept with every one of them.”
There was a wound-up moment when she believed me, and then the tension popped like an overwrought balloon. She sagged against the seat, sounding amused despite herself. “You asshole.”
I laughed softly, my eyes on the road. “Just keeping you on your toes.”
She lifted her sunglasses high enough that she could rub the bridge of her nose. “Okay. I admit I may have a little bit of anxiety about this wedding.”
“A little bit?”
“A lot.” She dropped her hand to her lap and looked out her window. “I’ve never been close to Mom or Vicki. I don’t know how to talk to them, and they don’t like my music.”
This was the girl I remembered, who put so much work into her defenses but was still so raw. The girl who dove head-first into every thought, every emotion. “I have a question for you,” I said.
She seemed to tense again. “What?”
“Have you ever even attempted small talk? Like, even once in your life?”
It was a gamble, but it paid off. Juliet laughed.
My hands clenched on the wheel at that sound, my knuckles going white as it rippled down my spine and through my chest. It was the first time I had heard Juliet Barstow laugh.
“You want to talk about the weather, Finn?” she asked.
I shrugged. “I mean, it’s a thought.”
“How about we talk about you? That’s probably your favorite topic.”
“How about we listen to music instead?”
She rubbed her thumb over her bottom lip, a gesture I was starting to understand was unconscious. “Your music or mine?”
“You can pick for the first hour,” I said graciously.
Now her smile was almost smug. “I don’t think you can handle my music, Ice Cream Boy.”
“Try me,” I said.
She picked up her phone, called up her music app, and tried me.
An hour later, Juliet’s app streamed automatically because we were busy debating—okay, bickering—about the relative merits of live albums versus studio albums. I said that no live album could fully capture all the layers of a song the way a studio recording could. Juliet thought that no studio recording, no matter how skillfully mixed, could reproduce the raw energy of a live show. Her evidence: Nirvana’s Unplugged. My evidence: Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors.
It was a debate neither of us could win, and I didn’t care. I didn’t think Juliet cared, either.
She suddenly went quiet, and I realized a familiar intro was playing. A song picked at random by Juliet’s music app. It was Radiohead’s “Creep.”
We had a long, awkward moment, as the song that had been playing the night we met—the night Juliet’s boyfriend cheated on her—played on. Finally, she picked up her phone and jabbed at it, skipping to the next song and turning Radiohead off. She couldn’t bear to hear “Creep,” apparently, even all this time later.
I thought of the girl with red hair, bending over and telling me to kick her out the door into the rain. I had been a boy then, carrying too much on my shoulders, pulled along by forces I couldn’t control. Dad had still been alive.
I missed Dad so much it felt like a knife had carved a slice of my flesh out of my side.
“So,” I said as the next song played. “What happened after I went upstairs that night?”
She leaned back in her seat, her expression thoughtful. “You really want to know?”
“I really want to know.” Unless you slept with him. Please don’t tell me you slept with him.
“I dumped him,” she said.
I kept still, trying not to react. We had left Portland behind, and a sign flew by for an upcoming exit. I signaled to change lanes.
“And then, a week later, I took him back,” Juliet said.
I groaned in pain. Just a little. I couldn’t help it.
“And then I dumped him again,” she finished. Her tone was flat.
“Was it bad?” I asked.
Juliet pushed her sunglasses up on top of her head and frowned. “Was I in love with him? I don’t think so. I thought it was serious, but back then, I always thought it was serious. It’s a failing of mine. Let’s just say I’ve dated a lot of men who know how to be convincing when they want to be.”
“So you don’t do serious anymore.”
She snorted. “God, no.” She seemed to have moved on from the topic, but her reaction to “Creep” haunted me. The song had bad memories for her. I squeezed the wheel. Fuck that guy, whatever his name was. He cheated on her, and she took him back?
I needed to stop thinking about this. It was a long time ago.
“A woman broke up with me to Tom Petty’s ‘Free Fallin’’ once,” I said.
Juliet sat up straighter, perking up in curiosity. “I’m sorry, what?”
“We’d been dating for a month.” I rubbed the scruff on my jaw. “It wasn’t working out. I was distracted—I had a lot going on, none of it good. I shouldn’t have been dating, really.” I paused, remembering how bad that time was. “Anyway, I knew it wasn’t working, and she asked to meet me in a coffee shop, which was weird. She was picking a public place in daytime, so I knew she was going to break up with me. I met her and she started talking, doing her speech. And ‘Free Fallin’’ came on the sound system in the background.”
Juliet had turned to watch me as she listened. Without the sunglasses, her eyes were dark-lashed and beautiful. I concentrated on the road.
“So she was talking,” I continued, “telling me how she was feeling, what she wanted out of life, which wasn’t what I wanted. This awful speech. And all I could think was, ‘Is this breakup going to ruin this song for me? I’d be so bummed out if it did. I really love this song.’ It was the first reaction that bubbled up. That’s how I knew she was right to end it.” I sighed. “I think she left thinking that I took it well. I was just relieved. I had to act sad.”
“So did it?” Juliet asked.
“Did what?”
“Did the experience ruin ‘Free Fallin’’ for you? I want to know.”
“Oh.” I shook my head. “No, it didn’t. I still love that song. I deleted her number, and I haven’t thought about her since.”
“Ouch,” she said. “Harsh, Finn.”
I raised my eyebrows at her. “Yeah? You keep in touch with all of your ex-boyfriends?”
“No, because I don’t want to catch a disease through my phone. But I stalk a few of them on social media from time to time. Don’t you?”
“Never.”
“Of course not.” She rolled her eyes. “You have another one lined up, so you can forget about the last one.”
I smiled, thinking about Alistair complaining that I was a monk, regrowing my virginity. “Juliet, you don’t know me at all.”
“Of course I don’t.” She raised her hands and gestured around the car. “You have this nice car and those expensive clothes. You live to annoy me. What else should I know?”
“Plenty. We’ve basically been in-laws for over a decade. I know a lot about you.”
“That’s because you’re a stalker. And because you know everyone, including Denver Gilchrist.”
“I like Denver,” I said, which was true. It had been nice to call him up. We had talked for a long time. He’d told me that I should come to the Road Kings’ studio and make a solo album, and he hadn’t been joking. I’d been thinking about it ever since.
“Yeah, you two are a mutual fan club,” Juliet grumbled. “But I don’t know you, Finn, because I don’t talk to my family very often and I see them even less. You might have noticed. I’m too busy to think about you much. I just assume you live in a mansion made of glass and sleep on piles of money with your fourteen-year-old girlfriend.”
“My what?”
She couldn’t help smiling, because she loved to shock me.
I shook my head. “Well, you’re going to see where I live for yourself. You should have paid closer attention, because I exited the interstate fifteen minutes ago. We’re taking a detour to my house before we go to Seattle.”