Chapter 19
Finn
I had been dramatic when I’d said I lived in the wilds of Washington. I lived, in fact, on a piece of property just large enough to give me privacy, but not so large that I could disappear. I could walk long enough along the damp, rocky paths of my property until Gary got tired, and then I could turn around and go home. I couldn’t see any other homes from my windows, but in twenty minutes of driving I’d be in the parking lot of Costco.
Still, as I took Juliet walking with me, it felt like we were briefly in the middle of nowhere, away from everything and everyone else. I was used to solitude, but one of the things I was reluctant to admit was that in the years since Dad died, my life had become lonely. I was a lighthouse keeper on the end of a jut of rocks, looking out at the ocean. This morning felt different.
Juliet wore the jeans and sneakers she’d arrived in yesterday. She’d swapped yesterday’s T-shirt for a different one, and she’d put on one of my lined flannel jackets to keep out the chill. It was too big on her, but of course she pulled it off. Juliet had the rock star’s ability to wear literally anything and make it look like she was about to take the stage.
She complained only briefly about our enforced outdoor exercise, and then she warmed to it. The walk was good for her baseline of restless energy. Gary trotted beside us on the leash I held, doing his usual routine of digging his nose into wet mounds of earth and pretending that he might chase squirrels and birds.
I took the earbuds out of my ears. Juliet had played me a rough recording from the take in which she’d sung backup for Denver. I put the earbuds into their case and slid the case into my pocket.
Juliet put her phone away, but she didn’t look at me. She kept her gaze straight ahead. I could practically see her struggling with herself, trying not to ask me out loud what I thought of it. Everything was always an argument with her, especially when she argued with herself.
“It’s really good,” I said when I realized she was never going to ask. “It adds more emotional depth to the song. I think when you rehearse it, you should play around with the key of your harmony. Different keys will give different moods. It could sound darker or lighter, depending on what you’re going for. If you want, when we get home I can import it into my mixing program and show you what I mean.”
Her cheeks were red, partly from the exertion and partly, I thought, from pleasure. I’d said something right. I didn’t think it was as simple as Juliet wanting my approval of her musical talent—she’d never needed it before, and she didn’t need it now. But her skin suffused with color, and she didn’t look at me.
“You can do that?” she asked. “Change the sound?”
“Very roughly, yes,” I said. “I can split the tracks out and edit them. It won’t sound polished—more like a sketch. But it will give you an idea of what you can try.”
“Don’t get any ideas,” she said, still arguing more with herself than with me. “Just because I slept with you doesn’t mean you get to take over my music.”
I was more amused than annoyed. “Have you ever tried making things easier for yourself?” I asked her. “I recommend it.”
She gave me a fiery glare. “You don’t have all the answers, Finn.”
“You’re right, I don’t,” I agreed. “What I have, as you’ve told me, is a lot of spare time because I have no career.”
Juliet stopped walking and turned to look at me. Her brows drew down. “Wait. Did I actually say that?”
I stopped walking, too. “More than once, yes.”
She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. She didn’t wear any makeup, and in the cloudy light her skin was flawless, except for the crease between her brows where she was frowning. “Finn, I’m an asshole,” she said.
“Only sometimes.” I bent to get in her face a little, because her voice sounded distressed. “It’s one of the things I like about you.”
“What do you like?” She dropped her hands and rubbed her palms on the hips of her jeans, a nervous gesture. “That I say dumb shit that offends people? You might have noticed that even my own family has no patience with me.”
How anyone could be so wrong-headed was sometimes surprising to me. “What I’ve noticed,” I said, “is your family begging you to come to Vicki’s wedding to be a part of it, and you running in the other direction until I offered you fifty thousand dollars to go.”
“I’m not taking your money,” she said, riled. “And it wasn’t fifty thousand.”
“I just upped it,” I shot back.
“I swear to God, Finn, if you give me that money, I’ll call up Max and give it straight to him.”
I stared for a second, stunned at the sudden rush of pure, undiluted jealousy running through my veins at the name of someone I’d never heard of. “Who is Max?”
“He’s a friend of mine in L.A. He runs a bunch of homeless shelters down there. Your fifty grand will go straight to the junkies, the crazies, and the sex workers. People who could use it. I won’t take a dime.”
She never failed to surprise me. Not once. But this was pure Juliet—to give money to people worse off than her while she struggled to pay her bills, and to have a bad attitude while doing it. It was her moral code, and she never wavered from it.
I put my hands in my pockets. “Well, there isn’t any money until the wedding happens and you actually go. So we can argue about it then. Max will have to wait.”
She caught the slight emphasis I put on the guy’s name, and the derision that slipped into it. She rolled her eyes. “Jesus, Finn. Max is sixty-five. I know him because The Muffins played for a fundraiser he organized years ago. Cool it with whatever this macho thing is.” She waved up and down, as if I was doing anything.
“There’s no macho thing,” I said. “And you’re not an asshole, because you’re right.” I moved my gaze past her shoulder, into the trees. “Dad died three years ago. The surgery was two years ago. I’ve made music, but I haven’t released anything because I’m afraid to do it. It’s been on my mind ever since you said it.”
When I finally looked at her, she didn’t look triumphant. She looked stung, and I knew it was because she didn’t like to be the truth teller all the time, to play the role of the one who said what no one wanted to hear. It was exhausting, and just for this weekend, she didn’t want to do it.
I stepped forward and cupped her face in my hands. I kissed her, long and deep, and she kissed me back. I let my tongue sweep over her lower lip, then into her mouth as her arms snugged around my waist.
I broke the kiss slowly, coming out of it in stages. My hands were still cupping her face. “I like it when you tell me the truth,” I said.
“Fuck you, Finn.” Her voice was shaky.
My fingertips moved over her cheekbones. I kissed her forehead. “I like it,” I said, moving my fingers up to gently brush her temples, “when you tell me what’s going on in here. Even when it’s just a glimpse. Even when you think it’s too blunt to be polite. What you think about is interesting to me. And what you think about me…Well, I can take it. My ego is so immense that the honesty barely registers.”
That got me the ghost of a smile. What I wanted to tell her was that she could say anything at all as long as she was wearing my jacket, walking in my woods, after a night in my bed. She could tell me the ocean was pink and that trees grew upside down and I would just nod, enraptured. But I wasn’t going to say that.
Gary bumped purposefully into my leg, giving a polite bark. The moment broke, and Juliet pulled away from me.
“He wants to go back,” I explained. When she raised her eyebrows in question, I added, “When we get home from a walk, he gets a certain something that I cannot say aloud.”
Gary was on to me. He got excited even though I hadn’t said the word treat, wagging his tail and pulling at the leash to go back toward the house.
“Gary is right,” Juliet said. She waved at the trees around us. “This is a lot of outdoor time. I’m allergic to fresh country air. And I’m hungry.”
We walked back the way we came. I’d make her lunch. The weekend wasn’t over, and I would make this last as long as I could before she was gone again.