THIRTEEN
Maeve
“You know, this is nice. I could get used to it.” I’m lying on Sarah’s twin-size dorm room bed, looking around at the string lights and polaroids taped to the walls. “It’s, like, minimalist. Maybe we should start chilling here instead. We can film Tell Me How You Really Feel college edition. ‘Is the fuckboy who won’t answer my texts my soulmate?’ will be an easy week for me.”
Sarah lobs a pillow directly at my head. “Next time, that will be a textbook. I know this isn’t up to your Met Gala McMansion standards, but some of us are in college still.”
I raise my hands in surrender. “Comments withdrawn. Can we go the dining hall, though? This is making me nostalgic for freezer-burned froyo and living on fries because the rest of the food is inedible.”
Sarah shoots a withering glance at me from her roommate’s bed. “No. You’re famous now. And way too old to go to the dining hall. It’s creepy until you’re like fifty with your own kids. But you can take me to La Barca.”
Twenty minutes later we’re sitting outside at La Barca’s patio and staring down flights of dragon fruit, hibiscus, pineapple, and rosé margaritas. Sarah rests her head on her fist and pretends to push a pair of glasses up the bridge of her nose. “So, Maeve, tell me—how do you really feel?”
“You’re giving … cringe. Seriously, gross.” I take a long sip of the dragon fruit marg. My sister introduced me to this place soon after I moved, after talking it up the past few years. And surprisingly, given that she typically subsists on ramen and pizza bagels, it did not disappoint.
“I’m just teasing! But seriously, how are things with Finn? The new episodes are really good. I missed you two together.” She catches my narrowed eyebrows. “But I hate him, obviously. Ready and waiting to key his car, slander him online, put Nair in his shampoo, whatever it takes.”
Sometimes I hate my sisters, but in moments like this I remember that I love them even when I hate them. “Thanks. I mean, we look good on camera or on the mic or whatever … but it’s awful.”
Sarah raises an eyebrow. “Your drunk texts from the gala say otherwise.”
I drain the rest of the dragon fruit marg and move on to the pineapple. “Trust me, I paid for thinking we could go back to normal after I sobered up. Knowing that I’m disposable to him … I just can’t trust him. And having fun with him hurts! Like, seriously. Laughing with him basically feels like purposefully poking splinters directly into my heart, because I want it to be as real as it feels to me, like, so badly. Wanted. Because now I hate him, and you can’t love someone you hate, unless they’re family. But it really does hurt. You know, heartbreak causes the same reaction in the brain as withdrawing from hard drugs. It’s science.”
The waiter brings out our food, and we dig into our fish and shrimp tacos ravenously. Through bites of taco, Sarah responds. “Well, that sucks. But real talk: you have three years on this contract. And it’s going to be way too tiring to hate him the entire time, so you really need to find a way to be friendly. Or at least call a truce. Maybe the gala was too all in. Just treat him like Claude after she’s really pissed you off, but she also won her soccer match, so you can’t be a total brat.”
“I have to be nice to Claude, though; she’s family. It’s not that easy with him.” Claude might destroy my favorite shirt, but Finn got me to open up about every insecurity, to show him all of my soft spots, just to have him stab them with a fork perfectly designed to hit each and every one.
“Well, he’s your ticket to literally making history as the highest-paid female podcaster, beating Paul Myers, getting your solo show, basically all your hopes and dreams. I mean, no biggie. But talk about incentive.” Sarah reaches over to my side of the table to steal a taco, and I bat her hand away.
“Maybe you should be a therapist too.” My tone is light, but her words are ringing in my ears. He’s your ticket. She must not think I have what it takes to do this on my own either. Fuck. I know this is just an intrusive thought. She’s my sister and she believes in me. But it rings through my mind anyway. She must not think I have what it takes to do this on my own either .
She grins and swipes one shrimp from my taco and adds it to her own. “Too easy. You did what, six years of school? Eight? Try fifteen years of school and residency.”
“That highest-paid spot is looking sweeter every day,” I mutter. Sarah’s face drops a bit, and I falter. I don’t want to make her feel guilty or indebted just because I’m paying for her school. Well, maybe just indebted enough that she’ll be my on-call source for all medical questions. But not actually indebted. “I’m kidding. You know I’m happy to pay it.”
“I appreciate it.”
Sarah looks like she’s about to say something touchy-feely when my phone chirps loudly. Earlier, I’d set it so emails about the show go to a special inbox, with notifications on so I don’t miss anything. Now that I’m not worried about the show getting canceled, I’m trying to get my head in the game and capitalize on the good ratings to hold our spot long enough to beat The Paul Myers Show . I pull out my cell and open the email, only to be greeted with a five-paragraph essay.
“What? You got all bug-eyed.” Sarah leans across to try to read the message.
“It’s from Graham, our guest this week. The football player. He had told Finn he had a specific problem he wanted help with, and he wasn’t kidding.” I scan the email quickly. The sum of it is that Graham is deeply in the doghouse with his girlfriend.
“Why don’t you prep with Finn?”
I roll my eyes. “Why would I do that? He’s basically the comic relief.” Sarah just stares me down, not saying anything. She knows that’s not exactly true. I would call her the two years we did the show, buzzing from spending hours working on an episode with Finn, glowing from building on each other’s ideas and making something great. “Fine. I’ll text him.”
Saw that email. Want to come over and brainstorm?
I look up at Sarah. “Done, but he’s pissed now too. You should’ve heard us last week. There’s no—”
My phone buzzes. Be there in thirty
Sarah lunges across the table and grabs it out of my hand. “Don’t!” I say.
“‘See … you … then …’” Sarah types. She glances up. “Should I add ‘Fancy a truce?’”
I stand and grab the phone back from her. “I think he gets the memo. I’ve got to go. It’ll take me thirty minutes just to get there.” I look down at my outfit: a sweat set, greasy hair, and no makeup—and Sarah snickers.
“If you don’t care about him, you don’t need to dress up for him.”
I signal a waiter and tap my watch against his card reader to pay. “Enjoy the walk to campus,” I shout over my shoulder as I dash out. The drive to my place in the Hollywood Hills is a theoretical twenty-eight minutes, but in actuality is at least forty since LA has hellish traffic at all times. When I pull into my driveway, Finn is already there, sitting on the doorstep with his head lolling back against my door.
“Sorry I’m late,” I say as I get out.
But Finn has perked up considerably at my arrival. “I thought you ditched me.”
I unlock the door and let us both in, and he immediately starts walking around and looking at my things, making himself overly comfortable in my space. “Wow, Maeve, this is a great place. It’s exactly what you always talked about.”
“Almost.” I used to fantasize about having a giant marble kitchen island that my sisters could sit at while I cooked, a huge pool, and an at-home theater. And that’s all here, it’s just that this place was—
“Whoa!” Finn’s shout tells me he found exactly why this place was a bargain. “Maeve! This is the house from your crime podcast, isn’t it?”
I follow him into the living room. Which is very recognizable because before I started renting this place the owners let Netflix film in here for the first-ever video episode of my favorite crime podcast, which just happened to focus on the horrific murder that happened in this very living room.
Finn turns to me, his eyes wide. “It isn’t … Is it?”
“Sarah hasn’t noticed yet. It was a fantastic deal …” I look around. The room has a sparkling paint job, and they let me keep the awesome furniture Netflix used in here for filming. But I’ve seen the crime scene photos, and the wall my TV is on used to be covered in guts from when a woman axed her neighbor to bits after finding out she hadn’t vaccinated her children, which led to her baby dying of complications from the measles. “And, I mean, in a way … the woman killed her son first?” I wince as I say it. “I didn’t say that; strike from the record. But I swear it’s not haunted. And maybe it’s cool podcast history? And it has a pool!”
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me this. You know I love that show too! They’re making a dramatization too; my dad’s working on it, and the podcasters are producing.” Finn grins at me. “It’s cool, seriously. I mean, they could be like friendly ghosts.”
“You know, that’s basically what the real estate agent led with. Shazia was horrified that I took this place, but I kind of like it. And who knows, they want to sell it. Maybe if I last a year with the spirits, I’ll buy it and get a great deal.” Even though I now make more money than I ever have dreamt of, it doesn’t feel real. I still agonize about the cost of getting my dinner delivered instead of picking it up, and I can’t imagine paying for a first-class plane ticket. The other day I added two thousand dollars of items to my Reformation cart, but I couldn’t check out. Instead I just favorited them and decided to wait for the sale. Maybe at some point the money will feel real, but after living frugally my entire life, I still feel like I could lose everything in an instant. I flop down on one side of the couch, and Finn sits on the other, leaving a comically large amount of space between us. “So, that email.”
He snorts. “The novel you mean? Graham isn’t going to need a ghostwriter for his eventual memoir. He’s ready to go.”
I put my feet on the ottoman and Finn follows suit. Our socked toes touch for the slightest moment while adjusting, and we both pull back. He moves his feet to the very edge and I look away uncomfortably, opening my computer that was tucked into the corner of the couch. I never thought we would be like this. I thought we had a bond that couldn’t be degraded down to awkward glances and snipes that go for the throat. It just shows that even though I’m great at giving other people advice, it doesn’t mean I necessarily have my own house in order.
“So, basically, he is in deep shit,” I summarize. “He showed up baked to his daughter’s christening. Bad. And he didn’t propose when she got pregnant because he was waiting to do it when he won the Super Bowl. And then they lost, so he didn’t do it. So she already thought he wasn’t serious, and he made it even worse with the christening. She’s not speaking to him, and he’s staying in the guesthouse and wants to not only fix things but propose because he knows he’s waited too long already.”
Finn whistles. “He is in deep . And I assume he’s already tried apologizing.”
“Well, who knows if he did it right,” I counter. Finn raises an eyebrow, and I elaborate, mimicking a guy’s voice. Finn’s voice, really. “I’m sorry, but you just don’t understand, I meant X, Y, Z and yada yada bullshit bullshit.”
“Ouch. He seems like he meant well. And he loves her!”
“Well, actions have consequences.”
Finn pulls on the neck of his T-shirt. I can see beads of sweat forming on his temple. “Do you have water?”
I stand to get him a glass, then pause. “Want to go in the pool?” I still can’t believe I have a pool. And that it’s an inground pool, not a plastic six-foot-deep aboveground situation. I never thought I would be the kind of person who has a pool, which when I was growing up meant you were rich rich. But the people I’d considered rich rich as a kid are probably people that Finn considers poor.
“I didn’t bring trunks.” He glances down. “But I won’t look if you won’t.”
I speak slowly, since clearly he’s an idiot. “If you think we’re skinny dipping, you’re insane. Wear your boxers. I’m going to go change. Brita’s in the fridge.”
I practically run up the stairs and lock my bedroom door behind me. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to forget the last time I saw Finn naked. How good he looked. How he looked at me. The way my stomach dropped when I saw how he looked at her just weeks later. I take a few deep breaths, pop half an edible to calm down and hopefully stop the panic attack I can feel brewing, ready to unleash if he says one more idiotic thing, and start digging through my closet for my cutest bathing suit. I want him to see what he’s missed out on.
When I walk downstairs, I see that Finn is already in the pool, floating on the flamingo in his underwear. They’re tight gray Calvin Klein briefs, and instead of looking like an idiot, he looks like a male model. It’s so irritating. As is the way my nipples tighten and I feel something low in my gut at the sight of him. But I’m gratified to see that I’m not the only one reacting.
Finn’s blue eyes look darker as he watches me walk toward him. And if I’m being honest, I am walking a bit slower than usual. Letting my hips move. I may not be a six-foot-tall model like Cassidy, but I am fit, and just like my sisters, my curves are in some great places. And this tiny Inamorata bikini isn’t leaving much to the imagination.
I jump in, splashing Finn and holding on to my top for dear life, then climb onto the unicorn float. “So, solutions for Graham.”
“Right.” Finn’s voice is rough and he coughs. “Maybe you tell him exactly how to apologize. So he can get it right and take accountability. And then we focus on how he can show her how much he cares.”
I let my float spin lazily and lean back on the neck of the unicorn, my feet dangling in the water. “And he has to make it clear he loves her. And has this whole time, that he’s not just doing this because they have a child. It’s about her.”
“Why would it be a bad thing to want to be a family now that he has a kid?” Finn’s spinning his float by sculling with his hands so he can stay facing me.
“It’s not a bad thing. But a marriage, at least a good one, is a lifetime. Why would she want to marry someone who isn’t actually choosing her ?”
“Maybe he just doesn’t know how to make her believe she’s who he chooses.”
I’m not sure we’re talking about Graham anymore. But I continue as if we are. “Not taking something that’s important to her seriously, like the christening, isn’t a good way to show it. I don’t think he can propose right away. I think he needs to earn his place back in her life, then go for it. And have the moment be about her, not about him, like the football plan was.”
Finn is quiet. I hope he doesn’t think I’m saying he still has a shot. Because we are done done. I reach a hand toward him, and he paddles toward me, then reaches out tentatively. I take his hand firmly and start to tug, not realizing until he’s tipping over and I look up and notice that his mouth was open, about to say something, his eyes wide and earnest.