FOURTEEN
Finn
I surface, sputtering. I thought we were having a moment . “What was that for?” And I’m immediately hit in the chest with a beach ball. I serve it back at Maeve, and it hits her leg with a sharp smack, knocking her off-balance.
She rolls off the float, and I try not to look too hard to see if that completely impractical bikini slips. “Whoever gets the first point gets to ask the other whatever they want. Honest answers only.”
Game on. “Where are the goal posts?”
Maeve points to the two opposite sides of the deep end. “Seven-foot markers.” She tosses the ball to the middle of the deep end, and pushes her float to the shallow end.
“You’re on,” I say, eyes narrowed. “Three, two, one!”
We both lunge for the ball, vicious in our intensity. We’ve been tiptoeing around each other for months, not touching, barely talking, but now she’s elbowing me and I’m pushing her away. At first I’m slightly worried about hurting her, since I’m twice her size, while we fight over the ball. But after she holds me under for at least ten seconds, ending it with a kick to the ribs, I realize that with her fighting dirty and me fighting fair, we’re a pretty even match. Playing this impromptu, scrappy version of water polo should be sexy, considering we’re both practically naked. But I forgot how competitive we are. There is not an ounce of sexual tension here, just months’ worth of frustration coming out, on both sides.
Right as it seems like Maeve is going to launch the ball over my head and make a point, I lunge at her and bring her down by the arm, dunking us both underwater. For an instant I’m afraid I’ve hurt her. How many hours have I spent watching that arm hold a mic, or her wrist poised delicately over the computer, editing? But she shakes it off and uses my momentary concern to her advantage, laughing in my face and grabbing the ball back.
We fight over the ball until my legs ache. We both have scratches on our arms, and I may have bruised a rib. But finally, I throw the ball and it hits her seven-foot marker. “Yes!” I bellow. “Take that!”
“Best out of three?” she tries. We swim over to the edge of the pool and both hold on, heaving.
“Nice try. I know my question.”
“Ugh, fine. But let me get out of the pool.”
Maeve pulls herself out with effort and lies down directly on the deck, not even bothering to make it to a chair. Her chest rises and falls dramatically as she catches her breath, and I lie down alongside her but opposite, so our heads are next to each other, but our bodies are facing in different directions. Personal space, since I’m taking the slow and steady route now.
“You know, this is exactly where she dragged the body,” I point out. “Or the big chunks anyway. She dissolved them in a bucket on the lawn.”
“They bleached it, relax.”
I laugh shortly, unable to really get into it since I’m still gasping for air. Maeve is the only person I know who would be this unperturbed about living in a murder scene. “Do you miss us? Like how we were before?”
“That’s your question,” Maeve says. A statement, more than asking. I nod, and she seems to feel the movement of my head, or the splatter of my hair, or just know what I mean, because she continues. “Yes. I do. But we can’t go back; it’s not possible.” The silence is heavy for a moment. I turn my head, but she keeps looking up, and all I can see is the side of her face. Her auburn hair is darker since it’s wet and slicked back, bleeding water onto the pool deck. Her cheeks are flushed, and she’s biting her lip, a nervous habit she has. Tiny droplets of water are falling off her lashes. At least, I think it’s water. I’m not sure. “But you were right. The point of the show was for us to find the one. It was time for us both to date seriously; it was the whole premise. And Cassidy was a good fit for you. She’s always been the one that got away; it would have been ridiculous not to try.”
The show did help me find the one. But it was you, not Cassidy. That’s all I can think. But it’s not the thing to say right now. Maeve won’t believe me.
“Can we be friends again? Like actually friends. I miss you. We don’t have to be cuddling and touchy. But Maeve, I miss us.” I’m whispering, my entire body craning toward hers.
She turns her head, just the slightest bit, and catches my eye. “Just friends?” I nod, barely, and she looks back up at the sky and even though I can’t hear her exhale, I see her chest rise and fall. “Fine. Just friends. Normal friends.”
I don’t know what normal is for us. Normal is giving her everything, every last bit of me, all the best parts that I didn’t even know were there until I was around her. But normal is better than having her hate me.
I stand up and offer her a hand, pulling her up. “Thank you.” We walk over to the chairs set out by the pool house and I point to a section on the middle of lawn where there’s a patch of grass that has clearly been freshly put down. “That’s where they found her?”
Maeve nods. “I kind of want to dig it up. They say at least ten small bones were never recovered.”
I drop into my chair and look over my shoulder at it while Maeve grabs waters from the outdoor fridge. “I’ll do the grunt work if you want. You can just hose off the potential bones.”
“I’m in.”
We sit in silence for a few minutes, chugging water. Only once I’ve had a bottle and a half and am at serious risk of dry drowning do I stop. “So where did the water polo come from?”
“Oh, my sisters used to play when we were really mad at each other. Breaks the ice.”
I nod, my chest warming. That means Maeve wanted to make things at least somewhat better between us too. “You had a pool?”
She shakes her head. “We played at the public pools. So there’s a limited number of runs, since the lifeguards banned us afterward each time. We worked through all but one public pool in the Pittsburgh area.”
“Well, I hope you saved the last one for a really big fight.”
“Of course.”
I steel myself, then chug the rest of my water. I know I sweated out way more than two bottles during that match. “We’ve been in number one for two weeks, you know.”
Maeve splashes me with the remnants of her bottle, and I shake my head like a dog, soaking it in. “We dropped to number two today.”
“Fuck. Them?”
“Yeah. He got an evil tech billionaire on. Being number one for six straight months is going to be really hard.”
“I think we can do it. Maybe he’ll get canceled.”
Maeve shakes her head. Her hair is starting to dry in the heat and some strands are becoming redder. I always love seeing her like this, in the in-between states, when I know that I get to see her in a way our fans don’t. Although, right now, I can see so much of her that I’m having to think unsexy thoughts like, mic cutting out, canceled contract, wide shot stopped recording, temporary ban on social for inappropriate content, to keep myself from showing how attracted to her I am. My briefs don’t leave much to the imagination, but she’s not looking. “Paul Myers could turn getting canceled into better ratings. I hate him, and I hate how good at manipulating the ratings he is. But we have time. The guest thing is working for us.” Silence lingers for a few minutes. And it’s easy, not the tense, don’t talk to me silence we’ve been having. “So what have you been up to?” Maeve asks finally.
It’s the first time she’s asked me about myself since the “incident,” as I think of it now. I try not to show my surprise. “Like aside from the show?” She nods, and I can tell she’s actually asking. Listening. “Nothing really, to be honest.”
Her brows furrow. “What do you mean? You haven’t been editing, so you must have some spare time.”
“Trust me, I do. But I just … I don’t know what to do.”
Maeve is quiet for a moment while she takes this in. “We’re in LA now. You could just think about acting aga—”
“I can’t,” I cut in, my stomach twisting with a familiar anxiety at the thought.
Maeve raises her eyebrows at my strong reaction. “The paparazzi are more regulated than when you were a kid.”
“And the fans have smartphones. It evens out.” I sigh, long and heavy. I’ve thought about all this too, mostly late at night when I’m feeling unsatisfied and alone. But I always come back to the same thing, which is the visceral memories I have as a child of just feeling so scared by all of the shouting and chasing and flashing lights.
“We’re already famous now. The show is big and you’re you. And you made yourself much higher profile this past summer. I really think it won’t be that different of an experience than the life you’re living now.” She purses her lips, holding back whatever else she was going to add.
“Think about the women from your crime podcast,” I argue. “They’re super famous, for podcasters. They have almost a million followers, they go to award shows, the whole thing. But they can still go out to eat unnoticed if it’s a random spot, go to Target, whatever. Then think of what would happen if my mom tried to walk into a mall.”
“She’d be mobbed,” Maeve acknowledges.
“Exactly. And to their million followers, I have thirty million, ten of whom have stuck around even for the decade I never posted. Acting would make everything infinitely worse. It would be like when I was a kid again, being hounded.” Just the thought of living like that again makes my skin crawl. “I’m not ready to give up being able to use a Starbucks drive-through. But you’re right, I know I’d enjoy it. Until I couldn’t tolerate it.”
Maeve is quiet, just listening. Not pushing. And not saying we don’t need to talk about it because it upsets me. She’s the only person I ever talk about this with. After a few minutes of silence, just us and the breeze, she finally speaks. “If you ever decide it’s worth it and want help learning to sit with your anxiety surrounding it, I’m here. And I know that if you decide you want to you can. You’ll find a way you can still live a full life with it, like your mom has.”
“Thanks,” I say tersely. She doesn’t understand how hard it was seeing the press decimate my mom’s confidence for years, stalk our family, harass me wherever I went. Podcasting is one thing. If I started acting … it’s a massive amount of risk. With Tell Me How You Really Feel , I knew what I was trading for, and it was time with Maeve. This is a whole different story. But I break the tension, more concerned with keeping us on track than talking out my existential crisis. “Who should I make the bill for this session out to?”
Maeve giggles and splashes water on me. We spend the rest of the afternoon working on our plan for Graham’s episode, and for the rest of the season. Planning what guests should come on when together, how to make the episodes pop. Cool social content we could film. I really believe that if we can actually work together, we could take that top spot.
When I get into bed later that night, for the first time in months I actually relax when my head hits the pillow. I feel so much better now that I’ve gotten to a better place with Maeve. Just as I’m drifting off, my phone dings.
It’s a text from Maeve. I think you activated the ghosts. I’ve been feeling a chill in the air
One text shouldn’t make me smile like I’d just won the lottery. But I can’t help it. I thought they could be friendly ghosts?
Good point, I’ll ask them to stream the show.
Maybe we can do a special episode-advice from beyond the grave
SOLD!
I fall asleep clutching my phone, a smile still on my face.