Chapter Nine Finn
“You’re an idiot.”
Marsha meows in agreement. I’m having my weekly video call with my siblings.
Ollie is a senior engineering major, and Violet is a junior majoring in art education at a state school back in Oregon.
They’re on the same campus but rarely do our weekly calls from the same place.
They’re both busy with sports—hockey for him, swimming for her—plus their classes and social lives.
I’m pretty sure if we didn’t have these calls, the two of them wouldn’t connect at all during the semester.
“Thanks, Violet,” I say. “I hadn’t figured that out on my own yet. How do I fix it?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know if you can. You go from telling her you love her one minute to accusing her of having a shifter sex kink the next. Kinda hard to rewind from that, Finn. Poor woman probably has whiplash.”
I drop my head in my hands and groan. This is what I get for opening up to them about everything. They never knew the truth about why Ivy rejected me. I let them think she decided we were incompatible.
“Vi, he overreacted,” Ollie says. “He knows that. Dude got triggered. Do you have anything helpful to add?”
Ollie using the words “dude” and “triggered” at all, let alone in the same sentence, floors me. I love my brother, he’s awesome. But he’s not cool. He’s not edgy.
“Ollie, you can’t eat random brownies.” Violet sighs. “Especially with hockey season starting soon. You ate a pot brownie again.”.”
My eyes bug out of my head. “Pot brownies? Again? What the fuck?”
What kind of school are our parents sending my siblings to?
Ollie says, “It wasn’t an edible. I was just trying to speak like the guys on the team. I’m tired of being called a point-scoring Poindexter.”
Violet rolls her big brown eyes. “Well, refer to them as pencil-dicked peckerheads and call it a day. Who cares what they think? They’re jealous. If you weren’t on a team with them, you wouldn’t hang out with them. They aren’t your people.”
She may be the youngest of us, but she’s the wisest.
“Anyway, this week, we’re dealing with Finn’s angst. We’ll get to yours next week, okay, Ollie?”
She’s also the snarkiest. I love her.
“Do you know where she is?” Violet asks me.
“No idea.”
“Slide into her DMs,” Ollie says.
Even Marsha is staring at my brother, wondering what alien pod person has taken over his body. But it’s not a bad suggestion.
“You know they got married, right?” Violet says.
I think I’m going to be sick. She went back to him? My expression must have betrayed my thoughts because Vi gasps and waves her hands like she’s clearing the air after one of our dad’s farts.
“NO! Not Shelby and her douchecanoe ex. The ex and Ivy got married yesterday. Just recycled everything and acted like it was the love story of the century. So tacky. I mean, the situation but also the sponsored stuff. I don’t care if it’s free, I wouldn’t want my wedding with little signs saying “Courtesy of x” in front of floral displays and hideous ice sculptures and hashtagging everything in the speeches.
No way they are legally married. It was just for show.
The new hashtag is “KonnIving,” like conniving.
I think they’re too dumb to realize they’re being made fun of. ”
I don’t give a flying fuck about those two. I need to reconnect with Shelby. If she’s left, I’ll go wherever she is. I need to apologize and beg for another chance. Maybe she won’t forgive me, but I need to know I tried, at least.
We discuss ideas to fix things and talk about what’s going with Ollie and Vi before disconnecting.
I can’t explain it, but I think Shelby is still nearby.
Our connection doesn’t feel severed. I have to work tomorrow and teach my class, but maybe that will help me think of something.
Before going to bed, I follow Shelby on every social media platform possible and set up to be notified when she posts something new.
If I can’t be with her in person, at least I can still see her and hear her voice.
I watch the video she shot in my guest bedroom and smile at the pictures she’s posted of things from the refuge.
My heart trips at the picture of the bald eagle and her caption, “My first bald eagle! We’re both resting for now, but just like the eagle, I will soar again.
” She didn’t turn off location tags, so the name of the refuge came up.
Maybe it will get us some new visitors. It’s not like people are going to come here looking for her.
I watch her earliest videos, where she’s most like the Shelby I spent the weekend with.
Before all the sponsorships and followers.
She’s the girl from the show. How could I have ever let her go?
I create a playlist of just those videos and play them in a loop as I drift off to sleep.
I can still smell her on my sheets from this afternoon.
I can fix this. If I don’t, I’m going to be broken forever.
The next morning, I’m up at dawn. No use staying in bed when I can’t sleep. One night of holding Shelby ruined sleeping alone for me.
After my morning drive along the wildlife drive loop, I’m in the meeting room where my class assembles before heading outside. My students keep shooting me glances as they come in, whispering while looking at their phones. That’s not unusual, but today it’s making my senses tingle.
“Do you think she’s here now?” I hear those words whispered multiple times and do my best to not react.
When I hear, “They know each other. She was on the show with him,” my head snaps up.
I’m looking into the faces of fifteen curious students, and it has nothing to do with monarch butterfly migration.
“What?” I ask, sighing as I lean back in my chair and rest my laced fingers on my abdomen. I’m trying to convey casualness, but my heart is beating a mile a minute.
“You know Shelby Albright?” one of them asks, and their classmates eagerly await my reply.
“The influencer?” I ask, unsure what to admit to my students.
“Yeah, the one who was on your season of Bigfoot Finds a Bride a couple of years ago.”
A flush creeps up my cheeks. It’s obviously not a secret I was on the show. Anyone can Google it and watch it on streaming services. But I never expected to discuss it with my students.
“I do. Why?”
“She was supposed to get married last weekend at the resort but didn’t. Her fiancé and best friend got married instead. Shelby posted pictures taken here at the wildlife refuge. Maybe you have the scoop on what happened?”
I inhale through my nose and silently count to ten.
I can’t go off on my students. They’re mostly still teenagers since this is a lower-level course for freshmen and sophomores.
They don’t know better. These people they see online aren’t real to them.
I know from my own experience that people think they know you because they saw you on TV and that you don’t have a right to privacy or feelings.
To them, Shelby is entertainment, not a woman whose heart was broken and future upended.
Well, they’re going to learn something extra in my class today.
Rising, I stand tall in front of my class, shoulders back, feet spread, taking up every inch of space I can.
Usually, I try to be nonthreatening, make myself as small as possible, but this time I take advantage of my size and use it to get their attention.
The humans know they better pay attention, but the shifters in my class recognize my posturing—I’m the alpha here.
“Shelby is my friend,” I say in a deeper tone than usual.
Not quite a growl, but it could be. It has their attention.
“More importantly, she’s a real person with feelings.
Just because you see someone on TV or online doesn’t mean you know them, and it doesn’t mean they aren’t entitled to privacy.
They can choose to share all sorts of things, but they can also choose to keep some things private, and that means the public is not entitled to know.
So no scoops, and I don’t want to hear any speculation. ”
Wide eyes stare back at me. Good, they’re listening. Relaxing my stance slightly, I decide to share my truth.
“You know I was on Bigfoot Finds a Bride. Some of you probably watched it and know more about my romantic past than I’m comfortable with.
” My students nod, some of them sheepishly.
“What you don’t know is what I dealt with after the show.
What my family dealt with. Strangers would walk up to my mother in the supermarket and tell her things no mother wants to hear about their son.
Girls flirted with my younger brother because they wanted to use him to meet me.
Complete strangers sent my little sister disgusting messages.
My siblings were the ages you are now.” My students are sinking in their chairs and looking away.
A few are blushing. It’s sinking in. Good.
“People were showing up at the refuge I was assigned to and making it impossible for me to do my job. I have a hard time trusting people now. I transferred here for a fresh start and to give my family some peace. I stay out of the spotlight now. It changed my life.”
And I’d go through the embarrassment and annoyance again and again if it means I end up with Shelby. I have to get her back.
“To those people, I wasn’t a person, I was a public figure.
I was supposed to be available for their entertainment and scrutiny even after the cameras shut off.
I don’t know what Shelby or any of the other people involved with her wedding are dealing with, but it’s their business.
They’ll share what they want and should be given the time and space to do so. They don’t owe us anything.”
I grab my USFWS ball cap and raise my eyebrows. “Ready to head out?” If the speed with which they’re out the door and ready to study the exciting migration of monarch butterflies is any indication, they are. Hopefully some of what I said sunk in.