Chapter Nine #2
Flora took it and slid it into her backpack, looking around at the landscape paintings on the walls as if they might tell her what to say next. They were silent.
“Right,” she said quickly. “Well—thanks for the book. I mean… thanks for returning it. I’ll see you around, Finn.”
“What is up with you?”
Flora’s eyes went wide. So abrupt. She wasn’t accustomed to being called out for much of anything. But Finn stood there, one eyebrow raised, arms crossed. CEO.
“Nothing!” she said quickly. “Nothing’s wrong.”
“You’re being weird.”
Flora groaned a bit and shrugged. “You didn’t tell me you were going to New York.”
Finn was silent for half a second.
“You didn’t tell me you were going to Tahoe,” he replied.
“Well, what am I—your secretary?” she shot back.
Finn’s jaw dropped at the inconsistency, but he grinned knowing she was joking.
“So,” she started, sliding into the chair across from his desk, “how was New York? Did you bring me back a hot dog?”
“No. I didn’t think you wanted food poisoning. And I don’t get out much because all we do is work. Roman was being fidgety the entire time, and it was pretty much a wash by the end of it. I think we got less done than we’d planned.”
“Why did you bother to take him?”
Finn looked uneasy at the question.
“Roman needs to take some responsibility at the company,” he said, shaking his head.
“I’ve never told him he has to work for us.
He has had every chance to go and get any job he wants—we have connections everywhere—but he shows no aptitude for anything except going to the pool, eating cheese plates, getting parking tickets, and driving his car too fast up Cascade.
I think some level of interaction with the company might be beneficial.
He’s getting married. He’s going to be someone’s husband. ”
“So…” Flora said, “you didn’t go out and do anything while you were in New York?”
“I got stuck in an elevator for an hour and had an anxiety attack.”
“You know you’re funnier than people give you credit for.”
“Yeah. Finn Woodhouse, stand-up comedian. Definitely not the next headline. But that, I suppose, is a peril of this job. You become things you may not have ever planned to be and do things with consequences much deeper than what you want.”
Flora was about to ask him what he meant by that—
“What are you doing tonight?” he cut in.
“Uh—” Flora swallowed a sudden rush of adrenaline.
“Wandering the hills? Picking flowers?” he asked.
She pointed a finger at him. “Don’t judge my free-spirited nature.”
“You want to go see the new Spider-Man?”
“It doesn’t come out for two weeks,” she said, looking at him like he couldn’t be dumber.
“I’ll ask it again. Do you want to go see the new Spider-Man?”
Flora stared blankly.
After he explained that he could get an early and private showing, Flora felt something close to a joyous panic set in.
“Yes!” she exclaimed. “Obviously!”
They settled on meeting at six.
Flora spent the rest of the day at the park, riding her bike down dusty trails, and picking flowers for her book. She barely made it back in time to change.
She still smelled like summer when Finn showed up in the Defender outside of the studio.
Despite the fact that they were so different, he’d become increasingly aware of how much he enjoyed her company.
He thought how unfortunate it would be to lose a friend when all was said and done.
But saving the merger mattered more than anything else.
Roman was still talking about not marrying Jane, and every second he spent with Flora was dangerous. Finn had to keep her occupied.
He was also balancing Holly, whom he had seen three times since the concert. While she wasn’t as hard to corral or as enjoyably unpredictable as Flora, she was quick in her own way and kept asking about “the little chauffeur’s daughter, you know, with all that hair.”
At the end of the day, neither Flora nor Holly could know what was really going on and he was left to manage the chaos. He wasn’t enjoying it.
However, he was enjoying what was going on at that moment. Flora was exploding with excitement as they walked into the theater.
“I could sit anywhere,” she said, moving from seat to seat. “I don’t know what to do. I always sit in the very back row, but now what do I do?”
She tried every section before ending up exactly where she always sat—back row, dead center—dropping into the seat with a satisfied sigh. Finn had already been up there for five minutes, eating sour Skittles, waiting for her to do exactly what she’d done.
As they waited for it to start, Flora turned, watching him shove candy in his mouth and narrowed her eyes.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Uh huh.”
“And you have to tell the truth.”
“Uh, no, I don’t agree to—”
“Did you ever kiss Virginia Thomas?”
Finn nearly choked.
Flora sat back, crossed her arms, and looked gleeful. “You did! So weird! She stole your boxers and wrote her number in all of them, and you kissed her. You weirdo!”
“I did not.”
“Liar.” She waved her hand. “I know a guilty face when I see one. She was pretty, she really was, just totally insane. But I don’t know, maybe you like crazy.”
Finn put his head in his hands. “Why did she tell you?! You were like fourteen at the time and she was eighteen when that all happened,” he asked, leaning his head back on the wall behind them.
Flora was laughing so hard she could barely answer.
“She told me her victorious story one day while I was doing my algebra homework in the kitchen. After alluding to my hair being ugly, she told me she’d ‘done the impossible.’ I told her it was unlikely, but I wish I would have never defended you now!”
“I had two sips of that disgusting Fourth of July jungle juice that my mother serves every year,” Finn muttered. “That stuff is lethal. I wasn’t supposed to have any, but I did anyway. And… things got out of hand.”
“Apparently! Enough to kiss your stalker.”
“I regretted it for the rest of my life. I don’t need to be reminded. Luckily, they moved away eventually. New York. Although India wouldn’t have been far enough. She’s married now with a kid.”
“Really? I thought she would have waited for you!”
Now Finn socked her in the arm just as the movie started. Flora settled into her seat, forgetting all about Virginia Thomas.
Finn leaned back, trying to ignore the lingering embarrassment.
He hadn’t dated much.
There had been a girl in high school—Nora Parker—but she moved away before anything happened.
In college, he’d been too busy, though there had been a girl in a political theory class he’d liked.
That never went anywhere either. Then his father died, and dating became completely irrelevant.
Years went by and it hadn’t crossed his mind once.
Now all his dates were girls sent by his mother or girls he thought were normal only to find she enjoyed skinning bunnies for shoes, or she had a minor (or major) drinking problem.
Taffeta Borns, a girl he had seen once or twice, ended up in Alcoholics Anonymous after driving her car into a packed Wiener-Schnitzel in Oakland.
Luckily, no one had been injured. Then there was Fawn Saranap, who tried to rob the Los Angeles Gucci store with a lime green squirt gun, and she’d been wearing one of his shirts when she did it.
She’d stolen it from his closet at a dinner party.
After these episodes, he told his mother that if she sent one more girl named Taffeta, Doe-A-Deer, Lemon, or Lady, he’d sue her in federal court.
He eyed Flora now.
He’d never seen anyone get so invested in a movie before—or eat so much candy.
Flora laughed, leaned forward, gasped, and commented under her breath through half of it.
She was talking a mile a minute when they left, recounting every part she liked.
He couldn’t decide whether he’d enjoyed the movie or her reaction to it more.
“When he flew off that building and did that thing—” she said. “I wish I could do that. Just—” She flicked her wrist at a passing car— “web and go… oh, look! A dog.”
She spotted a puppy and veered into the street before he could stop her.
“Flora—”
Too late. She was best friends with Herald, the three-month-old golden retriever.
Then she was in a flower shop, rattling off all their Latin names—a skill his father had taught her.
Then she was running down the street jumping over all the poles meant to keep cars off the sidewalk like they were hurdles.
She was a blur.
Finn was trying to get her to the car while answering work calls. It was a Wednesday night, and people at Woodhouse worked nonstop.
At one point, he snagged the back of her shirt to keep her from stepping into traffic, phone pressed to his ear, carrying her leftover Sour Patch Kids.
“Hey—hey. Hey!” he said, pulling her to the curb. “Be careful! No—sorry, James, I’m babysitting right now.” He eyed Flora and she stuck her tongue out. “Friend of the family… Flora, stop that. Flora, you’re going to get yourself killed… excuse us, ma’am. Sorry.”
Eventually, he got her into the passenger seat of his car what felt like hours later. Five minutes of the lull of the car and she fell asleep. Finn was laughing to himself as they pulled into the estate.
She woke up with a start when he parked, not knowing where she was for a second. “Ugh. I think I had too many Sour Patch Kids…” She shrugged and stretched. “I had fun. Thanks again. See you tomorrow.”
He assumed this was a figure of speech, but she really did find him the next day.
She waltzed into his home office without knocking to show him something. A photo. A photo from the day they went to San Francisco.
“I think this might be the coolest photo I’ve ever taken,” she said. “What if—just stick with me here—what if I submitted it to National Geographic along with my portfolio. I’ve always wanted to work for them. I really love nature and animals.”
It was a perfect photo of the Sutro Baths. The sun setting over the water with the reflection of the sky in the waves. It looked surreal. She really did have an eye for it.