24. Finn O’Connell
Finn O’Connell
Her eyes go wide, her pupils dilating until they’re almost entirely black.
She’s standing there in my giant, ridiculous gray cross-trainers, her hands shoved deep into the pocket of my black sweatshirt, and her jaw is slack.
“Cash,” she says, her voice flat. “Tell me you have a physical map in that backpack.”
“I don’t have a physical map. It’s a designated three-mile community loop. Usually, you have to try really hard to get off it.”
“Well, congratulations to us,” she says, her voice rising an octave. “We are overachievers. We have successfully separated ourselves from civilization in a state we do not live in, during an unseasonal weather event, while I am wearing footwear that makes me look like a cartoon character.”
“It’s just a little front rolling over the crest,” I say, stepping down from the boulder and reaching out to touch her arm.
“We just need to find the runoff line. If we follow the water downward, it hits the creek, and the creek runs right past the gravel lot where the van is. It’s basic geography. ”
She jerks her shoulder away from my hand.
“Do not give me the ‘basic geography’ speech, Cash! You are an athlete! Your entire life is lived in seventy-two-degree indoor arenas with clear red and blue lines painted on the floor so you don’t get confused!
You are not a mountain man! You don’t know where the creek is! ”
“Hey,” I say, raising my hands. “Take a breath.”
“I can’t take a breath!”
She starts pacing in a tight, three-foot circle on the dirt, her giant sneakers kicking up pine needles. “This is a disaster. I am your agent. My actual, legally binding responsibility is to keep you safe from harm, and instead, I am about to freeze to death next to a bush.”
The rain starts coming down harder now, turning from scattered drops into a steady, freezing sheet that begins to hiss against the pine needles. Scottie’s hair is already starting to plaster itself to her forehead.
“Okay, look,” I say, stepping into her path to stop her from spinning herself into a ditch. “We aren’t going to freeze. We have jackets. We have water. We just need to start heading down the spine of the ridge.”
“We can’t go down the spine of the ridge, Cash! Look at it!” She gestures wildly toward the gray void behind us.
The fog is so thick now I can barely see the keys to the van in my own hand.
“It looks like the opening scene of a movie where everyone dies in the first ten minutes! We are going to get eaten by a mountain lion. Or a bear. Do you know what bears do to people, Cash? They don’t even kill you first. They just start eating your legs while you’re still complaining about the lack of cell service. ”
A small, involuntary laugh leaks out of my mouth before I can stop it. The visual of Scottie arguing with a black bear about roaming charges is just too real.
She stops dead.
Her chest is heaving under my sweatshirt, her face bright red, her eyes flashing with a terrifying, manic light.
“Are you laughing at me?”
“No,” I say quickly, wiping the smile off my face. “I’m not—”
“You are fucking laughing at me!” She steps right into my chest, her small finger coming out of the sleeve of the sweatshirt to poke me hard in the sternum.
“This is your fault! You and your stupid ‘real air in our lungs’ nonsense! I told you I don’t do dirt!
I told you I am a creature of indoor lighting! ”
“Scottie, calm down—”
“Don’t tell me to calm down! That is the most misogynistic phrase in the English language!
I will not calm down! I am going to die in sneakers that don’t fit me, and my obituary is going to say I died while ‘recreating’ with a client!
Do you know what the league office will do with that information?
They’ll use it as a cautionary tale at the agent seminar next winter! ”
She’s practically vibrating with rage, her breath coming in short gasps. Then, just as quickly as the anger came, her face crumbles. Her shoulders drop, her chin starts to tremble, and she covers her face with both hands, letting out a small, pathetic sob that goes straight to my gut.
“Oh my god,” she whispers through her fingers. “I’m sorry. It’s my fault. If something happens to your shoulder again because you slip on a rock trying to save me, your career is over, and I’m the one who let it happen. I’m a terrible agent. I’m a terrible person.”
“Hey. Stop that.”
I don’t ask for permission this time. I step forward, grab her by the upper arms, and pull her firmly against my chest.
She doesn’t fight me. She just collapses against my chest, her forehead digging into my shoulder as the freezing rain starts to drench both of us. She’s shivering, her whole body shaking from the adrenaline dump of the last five minutes.
“Listen to me,” I say, putting one hand on the back of her head. “Look at me, Scottie.”
She pulls her face back slowly, her green eyes watery, her nose bright pink from the cold.
“We are not going to die,” I tell her, looking right into her eyes so she can see I’m not joking anymore.
“My dad took me into the boundary waters in Minnesota every single summer from the time I was seven years old. He used to drop me off in the middle of the pine woods with a compass and a bucket of bait and tell me to find my way back to the cabin before the mosquitoes ate my ears off. I know how to read a ridge line. I know exactly which way the slope goes.”
“Your dad sounds like a child abuser, Cash.”
“He was an old-school defenseman,” I say, letting out a soft laugh. “He always told me, ‘If you get lost in the high country, the water is smarter than you are. Find where the rocks dip, follow the trickle, and it’ll take you back to the pavement every single time.’ Now, look down at your feet.”
She looks down.
The loose gravel under our sneakers is already turning into a dark, muddy slurry, and a tiny, clear stream of rainwater is beginning to cut a miniature channel through the dirt, trickling around a large pine root and heading straight down into the gray mist to our right.
“That’s our path,” I say. “We aren’t looking for trail markers anymore. We’re just following the water. It’s a straight shot down to the access road.”
Scottie looks at the tiny stream, then back up at me.
“Okay,” she whispers. “Okay. But if a wild animal attacks us, you are the first line of defense. I am using you as a human shield.”
“That’s literally my job description, Scottie.
I stop things from going into the net.” I give her arms a firm, encouraging squeeze before letting her go and reaching into the backpack to pull out the small bag of trail mix.
I hand it to her. “Eat some of this. Your blood sugar is on the floor and you’re getting mean. ”
“I am not mean,” she mutters, tearing into the bag. “I am highly communicative under duress.”
“Right. That’s what we’ll call it.”
I turn around, facing the steep, misty slope, and take the first step down into the brush.
“Stay right behind me,” I call back over the wind. “If you slip, just drop your center of gravity and slide on your side. Don’t try to catch yourself with your wrists.”
“If I slide, Cash, I am going to slide all the way to the bottom like a bowling ball,” she yells back.
The rain doesn’t let up; it settles into a steady, freezing drench that turns the front of my shirt wet and leaves Scottie’s red hair looking like a drowned bird.
Every ten paces, I stop, turn around, and extend my hand to help her lower herself over a fallen log or a steep drop in the dirt.
Her hands are freezing, her skin pale and damp, but every time I grab her, her grip is incredibly tight, her fingers digging into my palm with a fierce, stubborn strength that makes me want to carry her the rest of the way down just to get her out of the cold.
“You doing okay?”
She lands with a heavy, squelching thud in the mud, her giant gray sneakers covered in brown muck now. She wipes her face with her sleeve, letting out a short, breathless laugh that sounds a little bit crazy.
“Honestly? I think I’ve passed through the panic and entered a state of acceptance,” she says. “My feet are entirely numb. I don’t feel them anymore. They belong to the mountain now. I am just a floating torso of corporate strategy.”
“That’s the altitude talking,” I laugh, turning back to follow the stream. “Keep moving. The trees are thinning out ahead.”
She’s right, though—she’s handling it. Scottie is drenched to the bone, her feet stuck in sneakers that are five sizes too big, and she’s still making fun of her own misery.
“You know,” she calls out from behind me. “This really highlights the flaws in our dynamic, Cash.”
“Oh yeah? How’s that?”
“You need to get yourself a girl who can actually survive on a hike,” she says, her tone light and teasing, but there’s a tiny, sharp truth to it that makes me stop in my tracks.
“Someone who owns real hiking sneakers and knows what a real rock looks like. A real outdoorsy type. Not a Boston agent who gets anxiety from a pine cone.”
I turn around slowly, standing on a wide flat boulder, looking down at her.
She’s looking up through her wet eyelashes, her hands tucked back into the sleeves of my sweatshirt. She’s smiling, trying to make it sound like another one of her jokes—another way to push the reality of us away by framing it as a mismatch.
“Well,” I say. “Maybe I don’t want that girl. Maybe I only want you.”
Her breath hitches, the playful, defensive look on her face evaporating in a split second.
“Cash,” she rolls her eyes. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Do what?” I say. “Tell you the truth? I don’t give a shit about hiking sneakers , Scottie. And I don’t want someone who’s comfortable out here. I like the girl who’s currently screaming at bears in my sweatshirt.”
Her mouth opens slightly, her lips parted, her gaze dropping to my mouth for a long, agonizing second before she forces herself to look back up.
She lets out a tiny, shaky breath, her forehead dropping forward until it rests against my collarbone, her whole body going soft against mine.
“You are an incredibly difficult—truly unmanageable—client, O’Connell.”
“I’m the best client you’ve got, Sharky.”
I slide an arm around her shoulders and tug her in, holding her close for a warm, stubborn ten seconds. Long enough for her to melt a little, even if she’ll deny it later.
“Come on. Let’s go find that van before your toes actually fall off.”
She nods, not saying anything else, but her hand stays tucked firmly into the crook of my elbow as we step off the rocky ridge and continue down the slope.
Ten minutes later, the dense trees give way to an open, gravel clearing.
The square, boxy silhouette of our van appears through the mist like a beautiful, industrial mirage, sitting exactly where we left it in the dirt turnout.
The access road is empty, the gravel dark and wet from the storm, but it’s the most beautiful piece of municipal infrastructure I’ve ever seen in my life.
“Oh my god,” Scottie breathes. “Pavement. Real, engineered pavement.”
She breaks away from my arm, trying to jog toward the van, but because she’s still wearing my massive sneakers, her left foot catches on a wet root and she stumbles violently, her arms flailing as she nearly face-plants into the gravel.
I catch her from behind, hoisting her back up onto her feet before she can hit the ground. She lets out a loud, frustrated groan, turning around in my grip, and before I can even ask if she’s okay, she throws her arms around my neck.
She pulls herself up against me, burying her face into the crook of my neck, her wet hair cold against my skin. She’s hugging me so hard her knuckles are digging into my shoulder blades, her whole body shaking with a mix of leftover adrenaline and pure exhaustion.
“I’m sorry,” she mutters into my neck. “I’m sorry I was such a bitch up there. I’m sorry I yelled at you about the concrete lobby and the 5th Ward Alderman and the bears. I was just really terrified that I was going to lose you in the woods.”
I stand there in the pouring rain, the keys to the van clicking against my fingers, and let out a long, quiet laugh as I wrap my arms around her waist, lifting her completely off her feet for a second to hold her tight.
“You’re fine,” I say into her hair, my face breaking into a massive, unstoppable smile. “You did great.”
She pulls back, her hands resting on my shoulders, her eyes clear and bright as she looks down at me.
“Unlock the door, Finny,” she says, her mouth twisting into a familiar, sharp smirk. “The Boston Glacier needs to turn on the heat before I fire you for real.”
***
8:39 PM
Ivy: How’s Scottie doing?
Me: pretending she doesn’t like me
Ivy: So, normal.