33. Cash
Cash
Scottie hasn’t moved her head from the vinyl headrest since we cleared the grocery store parking lot.
Her eyes are open, tracking the green highway signs as they flash past in the gloom, but she’s not seeing them. She’s staring into the middle distance, her jaw locked in that stubborn, beautiful line that tells me she’s currently running through every possible catastrophe in her head.
I reach down, click my indicator, and swing the van across three lanes of traffic toward the exit ramp.
“The rink is north, Cash,” she says. “You’re heading away from the rink. The equipment manager is going to lock the room at five.”
“The equipment manager is currently at a sports bar.” My hand stays loose on the wheel as I guide us down the steep curve. “I saw his story. He’s three beers deep at Murphy’s.”
“What are you talking about?” She turns her head, her brow furrowed. “I have the schedule right here. I confirmed the steel prep with the front office yesterday morning. They’re expecting you.”
“And I called Wade from the bathroom at the gas station,” I say smoothly, pulling the van up to a red light.
“I told him my shoulder felt like a bag of wet gravel and I wasn’t putting my skates on until tomorrow morning.
I canceled the skate, Scottie. The whole thing.
We’re scratched for the next twenty-four hours. ”
Scottie sits up straight in her seat, her fingers dropping the planner entirely. Her face doesn’t light up. She doesn’t look shocked in a fun, spontaneous way. She looks horrified.
“Are you serious?” she asks, her voice dropping. “Finnian, the general manager is flying in from Chicago tonight specifically to look at your short-side recovery metrics. You can’t just scratch a showcase because you feel like it. The agency—”
“The agency isn’t in this van,” I interrupt, turning the key and cutting the engine.
“And neither is the goalie. For the next twenty-four hours, there is no agent and there is no hockey player. Look across the street, Sharky. See that vintage store? We’re going to go inside, find the most ridiculous outfits they have, and create fake personas.
We’re going to be amateur birdwatchers named Gary and Bernadette, and we’re going to spend the afternoon doing street mime routines. No hockey, no contracts. Just—”
“Stop it, Finnian.”
She turns in her seat, her face flushed a dark, angry red, her eyes dark with a frustration that makes my fingers freeze on the steering wheel.
“Stop joking all the fucking time,” she spits, her voice shaking as she glares at me.
“I am sick of it, Cash. I’m done. I am trying to keep your entire professional life from collapsing, and you’re treating this like a spring break road trip.
I don’t want to play dress-up. I don’t want to be Bernadette.
I am trying to do my job, and you are acting like a child who can’t take a single second of reality seriously. ”
The words hit me right in the center of the chest, a hard, physical blow that makes my jaw lock.
For a second, I can’t even look at her.
Yeah, maybe I lean on humor too much. Maybe I throw it around like a life raft. But it’s the only way I’ve ever known to keep people close, to navigate the mess of things you can’t fix.
Hearing her spit it back at me like it’s useless, like I’m useless… it lands deeper than she knows.
But even through the sting, I know she doesn’t mean it.
She’s hurting, scared, stretched thin, and I am the closest target.
“I’m trying to help you, Scottie.”
“Well, you’re not helping,” she snaps. “You’re just distracting.”
“I’m distracting you because you look like you’re about to jump out of a moving vehicle,” I say, my voice steadying. “I saw your face in that store, Scottie. I’m not trying to sabotage the contract. I’m trying to make sure you’re still breathing by the time we hit the winter meetings.”
Scottie stares at the brick wall across the sidewalk for five long, agonizing seconds, her chest heaving under her green pullover. The silence in the van is thick, suffocating.
Then, the anger just… drains out of her all at once, leaving her shoulders slouching forward, her head dropping into her hands.
“God,” she whispers, her voice cracking as she presses her palms against her eyes. “Sorry. Cash, I’m sorry. You know I didn’t mean that.”
I don’t say anything. I just watch her, my hands still flat against the wheel, giving her the space to unravel.
She takes her hands away from her face, turning to look at me, her eyes wide, wet, and exhausted.
“I’m just… I’m so sorry, Finny,” she says, her voice dropping into a small, broken register I almost never hear from her. “Please forgive me. I know you’re not a child. You’re the best thing in my life, and I just… I’m sorry.”
“You keep saving me,” she continues, shaking her head like she hates admitting it. “You always know before I do that I’m about to disappear into my own head. I don’t think I tell you this enough, Cash, but I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
She swallows hard, a stray tear cutting a clean line through the dust and rain on her cheek.
“It’s just… seeing her standing there like that,” she whispers. “I’m just so deeply embarrassed, Cash. I felt so small, and I hated that you had to see it. I took all that sickness and threw it right at you because you’re safe, and that’s so unfair to you.”
The knot in my chest relaxes, the hurt shifting back into that protective ache that has been ruling my life since she became my agent.
“I love your jokes,” she continues, her voice gaining a tiny bit of strength. “And I love your… your unhinged plans and the mimes and everything. I do. It’s the only reason I haven’t lost my mind between Boston and here. I just… I don’t know if I’m the best company right now, Cash.”
I reach across the console, my hand coming down over the back of her neck, my fingers tangling deep into her red hair as I pull her gently toward me. She doesn’t fight it.
She leans across the console, burying her face straight into the hollow of my shoulder, her hands gripping the fabric of my t-shirt.
“You’re the only company I want, Sharky,” I rumble into her hair, my chin resting against the top of her head as I hold her tight against my chest. “Even when you’re a pain in the ass. Especially when you’re a pain in the ass.”
“She calls me by my middle name,” Scottie mutters into my shirt. “Nobody has called me that since I was eighteen. It feels like a different person. A worse person.”
“I know who you are. You’re Scottie. My Scottie-girl,” I say. “You’re the girl who threw forty checkers across a room because she couldn’t handle losing a game.”
She lets out a soft, wet breath that feels warm against my skin. “The coach is still going to be pissed about the skate, Cash.”
“Let him be pissed,” I smirk, my lips brushing the edge of her ear. “I’ll give him twenty saves tomorrow and he’ll forget all about it. Now, are we going to go inside this thrift store and buy some terrible polyester, or do I have to fight this invisible wall by myself?”
Scottie lets out a weak, genuine laugh against my shoulder, finally lifting her head to look at me. Her face is still tired, the shadows under her eyes dark in the gray afternoon light, but the steel wire under her skin has slackened.
“If we’re doing this, O’Connell,” she says, wiping her nose with the back of her hand, “you’re wearing the worst thing in the building. I’m talking nineteen-seventies upholstery.”
“Deal,” I say, reaching past her to unlock the passenger door. “Get your coat, Bernadette. The puffins are waiting.”
***
“You look ridiculous.”
“Gary Potts doesn’t care about your metropolitan fashion standards, Bernadette,” I say, adjusting the collar of the yellow shirt. “Gary is a man of the earth. He tracks the tufted puffin. He has a pension from the municipal water district and a collection of stamps.”
“Is that who we are?” She steps closer, looking at our reflection in the shop’s dusty mirror. “Gary and Bernadette?”
“Yeah,” I say, catching her eye in the glass. “And we don’t talk to the locals. We’re mimes on the weekend. We communicate through the medium of disappointment.”
She lets out a real laugh at that, and for a second, the light in the shop seems to brighten.
We buy our clothes and walk down toward the old wooden dock. The marina is dead quiet, the lake a flat gray that matches the clouds perfectly.
Scottie has her hands buried deep in the corduroy pockets of the jacket she picked up, her red hair blowing around the frame of those big, absurd sunglasses.
A guy in a delivery uniform walks past us with a clipboard.
I stop dead on the wet wood, hold my hands out, and pretend to flatten my palms against an invisible pane of glass, my face going totally serious as I mime being trapped.
The delivery guy stops, looks at my short, neon plaid trousers, looks at her big, oversized frames, shakes his head, and keeps walking, muttering something about tourists.
“You’re an idiot,” she says softly, leaning into my side.
“I’m a researcher, Bernadette,” I rumble, wrapping an arm around her shoulders to shield her from the damp wind. “Let’s go get some food. Gary’s buying.”
***
We find a small shack at the end of the dock. It’s tiny—just three booths and a counter. We sit in the corner, my knees crowding hers under the small laminate table.
Scottie pushes the sunglasses up into her hair. Her eyes are still a little tired, but the raw look from the grocery store has cleared out.
She looks out the window at the gray water, her chin resting in her hand, watching the rhythmic bobbing of a small fishing boat.
“My dad used to take me to places like this,” she says quietly. “Before they split. I mean, I don’t remember much from when they were together, but I remember him taking me places like this.”
“Sounds like a smart man,” I say.
She smiles faintly, but it disappears almost immediately.
“He was just tired,” she says.
Her eyes stay on the water outside the window.
“I think that’s what makes everything with my mom so complicated,” she says after a moment. “Because everyone acts like you’re supposed to have this relationship with your mother. Like no matter what happens, there’s supposed to be some kind of bond there.”
I look at her carefully.
“Scottie—”
“We’ve never really had that,” she says. “Not the way people mean it.”
She lowers her hand from her chin and starts picking at the corner of the paper basket.
“She’s been drinking for years. Constantly. Some days she’s my mom, and some days it’s like I’m talking to a completely different person.”
She laughs softly, but there’s nothing funny about it.
“And she always tells me I’m going to end up just like her.”
My eyebrows pull together. “She says that?”
Scottie nods. “All the time. That I’m not actually that different. That eventually I’ll get tired, I’ll stop pretending, and I’ll become exactly like her.” She swallows. “Like all the work I’ve done to build a life for myself is just me running from something that’s already waiting for me.”
“You don’t have to tell me any of this, you know.”
She looks over at me.
“I know.” There’s a small pause. “But I want to.”
So I let her. I sit back and give her the space to find the words, even though every part of me wants to reach across the table and take some of the weight from her.
“My dad left when I was four.” She clears her throat. “He just… left. And he never came back. Not for birthdays. Not holidays. Not even just to see if I was okay.”
Her voice gets quieter, dropping an octave. “I don’t even really blame him for leaving her, you know? I get it. The house was a war zone half the time. If I was him, I probably would have packed a bag and driven away too.”
She exhales. “But he left me, too. That’s the part I can’t wrap my head around. I think I spent years waiting for him to change his mind. Like one day he’d knock on the door and explain everything, or at least look at me and decide I was worth sticking around for.”
I don’t know what to say to that, the ache of it sitting right in my chest.
“Scottie.”
“I know it doesn’t make sense.” She shrugs, trying to make it smaller than it is.
“I know it sounds stupid. I know that. But, like, I’m looking at her and I’m thinking—I mean, you saw us.
I’m a literal copy of her. Everyone says I have her eyes, her mouth, her hair.
Who’s to say she isn’t right? Who’s to say I won’t actually turn out like her, and that’s why he didn’t bother fighting for me? ”
“You were four, Scottie,” I say again, firmer this time, leaning across the small table so she has to look at me. Her eyes lift to mine. “What were you supposed to do? Make him stay? That was never on you. He’s the adult.”
Her face crumples just slightly before she looks away. “I hate that I still care. I hate that I’m sitting here in some grease-joint talking about a guy who hasn’t thought about me in years.”
“That’s not something to hate.”
She wipes beneath one eye quickly with the back of her wrist. “It’s pathetic.”
“No,” I say. “It’s human to want the people who brought you here to actually love you the right way. It doesn’t make you weak.”
She lets out a shaky breath, a half-laugh mixed with a sigh, and finally leans back into my touch. “You always know how to make it sound less heavy, Finny.”
“Just telling the truth,” I murmur.
***
Scottie climbs into the passenger seat, pulling the big jacket tight around her ribs as the heater kicks on, blowing warm air into the dark cabin. She looks out the window as I back the car out of the space.
“Are we still Gary and Bernadette tomorrow?” she asks, her voice small against the rumble of the engine.
“Until noon,” I say, glancing over at her. “After that, you have to go back to being an expensive agent who tells me I can’t buy a boat, and I have to go back to letting people throw things at my head.”
“Sounds exhausting,” she murmurs, closing her eyes. “I think Gary might have to visit me every once in a while. Just for backup.”
“He’ll be there, Scottie-girl,” I say softly, my fingers reaching over to find hers in the dark. “He’s not going anywhere.”
***
8:56 PM
Scottie-girl: Thank you.
Me: anytime