I nod and I’m not sure if it’s the thought of the shower to come or the way Finn kisses me that makes the heat pool in my stomach, but it moves steadily lower as he kisses my throat and then steps back, starting on the buttons of my sundress. His fingers whisper over my bare skin as he lingers on the placket. He doesn’t kiss me and leans just out of reach when I try to kiss him. Mostly I feel his touch through the silky fabric, tracing the outline of my bra, my ribcage, the waistband of my panties. It feels like forever until my dress hangs open and his fingers slide across my collarbone, pushing the thin material off my shoulders.
I grab two fistfuls of his T-shirt and pull him to me, kissing him as I work my hands underneath his shirt to yank it off. He unhooks my bra as I slide his shirt up, and when our skin collides, both of us let out a moan. I fumble with the button on his shorts and push down his shorts and boxers in one swift movement. My panties follow, and we both step into the shower.
Finn turns on the water, which comes out freezing cold. I yelp and flatten myself against the wall while he fixes the temperature. Although once he has, I still don’t move because he’s standing right in front of me, tracing the drops of water down my chest.
“Sorry about that,” he says.
I let my hands wander over the smooth muscles of his stomach and up across his chest. “No problem.”
“You know I have this fantasy about you and the shower?” His voice is low and he closes the small gap between us. We’re chest to chest, and his erection presses against my stomach.
“Do you?” My question comes out between a gasp and a whisper. I have a fantasy about Finn and the shower, too, although I’ve never gotten much beyond where we are right now and it looks like real life is going to beat that by a mile.
He reaches for a tube of shower gel and squeezes some into his hand. His hands glide over my wet skin. The soap makes his movements smoother and faster, and my pulse accelerates in time with his fingers playing with my nipples and sliding across my thighs. My own hands pull Finn’s hair, rake down his spine until finally I reach between his legs and wrap my fingers around him.
His hand closes over my wrist. “Uh-uh. This is my fantasy, remember?”
I look up into his eyes, ready to argue, but he slides his hand around my waist and turns me around to face the wall. Between his lips on my neck, my breasts pressed against the cold tile, and his erection rocking against my back, I’m already halfway out of my mind when he finally touches me. I cry out when his fingers go inside me and again when, two minutes later, I’m coming so hard my knees buckle.
When we’re lying on towels on the bed ten minutes later and I walk my fingers down Finn’s chest and over the fine line of hair that leads down his stomach, I kiss his shoulder and say, “So when do I get my love hotel fantasy then?”
He grins. “Whenever you want.”
I raise my eyebrows at him, but lift myself up to straddle his legs, inching up toward his hips. I lean down to kiss him, and he tangles his hands in my hair. My hips shimmy up his legs until he places his hands firmly on my thighs.
“I want you, Zosia, you know that.”
“So have me.” I don’t mean for it to sound like a challenge, but it comes out that way. Ninety-five percent of the time Finn’s no-sex rule isn’t an issue. The other five percent, though, when it rears its ugly head…ugh.
Finn sits up and slides back up against the headboard, scooting me back to the middle of his thighs. “I said before I don’t want to be the guy you wish you could undo. I still don’t.”
“Instead you want to be the guy I wish I could do?” I pull myself off of him and lay down.
“I’m not trying to frustrate you, Zosia.” He stretches out beside me and places his hand on my stomach.
“I know.” We’ve talked about this before. And it’s not like either of us are walking around sexually frustrated. Shower. Case in point. But I’ve thought the next thing a hundred times, and I can’t stop myself from saying it. “But you know it won’t make it easier.”
“Make what easier?”
“To leave.”
The words hang between us. It’s the one thing we never talk about. What happens next.
He speaks first. “We have thirteen days.”
Until my flight back to New York. August tenth. Finn’s is a week later because he’s flying directly to Boston.
“You could always come to Westfield with me,” I offer.
“You could stay.”
“I can’t. I have to see Babci and if there’s anything with the house…” I swallow over the lump rising in my throat. How did this happen? Twenty minutes ago we were practically having sex in the shower.
Except we weren’t.
That’s how this happened.
I stare at the ceiling, knowing what I’m about to say is a mood-killer for sure. Not that there’s much mood to kill at this point. “When my mom was sick, I hated it, knowing it was going to kill her. Until I went to this bereavement group. My dad made me go. It was all kids who’d lost someone. I sat there and never said a word because my story wasn’t any worse than anyone else’s. I hadn’t even technically lost anyone yet. But there was a girl there whose brother died. He drowned. And she said the worst thing was that she never got to say goodbye. If she’d known, she could have said goodbye.”
I pause for a minute to swallow. Because I can see that girl still in my head. Her honey-blond hair and blue eyes. She’d been older than me, maybe eighteen, and the way she talked about Matty, her brother, made me ache. “After that I felt lucky. At least I knew. I’d get to say all the things I wanted to say. I’d get to say goodbye.”
Finn’s fingers stroke my ribcage. “Is that what you’re doing then?”
“What?”
“Saying goodbye?” His hands are still, his voice soft.
“Is that what I should be doing?” It’s the closest I can get to asking.
“I love you.” He bites his lip. “This summer has been so much more than I ever thought it would be. You… someone like you…was never supposed to be here. That night on the swings, I remember thinking I wished I knew you. You were so beautiful. So genuine. And then you were here. And all I’ve wanted is more and more and more of you.”
“What’s wrong with that?” My hands clench underneath my legs.
He shakes his head. “Everything.”
“Why? I mean…”
He cuts me off. “I’m not…I’m my father’s son, Zosia.”
“What? What are you talking about?” I reach for him, but he jerks away.
He tenses, like he was waiting for my denial. “I told you that first night. I’m a four, maybe a five on the honesty scale, and the five is generous. Do you want the truth? This isn’t it.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve been lying to me all summer. That’s bullshit.” Finn’s the most genuine, honest person I’ve ever known.
“You know what he does? My father? He’s a researcher at Johns Hopkins. He’s the last person on earth you’d imagine being the dick he is. But he started hitting my mother when she was pregnant. Said she was letting herself go. She went to work with a black eye and told everyone she’d walked into a door. They believed her because how could it be anything else? John was a med student, volunteered at a clinic, and beat the shit out of his wife every month or so. He never touched me until after she left, and then it started. My grades would fall and I’d get the belt. My team would lose and I’d get a kick in the shins. I learned to study and learned to run, but there was always something, some way I wasn’t good enough. My mom, she knew. Sort of. She didn’t know how to ask what was happening and I didn’t know how to tell her, so we just continued on like it was normal. Which it kind of was by then.”
He picks up the handcuffs on the dresser and works the key. Open, close. Open, close. “He had a bunch of girlfriends, students mostly. He’d come home and tell me to get lost for a night or a weekend.
I’d go and stay with Jamal, sometimes my mom. One of
the girls came over when I was fifteen. She couldn’t have been more than twenty. She came looking for my dad, but he was out. She said she was looking for a good time and what did I know about showing her one? I didn’t know a goddamn thing, but she took me to bed that day and every day for a week. She was my first and I thought I loved her because of it. When I told her, she laughed. Said I was very sweet, but sex isn’t love and John should have done a better job making sure I understood that. Funny thing is, I did understand, but I thought I was different.”
“But you’re not?” The thoughts spinning in my head make me dizzy.
“No.”
“How many women have you hit then?” I hold my breath and wrap my arms across my stomach.
Finn’s eyes are black. “What are you asking?”
“Just what I said. How many women have you hit? One? Three? More?” Please let me be wrong. Please let me be wrong.
His voice rises. “Who the fuck do you think you are? Do you think it’s a joke?”
My fingernails dig into my ribcage now, but I won’t back down. I need to know. “Do I look like I think it’s funny? You said you were just like him, Finn. So how many? Do you want to start with an easier one, like how many women you’ve fucked? Did any of them matter after you made that mistake with the first one?”
“No.” I never thought one word could be so cold.
“How many?” I try to keep my voice cool as well, but my heart is practically thumping outside my chest.
He shrugs, but it’s anything but casual. “Ten. Fifteen.”
I’m pretty sure I might throw up when I ask, “Which is it? I know you know.”
“Twelve.”
I hate knowing that.
The pain is sharp and hot as the number sears itself into my brain.
“How many of them did you hit?” My voice is steady, even though I want to hurt him, lash out. But I can’t hurt him any worse than he’s been hurting all these years.
He doesn’t answer right away. Instead he picks up the whip from the dresser. Which might be coincidence and might not. Either way, my mouth goes dry. Because I’m not so sure I’m not playing with fire.
“One.”
I’m ready this time for the hot and cold that wash over me when he says it. Although that doesn’t make it any better. “Why?”
“I thought that’s how it was done.”
“It’s not.”
“No shit.” He sort of spits the words at me. “But it proves it, doesn’t it?”
“It proves you were an asshole once, if that’s what you mean.”
“No. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. That’s what it proves.”
“You made a mistake, Finn. That’s like saying just because I’m not sick yet doesn’t mean I don’t have cancer.”
“It’s not the same fucking thing, Zosia,” he shouts.
And, finally, so do I. “You won’t have sex with me because you love me? But you’re afraid to love me because you think you’re just like him? Like the person you are with me isn’t real? Jesus, you’re the most real person I’ve ever met.” My voice cracks and I let it. “And that has nothing to do with Tokyo or me. It’s you. You are kind and smart and generous and funny and beautiful. That’s who you are and that’s real.”
“No, Zosia. Why can’t you see? It’s not.” Finn looks like he’s going to cry. “I’m not.”
He goes into the bathroom and slams the door. The water runs for a minute, and then he throws it back open. His face is red. His T-shirt’s on inside out. He still looks like he’s going to cry.
When he brushes by me and out of the room completely, I stay in the middle of the floor, unmoving until I no longer hear his footsteps in the stairwell outside the door. Then I sink back onto the heart-shaped bed and bury my face in my hands.
chapter seventeen
By the time I slip my shoes off and make my way to the couch in the dim light filtering in through the windows of the apartment, it’s after eleven. An hour in the hotel with Finn, an hour wandering around Shibuya, and another hour to get home and not a word from Finn. He hasn’t called or texted. I half-thought he’d be waiting for me outside the hotel or at the station, but there was no sign of him anywhere. I slide my phone from my back pocket before I lay down and glide my fingers over the smooth surface. Still nothing.
I still haven’t turned on any lights when I Skype Mindy, the laptop propped on my stomach. “Hey. What are you doing? I can’t see a damn thing.”
I shake my head, even though she can’t see me. “Not yet. I just want to talk.”
Her voice changes, goes on alert. “Oh God. What’s wrong? What happened?”
“Finn and I had a fight. He walked out on me.” I haven’t cried. Not a single tear. I sat on that bed waiting for it, but nothing.
“About what?” Mindy’s got half her makeup done, so one eye looks dramatically wider than the other.
I don’t answer her. “Do you think people are predestined to be a certain way?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like if your mom has a bad temper, does that mean you’ll have one, too?” The example is a little closer to home than I intend, but Mindy gets it.
“Nature versus nurture, you mean? I think it depends.” She chews the end of an eyeliner pencil. “I mean, Liz is neurotic as hell, but I think that’s because of everything that happened. She wasn’t like that before.”
“But you’re not, even though the same thing happened to you.”
“I don’t think I have it in me. Not that I don’t care. It’s just different.” Mindy draws a line around her lower eyelid. “Is that what you two fought about?”
“More or less.” I shake my head. “My dad knows we’re in love.”
“Oh shit. Did you tell him?” She stops drawing. “And turn on the damn light so I can see you.”
I obey her this time and blink hard against the brightness. “No. He assumed.”
“Well, you’re not exactly subtle about it. I knew before you told me.” Which is true. She tried to get me to admit it, but I wouldn’t, not even to her. “So what are you going to do?”
“Do?”
Mindy rolls her eyes. “You had a fight. He walked out on you. What are you going to do?”
“He doesn’t think he’s good enough for me.”
“Is he?” One of the reasons I like Mindy is that she doesn’t always assume I’m right.
“He’s amazing.” The tears prick behind my eyes.
“You could text him and then back off?”
“He walked out on me, Min.”
“Because he doesn’t think he’s good enough for you. So you want to confirm that?”
“I’m not sure I could convince him if I shouted it from the top of Tokyo Tower.”
“Can you tell me why?” she asks. Another reason to love her. She understands confidences.
“No. I’m not even sure I know the whole story.”
“You’re not giving me a lot to work with here.”
“He thinks he’s bad. A bad person. Bad for me. You name it.”
“He’s not.” It’s a statement. Like she knows. And maybe she does. Finn and Mindy are alike in a lot of ways. What you see is definitely not what you get.
“No, he’s not.” My voice gets louder. “I mean, he’s no angel, but he’s not…I just…I wish he could see himself the way I see him.”
“So show him.” Mindy’s voice is gentle in comparison to mine.
“How?”
“I don’t know.” The eyeliner pencil goes back to her mouth. “Remember when I got in trouble for shoplifting? We were what? Fourteen? My parents sent us to my room while they talked to the police, and we looked at Seventeen like it was any other day. They called me down, and after I talked to them, I came back up and we went right back to ogling the guys in their ‘Hot Twenty Under Twenty.’ You didn’t ask how I was or what they said until way later. You just let me be. I think the only time I felt normal that whole year was when
I was with you, your taste in boys aside.” Mindy smiles and I have to laugh. We disagreed on every single guy. That feels like a long time ago.
“My taste has clearly improved, but what does that have to do with Finn?”
“I decided that day you were going to be my best friend forever.”
“But I didn’t do anything.” I remember that day, too. I hadn’t known what to do. Much like now.
“Which is exactly what I needed. And when Todd Sullivan fucked me over you bought me He’s Just Not That Into You and forced me to read it. You know him, Zo. You’ll know what to do.”
She makes some gesture and either hangs up accidentally or the gods of cyberspace have decided I need to figure the rest out on my own. Regardless, we don’t call each other back, and I lay back on the couch with my phone on my chest in case Finn texts. My conversation with Mindy helped, even though it didn’t solve anything. Images float in my head, bits of conversation, moments. Finn. When I finally pick up my phone and tap out the letters, I erase the text five times before I press send.
I miss you.
I’m not sure it’s the right thing to say, but I at least expect a reply. A phone call or a text in return. Instead I get nothing.
Finally, at 2:30 in the morning, I run a bath because I can’t sleep. To be fair, I’m usually not asleep yet on a normal night, but I want this day over and done. I leave my clothes in a pile in the living room and sink into the steaming bath. For how lame the shower is, the bath is awesome. Deep and hot, I can stretch out with just my head exposed. I dip my head under and close my eyes.
The water’s cooling when the knock sounds at the front door. At first I’m not sure, but then it sounds again. I stand up too fast and have to steady myself against the wall because being in the hot water so long has made me dizzy. But that’s not why I don’t grab a towel. Or a robe. Or the crisp white yukata I bought last weekend hanging on the hook. I tread across the floor, dripping water everywhere. Naked.
I have the sense to peer through the peephole to make sure it’s Finn. I open the door and he walks in the living room and his eyes are deep and dark. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I recognize the cliché in me standing naked in front of him, but I don’t move. He takes in every inch of me. And I mean every inch. Until he looks away and I walk back to the bathroom and get my yukata from the hook. I’m still wet so the thin cotton sticks to me, and I leave it hanging open.
Swimming to Tokyo Page 19
