by Izzy Shows
She thought Finn liked me. Well that was a total crock.
I snatched my hand away as if I’d been burned. “I’m going to get a drink.” I said coolly, and walked away without waiting for either of them to say a thing. I had been trying to be nice to her for Finn—mostly so that I could hang out with Finn after she inevitably went home, and make a few jokes at his expense about how he needed to leave all the poor people alone. But that wasn’t a good enough reason for me to be nice to someone who hated me.
I had to wait for what felt like an eternity before one of the barmen finally got to me, so swamped were they in business. I didn’t know how they did it, and personally thought they should hire another barman just for the weekends. Probably wasn’t the first person to think that, though, and I was sure someone had made the offhand suggestion to them a few times by now. I ordered a cider, and the barman disappeared as quickly as they had appeared. I cannot stand the taste of beer, no matter how many people try to insist that it’s incredibly delicious and that I just don’t know what I’m missing. I know. I’m missing the taste of piss in my mouth, thank you. I never understood men’s obsession with beer, it wasn’t even very alcoholic. A ‘fruity’ drink would get you buzzed, or smashed, much faster than a pint of beer could.
“You disa-fucking-peared.” Finn’s voice sounded in my ear, and I turned to look over my shoulder at him. Vicky was not present, I assumed she was guarding the table.
“I wanted a drink.” I shrugged my shoulders as if nothing was wrong. I didn’t need to bother Finn with the knowledge that his girlfriend was frothing-at-the-mouth-jealous. He never kept anyone around for long, anyway, so it wasn’t worth the effort. That, and I wasn’t entirely certain how to broach the topic—I just read your girlfriend’s mind and guess what…? probably isn’t the best opening line for that situation.
“She thinks you hate her.” He pointed out, and I glanced at him suspiciously. He was very carefully keeping any kind of emotional inflection out of his voice, the way he did when he was fishing for information. I’d observed him doing it when he was investigating a case, and had heard him do it with other people. I guess he hadn’t had to fish for anything with me before.
For some reason, I was annoyed that it was being used on me now.
“I get that reaction a lot, you know.” I rolled my eyes before standing up on tip toe and looking around for the barman. How long did it take to get a freaking cider?
“Yeah, well, usually I don’t think you hate people when they think you do.” I turned my attention back to him and saw him cross his arms over his chest, his expression inquisitive. “What’s up?”
I sighed. “It doesn’t matter, Finn. It’s not important.”
“Course it does. You may not like hanging around people or anything, but you have very good instincts. You’ve never told me a person was bad that didn’t turn out to completely deserve the word.” He shrugged his shoulders, and I realised with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach what he was saying. He trusted me. He trusted my opinions of people. My opinions mattered. How ridiculous was that? And since when did I have good instincts? I didn’t remember him ever telling me that I was right about anything. In fact, I’m certain any time we had an argument about who was right about something, we both dug in so hard that it would take a few days for either of us to let it go.
I blinked at him, a little dumbfounded and lost for words. “Uh.”
“I’d love to make a joke here about how it’s so satisfying to leave you at a loss for words…but this isn’t new,” he joked, and I felt the tension ease out of me momentarily. Good. We were still joking. Why couldn’t things just stay normal and casual and easy? I didn’t want to complicate things with trust and dependence and…all the junk that came with having close friends. People let you down, so the easiest solution to it is to not let them in to begin with. “So what is it, why don’t you like her?”
“I don’t have a problem with her—aside from her being completely, psychotically, territorial about you.” I decided to just tell him the truth, shrugging my shoulders as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. I’m sure some normal girl would have been able to pick up on how jealous Vicky had been from the course of conversation, but I just wasn’t the type of person to pick up on those clues.
He raised an eyebrow. “What makes you say that?”
Oh crap. “Hey, you asked what was up, you didn’t say I was going to have to deliver a bloody speech defending it.” I grouched, hoping that it would blend in with the several months of not wanting to expand on things and such.
“Yeah OK. Good to know, anyway. Like I said, you have good instincts, and if she’s super territorial, well then, I can’t really keep this up. It just means she’s going to freak out that much more when I break up with her.” He spoke about it with such finality, I was a little surprised. I would have thought he’d just shrug his shoulders and go on for the rest of the week, maybe another, and then break up with her on schedule.
“Don’t drop the bomb tonight. I’m rather attached to the idea of not having my hair yanked out of my head.” I said with a laugh. I almost felt bad for her, it was a sad world to live in if you saw threats in everyone that came near a person you liked. Especially if the person you were imagining as a threat was me, and the person you liked was Finn. Finn and I couldn’t be farther from romantically attracted to one another—I wasn’t his type in the slightest, and as far as I knew, I didn’t have a type.
Beside the point. Finn was basically the not-close-friend equivalent of a brother. I liked the comfort that existed in not having to worry about whether I was giving him the wrong impression, I liked not having to worry about whether I was impressing him. We were just friends and that was nice.
“We should probably get back to her, before she gets it in her head that we’ve sneaked out for a quickie, eh?” He grinned with a devilish wiggle of his eyebrows. I laughed at that, a good whole belly kind of laugh that I hadn’t realised I’d been needing.
“I’m still waiting on my drink. You go on back to her. I’m sure that’ll go over better than us coming back as a pair.” I smirked.
He nodded and left. I could tell by the set of his shoulders that he was feeling relieved. It then occurred to me that he might have thought the situation was flipped around, that I was feeling territorial about him and that was why Vicky and I weren’t getting along. I worried my lower lip, hoping that wasn’t the case. I didn’t want to have to worry about all that double thinking, so I did my best to push it out of my head.
Finally, my cider showed up. I paid the barman and took a quick sip from it, glad to have alcohol to help with this social encounter. I made my way back to the table, trying very hard to move around all the various patrons of the bar without spilling my cider on any of them. It’s a lot harder than it looks, OK.
I got back to the table and slid onto a chair opposite Finn and Vicky. I was glad to sit down at last, the introductions earlier hadn’t really given me the opportunity to do so, and my body was tired even if my mind was waking up. Vicky looked just as perky as she had been when I left her, which was a little confusing to me as I had assumed that she’d had a conversation with Finn about how she thought I hated her. Maybe he’d just picked up on her body language. Maybe he’d reassured her that I didn’t and she was just determined to put her best face on so that it couldn’t possibly be blamed on her. My money was on the latter, Finn could read a person’s body language as good as a literal mind reader when he was on a case, but in his personal life he pretty much sucked at it.
“So Vicky, what do you do?” I tried a smile, hoping that I didn’t look as wary as I felt.
“I’m a nurse, actually.” She looked so excited to have a topic that she could dominate. “Finn and I met during one of his investigations, I was the nurse on duty. Isn’t that just so cute?” She smiled adoringly up at Finn.
“Oh, it’s a story book romance.” I said, barely managing to keep the patronising tone out
of my voice. I wanted to tell her that it wasn’t that cute, considering he met most of his flings while on duty, because he could never tear himself away from work long enough to meet someone outside of work. I didn’t want to pop her little magical bubble. Finn could do that himself later.
“What do you do, Blair?” She smiled at me now, and I had the distinct impression of a predator baring its fangs at me.
“Oh, this and that. I mostly do freelance work. I actually just wrapped up working on a case for the night.” I knew that telling her that I didn’t have a solid job was basically another nail in my coffin as far as she was concerned, but luckily her approval was not important to me in the slightest. I also had a gut feeling that telling her I was working on a case was probably going to piss her off—the idea of Finn and I being even remotely in the same business would read as a threat to her. Never mind that Finn and I weren’t in the same business. He was a cop and I was a twenty-two-year-old that picked up random jobs whenever she could to scrape together enough money to pay her bills. Touch wood I managed to pull that off.
“Blair’s absolutely brilliant when she actually takes a case, Vicky.” Finn’s tone was rather casual, but I noticed the look in his eyes. He was trying to stir up trouble, the jerk.
“What does that mean? Actually takes a case?” Vicky blinked, looking from one of us to the other with clear confusion in her eyes.
“It means Blair doesn’t take work unless it’s interesting or she absolutely needs to. She thinks she’s allowed to be picky.”
“Oh, that is not fair, Finn, and you know it. I take cases that need to be taken. I’m not going to hunt down some lost puppy, but I will hunt down a lost husband.” I snapped, fully aware he was trying and succeeding to get a rise out of me.
“No, she’s not a detective, she’s basically a PI. Don’t get me wrong, she probably could be a detective if she would just do the work,” he said, glancing over at me with a glint in his eyes that made me think he was up to something. What did he mean by that? Was he just trying to get under Vicky’s skin? That’s what it seemed like. It was a mean thing to do, playing on the girl’s jealousy, but I didn’t feel particularly bad for her. Finn always made it abundantly clear what he was looking for when he started a fling, and it wasn’t his fault if people didn’t take him seriously when he told them that. In fact—I’d heard the layout that he gives before—the way he sets it out for them, there’s no room for jealousy. He doesn’t even offer monogamy, because he isn’t looking for that. So, it really boggles my mind why someone would agree to that and then be so violently jealous over him having a female friend. Then again, I didn’t know if her jealousy was just directed at me, she might be jealous of any of his male friends as well—I didn’t really know anyone in Finn’s social circle. We didn’t overlap.
“What, did you like, fail the police test or something?” Blunt words yanked me out of my own head, and I stared at Vicky, who appeared frozen in time. A quick dart of my eyes informed me that the world had not frozen around her, but rather that she had realised how awful her words had been. She’d clearly just blurted them out as they came into her head, and was deeply regretting it. It took so long for me to realise what had happened that I didn’t even flinch, though I imagine I would have had I been paying attention to her when she was talking. Lucky me, I had time to look impressive.
I arched a singular eyebrow at her. “No.” My words were uttered with a cool tone, likely giving off the impression that I didn’t give a single shit what she thought. “I have not taken a single ‘police test,’ and I likely will not be doing so anytime soon. I have a problem with authority.”
That was true. I couldn’t handle a person telling me what I was or wasn’t allowed to do, and I probably never would be able to. I didn’t know how Finn did it, because he was very much an alpha male personality. I imagined he butted heads a lot at work. I didn’t work with him, though, so I didn’t know if that was true or if I was just making wild assumptions.
“You know, Blair, I was thinking about putting a word in for you. As a consultant.” Finn leaned back in the booth, doing his best to look and sound casual, but I saw the sharp attention in his eyes. He cared about what I was going to say next, I would bet money on it.
I chose my words carefully, feeling like I’d lost my footing in the conversation. “I don’t even know what that means.” I said slowly, my eyes darting nervously around the room. It occurred to me at this point that we were all but ignoring Vicky, but a quick look made me think that she was more appreciative of that than anything else. After being so rude, I would assume it was better to be ignored than to have someone tell you off about it.
“A consultant is a freelancer who comes in and looks at a case the department is having difficulty with, and gives opinions and, hopefully, insight. I think you have good instincts, and I think you’d be great at it.” He sounded earnest now.
“Yeah, maybe. I don’t know.” I shrugged my shoulders, uncomfortable now that I was the focus of praise and attention. That wasn’t a common occurrence in my upbringing, not at all, and therefore I didn’t really know how to deal with it in my adult life. I wanted to change the subject as quickly as possible. “So, Vicky, what’s your favourite thing about Finn?” I asked suddenly, leaning forward and focusing in on her. She appeared startled, then flashed me a confused and grateful smile. She was the type of person who enjoyed attention, I guessed, and I was all too eager to pass the ball along to her.
19
THE NIGHT WENT ON IN A rather predictable fashion for another few hours, Vicky taking the lead on most conversations. She seemed to really enjoy it, being incredibly chatty and likely having something to prove.
I did my best to stay focussed on the rapid changes in topics as they occurred, but I didn’t do all that well. There were a few times when something was said and I would respond with something from a prior topic, though I usually managed to stay at most one topic behind the conversation. A good amount of the time I was on top of things, and I counted that as a win.
At last, the conversation was winding down to a manageable level, and I could tell that Vicky was ready to go home. Finn, as per usual, was not. I don’t know if he prepped the people he brought to meet me with the knowledge that they would likely be going home without him so that we could talk for the rest of the night, but I got the feeling that he probably didn’t. Maybe he didn’t realise how much of a regular thing it was, or maybe he thought that it wasn’t going to happen this time.
Or maybe he thought it would be opening him up to jealous accusations, which in Vicky’s case would have been right.
Still, I felt it would have been helpful for her to know that yawning and leaning her head on his shoulder wasn’t going to help her. It just made her look silly. After another awkward pause and a too long glance at Finn from her, she finally cleared her throat.
“Don’t you think it’s time we’d better be going, sweetie?” She said, her voice sugary sweet. “I’ve got an early shift in the morning and I can already tell I’m going to be dead on my feet.”
“You should go on ahead then.” He pecked her on the cheek. “I think I’m going to hang back and have a couple more beers. Talk shop with Blair.”
You would have thought he’d stabbed her in the gut from the way her mouth opened in a soft little gasp, combined with the widened look of horror in her eyes.
I felt awkward and in the way for the entirety of it, trying to find anywhere to look but at the two of them, and yet unable to tear my eyes away. It was kind of like watching a car crash in slow motion—you knew you probably shouldn’t be watching this happen, but there was a whole lot of nothing that you could do to stop yourself.
Finally, she closed her mouth and set it into a stern line, her eyes tightening in an angry fashion. She was ‘Not Pleased’. Finn was going to get an earful about this tomorrow, I had no doubt. At least he would listen to it and let her say her piece, though. He wasn’t an arsehole, like me.
&n
bsp; “Goodnight, then.” She nodded her head at me, gave Finn an icy kiss—was that even possible?—and left the two of us behind with one last angry look over her shoulder.
I let my breath out all at once, unaware that I had been holding it for the past few moments, and gave him a weak smile.
“Well I think that went well.” I said, chuckling.
“Absolute train wreck of a night. I’d like to remind you that you asked to meet her.”
“Yeah, well, I’d like to remind you that you failed to mention that she was absolutely batshit.”
He shrugged. “How was I supposed to know? Not a lot of talking actually goes on.”
“Oh you are such a tool.” I rolled my eyes and shook my head.
“Yeah, but you love me.” He said it with such a shit eating grin on his face that I momentarily entertained the idea of punching him, just to see what would happen. Hm. That’s probably not a normal thing to think about.
“So hey.” My tone became a little more serious, and I glanced over my shoulder to ensure that Vicky had indeed left the building. “Yesterday you said ghosts were not that craziest thing you’d heard lately, and that you’d tell me more soon. Is it soon yet?” I tried to keep my tone casually inquisitive, hoping that he wouldn’t realise why I was really asking.
But I mean, it’d be impossible to tell that, right? He couldn’t possibly have guessed that I had learned I was a mage last night, or that I’d spent the morning generating shields from fire.
Christ, I sounded psychotic. I watched Finn become visibly uncomfortable, shifting in his seat and plucking at a napkin on the table. He didn’t want to talk about this, but I needed him to, or else I wouldn’t have brought it up again.
