by Roxy Reid
“Ok. Fine. I understand,” I say as I pass him, trying my best to be the adult in the situation when what I really want is to grab his shirt collar and yank him down to my level and shout in his face until he goddamn listens to me.
“I’ll see you at the airport,” I say, stepping into the hallway. I hope the carpet was cleaned recently.
“Oh fuck no. You’re fired. We are never talking again.”
“But the rest of your album—”
“Oh Christ, Charlie. Don’t pretend you care,” Finn’s voice is like a lash, and I wince.
“I’d cash that check if I were you,” Finn says. “Because that’s the last thing you’ll ever get out of me.”
“Finn, please, I love—”
He winces, and I trail off. When he speaks it’s like his voice has been dragged over broken glass, “Don’t Charlie. Just don’t.”
I stare at him, helpless, because I’m sure as hell not walking away if I’ve got even one option left, but I don’t know what else to do. I’ve tried explaining. I offered to give him space. And I almost told him what he means to me.
Meanwhile, he’s refused to listen, fired me, and is about to get on a jet to another city.
“I wasn’t going to tell him about your songs,” I blurt. “Zane told him first. I was just trying to do damage control …” I trail off, because Finn’s shaking his head. He doesn’t believe me.
He doesn’t believe me, and he doesn’t believe in me.
I’m out of options.
Finn looks at me for a long moment. Like I’m a painful thing he’s memorizing. “Goodbye, Charlie. Tell your parents they were right after all.”
“Wait, what does that—”
But he’s already shut the door in my face.
A part of me wants to pound the door and scream, make a scene until he comes out, but I know Finn. He’s immune to other people’s opinions. And he’s not coming out.
13
Charlie
I sit slouched in a booth at a shitty Italian restaurant in the O’Hare airport. The vinyl is sticky and the pasta is horrible, but I’ve got seven hours to kill before my flight back to New York, and I’m feeling homesick.
For the first time, flying back to New York feels … small. I love visiting my parents in San Francisco, but normally when I get on a plane to head back to my real life, it feels good. Like I’m heading back into the adventure.
But for the first time, the things I’m leaving—Finn, the tour—feel more real than what I’m going back to. A tiny apartment and a lonely career that doesn’t mean anything.
I try not to examine that feeling too closely. Instead, I pull out my laptop and start going through the photos I took of Finn on tour. I’ll pick the best ones and send them to Bridget. They wanted to run projections of photos from the tour before the encore at the last concert. It’s pretty much the epitome of too little too late, and I don’t think Finn will let them use any photo I took. But I made a promise, and I’m not going to break it.
I’m holding it together as I focus on finding good crowd shots and ones of the band. But as I start sifting through the ones of Finn, my throat aches. I’m trying to be dispassionate and focus on objective things. The lighting, whether or not the shot’s in focus, whether or not the background is too distracting.
But it’s not working, because there, at the center of it all, is Finn. Beautiful, challenging, arrogant, insecure Finn. Quick to stand up for people, slow to forgive. A good, good man who has a habit of making me fall for him, and then kicking me out of his life.
For a moment, I imagine what it would be like if I had actually applied to shoot Finn’s tour for real, without False Prophet whispering doubt in my ear. If I’d just gotten to know him again. And helped him write his songs, and let myself fall in love. If I’d been ok going out for a nice, romantic dinner in Chicago. If we hadn’t had a reason to fight this morning.
I’d be on that plane with him right now. Watching Chicago fall away behind us as we fly west, into the sunset.
Finn was geeking out about that the other day, how if you time it right, you can fly with the sunset for hours. When I said I’d never done that, he’d promised we’d do it. And instead of telling him that was the sweetest thing any man had ever promised me, I smacked his arm and told him not to be ridiculous.
Maybe False Prophet isn’t the only reason Finn and I wouldn’t have worked. Finn acts sarcastic and prickly, but when it comes down to it, he puts his heart out there. For his friends, for his music, for … well, for me.
Meanwhile, I barely had the guts to admit I wanted to date him. I thought if I didn’t admit I cared, Finn couldn’t break my heart again.
I groan and put my head in my hands. Didn’t that backfire spectacularly.
My phone buzzes with a notification, and I turn to it, grateful for a distraction. Any distraction.
But it’s just a social media reminder. Eleven years since you posted this photo, Charlie!
I click on the notification and freeze.
It’s a photo of Finn. Just his face, lazy and happy, smiling up at me. I took it a few hours after we had sex for the first time. He was so careful, so worried he was going to mess it up. And he did, technically mess it up. It hurt, and I didn’t orgasm, and we were both self-conscious the whole time. It was, in hindsight, the worst sex I’ve ever had.
But he was so happy that I’d picked him. And he made me laugh, and was surprisingly tender. And in the end, I was glad I’d picked him too.
Finn smiles up at me from the screen. He looks so young, but also like he always has, and always will. He looks like Finn, and my heart aches.
I close my eyes. No, I can’t do this again. It’s over. I fucking refuse to spend more of my life pining over Finn Ryan. We aren’t right for each other. There’s nothing else to it.
I close out of the app and call my mom, because if there’s ever someone I can count on to cut through my tendency to romanticize, it’s her. Especially when it comes to Finn.
She answers on the second ring with so much delight I wince.
I should call my parents more.
We chat about how the restaurant’s going and how the street is changing. She asks if the plastic vines and white lights twining around the indoor trellis in our restaurant is tacky, and I lie and tell her it isn’t, because I love that trellis.
We’ve been talking for a while, before I work up the courage to say, “Um … Mom. Can you say something bad about Finn Ryan? An old photo of him popped up on social media, and I just need to snap myself out of the what-ifs.”
Normally, this is just the sort of prompt she needs, but this time she hesitates, “You haven’t brought him up in a while. Is this because you’re shooting his tour?”
I blink, “How do you know that?”
“His brother—oh, what’s his name? John? James?”
“Jim.”
“Right, Jim. He ran into your dad, and he said Finn had told him about it. He said Finn was really excited about seeing you again.”
My heart lifts, before I remember that duh, Finn said that before he knew the truth. “Well, he’s not excited anymore. He fired me.”
“What?! Why? Oh I knew that boy was no good.”
It’s exactly the type of thing I wanted her to say, but instead of a surge of vindication, I just feel guilt and a protective urge to defend Finn. I sigh and slouch, my head in my hands and my elbows on the table. “This time it was my fault, Mom. I really, really screwed up.”
“Honey? What’s going on?” she says, and I know she can hear the threat of tears in my voice.
So I tell her everything. Well, not everything. I leave the Study Game out. But I tell her about Shaun, and Zane, and about helping Finn with his song, and falling for him, and about the big horrible fight when he found out about my lie.
“Why is it always him?” I finish. “He dumped me out of nowhere the first time, and then I fall for him again and I … why him, Mom? Why does it have to be him?�
�� I complain.
“Well … maybe because it’s supposed to be him.”
I sit up, shocked. I have never, ever heard my mom say something nice about Finn. Not since we started dating. One time she grudgingly admitted he was tall, but that was only because it’s obviously and objectively true.
“Are you ok, Mom? Are you running a fever?”
She groans, and laughs, but it’s a tired laugh, “Charlie, no one tells you how to be a parent. Except your own parents, and God knows you can’t trust them.” She sighs. “Maybe I shouldn’t have done it, but you were so young. And you wouldn’t listen to reason.”
“What are you talking about, Mom?”
For a moment I don’t think she’s going to answer. And then she says, “Your dad and I told Finn to break up with you.”
“WHAT?”
“You were going to drop out of high school! And give up your college scholarship to follow this boy from bar to bar across the country! I tried to reason with you. So did your dad. So did all your friends. But you wouldn’t listen to any of us when we said you could do long distance. Because God forbid he stay in school or follow you across the country.”
“Mom.”
“Sorry, sorry. What I’m trying to say is that when you wouldn’t listen to us, we decided to reason with Finn. He actually came to us first, because he wanted to talk about … well, I suppose that one is his story to tell. But the point is, we expressed our concerns. That you were too young. That you were giving up too much. That if you ever changed your mind, and didn’t want to be with him, you’d be left with nothing. That if he really cared about you, he’d let you go, so you could have a life. You were so young honey. Both of you were. And I thought … well, who ends up with their high-school sweetheart?”
I stare straight ahead stunned.
Tell your parents they were right after all. That’s what he said in Chicago.
And before that, in New Orleans, I wasn’t good enough for the great Charlie De Luca.
And suddenly it all makes sense. The break up came out of nowhere because he still loved me. And yeah, he should have just talked to me. But I should have been grown-up enough to pick my own future, instead of just trying to wrap mine around his, despite everyone telling me it was a bad decision. Hell, even Finn’s mom tried to convince me to go to college.
“I’m sorry, honey. Maybe we shouldn’t have gone behind your back like that. And we definitely should have told you sooner. But we thought we were doing what was best for you. What were the odds you were going to find the person you could be happy with forever in high school?” my mom asks.
“Pretty low,” I say numbly. 28-year-old me understands why my parents did this. 18-year-old me is furious. Both of us feel sucker punched.
My phone starts buzzing with an incoming call.
It’s Shaun Coleman.
The swirl of emotions inside me narrows to one point: rage.
“I’ve gotta go, Mom,” I say. And then, right before I hang up, “Thanks for telling me the truth.” Finally.
I answer Shaun’s call. “Hello,” I say, ice in my voice.
“Charlie! I’ve been trying to get in touch with you. I’m smart enough to know when the story’s changing, so here’s the new deal. Twenty five thousand for the exclusive story of your affairs with Finn Ryan. Now and then. Plus your photos from this assignment, obviously.”
“Drop dead, Shaun.”
“Ok, thirty thousand, but that’s as high as I can go. And for that I need some old high school photos of you two. Doomed lovers. People eat that nostalgic shit up.”
“You’re not hearing me, Shaun. I said no.”
“If you give me the interview, you get to control how the story gets told. Make yourself look good.”
Shaun interprets my silence correctly.
He sighs heavily, “Can’t blame a guy for trying. Ok, send me the photos. Lucky for you I have my other source, so we’ll do your normal rate, and I won’t sue you for breach of contract. Which is more than you deserve, young lady.”
“You are never getting those photos,” I say.
“Don’t you fucking dare. Those are my photos.”
There are ways I could get out of this. I could tell him Finn already bought the photos. I could tell him Finn threatened to sue me. I could tell him the SD cards were damaged, and none of the photos came out.
I don’t.
“Eat shit, Coleman,” I go to hang up the phone.
“I’ll make sure you never work in this town again!”
“There are other cities.” And as I hang up, I mean it. I think I’ve been done with New York for a while now. I feel free.
I pull my ticket to New York out of my purse and stare at it.
My phone buzzes with a text from Bridget, reminding me that she expects the photos for the final tour show, regardless of Finn’s temper tantrums.
I look at the ticket.
And then I text Absolutely. The photos will be delivered in person.
I’m tearing up Finn’s check when an exhausted waiter stops by my table. “Can I get you anything else?”
She sees the number on a torn up piece of the check, and her eyes bug out a little.
“Yeah,” I say. I drop some cash next to my cold coffee and uneaten pasta. “Where do I go to change my flight?”
14
Finn
It’s a cold and foggy day in San Francisco as I slouch down Market Street, my hands in the pockets of my leather jacket, and my collar turned up. I’m supposed to be rehearsing. The last concert of the tour is tonight. But instead I’m standing across from De Luca’s Fine Italian Dining, missing Charlie so bad it’s like a physical pain.
I can’t believe she sold me out like that. Charlie used to be the kind of person who wouldn’t betray someone she cared about for anything.
But I guess that’s my answer. Charlie doesn’t care about me. She hasn’t for a long time now, and she clearly never will.
Every inch of me feels hurt and raw and bruised. Like my body’s running a fever, trying to burn out all traces of Charlie De Luca.
But it’s not going to work. It didn’t last time, and it won’t this time. There’s nothing I can do to stop loving her. Her smile, her anger, her passion, her dreams. The way she hides behind that camera. But then when she shares her photos, you get to see how she sees the world. And that’s the opposite of hiding. It feels like the bravest thing possible.
It’s probably for the best I never saw any of the photos she took of me on tour. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to look at the proof of how little she cares.
I turn away from De Luca’s, about to get my ass back to rehearsal, when I hear a man say, “Finn?”
It’s Jim. He’s standing in front of our parents’ pub, a trash bag over his shoulder.
“What the hell are you doing here? Don’t you have a concert tonight?”
It’s a simple question, and I don’t have a clue how to answer it.
Jim takes a good look at my face. “Aw, hell. Charlie again?”
He tosses the trash bag into a dumpster in between our bar and the Chinese place to the left.
“How … how do you …”
“Because the last time your face looked like that, it was Charlie. Come on in. Have a drink and tell me all about it.”
I follow him inside. It’s warm and dim, with scarred, heavy wood, and a few customers huddled over pints. The smell of hot fried food and shepherd’s pie almost covers up the scent of spilled beer. In the corner there’s a raised area with a mic stand and someone’s amp, which probably means they have someone playing tonight.
It was the first stage I ever sang on, and looking at it I feel a deep yearning. It’s deeper than nostalgia or missing a simpler time in my life.
No, I miss the time in my life when I had things I hoped for. Now I either got what I hoped for—I’m a fucking rockstar—or I’ve lost it definitively—Charlie. I’m fucking miserable, and I can’t think of a single thi
ng left to hope for.
Jim ducks behind the heavy wooden bar. “Go on. Sit your mopey ass down and tell me how you fucked it up this time.”
“It wasn’t me this time!” I sit down on one of the bar stools lining the bar.
“Somehow I doubt that.” Jim slides me a Guinness.
I take a sip, “She only took the tour job because she got hired by a magazine that was looking for dirt on me.”
Jim gives a long, low whistle.
I don’t realize until he does it that some part of me was hoping he’d tell me it wasn’t that bad. That I’m overreacting.
But it’s that bad. I’m unloved and unlovable, at least when it comes to Charlie De Luca. I wash down the pain with more Guinness.
“Well, did she find any dirt?”
“Yes. No. I told her I hadn’t written any songs.”
Jim winces, “And she told the magazine?”
“No. She helped me write almost a whole album. And I thought … fuck, I’m an idiot.” I rub a hand over my face. “It just … we were spending a lot of time together and it felt like … I started falling for her again, and the other night we had this fight, but we worked it out, and I thought … I thought this time it was going to be different.”
I take another drink, while Jim watches sympathetically. “Then yesterday morning, I hear her on the phone. Promising this magazine that does hack jobs on people like me that I’ll do an interview about overcoming my writer’s block. That I’ll do a nude photo shoot.”
Jim snorts a laugh.
“Not funny!”
“Right, sorry. Not funny.” He picks up a cloth and starts drying off glasses. “Do you have any idea why she did it?”
“She said they already knew about my writer’s block from Zane, and she was just trying to fix it.”
Jim nods noncommittally. “Could be bullshit. But it could also be real. She always had that independent streak. Wanting to fix every problem by herself.”
