Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 71403 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 286(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71403 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 286(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
In the end, not much “good” comes out of your “good” act. The whole conversation on the internet now is about how awful a person you are. No one should ever hire you again. It’s speculated how you still get work at all. I likely give killer blowjobs to land every undeserved role.
No one’s talking about the director.
Before I know it, I’m out of the house and standing on the back porch, gripping the banister, and staring off at the crashing waves, which I can only barely see in the dark. It feels easier to breathe out here where nothing can touch me at all. No hashtags. No calls. No text message vibrations.
No stunning performances by Cissy.
I don’t mean to be too dark and dramatic and prove all of those headlines right, but I wonder what it’d feel like to just walk out into those waves and disappear. I need relief from this somehow. I need peace—and a fucking vacation.
The floorboards creak. I turn.
There stands Finn, as surprised to see me out here as I am to see him. Tank top and shorts. Headlamp around his forehead. Thick brown gloves with a toolkit hanging from his grip. His most formidable feature is his cute doe eyes, locked right on mine.
I was buried in my solitude so deeply, I’m not sure it’s fully processing that the guy actually returned to fix what I had broken. That there’s anyone standing there at all. I very well could be imagining him right now.
I honestly didn’t think he’d come back.
Not after the way he left.
“Mr. River,” he greets me, breaking my trance.
And his whole attitude’s changed. “Uh … Mr. Finn.”
“I just dropped by for your back door.”
I blink. “For my … what?”
“To patch up the back door window.” He takes a quick breath, appearing uncomfortable. “Should’ve patched it up with something when I was here before. To keep the hot air out … and the bugs. Think I was just thrown off by the, uh, doorframe-trying-to-eat-my-shirt-off-my-body thing.”
I peer down at his toolkit. A folded-up piece of plastic and a square of cardboard hang loose out of its side.
Finn, the beach-town handyman.
“Should just take me a minute or so. I won’t be in your hair very long.” He sets down his toolkit by the door. “And if I patch it up right, no bugs will be in your hair, either.”
Was that an attempt at humor? “Thank you.”
He flicks on his headlamp, blinding me for a second, before inspecting the door. He pokes a gloved finger into the hole and runs it over the rim, then scrunches up his face to focus, gently dislodging bits of glass that still remain.
I can’t describe what a comfort it is to see some totally normal guy doing a totally mundane activity. It’s centering. Grounding. More calming than listening to the waves.
“Oh.” He notices something by the door—the bottle of sparkling wine Brooke left next to my welcome basket. He looks up at me, searing my eyes again with the bright light from his headlamp. “Was this not to your liking?”
“Eight years sober.”
“Oh.” He looks down at the bottle. “Sorry. I’ll just—”
“I’m surprised you came back.”
He hesitates, then only half-turns, sparing me another blinding. “Is it a bad time? I can come back in the—”
“Thought I scared you away.”
He gives it a thought. “Guess I’m not easy to scare.”
“Even when I called your eyes pretty?”
He smirks, sets the bottle aside—I guess to take with him when he leaves—and continues his work, pulling the cardboard out of his toolkit along with some tape. “You called them beautiful, actually.”
“Did I?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been hit on.” He uses a razorblade to trim the cardboard, fitting it to the hole. Then he pastes on a smile—a forced one. “I was rude earlier.”
“Rude?”
He begins securing the cardboard in place. “Yeah. I … should have said thank you for complimenting my eyes.”
“No.”
His smile falters. He lifts an eyebrow. “No?”
“You don’t owe me for my compliment. Certainly not a thank you. I shouldn’t have come on to you like that and made things uncomfortable, especially in that situation. I should’ve respected your bungalow and called the number instead of breaking in and creating more work for you.”
After a moment of appearing stunned, he slowly clicks off his headlamp—thank you—then drops his hand. The wind picks up out of nowhere, the salty scent from the crashing waves hitting us at once, drawing both of our faces to the darkness of the shore. I don’t know if a storm is coming in or if this is the usual weather, but everything about tonight seems incorrigibly restless.
“You didn’t make me uncomfortable,” he softly says.
I turn back to him. “I didn’t?”
“I’ve been in a weird place. Emotionally. In my life.” He runs a finger along his cardboard patch, as if detecting a wrinkle in the tape and choosing to smooth it out. “Your compliment … wasn’t unwelcome.”