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I catch his drift immediately. They met on the day I drowned.
“Oh.” I can’t think of a better response.
“I was lying on the deck of my dad’s boat, drinking myself into a coma, when he came up to me and gave me a card with the place and time of the AA meetings,” he elaborates. “I blew him off at first… but then… the accident happened, and I knew I had to get help.”
“I could barely believe it when he showed up at a meeting the next day,” Ruben adds.
“So, you’ve been living in Hillford this whole time?” I ask Finn.
He nods as a response.
“But… how could you afford an apartment?”
“I couldn’t.”
Images of him sleeping in his car return to me. God, I hope he wasn’t homeless for a year.
“Ruben found me sleeping in my car behind the town hall a few days later and took pity on me,” Finn clarifies.
“One of the kids I sponsor had just opened up a gym downtown, and he needed the help, so I told him I had a guy for him,” Ruben adds.
“I agreed to work for him for half the salary if he let me crash in his back office for free.”
“Wait, you were living in an office? How did that even work?”
“Part of the deal was that he added a couch.”
It pains me to think that Finn’s been living with close to nothing for so long. He went from living in a million-dollar mansion to sleeping in a stranger’s office. And now that he’s living with Xavier and Aveena, he’s still sleeping on the couch. He hasn’t had a real bed for over a year, and when he had a choice, he still insisted that I take the guest room.
I must be doing a very poor job of hiding my emotions because Finn notices the worried expression on my face.
He covers his hand with mine, halting my spiral. “Hey, look at me.”
I oblige, stressing my bottom lip.
“It wasn’t as bad as it sounds. I had a place to sleep, a roof over my head, and my boss let me work out and shower after the gym closed. I took up boxing and started exercising like crazy to blow off some steam. My boss even bought a minifridge and stocked it for me. He said it was for all of his employees, but he knew damn well I was the only one eating that food.”
Since the day he came back, I’ve been making jokes about how he had to have been living in the gym to get a body like that. Turns out I was right. He literally lived at a gym, hence his new obsession with fitness. The conversation we had with Mabel randomly comes back to me.
“What did you mean? When you said you missed Mabel’s food? Did she cook for you or something?”
Finn grins. “I was flat broke and starving at the beginning, and she caught me shoving the cookies she’d made for the meeting into my pockets. I thought maybe she’d be pissed, but she didn’t say anything. Then, at the next meeting, she came up to me and handed me an entire box of homemade meals prepped into containers. I told her I couldn’t accept it, but she forced me to take it. She’d lost her husband a year prior, and she said she always overcooked anyway. She brought me food every week after that. It went on until I left town.”
Finn could’ve chosen any town, attended any AA meetings, but he wound up here, in a beach town full of lovely people with gigantic hearts. I’d like to think it was fate. That he was led to this town for a reason.
Our waitress places three glasses of water down on the table before asking us if we’re ready to order. We end up asking her for a few more minutes.
“Does your dad know you lived in a gym?”
Mr. Richards might not be the world’s most present father, but he always made sure his kids’ needs were taken care of. I’m surprised he didn’t try to give Finn money.
“No. I told him I was staying with a friend and I had a job so he’d stop trying to shove his money down my throat.”
“Wait, so he wanted to help you out, but you refused?” I’m not judging him. It just seems to me like turning down his father’s money made his life harder.
“I think I needed to prove to myself that I could get through life on my own. Without you. And without him…”
“When is the last time you talked to him?”
