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Chapter 8
An empty house, a sleepless night. Finn lay on his back, his folded arms under his head. He almost wished Max would call to tell him that he couldn’t fall asleep and ask him to pick him up from Eli’s, even at three a.m., like he had done in the past. That could spare him from running everything in his head again.
So many what-ifs.
He had given up shunning the what-ifs.
What if they tried?
What if he hadn’t made that single, half-drunken mistake? What if he had waited another week before marrying Avery?
What if it had been someone who wasn’t closely related to Jane? That way, at least the divorce would have made a difference.
He remembered the moment when the magnitude of the impact had wrought on him—that not only he would have to leave Jane for Avery, but that he was marrying himself into her family and that they’d remain each other’s perpetual, torturous reminder of what-ifs and could-have-beens.
Ironically, the knuckle of his ring finger still bore the scar from when he had slammed his fist into the wall.
He knew the answers to all these rhetorical questions, having answered them in his head a million times already.
Two years older than him, he hadn’t really known Avery except by first name and looks. Her come hither attitude in a bar had looked promising for a one-night stand to his depressed mind. It had been mediocre, at best, and completely forgettable, but that one night had turned into years. He remembered using a condom, but maybe he hadn’t.
It was only one week, Jane had said at the gallery. But it hadn’t been just that. That one week had been long coming, ever since that first time he had met her at the library. Except for his son, he had never been truly happy, other than when he was with her, in that single week or even before. Not even when he had won the gold medal in the preliminary relay. That medal, his son, and that single week, which had been the first and last time he had felt what love really was, when every part of him was in love—these were the three peaks of his life.
The medal accumulated dust on a shelf next to its lesser peers; the love was lost, though he kept crashing against it like an endless tide. His son was the only happiness left. He should be satisfied with that, yet he had allowed himself to put that aside and go see her.
And now he had kissed her. He had gotten his dose. The first one in fourteen years. She was in his bloodstream. It couldn’t end with that. Not just because he already needed more, craved more, would figuratively kill for more, but because that kiss had told him that she loved him, too, just as much, just like then. She had kissed him like she always had—in desperation, with abandonment, hunger, surrender, love.
Not going for her was against his very being. Zooming in on his end goal was a part of him, of his life, of who he was. She was his end goal. Yet, he couldn’t be with her.
At six a.m., when he realized he wasn’t going to sleep, Finn got into his car and drove to the pool. His Rav4stood solitary in the parking lot. He locked the pool doors behind him, took his clothes off, and dove in. The cool, clear water wrapping his naked body was oblivion. An hour and a half later, he activated the robotic cleaner, opened the front doors, greeted the lifeguard who arrived for a morning shift, and got in the shower.
At nine a.m. sharp, he waited in the car outside Eli’s house. A few minutes later, Eli’s mom waved at him from the door as Max took the front stairs two at a time.
“Blue Jam?”
“I want the large pancakes,” Max said, buckling up next to him.
“You got it. How was it?”
“Great. Kylie is really good at Overwatch. She beat us. His mom said we could play Overwatch because Kylie is older than thirteen.”
“And beside Kylie and Overwatch?” He made a note to self to re-check what that game was. “Did you sleep well?”
“Yeah, Dad. I’m over that part. It was a long time ago.”
“Last year.”
“At my age, last year is a long time ago.”
Finn laughed.
“You went swimming?” Max asked. Finn could never quite get rid of the chlorine smell. Avery used to say it made her sick, which worked well for him, but Max didn’t seem to mind it.
“Yeah. Woke up early,” he lied.
As soon as Max’s pancakes and Finn’s breakfast burritos were served, Max dug in. He was beginning to develop the appetite of a teenager. And the silences of one, too.
“So, what else did you do?” Finn asked.
