Page 17 of Hearts Adrift
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 thissomehow. 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, nobugswill 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?”
