FINN

"Have a good night?" I asked when Winter walked out of the strip club at three in the morning for the second night in a row.

"What are you doing here?" She peered into the dark night. Jimmy Risk had his parking lot dimly lit, possibly to disguise husbands paying a hundred for a table dance from girls they had no shot with.

I pushed away from the side of my truck and approached. What was I doing here? A good question with no good answers. All the ones that popped to mind were fairly creepy, from the I've been waiting to I just passed by this road leading north that holds only auto body shops and strip clubs to I wanted to spend a second consecutive night at a strip club.

I went with the solid truth. "I wanted to talk to you."

"We talked last night." Her tone was terse and unwelcoming.

For a moment I thought about walking away. There were plenty of female fish in the sea, so why was I stalking—following—this one? I had never had to chase anything or anyone in my entire life, but that night two months ago woke me the hell up. We'd talked, we'd commiserated, we'd comforted each other, and then we’d proceeded to have several hours of unforgettable sex. So no, I wasn't done with her. Not by a long shot.

I said, "You said things, but they didn't make any sense."

“You mean you didn’t agree with them.”

That was accurate. She’d said we were done, and I disagreed. Ergo, her words were nonsensical.

She pressed her lips together and took a step toward her car, but I moved with her until she realized I wasn't going anywhere.

She paused and turned halfway. Her fine features were in profile. The curve of her cheek she once thought wasn’t sloped enough and her snub nose that begged for a kiss were lightly highlighted by the streetlights. "You ever see the movie The Joy Luck Club?" she asked.

"No, I can't say I have. Should I?"

"In old Chinese culture, the man can take more than one wife. The more wives he has, the lower your status. In The Joy Luck Club, An-mei's mother had no status as the fourth wife."

It took a minute to process her statement. It was about Ivy but not in the way I'd expected. "The fact that Ivy dated me first makes you feel like a fourth wife?"

She waved her hand. "Second wife, fourth wife. Whatever. But yes, I'll always wonder if you should be with her, and I don't want to feel that way."

"I don't see you that way."

She threw her arms out. "What is it that you even want? To hang out? To fuck?"

She sounded frustrated, like me. "Yes to both. I want us to spend time together, as adults. You're twenty-two, and I'm twenty-five. That's a far cry from fourteen and seventeen, and I’m guessing both of us have changed. So let’s find out who we are. And in the meantime, yes, we should goddamn have more sex. I can't forget that night. And I don't want to. When I close my eyes, I still feel you coming apart in my arms."

She made a strangled sound and dropped her chin into her chest. Instantly I felt like an ass. I wanted to make her feel good, knew I could. I wasn’t alone that night. She had been insatiable. She couldn’t get enough, and neither could I. It made no sense for us not to see where a little more time could take us.

"Tell me what’s wrong so I can make it better."

"It wasn't supposed to be that way."

"What way?"

"I thought if we had sex, you'd feel better and I'd be able to forget you."

"A pity fuck?" I stepped back and dragged my hands through my hair, about to detonate at the idea of having the best night of my life be a pity fuck, when the last part of her sentence penetrated my dense skull.

"We had sex. It was done. A one-time thing."

I stuck my tongue to the roof of my mouth and took a breath, searching for patience. "I was fucked up after my dad died. Maybe I still am a mess, but after the fog cleared, I realized the best thing I had going for me in these last three months was you. So maybe I cut it too close, but I'm here, and I'm telling you I want to see you again."

Her face closed down, and the shyness, the embarrassment, and even the spark of memory was shuttered. "It's just not meant to be. Anyway, I need to go."

She moved to the car next to mine. When I’d seen the Donovan's seven-year-old car parked in the lot, I sat for twenty minutes for the next space over to open up. Then I lain in wait for Winter, so I wasn't letting her go until we'd hashed this out, which meant she was going to let go of whatever reservations she had and agree to go on a date with me.

"Ivy and I dated in high school, which is the equivalent of having a play date in kindergarten. It's nothing; meant nothing."

"And your first year of college,” she reminded me.

“Barely,” I muttered under my breath.

“When was the last time you had a girlfriend?"

Her question took me off guard, and it was on the tip of my tongue to lie. After all, what did it matter? But lying is something my old man did, and it destroyed my mom, who always, always found out. I loved my old man, but I didn't want to put that kind of haunted look in any woman's eyes. "Before my dad died, I was dating Verity Michaels. She was a friend of a friend of a friend. We dated about six months."

"Why'd you break up?"

"My dad died." I'd had too much going on in my head, and Verity and I’d had a very superficial relationship that consisted of sex and a few dinners out. She was grateful when I suggested we take a break, not wanting to deal with my sudden change in personality. "You want to tell me what this is all about?"

"Ivy says you're emotionally unavailable and that you like being the good guy, so you stick with one woman until you’re bored and then move on. She said in all the years you dated, you never once said ‘I love you.’”

A nerve in my forehead started throbbing at the idea of Ivy and Winter discussing me as potential boyfriend material. I hadn't been the greatest boyfriend to Ivy. At the time, in high school, baseball was the most important thing, followed by my family and my boys. Ivy was convenient. A girl to take to the prom and homecoming. Someone who was more than happy to accept my unrefined backseat, basement, and sometimes bedroom skills. When we both went to State, she drifted into a different crowd, and while I regretted that I didn't catch on to her downward slide and help her, I wasn't torn up that she'd begun cheating on me.

Then I realized I just characterized my dating relationship with Ivy. As a playdate in kindergarten. Oh fuck. Ivy had told Winter that all my relationships with women were superficial. By comparing a four-year relationship with a kindergarten playdate, I’d just confirmed with my own careless words exactly what Ivy said.

"I'm a different person today." How different, though, even I didn’t know. I hadn’t pinpointed yet what I wanted from Winter, but it was more than a one-night stand.

"Right." It wasn't a good enough answer for her because she moved to the driver's side door and opened it. "I'm so sorry about your dad. I know how it feels."

And she did. Maybe that was why that night resonated so strongly for me. Every comforting word Winter whispered came from her own well of grief that ran deep. But I'd seen Ivy not a month before that night with Winter, and she'd said similar things, and I'd just felt relief when I dropped her off. I didn't feel relief watching Winter's taillights drive away from me.

That I hadn't loved anyone I dated in the past wasn't far off the mark, but that didn't mean I wasn't capable of love.

It meant I hadn't met the right girl.

* * *

I slept poorly and woke early, which was for the best. I needed to be at the build site before Henry showed up. Downstairs, the house was quiet. Even though I lived with four guys, two of them college students, we had some early risers. Noah, one of the former Marines I’d told Winter about, was training for an upcoming pay-per-view match. He could be out running. The other Marine, Bo, spent most mornings in bed with his girlfriend. Adam was a night owl who saw the ass side of most mornings and hit the sack around the time most people were climbing out of bed to start a new day at work. Mal…he was a mystery. Four years of college and three years of living together and I still didn’t know him or his schedule.

I checked my phone, but it was curiously blank. No texts from Winter. No messages from my mom. I probably needed to drive out to the farm to make sure she was okay.

I pulled the cast-iron frying pan out of the drawer and set it to heat on the stove. As the bacon fried, Bo’s girlfriend AnnMarie stumbled into the kitchen wearing a long gray USMC T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants.

“You have a good night?” I asked. Her cheeks pinkened. “That good?”

She ignored my comment and pointed to the pan. “Are you making that just for yourself?”

“If you make coffee and toast, I’ll throw in the eggs and bacon.”

“Deal.” She scooped coffee grounds into a filter. “We’ve missed you around here. Are you avoiding us?”

“Yes. Your boyfriend wants to throw me out of an airplane.”

“It was a joke,” she claimed. At my doubtful stare, she revised, “Maybe he was half serious, but he only suggested it because he loves you.”

I let that fabrication slide and turned to my bacon. “His love is painful.” After my dad died and I'd broken it off with Verity, I'd gone on a month-long binge of drinking and sex with women I barely knew, ending with that night with Winter. My well-intentioned roommates took this as a sign that I needed distracting. “I still have bruises from the last time we went paintballing.”

I pulled up my T-shirt and pointed to the left side of my abdomen where Noah had shot me twice. AnnMarie tsked sympathetically.

“I don’t see any marks.”

“They’re psychological,” I informed her.

She laughed and patted me on the shoulder. “Well, I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

I plated eggs and bacon while AnnMarie buttered toast and poured coffee. “How’s it going with you these days?”

“I’m glad school is almost over. I was thinking about getting a job. Bo said he was going to be busy doing more work for you.”

I made a face. “The Riverside project is keeping me too busy to oversee our flips, but I think Bo can handle them.”

“Don’t tell him I told you this, but he’s like a nervous girl on her first date.” She grinned, clearly delighted at seeing Bo suffer a little insecurity. He did throw off the aura of a guy supremely comfortable in his skin—kind of like I was before my dad died. I hadn’t ever suffered a whiff of anything unfortunate in my life. Placid and drama free.

Then it all blew up. My mom slept with Dad’s brother. Dad found out and had a heart attack. Now he was dead, and she couldn’t get out of bed.

It had made me rethink everything, including relationships. I was nearing my quarter century mark, and while I’d had plenty of girlfriends, Ivy and Winter were absolutely right. I hadn’t loved any of them. I hadn’t cared when the relationships were over, and I was often glad to see the back of the girl when she walked out on me.

But that didn’t mean I wasn’t capable of something serious. Right?

"Did I ever tell you I've never asked a girl out?" I informed AnnMarie.

“How is that even possible?”

I laughed a little self-consciously. "When I was in eighth grade, Shannon Blake came up to me after first period on the first day of second semester and said I was going out with her."

"And that was it?"

I shrugged sheepishly. "She was pretty cute. Why fight it?"

"How long did you date her?"

"Off and on for a couple of years."

"Wow, a long time. What happened next?"

"During the second week of tenth grade, I met Julie. She had a yen for pale skin and asked me if I glittered in the sunlight. I don't, as you know, but she kept lifting my shirt for a peek, and eventually she just took it off and kept it. We drifted apart. I think she was disappointed at my lack of sparkle. In my junior year, Ivy Donovan came up to my locker and said that since I was single it was time to date her. And I did, for over four years. After her was my chem lab partner Bethenney—three e's, two n's. She and I ended up playing on the same coed intramural flag football team. She made a pass, I caught it—literally. Then we went out until I graduated from State and moved back home."

"You've had all these girlfriends? And you didn't want to marry or anything?" She sounded bewildered. It never occurred to me it was unusual in any way.

"It was high school and then college." I raised an eyebrow. "I wasn't there to get my MRS degree."

"Still," she replied faintly.

Irritated, I tried to joke my way out. "It's my superpower." I winked. "Yours is taming wild men. Mine is never having to ask a girl out. They've always asked me."

She picked up her coffee and leaned back in her chair, eyeing me speculatively. “But now you've found a girl you like, and you don't know how to ask her out.”

I spread my hands out in front of me. "Yes, my perceptive dear, what should a man do if his superpower abandons him?"

She smiled over the rim of her mug. "Tell me about her."

"She's easy to talk to and has a big heart. Very loyal. She's an artist and does commission work for an ink shop downtown."

"I like her already. She sounds neat."

"Yes, well, you can't ask her out. She's mine. You'll have to find your own hot tattoo artist girlfriend."

She stuck her tongue out. "She's not yours if you can't get her to go out on a date with you."

"Touché. Why don’t you come out with me and play wingwoman?”

“I would do that. When and where?”

A gruff voice called from the entry. “What does being your wingwoman entail?” Bo shuffled in, bleary-eyed and grumpy. “Because I outta get a say in how dates with my girlfriend go down.”

I kicked out a chair for him, and he collapsed in it. With one big hand, he corralled AnnMarie’s plate and polished off her leftover eggs and toast, and then he pulled the cup from her hands and drained it.

She rolled her eyes. “I think being on a date with Finn would reduce his ability to charm another woman. What does the wingwoman position entail in your eyes?”

“She vouches for a guy,” Bo said and got up to fill a plate and the empty mug. “Her mere presence validates the guy she’s with as decent. Doesn’t matter how much pussy that asshole has slayed, if he’s standing next to a girl and that girl isn’t afraid or disgusted by him, he’s golden.”

“Gross, Bo.” Annmarie,” AnnMarie frowned, “and language, please.”

“Sorry,” he said around a mouthful of eggs. “I’m a work in progress.”

“I might have put it a different way,” I interjected. “But Bo’s right. Plus there’s the added bonus of people wanting what other people have. In any event, hanging out with a girl who is not your friend with benefits gives you instant credibility.”

“That’s screwed up,” she scowled.

“We don’t make the rules,” I protested.

“You only manipulate them to your benefit,” she finished.

I quirked an eyebrow and shrugged. “I wouldn’t say manipulate.” Had I manipulated Winter into having sex with me? Was that why she turned away? Because she was hurt and angry? No, I think the hurt came from my silence. The way that I let her walk away without calling her back.

I was ready to make up for that, and if she needed to be wooed, I could do that. “Forget the wingman shit. We’re past the stage where you vouching for me would be helpful. What I need is take her out on a good date. Wine her and dine her. Lay your ideas on me.”

"I took AnnMarie to the Natural History Museum," Bo said. "Chicks dig museums."

"You did not," AnnMarie exclaimed. "That was for our assignment."

"If you want to think we were meeting there for class, by all means, delude yourself."

"That was our first date?" AnnMarie looked confused.

"Sunshine, our first date was Advanced Economic Theory when I winked at you and you glared back." Bo bent over and kissed her neck. She pretended to be offended and tried to push him away. He was about a hundred pounds heavier. She wasn't moving him anywhere. Bo lifted her out of her chair and set her on his lap.

"If we're labeling dates based on random interaction with the opposite sex, then I've been getting around," I mused.

"Ignore him," AnnMarie said. "Remember, you were the one who correctly placed Bo at level three on an evolutionary scale of ten."

"Me man, you woman," Bo grunted.

"I hope you don't plan on making a living with this routine." I raised my eyebrows. "No offense, but I've seen five year olds with better comedic timing. Do you realize, though, that we don't date anymore? We talk, hook up, realize that we're suddenly sleeping with someone, and then are too lazy to make a change."

AnnMarie pinched Bo's side, and he made a big show of grimacing. "Take her on a picnic. Maybe out to your farm?"

I rolled the idea around in my head. "Yeah, I like it. Thanks, sweetheart." And then to piss off Bo, I leaned down and kissed AnnMarie's forehead. Bo kicked me hard enough to bruise my shin, but I laughed. It was worth it.

I headed downtown to the jobsite and checked in with Henry. He and I had come to a tentative agreement of mutual uncertainty. His was more accurately labeled distrust, but the other night at the strip club apparently made me appear more manly in Henry's eyes because when I saw him, he actually said hello instead of his usual grunt.

"Grading inspector tomorrow." Henry always greeted me with the most important task of the day—or tomorrow, as it were in this case. No hello, how're you doing? Just this shit needs to be done, and I don't think you're quite up for the task.

"Yep. Everything looks good. What's the worst thing that could happen?" I give him an easy smile even though my stomach churned "We have to pull them out and start again."

"That's right." Henry nodded slowly. "It's what your old man would've done." He awkwardly patted me on the shoulder and then went off to inform the crew.

Pouring the footings before the grading inspector came was a risk. If we ended up needing to move more dirt to satisfy the inspector, some of the footings might have to be redone. In order to get in under the tiny margin Dad built in when he bid the project, we couldn't have any delays. Not one.

I wanted to see Winter again, tell her to give me—us—a chance. I couldn't promise her a picket fence, but there was something between us I'd be a fool to let go of. But I figured I'd give her a day or two to stew about what we'd said.