CHAPTER 11

FINN

Present Day

“No, I don’t want to go on a double date with you because I’m neither in middle school nor are we starring in a gum commercial.”

My buddy, Scott, was giving me the hard sell over the phone. He had a head for business and not much else. “Finn, dude, it’s one date. Kari’s friend is in town for the weekend, and she won’t go out without her. It’s some kind of girl code or something. Come have a drink with us, and take her friend back to your place so I can take Kari back to mine and bust a nut. I’m offering you a lay with no strings attached. How can you turn this down?”

“Would it kill you to not be so crass?” I took off my glasses and cleaned the lenses on my shirt. I noticed I had been doing that often when Scott talked about women. We’d been friends since college. He was my opposite in every way. He was a gym rat to my average build. He had women falling over themselves to get to him, whereas I . . . did not. And he had never seen an episode of Battlestar Galactica. I had no idea why we were still friends.

“Man, you have got to put yourself out there.”

This again. “I put myself out there.” I didn’t know what it meant to put myself out there, but I was sure I was doing it.

“Every time we go out, you have tons of chicks throwing themselves at you.”

That was ridiculous. “Shut up. I do not. They only talk to me so they can get to you.”

“You are so blind. You never notice any of them. You could be pulling down so much tail every week. You have no idea.”

I let that sink in for a minute. It didn’t feel right. “Maybe none of them were worth noticing. And you act like I’ve never been with a woman before. I’ve had my fair share of girlfriends. I’m not a monk.”

“What’s fair when it comes to pussy?”

I cleaned my glasses again. That one didn’t deserve an answer.

“Oh, wait. Is this about your dream girl? Dude, you’ve got to get over that.”

I wished I had never told him about her. Maggie. The girl with the blondest hair and no last name. I should’ve kept that to myself. Now he knew I often did ungentlemanly things to the thought of a girl I had met half my lifetime ago.

Damn that fucking Nickelodeon booth and their vat of slime where I dropped my phone one goddamn hour after Maggie gave me her number. Damn that whole channel. I never even got a chance to call her and I had to get a new number when I got a new phone. I hoped Nickelodeon went bankrupt. I would never forgive them.

True to form, Scott hadn’t let me live down my fantasies.

“Did you have another dream about her? You did, didn’t you? Did she do anything nasty in the dream? I want details if she did.”

I wasn’t talking about this. My dreams were private. Even the erotic ones. Especially the erotic ones. I wanted to go back in time and kick my own ass for ever mentioning Maggie to him.

“Did she let you go up her down escalator?”

He had his own language that I still hadn’t decoded. “What?”

He let out a frustrated huff. “Her ass, man. Did Dream Maggie let you put it in her ass?”

I hung up. I didn’t know why I was so protective of someone I met once and would never see again, but I was. Maggie was sweet and crazy and funny, and she didn’t deserve to have some Neanderthal asking about her rectum. I shook the thoughts of her from my head. She probably didn’t deserve my erotic dreams either, but I couldn’t control my subconscious.

I met her as a teenager at San Diego Comic-Con. She was the only one not wearing some lame, predictable costume. She scored major points when she knew what my costume was. I didn’t know how to describe her other than Maggie was a force. A force of what, I didn’t know. The thought was so cliché it made me cringe, but I felt something when I saw her. I lived in Manhattan surrounded by millions of gorgeous women, but none of them gave me that feeling. I wanted that feeling again. I wanted to feel at home and alive. She made me feel things I couldn’t put into words.

And that kiss. That kiss had been enough to fuel years’ worth of dreams. I could feel every ounce of her passion in her kiss. I didn’t know a girl could kiss like that. I hadn’t found a woman since who could. She tasted like fruit snacks and sunshine. Feeling her mouth was more than my teen self could handle. To feel her under me would be . . .

Shit. I was hard again.

I checked my watch. Just after noon. I didn’t have anywhere to be for a few hours. Plenty of time to rub one out before I had to get out of bed.

***

“I’m not wearing that costume, dickface.”

I jumped out of the way of a woman with a rolling suitcase while holding the phone in my hand. “Scott, you promised you would wear a costume to New York Comic-Con. I’ve had the metal shop working on it for months. You can’t back out now.”

“I said I would wear a costume. You never said anything about a couple’s costume. How am I supposed to get any geek trim if I’m stuck inside a car with you? No way, man.”

I felt the need to clean my glasses again, but my hands were full. “It’s not a couple’s costume. You’re going to be the back half of Lola, and I’m going to be the front half. It’s too late to change it now. I had to commission this one because I don’t have welding tools.”

“Lola? I thought you said we were going to be a car.”

I needed new friends. “Lola is the name of the sports car from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. This is really something you should know if you’re going to the Con.”

“Man, you know I hate this shit. I only go for the money. I’m not going to be the back half of some gay car. Fuck that.”

“What are we supposed to do for a costume now? The convention is tomorrow.” He had no idea how serious this was for me. Costumes were planned years in advance. You couldn’t just toss one together overnight.

“I’ll go buy one at the store. You can be both halves of the car.”

I wanted to punch a parking meter. “I can’t be both halves of Lola. It was built for two people. I’ll have to get a totally different costume if you bail on me.”

“Sounds good, bro. I gotta go. I’ll catch you later.”

I stuck my arm out to hail a cab since I would need to go by the shop and see if they could help me deal with this crisis. I had no idea how they could shrink a car down to half its size, but I was going to ask for a miracle.

Fucking Scott.