Harlow might have been tied up in bungee cords last night, but it was like watching her bloom, and I don’t really want to hear her apologize for it. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything so real. In a matter of hours, things went from an easy, uncomplicated way to burn off some steam, to anything but simple. I like Harlow. Deciding we’re not going to sleep together anymore? Fucking sucks.
“You don’t have to apologize,” I say, and without realizing it, I place my hand on her knee, squeezing it. Her skin is warm beneath my palm and my fingers ache to move, to smooth up and over her thigh, distract us both again.
Fuck.
I move to pull away but she reaches out, taking my hand in hers while she casually studies it.
“No,” she murmurs. “Just saying I’m sorry if I made things weird.”
“You didn’t,” I assure her.
She looks at me and seems to be biting back a laugh. “Thanks. You’re so effusive.”
I nod magnanimously. “That’s what friends are for, right?”
“Is that what we are, then?” she asks. “Friends?”
“Definitely friends, maybe more? I don’t know, we were married once, after all.”
“The best twelve hours of my life, to be honest,” she says in her best Scarlett O’Hara impersonation, and straightens her legs across me, her thighs shaking slightly as her muscles stretch beneath my hands. “The days since have been nothing but a pale impersonation.”
Oliver walks in from the back, carrying a tall stack of books. “G’day. Nice to see you, mate.”
It occurs to me that I’m still sitting with Harlow’s legs in my lap, my hand resting a little too comfortably on her thigh. I blink back up and meet Oliver’s gaze. He gives me a knowing smirk, so apparently it hasn’t escaped his notice, either.
“Dude,” Not-Joe says, emerging from the bathroom with a stack of comic books in his hands. He holds them up for Oliver to see, and the two of them exchange a look. “Look what I found.”
Oliver groans, but I notice he doesn’t actually take the books. “Not again.”
“Again,” Not-Joe confirms.
My eyes follow Not-Joe as he gingerly puts the comics on the glass counter. “Are those Wonder Woman?”
“Yeah. Every fucking time I clean the bathroom. It’s always Wonder Woman.”
Harlow stands and I immediately feel the loss of her warm skin under my palm. When Oliver nods, she says, “You mean people go in there and . . .”
Oliver nods again, picking up an empty box and using a stapler to slide the sullied stack inside. “Bloody oath. Is nothing sacred?”
Harlow leans over, peering into the box. “Well. I mean . . . can you blame them?”
She looks up to three sets of saucer eyes, all of us staring, slack-jawed at her.
“Can we blame them for . . . ?” Not-Joe begins, and lets his question hang meaningfully in the air.
“Oh, come on.” She reaches over and plucks a pristine, plastic-wrapped copy of Wonder Woman from the shelf. On the cover of this particular issue, Wonder Woman is astride a giant seahorse, her lasso of truth suspended in the air above her, while a man in some sort of watercraft attempts to fire a weapon at her. All of this is supposedly happening underwater, though I don’t bother to argue the logistics of how one would lasso a person mere feet above the ocean floor, or how a laser—or whatever it’s supposed to be—would work in this scenario in the first place.
“Look at her!” Harlow says. “Even I’d have a little alone time with Princess Diana.”
“You knew her real name was Princess Diana?” Oliver asks, and I swear to God he looks like a dog whose owner has just beckoned him to the porch for dinner.
She shrugs. “Of course I did.”
Looking at me with fire in his eyes, Oliver says, “Finn, if you don’t marry this woman again, I just might.”
HARLOW HEADS OUT a few minutes later, kissing each of us on the cheek before she leaves and I pretend I don’t hate that all three of us got the same treatment. Eventually I leave, too, making plans to meet up with Oliver later that night. I take the long way back to the house, deciding a drive along the harbor might do me some good, and then I remember the unread text still sitting in my phone. The missed call from Colton. Apparently Harlow is an excellent distraction even when we’re not having sex.
In the end, I spend the rest of the afternoon driving up and back down the coast, pulling up to the house after sunset and only about thirty minutes before Oliver. I search the fridge and cupboards, pulling out a box of pasta and a handful of vegetables from the crisper. My phone stares at me from where it lies on the counter.
I do everything I can to avoid looking at it. I start dinner and unload the dishwasher. I watch a little TV, and even walk out to grab Oliver’s mail, hoping the fresh air will clear my head. It doesn’t.
Edgy and unable to handle it anymore, I toss the envelopes to the table and reach for my phone, deciding it’s time to man up and face the music. It could be good news, I reason. My brother would have called and kept calling if it had been something really bad. Right?
I check my email first. There’s a notice from the bank, some sort of stupid forwarded video from Ansel, and an email confirming my meeting in L.A. on Monday at 10 a.m. That last one does nothing to ease the sour feeling in my gut.
Finally I move to the messages, opening the single new text from Colton.
We are screwed, it says. We are absolutely royally FUCKED. I’m getting drunk.
THE KITCHEN IS filling with steam from a pot of overboiling pasta on the stove, when the sound of a door closing carries down the hall. “Honey! I’m home!”
I’m pacing between the counter and island, my stomach having bottomed out somewhere near my feet, when I hear Oliver drop his keys and kick his shoes off near the door.
Colton didn’t answer when I tried to call him back, but Levi did. Just like his message said, Colton is off somewhere getting plastered—and most likely fucked senseless by one of his many regular bed-bunnies—which would explain why he didn’t try to call me again.
According to Levi, engine one has thrown a rod, and the damage is so severe it’s actually penetrated the motor casing and rendered it unsalvageable. Worse than that, because of the extra strain being put on engine two, the oil sample came back full of metal shavings, meaning we are only weeks from its complete failure. A few days ago we knew we were in rough shape but assumed we could limp through another season. Now we know we are, just as Colton said, royally fucked. We’ve all put nearly every penny we make back into the family business, and without income, have barely enough left over to cover our living expenses for the next six months. We can’t take the boat out on the water until we fix it, and I have no idea how we’re going to afford to do that.