The urge to help him was so absurdly strong. I didn’t even know this guy, but I could see how much pain he was in and I hated it. I’d been there. Different circumstances, but one shattered soul recognized another. I hoped that he’d be able to pick up the pieces as I had.
With one final look back, I walked out the front door.
I spent Sunday afternoon painting the accent wall in my living room. It was between Lux or Hyper blue and when I’d reached the front of the paint counter, I blurted out the latter. It was a great color, but admittedly it might have had something to do with the fact Finn had been on my mind nonstop since last night.
It was really none of my business, but I couldn’t get his tortured face out of my head. After the wall was done, I decided to get out of the house for some fresh air. I took off for a walk around the block and dialed Richard.
“Hey,” he answered in a rush. “One second.” His muffled voice gave orders to someone else, “Email me the spreadsheet and I’ll take a look. The numbers are off somewhere and we need to find it.” There were a few moments of silence before he spoke again. “Hey, sorry about that.”
“You’re at work still?”
He sighed and I heard his squeaky desk chair and knew he’d stepped into his office to talk. I could almost see him sitting there in a button-down shirt, his dark hair neatly styled with just a touch of gel. “Yeah, I was hoping we could get out early today and I could enjoy at least a few hours of my weekend, but there’s just too much to do and not enough of us to do it.”
“You say that every weekend,” I reminded him, smiling as I cradled the phone to my ear. He was consistent and reliable from his schedule to his wardrobe of black slacks and button-down shirts, and even what he ate most days. I loved that about him. I always knew what to expect.
“I think we put twenty hours in this weekend. I’m getting too old for this.”
“You’re not old,” I insisted. “Thirty-six is young.”
“Says the woman who just turned thirty.”
“Six years is not that big of a difference.”
He grunted. “Six years ago, I worked ten hours a day, seven days a week and I could have worked more. I had stamina.”
My mind flitted to Finn, six years my junior. Those muscles and the cocky determination of youth still worn like a second skin. I bet he had stamina.
“Adele?”
“Sorry what?” I shook my head and squeezed my eyes closed trying to force the memory of Finn out of my head.
“I asked how your weekend was, did you and CJ have a good time last night?”
“Oh. Yeah, we did. I took him and Pixy to the park so CJ could run off some energy. You should see him. He’s already figured out how to pump his little legs to swing and he followed this one little girl around picking her dandelions until her mum started giving me concerned looks. Little man’s got game. Gonna be just like his daddy.”
“Good, good,” he said absently. He cleared his throat. “I should get back out there so we can finish up. I’ll call you when I get back to my place tonight.”
“Yeah, of course.” My face heated. I’d been blabbing on and on and obviously he needed to get back to work. Long-distance relationships were tricky sometimes. Finding times to talk that were convenient for both of us was a massive feat some days. “Talk to you later.”
After we hung up, I slowed my pace and delayed going back to my empty house. With Richard in New York, I’d gotten used to spending time by myself. Evenings, weekends, holidays. Not always, of course. We saw each other at least once a month and we’d been able to spend a handful of holidays and long weekends together. Plus, Chance and Aubrey lived close – less than a block from my house actually, so it wasn’t like I was a shut in. Aubrey and I did girl’s nights out, I went over for dinner or to watch CJ. My life wasn’t empty, but sometimes being in my house all alone it felt that way.
Later that night, I settled in my newly painted living room enjoying the bright pop of color and how clean and fresh it looked. It was amazing how much more at home I felt with such a small change. Richard and I had been planning on moving in together when he got the job opportunity in New York and since then my life had sort of been on hold. I’d put off making any changes waiting for the day we could make it ours or find a new place. I’d been looking at paint samples for over a year, telling myself it was silly to paint a wall I might not be looking at for long. Now, I wish I’d done it sooner.
I turned on the TV and then opened my laptop to check my work email and schedule for tomorrow. Then I went to my favorite recipe site. I was a terrible cook, but it was like window shopping for the shoes you could never afford. Except I perused recipes that I had no intention of making. I spent hours reading the most complicated and advanced meals and looking up words like macerate.
Tonight, I was learning how to make baked Alaska (A dessert that apparently took over six hours to make!) and watching Bear Grylls try to survive the Arctic Circle on TV. Recipes and survival TV were my guilty pleasures.
Bear stripped off all his clothes to cross Arctic waters and I was wondering, not for the first time, what sort of person did that without a real life/death scenario forcing them into it. Probably the same person who whipped up a six-hour dessert.
A box of raisins, a cup of tea... yeah, that was as much adventure as I was getting tonight. Maybe if I felt really wild, I’d stay up late and watch another episode or two. Yawning at the thought, my phone rang with an incoming call from Chance.
I answered, eyes still glued to the TV, “Did you know hypothermia happens at just three degrees below core body temperature?”
“Can you stay with CJ for an hour?”
I closed my laptop and set it on the coffee table. “Of course, is everything okay?”
“Aubrey is at the shelter and I need to take Finn to a hotel.”
“O-kay.” Why was Finn even still there?
“We think he’s allergic to the cat or maybe he’s sick, but I don’t think so.”
“The cat?”
“Finn’s cat.”
“He’s allergic to his own cat?”
“Not Finn. CJ’s allergic.”
Right. That made more sense. “I’ll be right down.”
I walked into Chance’s less than five minutes later. Finn paced the entry way, bag thrown over his shoulder. We locked eyes and my face heated. That tortured expression hadn’t left his face, but without the drunken haze around him it was so much more intense.
I looked away first and down to the adorable kitten circling his feet.
“Oh my goodness.” I rushed to get a better look. “She’s beautiful. What’s her name?”
Finn stared at me with a blank, uninterested glare. “She’s not mine.”
The kitten was absolutely beautiful. A Bengal, white with exquisite spotting like a leopard. I ran my hand over her head and down her back and she meowed and nudged my hand for more.
“Where’s the nearest hotel? You can just call me an Uber.” Finn’s voice, agitated and rough, sent chills down my spine.
“It’s fine, mate,” Chance said. “Adele will stay with CJ and I’ll take you.”