Spin (21 page)

“No, Finn, no,” I said, pulling him back
down by the wrist. “You can’t go kill him.”

“I have no intention of killing him. Just
hurting him. And scaring him. A lot.” But he let me pull him back
down anyhow.

“No, Finn. That’s stupid. One of us has to
be smart tonight, and I certainly can’t, because I’m drunk. And I
have to figure out what to do.”

He sighed. “Okay. Right. Well”—he looked at
me—“first of all, this isn’t the end of the world.

“It’s my equivalent of a nuclear blast. I’ve
been hemorrhaging clients all afternoon.”

He looked more serious. “Why?”

I sighed. “People in this world talk. A lot.
It’s just a matter of who talks first and the loudest.”

“And how much money they have.”

“Right. How do you think this is going to
get spun? I hit on
him
. That I’m an opportunist at best, a
gold-digging fraud at worst, finagling my way into rich people’s
homes to snatch their wealthy husbands, if not to become a next
wife, then at least with a good shot at being mistress. How many
jobs do you think I’m going to get again? Ever?”

“I’ll hire you right now.”

I laughed weakly and he grabbed one of the
throw pillows and slid it behind my back. We reclined in our
positions, me against pillow on the arm of the sofa, and looked at
each other.

“Why don’t you start at the beginning?” he
suggested.

“There’s not much to tell. Mrs. Lovey and
Olivia left the house, Mr. Peter J. came in a few minutes later and
started…startling me. I moved around the center island, away from
him, but he moved too—”

“You probably don’t want to give me these
kinds of details if you don’t need to,” he said, looking grim. Like
he might roll me again to get up off the couch and go get the gun I
hadn’t ever seen but was pretty sure he had stashed somewhere.

I nodded. “Right.”

“Did I create any of this, babe?” he asked
grimly.

“You?” I was startled.

“The pawn?”

“Oh, no. No… But he knows where I come from.
He knew all about me, and my parents, and he said something about
me, you know, being trash—”

“What?”

“I thought you didn’t want details.”

“I lied.”

“And then he said something about you. And
that’s when I poured the daiquiri over his head.”

Finn looked more cheerful. “You poured a
daiquiri over Pete Sandler’s head when he said something about me
being trash?”

I shrugged. “Then I whacked him upside the
head with the blender.”

I figured he’d laugh. It
was
funny,
if your entire professional career hadn’t just been ruined by it.
Finn was not the kind of guy whose life could be ruined by cold
blueberries, not even a little bit. Finn’s life could only be
ruined by Finn, and it would probably involve something hot and
metallic. I figured he’d have a good laugh.

But he didn’t. He just kept looking at me.
“That’s a problem,” he agreed.

I nodded. My eyes felt hot. “I know,” I
said, my voice catching.

“Because that’s a good drink.”

I blinked. I think he missed the part about
where I assaulted my client.

“Too bad you wasted your amazing drink on
his fat head,” he said.

“I hate his fat head,” I whispered fiercely.
That empty cloud of numbness was passing. Behind it was a huge
fiery ball of…what was that? Fury? No, dammit.

I was
scared
.

My nose was all pinched and my eyes were
hot, like I was going to cry.

“What am I going to do Finn?” I whispered,
looking up helplessly. “The Sandler-Rosses were my ticket. I can’t
start over. I’m branded. What am I going to do now?”

His face was calm and serious. “Well, what
do you want to do now?”

“I don’t know.” I wiped my hand over my
mouth, then my cheeks, then the tops of my thighs, but nothing
stopped the shaking deep inside me. “I think I’d like to have this
not be happening.”

“You know you could do anything, Jane,
right?”

“Anything?” I looked at him stupidly. What
did that even mean?

His body was warm beside me on the couch.
“Anything.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you don’t have to keep being an
event planner if you don’t want to.”

I stared at him, my eyes wide, because I
didn’t understand Greek. “What are you saying?”

“I’m asking if you actually want to keep
doing this.”

I thought of it all, the decade-plus I’d had
of being a steamroller. I thought of all the Mr. Sandler-Rosses I’d
run into and all the ones I was going to run into again. I thought
of turning from a steamroller into a bully. I thought of the money.
I thought of the maps. I thought of my empty, glossy apartment. I
thought about the eagles and the mountains and the wave and the
blue sea and Finn’s blue eyes.

It was one of those stupid, life-flashing
moments.

I hate those moments. I hate sitting through
them, feeling stupid for seeing my whole life, because who does
that? Feeling like an idiot. Feeling like crying.

I gave a gasping sort of wet laugh. “Finn,
that’s ridiculous. If I can’t do this, what do I have?”

He looked down at me, hooked some of my
beer-y hair with his finger, and pulled it off my cheek. “You have
some things.” He said it all quiet, and it scared me. Because I
might not have the things that low voice implied I did. And if I
stuck around, he’d find that out.

I drew in a breath. “I need a plan.” Plans
were good.

“To what?”

“Fix it.”

“Fix it?” He sat quietly for a minute, then
said, “Babe, you don’t even like what you do.”

I stared. “I-I do too. I love it! I adore
it.” I was being very emphatic.

“Mm. Guess that’s why you married it.”

I sent him the coldest look I had in my
arsenal. “I am
excellent
at it.”

“And you hate it.”

“Are you trying to piss me off on purpose?”
I asked coldly.

“Yup.”

“
Why?
I’m already sad, heartbroken,
crushed. You’re supposed to uplift,” I explained, raising my palms
to demonstrate. “Encourage me. Cheer me up.”

He put his hand on my knee. “I know you’ve
worked hard, and on the surface, I agree this sucks. We can talk
about that all day. But in the end, you’re starting to hate what
you do, and I’m not going to encourage you to keep doing something
you hate, and I don’t think you should be cheered up by the idea of
‘fixing it’ with the Sandlers.” He looked out the window a second
and shook his head. “I don’t think it’s worth it.”

I heard the words through the dissipating
cloud of my confusion and deep-down fear.

Maybe it isn’t worth it.

It was a terrifying thought. A disorienting,
confusing, emptying, terrifying thought.

Because if this wasn’t worth it…what was? If
the life I’d spent my life building, if the hole I’d poured all my
effort and time and money into was not worth filling up, what in
God’s name had I been doing all this time?

What was I going to do now?

A cold wind blew. Or at least it felt that
way. I shivered and looked up. The sun was still shining. I scowled
at it. How could that be?

Absent a college degree and without any
training in anything, I knew nothing but running other people’s
lives.

What else could ever fill the hole I’d
filled with other people’s complicated lives?

I, of course, did not have a life. Or
hadn’t. Until Finn came in, glowing in the sunlight, the calm,
cyclone center of him.

And that thought was almost as terrifying as
the first, only in a bright, uncomplicated way. I wasn’t used to
brightness. I was used to murky complications.

I’m a mole, I thought glumly. I need dark
tunnels of busyness to feel safe.

And wasn’t
that
was a depressing
thought.

“What if I can’t do anything else?” I said,
at the same moment he said, “It’s not like you can’t do something
else, Janey.”

What an offhanded way to discuss my lack of
career options. “It’s exactly like that,” I snapped.

He looked at me like I was insane. “Are you
insane?”

“Explain,” I ordered.

“You have options,” he said
matter-of-factly. “You could do just about anything.”

“Like what?”

“You like to cook. Open a restaurant.”

“Open a…” I stared. I might be drunk, but
even a drunk person knew that was nuts. “A restaurant?
Me?
”

“Sure. I’ll build it for you.”

“A restaurant.” I exhaled, stunned. He was
so light about it, so cavalier. “That’s…”
Terrifying.
Exciting.
“Ridiculous.”

He gave a little shrug. “Why?”

I scrambled around, sat up on my knees.
“Why? Nope. I couldn’t handle it. The finances, and the loans, and
the accounts and ordering— I’d never be able to keep my head above
water.”

“Bullshit.”

“Not bullshit,” I told him firmly. “Or any
other kind of shit. I’m not good with numbers.”

“Is that what the tests said?”

I squinted at him. “Which ones?”

“In school. The ones that said you were
stupid.”

Oh, right. Those ones. I eyed him. “I
am
bad with numbers, Finn. I don’t need a test to tell me
so.”

“Yeah? How do you manage your business
now?”

I was taken aback. And drunk. I attempted to
explain. “Those aren’t
my
numbers. All I do is pay vendors
with my clients’ money, if I’m even involved in the transaction at
all. I don’t have to keep track of that money. I don’t hold it or
distribute it. I don’t have employees; Savannah is an independent
contractor, and she fills out her 1099 for me. I just hire staff
per event, pay them cash night-of. With Savannah’s help, the taxes
aren’t very hard, and.…”

We looked at each other.

“You’re too smart to think you’re dumb,” he
said slowly, and examined me for a long time, like you would if you
were considering buying a used car. I felt like he was going to
kick my tires. I was drunk and flabby and my eyes were red-raw and
I looked like I’d been run over by a tank, so I hoped he
wouldn’t.

To the good, I wasn’t thinking about the
Sandler-Rosses anymore. I was thinking of half-whispered,
long-discarded dreams that Finn had just put back on the goddamned
table.

I was
angry
.

I just wasn’t sure what I was angry at.

His face cleared as if he’d suddenly reached
some inner decision.

“What?” I said suspiciously.
“
What?
”

“You don’t think you’re stupid, Janey.
You’re just scared.”

I gasped.

“Yup.” He nodded. “It’s easier to be stupid
than scared.”

I glared. “You’ve got that all wrong, Bucko.
It was never easy being stupid.”

He nodded like I’d just answered a question.
“You’re not stupid,” he said again. “You’re scared.”

I got real close to his face, cupped his
face between my palms. “Finn, listen to me. I might actually be
defective. I don’t think you’ve considered that possibility. My
mother went crazy. For real crazy, in the hospital, batshit crazy.
Pop did too, only he ended up in jail. They’re all nuts. I’m all
that’s left. And I think I have some something inside me too,” I
whispered. “I feel it in there, inside of me. You don’t think I’ve
thought about a restaurant before? Or another business where I
don’t have to work every weekend of my life making someone else’s
life look pretty? I want to make
my
life pretty. I have
ideas. I have them all the time. Why, just the other day I thought
of starting an all-girls valet service.”

He looked startled. I plunged onward.

“And it’s like I’m being bounced back, like
there’s a magnet there, pushing me away. Like I have to run away
from even the thought of it. I get all confused. I start to
panic.”

He looked me right in the eye. “That’s not
being unable to do something, Janey. That’s being scared to
try.”

We stared at each other.

“I’m drawing a blank,” I said.

He sort of smiled. “Babe, you can try to
salvage what you’ve got, or you can start over.”

Surely it was best to salvage. I was built
for salvage missions. Or I could start over. Which terrified me.
And excited me. Beyond belief.

I felt like a high-pressure front had just
moved through my life, and I could breathe again. That was so
insane I was almost breathless again from the power of it.

Maybe
this
was the rarefied air, not
the Sandler-Rosses’ DC air. Maybe the reason I’d felt breathless
before was because I’d been smothering.

“I think you can do it.”

“Do what?”

“Anything.”

He believes in me.

My body trembled.

Finn had seen through to the center of me,
and he believed in me. Finn had been in a war and seen the worst
that people could do, and he believed in me. He knew where I came
from, and he believed in me.

The floaty, weightless feeling came back, a
wave of Finn believing in me. It did just what I’d predicted it was
going to do, smash me up on the shore. I felt rocked to my core.
But as it came, it split apart all those little fissures across the
surface of my shell and split the whole thing wide open. I was
crying and didn’t even realize. I was kissing Finn, hard—I did
realize that—and pushing him down on the couch, crawling on top of
him.

His hands gripped my shoulders, trying to
slow me down. Possibly the tears were throwing him.

“Whoa, babe, what—”

“You believe in me?”

He started smiling. “Yeah.”

“Yeah?”
“A hundred percent.”

Actually, it was probably more like 99.9%.
Because he’d doubted me. Thought I’d bail on him if I knew the
truth. But he wasn’t the only one; I doubted me too, so he had good
reason to doubt. And truthfully, ninety-nine percent was a whole
lot higher than the percentage of how much I believed in
myself
. For now, it was enough. He was doing better than I
was. I’d aspire.