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  “My buddy was coming into town. His flight had landed early. I had to pick him up.”

  Her face contorts like she’s going to explode with word bombs, aimed straight at me. She takes a deep breath. “Let me get this straight,” she says like a detective recapping the events of a crime. “After you were done sticking your dick in her, you put on your clothes?”

  I laugh, rolling my eyes. “If you must put it that way . . . yes.”

  “And presumably she did the same?”

  “Well, she went into the bathroom to get dressed.”

  Finley holds up a finger. “Correction—she went into the bathroom to do the Mrs. Obama.”

  “What?” I ask, incredulous.

  “It’s this Amy Schumer bit. She says all the greatest women have to deal with the same issue after sex, even Mrs. Obama. Picture that. She has to walk to the bathroom carefully, all squish, squish, squish, to clean up after sex.”

  I blink, trying to both see and unsee that image right now.

  “So you and Cassie make the beast with two backs, and after, natch, Cassie has to do the Mrs. Obama, and you’re like, Oh hey, I’ll just pull up my Tommy Hilfiger briefs and jet.”

  “Okay.” I’m completely flabbergasted.

  “Am I right? Are they Tommy Hilfigers?”

  I glance down at my cargo shorts, tug them away from my waist, and confirm the name on the band. “Yes, but in my defense, I don’t remember if I wore this brand in college.”

  She waves a hand. “Hilfiger. Calvin Klein. Hanes.”

  I cringe. “I did not wear Hanes.”

  “So Cassie’s in the ladies’ room cleaning up your unused children.”

  “We used a condom.”

  “Work with me. You’re tugging up your Hanes, and that’s when you get the oh-so-urgent text from your friend?”

  Her eyes are bullets, aimed at me. I take cover from her fire. “He’d just flown across the country from school in North Carolina, and I was near the Oakland airport.”

  She stares intently, like she can’t quite believe I’m saying this. I can’t entirely believe it either. My actions made sense at the time. But now, hearing Finley’s cross-examination, it’s crystal clear I didn’t make the smoothest exit.

  “I told her I had a great time, and I had to go,” I offer, quietly searching for some kind of exoneration. “It was a really nice text.”

  She sighs for the whole world and slumps back in the chair, her expression shifting. Gone is the exasperation and in its place is gentleness.

  “You needed to stop, pause, breathe, and say goodbye to your girlfriend. Give her some TLC.” She leans forward and cups my knees. “Tom Sutcliffe, you are hilarious and thoughtful in a roundabout way, and you’re sweet, and you’re fun . . . and you’re also completely unaware, at times, of how you come across. In a way, it’s not entirely your fault. You grew up with three boys, you went to an all-boys school, your mom was gone, and sweet Sadie Mitchell could only do so much.”

  She remembers the name of the lady down the street. My God, this woman is too much, too wise, too insightful.

  “But at the same time,” Finley continues in that gentle tone, “she gave you her virginity, and you gave her a few words sent the way that convenience stores send promo codes for hot dogs and coffee.”

  I close my eyes, a cold heaviness settling into my bones as understanding flares. A pit forms in my stomach, gnawing at me. “After all this time, it was my . . .” I drop my head into my hands, my mind a swirl of conflicting emotions. “It was my fault. I completely messed up.”

  When I look up, she asks softly, “But why didn’t you tell your brothers at the time and ask for advice? Give them the details and ask what went wrong?”

  I don’t see much point in holding back now. Finley will get the truth out of me regardless, so I relent, even if it makes me look bad. Or worse. “I didn’t want to tell them the details of what I said and what she said. I was embarrassed. I was worried they’d mock me. Say I was a two-pump chump or something.”

  She smiles softly. “Tom, I’m going to tell you something. My last boyfriend left me to be with his ex. Another boyfriend dumped me because he said I sucked at blow jobs. And still another said I talked too much.” She raises her chin, exhales triumphantly. “See, I ripped the Band-Aid off.”

  I stare at her, slack-jawed, understanding what she just did. She stripped herself naked for me. She bared all. It’s my turn. “First of all, don’t think I’m going to let the bad at blow jobs comment slide. I bet you’re not bad at them at all. But we’ll return to that.”

  She laughs and mouths, So bad.

  I respond with Doubt it, then I turn serious. “But I know where you’re coming from. Not about being bad at blow jobs, but wondering if I was doing it wrong, you know?”

  She nods. “I know.”

  “I thought maybe she didn’t think I was good in bed. That she didn’t enjoy it.”

  “You were twenty. You weren’t supposed to be good in bed.”

  “It was supposed to be good for her.”

  “News flash. It’s never good when you lose your virginity. Except maybe for my friend Clara.”

  “Who’s Clara?”

  She waves a hand in the air. “My friend in high school went to Mexico for spring break. Met a guy there. Lost her virginity and had an orgasm, the lucky bitch. She’s basically the exception to every rule. But no one else, not a single woman, has had the Clara experience. Honestly, most of the time we’re just hoping it won’t hurt and we won’t bleed the first time. And then we want the guy to whisper sweet nothings.”

  The cruel light shines brighter. “And I didn’t whisper sweet nothings . . . and Cassie broke up with me . . . and I deserved it?”

  She shrugs as if to say she won’t quite go there. But I can lead myself to the right answer at last. “I wanted it to be good for her. I had three older brothers who bragged about sex, who talked about sex. I didn’t want to be the weak link in the chain.”

  Another sad smile tugs at her lips. “You think you’re supposed to know all these tips and tricks and make a woman meow. It takes time to make a woman meow.”

  “Meow,” I offer half-heartedly.

  She pats my knee. “She didn’t walk away because of meows. Maybe it was somewhat about her wanting you to focus more on school. But honestly, I think she left you because you hurt her.”

  I don’t necessarily regret my response to the breakup. I busted my butt to take her advice to heart—to focus on goals and motivations. To become disciplined in school and work. And to become a good lover.

  But I have to wonder if I became a better man. Or if I missed that critical step entirely.

  I meet her eyes. “I kind of feel like my entire view of the world has been tossed upside down and turned inside out.”

  “I felt that way, honestly, when Bruce said my show wasn’t working. I thought I was funny. I thought I was good at what I did. But maybe I wasn’t any of those things,” she says, vulnerability clear in her tone. “Sometimes we think something is one way, and it’s entirely another. And that stops us in our tracks.”

  “Cassie left me because I was a jerk that night, rather than because I was a slacker in general?”

  “I think she left you because she was devastated.” Finley stops speaking and her mouth parts slowly, then she talks at a million miles an hour. “I’m willing to bet something . . . Give me your laptop.”

  “Sure. What for?”

  “I need to try to find something.” She flaps her hands, shooing me away. “Go read a book for twenty minutes.”

  I hand her my laptop and click open my e-reader app on my phone.

  She peers over the top. “What are you reading?”

  “One Hundred One Ways to Act Like a Complete Idiot with Women.”

  She laughs. “I thought you’d have it memorized by now.”

  I wink. “Silly thing. I wrote it.”

  “Of course you did.”

  I tap the s
creen. “It’s actually the Updated Standards and Training Manual for Mechanical Engineers.”

  She rolls her eyes. “You’re such a nerd.”

  “A hot nerd,” I add, adjusting my glasses.

  “Be quiet, hot nerd,” she says, and I smile at the last two words, taking some solace in the sorta-compliment amidst this mess I’d made of my first real relationship.

  I read, peering over my glasses occasionally as Finley hunts.

  And pecks.

  And gasps and nods.

  Several minutes later, she says, “Ta-da!”

  I toss my phone onto the table. “What is it?”

  “Did you know she kept a blog a long time ago?”

  “No.”

  “It was around five years ago, shortly after she graduated and started getting more into yoga. I poked around Blogger and found it with a lot of other abandoned blogs. It’s so old it doesn’t show up in a regular search, but I went back to Facebook and saw what she called herself several years ago. PretzelGirl.”

  “Should I read it?”

  She sighs, clutching the screen. “Listen. I’m not trying to make you feel bad. I just want you to understand that I do think she was more affected than you originally thought.”

  “Why do you say that?” I ask, a sick sensation swooping down on me like a bat in a cave.

  She turns the laptop around, hands it to me, and sure enough, there it is—Cassie’s old blog, and it’s open to the About Me section.

  Finley speaks like a mourner at a funeral. “I’m sorry, Tom.”

  I prepare to read words I’m sure I don’t want to hear.

  “Hi there! I’m so glad you found my blog, and I hope you know you’re not alone. You are wonderful, beautiful, and good enough. Don’t ever let a relationship breakup define your self-worth. Trust me. I know. I’m building a successful business on the ashes of heartbreak that took me a few years to move on from.”

  I look up from the screen, raising a skeptical brow. “Years? She didn’t seem like she missed me that much.”

  “Just read.”

  I swallow hard and read on. “After a beautiful first love that ended terribly in college when he left me unexpectedly, even though I gave him my heart, mind, and body, I fell into a terrible slump and depression. I discovered yoga, committed myself to self-care, and realized I was good enough. Now, my passion is helping other women discover the same thing, and that’s what my practice will focus on—how to see your inner beauty and strength. Namaste.”

  I’m an ant. I’m a worm. I’m one-inch tall.

  I shut the laptop, a new shame seeping into my bones.

  What if after all this time, I’m the bad guy in my story? What if I’m the asshole? I thought all along I was the hurt party, but now I’m learning something else entirely.

  I was the hurter in one careless, thoughtless moment.

  I didn’t think. I didn’t consider. I just did.

  “This is me?” I ask, my voice leaden. “This was all because I didn’t say goodbye?”

  Finley simply nods.

  My chest is a storm, a churning sea of awful emotions. “I don’t want to be this guy. I don’t want to be him at all.”

  I stand up, pace around, try to process this new twist. I don’t like that version of me. I can’t have that part of me hanging out there, not when I’m trying to be a good person.

  I stop and look at Finley, and the answer arrives with blazing clarity.

  I want to be a better man for me, and I want to be a better man for her. For this woman in front of me. The woman who stomped on grapes and tasted olives and did movie quotes with me. Who told me to snap out of it.

  But I’m the one who needs to snap out of it.

  Because she’s the woman I want. She’s the woman I’m falling for. And yet I made the same stupid mistake. I left her at the end of a date. Fine, we hadn’t had sex. But that doesn’t matter.

  The difference, though, is she gave me another chance. She came here and told me I needed to shape up, and hell if that doesn’t make me want her even more. I’ve been looking for a connection, for someone I can talk to. I erroneously thought that person was Cassie. But that person is not Cassie. That person is this crazy, nutty button-pusher who gets me. This fantastic, unexpected someone who appeared in the window next door to my ex-girlfriend’s house.

  Cassie is my past. I changed my direction because of her last words to me. I changed it for the better, and I don’t regret that. But if I don’t let go of the notion that she’s the one and only, I’ll have many regrets.

  Cassie’s not the one. She hasn’t been in years.

  I don’t know a damn thing about who she is.

  I don’t know what she likes, what she loves, who she is.

  I’m not hung up on Cassie Martinez, and I haven’t been in a long, long time.

  I am hung up on Finley Barker.

  She’s real, kind, and funny, and she somehow finds me entertaining. Maybe it’s for her TV show, but maybe I can convince her I could be more than amusing or a muse.

  Finley’s the twist in my story.

  But you don’t get the girl until you deserve the girl.

  If I’m going to be the kind of man who deserves a woman like Finley, I need to repair the past.

  If I’m going to be the man I want to be, I need to make amends.

  And if I’m going to be the person my mother would be proud of in every way, there’s one thing and one thing only to do.

  I move closer to Finley, kneel in front of her, and grab her hand. “I have to go to her.”

  Finley’s face falls, sadness etched in her eyes. “Tom.”

  “Not to win her over,” I explain. “I don’t want her back anymore.”

  “What?” She sounds like I just said I wanted to dye my hair pink.

  It will take time to convince her I do want to dye my hair pink. Figuratively, I mean.

  I have to convince Finley I don’t want Cassie. But that’s what I have to do—embark on a brand-new quest, one to win the woman in front of me.

  “I don't want her back. But I need to go find her and to apologize for what I did. Will you come with me?”

  She doesn’t answer immediately. Her blue eyes are big and clouded with vulnerability. “I honestly don’t know.”

  15

  Finley

  My big plans at two a.m. that morning? Reread the scenes I just finished writing from episode two. Lying on the couch, with my feet kicked up in the air, I scroll through the pages on my laptop.

  “Have you ever gone hang gliding?” the heroine asks.

  “Generally, I try to avoid activities with a high degree of imminent death,” the hero scoffs.

  “It’s not that dangerous. How about downhill skateboarding?”

  “One, I’m not thirteen. Two”—he pats his skull—“I like my head too much.”

  His lady friend rolls her eyes. “How about being a stick in the mud? Oh wait, you’ve mastered that.”

  “Why do you want me to try insane sports?”

  “Extreme, not insane. And I want you to try because they’ll prepare you for the crazy risk of trying to win back your old girlfriend.”

  “You don’t think I can woo her without learning how to bungee jump first?”

  Her eyes light up. “Ooh, let’s do that one!”

  He arches a brow. “Voluntarily fling myself off a bridge and risk bodily harm?”

  “That’s kind of what love is. Love is bungee jumping. Don’t you think?”

  He laughs. “I think you just like to push my buttons.”

  She’s quiet for a moment, clearly thinking, perhaps preparing her closing argument. “I dare you to,” she says, singsong and taunting.

  He gives her a look, one that says he knows he’s been bested.

  Cut to . . .

  He stands on the edge of the bridge, stares at the water, and jumps. The look on his face as he falls is sheer exhilaration.

  She’s waiting on the bank, and once
his jump is over, he finds her, triumph and joy in his eyes. He thrusts his arms into the air, and she does a victory dance. But when he reaches her, he stumbles. He doesn’t have his land legs yet. He topples to his butt.

  It’s hilarious when people fall on their butts.

  His lady friend laughs, offers a hand, and tugs him up. They have a moment. They gaze at their linked hands, they look into each other’s eyes. But it’s too soon for a kiss. Throats clear, hands unlink, and the hero acts awkward.

  He turns the other way and walks along the river. He’s silent on the ride back.

  Later, outside his house, she asks why he’s been so quiet.

  “Didn’t you like bungee jumping?”

  “Of course I liked it.”

  “Do you want to do it again?”

  He stares at her. His eyes search her face, then scroll down her body. The audience knows what he’s thinking. What he wants isn’t to bungee jump again. It’s something else entirely.

  “Of course I want to do it again,” he whispers. He steps closer, but you can’t give into kisses that soon, so their next almost-kiss is interrupted by a phone call.

  It’s his boss, asking him, “Can you take a trip down the coast?”

  The hero turns to his trusty lady friend. She waits for him to ask her to join him, and hopes that he will.

  Tune in next week . . .

  It’s now or never. Taking a deep breath, I click open an email to Bruce and attach the script. My finger hovers over the send button. Am I doing this? Going in the complete opposite direction of what the network hired me for originally? But I have to. Bruce made it clear. Knock their socks off, and do it with some flirting, maybe a kissing scene, possibly a monkey in a diaper.

  There’s definitely no monkey in a diaper here, but flirting? Yes. Romantic tension? For sure.

  Nerves swell inside me, butterflies flapping higher, harder. I hope the network likes this. I hope they love it. Not just because I desperately want my show to stay alive, but because I’m liking it more.

  Maybe even more than I did before.

  I swallow my nerves, hit send, and shut my laptop. Trudging upstairs, I pass a photo of my family and stop in front of it. It’s a shot of the five of us—my two brothers, my dad, my mom, and me—on the Fourth of July when I was a junior in high school and my brothers were home from college. We’re on the deck, having just eaten barbecue. I had grilled corn and carrots, and my mom had kept clucking her tongue, rolling her eyes when she thought I wasn’t looking. “How can she eat that for a meal? It’s not a meal.”