You Before Anyone Else (13 page)

Eddie

Finley hops into the car all casual, like she didn't just drop the image of naked swimming into the space between us. If she's trying to distract me, mission accomplished. My thoughts are completely forced away from punching asshole dads and stealing blue ribbons for Connor and Braden. I climb into the passenger seat and wait for her to tell me she's joking. She's busy asking the boys what music they want to listen to.

“So what now?” I prompt, wondering exactly how we're going to spend this recovery hour. I glance back at the kids. Connor is still teary eyed, and Braden is still fighting off tears. I don't see them bouncing back from this in sixty minutes. No way.

“Lunch?” Finley asks, looking at the boys through the rearview mirror.

Braden wipes his face with his towel. “Can we get Dairy Queen?”

I turn forward again, tossing a sideways glance in Finley's direction. She keeps her expression neutral, but it's there in her tone when she answers her brother:
I told you so
. “Sure.”

“Don't worry, Eddie,” she leans in to whisper. “I won't take any pictures of you.”

• • •

Forty-seven minutes later, Braden and Connor race up and down the play structure at Dairy Queen, aiming the plastic squirt guns that came with the kids' meals at each other, laughing and shouting.

I turn back around in my seat to face Finley. “I don't think it's a fair bet when you let them get ice cream before their meal. How am I supposed to compete with that?”

She flips her blond hair over one shoulder and shrugs. “The Blizzards would have melted. And look at that line.” She points to the inside counter. “It's a mile long. I didn't want to have to go back and wait again.”

“Why?” I challenge. “Because it would have taken longer than sixty minutes?”

She picks up a cold french fry and tosses it at me. “Did you want them to be ruined over that race?”

I narrow my eyes at her. “Of course not.” I'm relieved they've bounced back. I'm just shocked that they have.

“Kids are resilient,” Finley says. “Much more than adults. You should have seen me and my dad on the boys' first day of kindergarten. It's like we were trying to convince Connor he was too shy and timid to go because we weren't ready.”

I look at the playground again, watching the kids run around. “Do you ever feel stuck? Like you're not allowed to be selfish and just worry about you?”

She laughs. “Did my dad put you up to this?”

“No, why?” I face her again.

“That's kind of his thing when it comes to giving me life advice.” She busies herself sorting burger wrappers and ketchup packets into piles. “He's afraid if I take too much responsibility for the boys now, then I'll regret giving up my glory days later or whatever.”

The cheeseburger and fries churn in my stomach. “Is that just about Connor and Braden? Or the studio too?”

“The studio too,” she concedes. “My parents didn't become anything like their parents, so my dad thinks something went wrong if that's what I want to do. But honestly, I'm most comfortable like this. Here. I'm happy at home.”

Her gaze flicks to my mine for a moment, and then her face flushes. I wait for her to clarify that she meant here with her brothers and not me, and when she doesn't, I make another point. “You're comfortable when you're dancing too. Not just comfortable. You look, I don't know…
right.
”

She doesn't say anything for a long second, and then she practically whispers, “Yeah?”

I nod. “Yeah.”

My fingers land on hers from across the table, and I'm just about to grip onto them when Braden's squirt gun aims at me, water hitting the side of my neck. I turn to him and lift my hands in surrender. “Hey! I'm unarmed.”

“Sorry,” Braden says. He's already in search of a new target. He calls over his shoulder when he's several feet away, “Can you come to our next swim meet, Eddie?”

Finley glances at her cell phone. “Fifty-nine minutes.”

Damn.

I lean on one elbow, staring at her. “You look really excited about this win.” She blushes again. Ha. “So I'm just supposed to swim naked. Alone. While you watch. Something about this feels off.”

“No…I just—I thought—” she stammers, her face growing more and more red.

“I'm messing with you.” I reach for her hand again and make sure she's looking at me. “I'm probably looking forward to paying my debt more than you are. In fact, I'm ditching the”—I glance at the calendar on my cell, reading the title of the party I agreed to go to tonight—“new fragrance launch for Alexander Wang tonight just so I can hang out here. Alone. In your pool. Possibly not alone…”

I don't know what kind of reaction I'd expected from that confession, but when Finley jerks her hand back, her mouth falling open, I'm not sure what the hell I've done.

“You got an invite to Alexander Wang's fragrance launch! How?” She lifts her hands, seeming both exasperated and impressed. I think.

“I don't know—”

“Oh my God!” she squeals. “You know who's going to be there?”

I shake my head, and then Finley proceeds to rattle off the name of a bunch of celebrities who could be in attendance and some rapper who is apparently rumored to be the secret musical guest.

People around are starting to stare at us.

“Okay, so it's a big deal?” I ask, keeping my voice low, hoping Fin will follow my lead.

She gives me this
Are you kidding me?
look. “You have to go! Seriously. Where is it?”

Hmm, let me think about that for a minute: go to a stuffy party where I don't know anyone and don't care to, or stay at Finley's house tonight with the potential for naked swimming. Kind of a no-brainer.

Regardless, I decide to humor her and pull up the email invite on my phone for her to see all the details.

“The Boom Boom Room!”

I reach across the table and put a hand over Finley's mouth. “Shh…”

“You have to go,” she repeats, handing my phone back. “I bet Summer didn't even get an invite. How did you?”

Okay, so call me an idiot. I didn't know this party was such a big deal. Or maybe I've been forced into attending stuffy parties way too many times in my life to be impressed by this one. “I met that one dude, the movie star guy in the cologne ad—”

“Toby Rhinehart!” Finley says and looks at me like I've gone nuts. “How did you meet him?”

“He was at the shoot the other day for Alexander Wang—” I get interrupted several more times to explain how I got a job with Alexander Wang, something Finley would kill for, apparently, if only she could ditch that “too sweet” label.

“This is what happens when you leave it up to fate for us to run into each other again. I missed all the good stuff,” she says. “Two weeks, and you're suddenly adding Alexander Wang to your résumé.”

My forehead wrinkles. “I don't have a résumé. Not for modeling anyway.”

“Whatever.” She waves a hand. “So you met Hollywood's biggest young male actor, and he just decided to invite you to the fragrance launch that he's headlining…yeah, 'cause that happens to everyone.”

I shrug. “I didn't even know him. I was trying to watch the World Cup game on my phone, and it was pissing off the makeup people. They were about to poke my eyes out with eyeliner pencils, I think. Until what's-his-name showed up and got really excited that I was watching the game. Guess his phone crapped out on him and lost reception during the second half.”

“So you bonded over soccer.”

“Sort of.” I pile the garbage onto a tray and stand up so I can toss it. “The line is shorter now. You want a Blizzard?”

“Sit.” Finley grabs my hand and pulls me back down. “What next? He invited you to the party after you guys watched the game?”

I work hard to remember the details. Seriously, it was ten minutes of my life that seemed more ordinary in comparison to other recent events—like that photo shoot with horses last week. “Um, actually, he asked if I wanted to go get drinks and watch the next game somewhere.”

“Did you?” she presses.

I shake my head. “I had just got to the shoot. I didn't leave for, like, five more hours.”

I hadn't been in a “hang out and make friends” mood anyway. I was watching soccer to distract myself from thinking about all my recent screwups or Finley. Probably both.

“He said he'd be back in town today for the party, and I said maybe I'd come—I didn't want to be rude. And then he took my number, and someone from the agency sent me the invite.”

Finley leans on one arm, seemingly deep in thought. “I bet it was one of those ‘I appreciate you treating me like a normal person' situations, you know?”

“Why wouldn't I treat him like a normal person?” I give her a good once-over. “This fangirl Finley is definitely a new side of you.”

I get a glare in response to that, and she snatches up the tray right from underneath me and stalks away to toss our garbage. On the way back, she checks on her brothers and gives them a ten-minute warning. She sits across from me again, the glare now gone. “Okay, I'm done with the inquisition now. Back to normal.”

“Good.” I glance at the line inside. I really do want a Blizzard. “How do you feel about Heath Bar?”

“Chocolate ice cream?”

“Sure.” I grin and then head inside. Finley reaches for her phone the second I'm out of sight, which has me grinning even bigger. She's probably texting all her model contacts to see if they got invited.

When I return with a Blizzard way too big for us to finish, she sets her phone down and looks up. “I was right. Summer didn't get invited. She's pissed.”

I crack a smile and hand her a plastic spoon. “That's a positive, right?”

“They're giving out Wang's newest handbag as a goodie bag.” Finley digs her spoon in and takes a big bite.

“I prefer your
Star Wars
goodie bags,” I say with my mouth full of ice cream. “Especially the Fun Dip. You just don't get many opportunities to enjoy Fun Dip after age ten or so.”

“Those handbags are worth at least a thousand dollars,” Finley says. “And I'm sure they're full of stuff worth at least that much. Makeup, skin care products—”

“You know how much I love makeup. This party is sounding more and more like my thing.” I flash her a smile, which she returns easily, like this is one of many more hangouts to come. Could it be possible? At least for the summer?

At least until everything about my life changes?

“That must be your appeal.” Finley turns the spoon upside down in her mouth, drawing my attention there. “You've got that attitude like ‘I don't give a shit about titles and labels, I'm going to the party if it sounds fun.'”

“Fun like Fun Dip,” I add. Then I say something I may possibly regret, especially given what we had planned for tonight already. “We could go? To the party.”

“We?” The spoon freezes in her hand. “This sounds like a date. Thought we weren't doing that.”

Yeah, I think I need a refresher course in defining a date, because I'm pretty lost right now as to where the lines fall. “It doesn't have to be a date.” The second the words are out, I realize I should have said,
Do you want it to be a
date?

Finley opens her mouth to reply, and then seems to change course. “I didn't get invited, remember?”

My phone is still resting on the table. I punch in a quick text to what's-his-name.

ME:
Hey, how's it going, man? Might stop by the thing tonight.

Finley leans in to read my text and scrunches her nose when I type “the thing.” Whatever. Fragrance launch is way too many letters. “I can't believe you have his cell number.”

TOBY RHINEHART:
Cool! Did you see that Brazil game?

ME
: Yeah. I nearly kicked the TV over. Those refs…wtf?

TOBY RHINEHART:
Right? Jesus Christ, who finds these guys?

Finley is watching this exchange, a bewildered look on her face.

ME:
Seriously. Mind if I bring a date tonight?

TOBY RHINEHART:
Not a problem. Just give me a name and I'll add it to the list.

The second she reads that reply, Finley tries to take my phone from me to stop me from typing in her name. But I don't get why. She's the one who is super into this party.

ME:
Finley Belton.

TOBY RHINEHART:
Done. See ya tonight.

“Oh my God,” Finley says, returning to fangirl Finley. “Now you have to go.”

“Now you have to go,” I point out.

“Why? So I can turn back into a self-indulgent fangirl?” She shakes her head. “I'm not in love with that side of me.”

“That Wang shoot paid a shit-ton more than the other jobs I've done,” I say. “Seems like it's worth going if you can, you know, network a little.”

“Network?” Her forehead scrunches like it's a foreign word. Which is pretty cute. I might be clueless about modeling stuff, but I've done my share of working the party crowd. Usually old women with fund-raisers to restore old things or old men with a number following their name.

“I bet Wang's people invite all his competitors to these parties. I think that's a standard. Maybe you can introduce yourself, be like, ‘Hey, I put on clothes every day, and I'm really good at it. Why don't you pay me to do it for you?'”

Finley laughs, nearly choking on her ice cream. “Thanks, that's exactly what I'll say.”

Connor climbs into the seat beside me, and I hand him another spoon in case he wants to join the ice cream party. “Connor, don't you think your sister should introduce herself to people she wants to work for?”