He parks in front of the bar and meets me on the sidewalk, as usual gesturing that I lead the way.
Mr. Furley calls out to me when we enter, telling Kyle to kick some “ratty-ass kids out of Harlow’s booth.”
“How dare they?” I hiss playfully to him.
“Kids these days,” he says, wiping down the bar. “Buncha little assholes. How’s Madeline?”
“She’s hanging in there.” I stretch across the bar and kiss his stubbly cheek before hopping down and grabbing the two bottles of beer he hands me. I give him my best Bogart: “Tanks, schweetheaaart.”
Handing one to Finn, I gesture for him to follow me to our corner, wiping a few stray peanut shells off the table as I slide into our booth.
“You sure have him wrapped around your finger,” Finn says as he climbs in after me, looking back at Mr. Furley behind the bar.
“Yep. He’s the best.” I take a long pull on my beer, watching Finn swallow as he does the same.
God, I love his neck. It’s tanned, and defined, and dark stubble just barely shadows it, from his cheek . . . down his jaw . . .
I clear my throat. No sex. “So what’s up?”
Finn shrugs, and stares at the television nearest us, currently playing a Padres game.
At first the silence is comfortable: I have my beer, he has his beer. He has the Padres, I have a couple of adorably dorky senior citizens cutting a rug on the dance floor. But when they go sit down at their table, I feel the weight of the silence at ours. I don’t have the sense that Finn asked me to come out so he could sit and watch baseball alone.
“So, is Oliver working tonight?”
He doesn’t seem to hear me.
“Do you want me to order us some food? I’m starving.”
Again, he seems completely lost in thought. The music is pretty loud, but it’s not like I’m whispering. Hello, I never whisper.
“I think I’m going to go over to the music booth and see if Kyle wants to get freaky on the dance floor with me.” Nothing. “Maybe bang him on the bar. Or maybe a little action in the back room.” I lean toward him. “And obviously ‘back room’ is a euphemism.”
“Hey now,” Finn says, pulling his eyes from the television. Finally, a reaction.
“Okay, so what’s going on?” I ask him. “If you wanted a quiet beer session you could have brought Oliver.”
“I just wanted to think.”
“And that you could do alone, or on a run on the beach. So clearly you need to talk. Do you need a sounding board, or a brick wall?”
Finn looks at me like he has no idea what I’m talking about.
“Do you need me to help you think something through,” I clarify, “or do you just want to talk it out without interruption?”
“Are you capable of that?”
My face right now. “In fact, I am.”
Finn rises from the table, holding out his hand when I start to protest. “I’m going to explain. I want to talk it out, no interruption. I just need another beer first. Or three.”
He starts to walk away so I call out, “Have Mr. Furley bring me some tater tots, too.”
FINN IS ALMOST half done with his second beer when he finally starts talking. “When I said I was here on business, I was telling the truth. I know it sounds weird, because our entire tiny business is centered up on Vancouver Island.”
I nod, inexplicably giddy to learn why he’s staying in San Diego for so long. I feel sort of special that he’s talking to me about this, but I absolutely don’t let that show. I am poker-facing it like a champ.
“But it’s not an easy business, and it’s one of those things where if you have a bad year, okay, you can pull it out the next. But if you have two bad years, it gets harder. A couple bad years, a big commercial firm comes in . . . then the boats need fixing . . .” He runs a palm down his face and then takes a deep drink of his beer, finishing it and then grumbling a quiet, “Yeah, so.”
I’m suddenly not quite as giddy anymore.
I can tell he’s not going to lay the specifics of his business troubles on me and really, it’s fine because I suspect I would be only marginally more helpful than Kyle the DJ would be in this situation.
But I stay quiet, not only because of my inexpertise, but because I know he isn’t done. I still have no idea why he’s here.
“So about, I don’t know, maybe a month ago, some people called up, said they had an idea for . . .”
He cuts off and looks at me for a long pause. “For a show.”
“Like a fishing expo?” I ask.
Laughing, he says, “No. Like a television show.”
Oh.
Oh.
I lean forward, my elbows on the table. “And by ‘some people’ you mean . . .”
He blinks away. “The Adventure Channel.”
I feel my eyes go wide. “Holy shit, Finn. They want to make a show out of your family business?”
“Me, Dad, Colt, and Levi. All four Roberts boys.”
“And you’re here to start negotiations?” I’m reeling. The Adventure Channel is huge. Finn definitely has a face and body for television, but . . . he’s not exactly warm and fuzzy.
He shakes his head, saying, “No. See, one of our smaller boats was fucked a while ago, but before our main boat, the Linda, broke, I wasn’t really considering it that seriously. I came down here because both my brothers want to do it, and I don’t feel right making a unilateral decision about it without at least weighing the options.” He rubs his face again. “But I found out about an hour ago that the Linda is fucked, too. I mean, fucked. We have maybe five thousand in the bank, and are looking at a repair that’ll cost a hundred grand. Maybe two.” Looking over at me, he says, “Now I have to consider this show, or bowing out of the industry completely. I don’t want this, Harlow. It’d be a circus.”
“Have you talked to the network since you’ve been here?”
“Only a couple of emails. I came down early because of Oliver’s opening, and Colton was worried I was going to have a heart attack like Dad and wanted me out of town.” He glances at me. “I’m meeting with them soon in person. They’ve been sending me promo materials.”
My stomach bottomed out at the mention of Finn having a heart attack, but at his playfully hesitating look and the mention of promo materials, I can’t help my smile. “ ‘Promo materials,’ you say? This I need to see.”
With a grimace, he reaches into his back pocket and pulls out his wallet, fishing out a folded glossy 8x10 of the family sitting on a boat docked in the water. “Here’s one thing they’ve sent.” He hands it to me. “They’ve also made a logo and T-shirts.”
“Wow,” I say staring down at the picture. The lighting is professional, the colors rich. Each man in the photo is the perfect balance of rugged and polished. “This is the extreme fisherman version of a JCPenney glamour shot.”
He snatches it from my hand. “Okay, and you’re done.”
I manage to snag it back before he can return it to his wallet. “So these are your brothers, huh?”
“Yeah.”
Finn is in the middle, with his father and the youngest brother, Levi, on one side, and the middle brother, Colton, on the other. It’s clear they’ve received some direction: Finn’s dad looks welcoming, laid-back. Levi is beaming, an open book, whereas Colton is making sex eyes at the camera. Finn looks no-nonsense and world-weary. All four men in the picture are completely, ridiculously good-looking.
“Well, thanks for this. I might need to go home and masturbate for the rest of the evening.”
“You know, if a guy said that, it would be super creepy.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Poodle. Does the sexual double standard make you grumpy?”
He laughs dryly. “You’re a pain in the ass, Ginger Snap.”
“So, the Adventure Channel wants you basically for a dating show.”
“No. It’s meant to be a gritty peek into our lives as fishermen and—”
“Does it say that on the back of the Glamour Shot?” I flip it over, pretending to look.
“Harlow.”
“Finn.” I turn the picture back over and point to it. “Look at you guys. You’re, what? Thirty-two?”
“Yeah.”
“And Colton is how old?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“And Levi?”
He sighs. He’s bagging what I’m raking, clearly. “Twenty-four.”
“I bet there’s a clause in the contract they showed you that you can’t be in a committed relationship when filming begins.”
His eyes go wide. “How would you know that?”
“Are you kidding? My mom has been offered a spot on a reality show a few times. They always have something in there about relationships. So you don’t think this show is really about filming your bulging biceps on the boat and then getting you shirtless and hooking up with coeds?”
“You aren’t helping. I already don’t want to do this.” He steals a few of my tater tots. “But my brothers think it will be a trip. It’s like they don’t really understand how it will change their lives. Colt is always sleeping with someone different. Levi . . . I swear I think he’s a virgin.”
I look at the sandy-haired hottie in the picture. “Okay, you’re high. If this guy isn’t putting out left and right, there is no God, Santa, or Easter Bunny.”