Page 14 of Finders Keepers

“Quentin Bell? Holy shit!” Hanako throws herself at him, wrapping her arms around his torso.

He sets down a numbered table tent and his mug so that he can return the embrace.

She’s even shorter than I am, with a much more petite build.

I can’t help but compare the way she fits against Quentin with how I did that first night on the porch, when he held me close, and wonder if he has a preference.

She steps away and they spend a moment catching up.

I don’t hear much of what they’re saying because I’m busy trying to reconfigure my memories to accommodate this new connection.

Quentin and Hanako…knew each other? I mean, of course they did.

We all went to school together, and it wasn’t exactly a huge graduating class.

But that they knew each other in a way that would generate this sense of nostalgia and camaraderie after all this time is news to me.

Hanako was so cool , and we, distinctly, were not.

I mean, if we hadn’t had to sit beside each other so often over the course of thirteen years, I’m not sure she’d even know my name.

So how did she and Quentin get to be besties?

What exactly went down at this pool party?

My stomach lurches unpleasantly at the thought of them having hooked up.

Not because Quentin isn’t allowed to have been involved with another person—truly none of my business then or now, really—but because if that’s what happened, it means he deliberately kept it a secret.

The knowledge that he could’ve been holding back an important part of himself from me, even when we were the closest we’d ever been…

It’s impossible not to start wondering if I was imagining that closeness in the first place.

If the whole thing with Cole has shown me anything, it’s that my perception of reality cannot always be trusted.

Sure would explain a lot, including how easily Quentin cut me out of his life.

And how surprised he was to find I still carry around some hurt over his ghosting me.

“Sooo…” There’s a suggestiveness in Hanako’s tone as she leans in closer to Quentin again and stands on her tiptoes to whisper something in his ear that makes his pale, freckle-dusted cheeks turn an impressive shade of scarlet.

When she mentioned a partner earlier, I assumed she meant life partner along with business partner, but I guess that isn’t necessarily the case.

Or maybe they do the whole ethical non-monogamy thing.

Or maybe she’s just flirting with Quentin because the universe relishes watching me squirm.

He shakes his head, a weak smile on his face as it fades from deep red to light pink.

Hanako’s attention bounces back to me. “Tell you what,” she says. “Let me give you my number, then you two can let me know if you’re going to swing by and I’ll make sure to give the staff a heads-up in case I’m busy. First round’s on the house.”

“Oh, cool. Thanks,” Quentin says, handing her his phone so she can text herself from it. “Looking forward to checking it out.”

“Oh, shit. Speaking of the bar, I was supposed to be there five minutes ago. Gotta run—literally—but it was so good to see you both.” She waves over her shoulder as she heads out the door.

“You too,” we return in unison.

Quentin takes the seat across from me at the small wooden table.

He doesn’t speak for a long time, simply stares at me with a hint of humor at the corners of his mouth, as if he can read my thoughts and finds them amusing.

“Well, that was interesting,” he says at last, sounding a lot like Sabrina.

He takes a long sip of his coffee while his eyes remain focused on my face, watching for my reaction.

I stare blankly in response, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of asking to what he’s referring.

“I didn’t know you had a problem with Hanako Hughes.” He leans back in the wooden bistro chair and props his ankle on his opposite knee.

I chew a bite of salad a bit longer than strictly necessary for digestion, then respond nonchalantly. “I don’t have a problem with her. She’s fine. I mean, I don’t know her as well as you do, apparently. But what I do know is fine. Lovely, even. She’s a lovely person.”

“Just seems like running into her bothered you.”

“What? It didn’t bother me. I am completely un bothered.”

He tilts his head and gives me a dubious expression as he takes another rather pointed sip.

I might have been able to conceal my duplicity in our treasure-hunting research that summer, but that was an exception to the rule. I’ve never had much luck hiding things from Quentin. So I concede, “I was just…flustered.”

It’s tempting to tell him that the idea of his having kept whatever happened between him and Hanako a secret feels like a final, long-delayed nail in the coffin of our old friendship.

That I’m wondering now what else he never told me, and if I’m misremembering how close we were.

What if what I thought of as the implosion of our relationship was actually more of an anticlimactic fizzling out, like the time we tried to do the Mentos and Diet Coke experiment without realizing the bottle of soda we found in the back of his pantry was three years old and mostly flat?

Considering how badly I’m realizing I must’ve misread things with Cole, it isn’t impossible.

But that’s not a path I want to go down, not after having agreed to spend time with him again.

I decide to settle for another explanation that is also true, if not as pressing.

“I don’t like having to lie to people about my situation. ”

He rotates his mug slightly, glancing up as he speaks. “Feels like an easy solution to that problem is, you know, not lying.”

“Don’t you understand how embarrassing it is to be back here with almost nothing to show for the years since I left?”

“Uh. Yeah. I do, actually.”

“Right,” I say. “But it’s different.”

“Is it, though?” he asks.

“Well, yeah. Did you know I was one of only a handful of kids in our entire grade to leave the state for college?”

He shakes his head.

“Out of those ten, two went to super Evangelical schools—”

“Christa Goodman and Mary…Fortune, was it?” he guesses, naming two of our more ardently religious classmates.

“Christa, yes. Mary, no. But she is one of the ten, incidentally. She wound up going to circus school in Philadelphia.”

Quentin is about to take a drink but freezes with the mug an inch away from his lips. “Are you…joking?”

“I am not. Last I heard, she’s a member of a traveling troupe called Clowns for Christ.”

“Didn’t have that on my bingo card, I’m going to be honest.” His brow crinkles. “I can kind of see it, though.”

“Anyway, four others went to state schools on sports scholarships. Which leaves four that left for academics—including me.”

“You know that there are really good universities in Maryland too, right?” he asks before finally taking his postponed sip.

“Yes. That isn’t the point. The point is that leaving here is the exception to the rule.

Leaving makes a statement—that you are going off to do things you can’t accomplish here.

Except now everything I accomplished has suddenly disappeared.

I’m not much better off than I would have been had I never left.

It’s like having to come crawling back to someone you publicly announced you didn’t need. ”

Quentin frowns. “Without discounting your feelings, is it possible you’re overthinking this?”

“Of course I am. I have an anxiety disorder.”

“What?”

I suppose this would’ve come up sooner or later. I just didn’t think it would come up right now . Whatever. If he can’t understand, then he can go join Jon Bon Jovi in fucking himself.

“I started dealing with some mental health stuff after you left. Depression, anxiety. It was pretty bad the last half of high school.”

I pause, waiting for him to joke about how it must have had to do with his no longer being around.

But he surprises me by asking, “Because of Dave’s accident?

” Considering it happened a few weeks after he moved away, I wasn’t aware that Quentin even knew about that.

As if reading the thoughts on my face, he adds, “Your mom told me about it when I first got back to town.”

I nod slowly.

“I don’t think there was any one cause, but I’m sure that didn’t do anything to help,” I explain.

“Things were hard. I felt…crushed. Trapped beneath an avalanche of sadness and worry. And no one…no one really noticed. Because my parents were so busy dealing with my dad’s stuff, and I put up a good front.

” And because you weren’t here to see through it.

“Eventually I figured out that, with a lot of things feeling so out of my control, I could focus on stuff I did have some control over. Like my schoolwork, my extracurriculars. By the time I left here, I had a feeling I was going to be a success. I didn’t know what that would look like, but I just knew there would be something good at the end of it all for me.

And now I am… this .” I spread my hands.

“A salad?”

“A loser,” I correct.

He frowns more deeply. I can tell he’s about to argue or dismiss what I’m saying as a bunch of self-absorbed rambling.

And it probably is. “Even if no one truly cares about what became of me,” I say, “even if they didn’t have any expectations, I had a ton of them.

And the funny thing is, I was actually a bit proud of my life until a few days ago. ”

“Nina…”

He reaches for my hand and I subtly move it away by using my finger to wipe away a tear caught at the corner of my eye.

“I know. This is something to discuss with my therapist, not you.” (Not that I can even see my therapist anymore, now that I’m out of state and no longer have health insurance.) “Forget it. Let’s move on.

Should we talk about the treasure hunt?”

“Thanks,” he says to the woman who places his food in front of him and swipes the number from the table. Then to me he says, “Nope.”

“Nope?”

“Not here.”

“Not here?”

He picks up his sandwich. “Is this a new game where you repeat everything I say but add a question mark at the end?” Quentin takes a bite, and I resent how my eyes are drawn toward his mouth even when it’s doing something as basic as eating.

His teenage braces did their job; his teeth are straight and even.

Those light pink lips that were a bit too wide on his youthful face are now perfectly sized (for what, other than consuming a BLTA, I refuse to acknowledge).

After he swallows, he says, “You know we don’t talk about the”—he mouths the word “treasure” before continuing at his previous volume—“in public. In fact, if I remember correctly, that was your rule.”

“Then why did you suggest lunch?” I ask.

“Because I was hungry and I figured you might be too.” He takes a bite out of his sandwich’s accompanying pickle spear. “Is it really that awful to spend time with me?”

“No comment.”

He shifts his jaw back and forth subtly. “Look, after this we’ll go to Sprangbur, start getting our bearings again.”

The idea of returning to Fountain’s estate with Quentin makes my stomach drop.

I can’t tell if it’s guilt, anxiety, or excitement.

But it forces me to put my fork down, my intended next bite still speared onto its prongs.

“You can’t expect me to spend all day, every day roaming around with you for the next eight weeks. I have other things to do, you know.”

“Do you?”

Well. He’s got me there.

“Come on, Neen,” he says as he reaches to take a cherry tomato from my plate. “We had fun that summer, didn’t we?”

I wonder if his mind also goes straight to that night in his backyard, staring up at the inky, star-scattered sky, my right arm and his left pressed together under the guise of the blanket being too small to allow for space between us.

Then again, I’m not sure I would call that fun so much as…

paradigm shifting. This could be something , I remember thinking.

Maybe we can find a way to keep it. I just never expected the paradigm to shift in the direction it did.

As if following my exact train of thought, he adds, “Up until the end, at least.”

I let out a small, humorless laugh.

Quentin lets out one of his own. “Don’t be too grumpy. It’s a treasure hunt! Fountain would want us to have fun with it. And we could both use a bit of fun right now, I think.”

He’s right. Having fun won’t counteract everything else that’s gone wrong lately, but moping around isn’t going to help me get out of here any faster.

It’s time to stop feeling sorry for myself and take action.

To be someone who is worth paying seven thousand dollars for her expertise.

Preferably also someone who can handle eight weeks of close contact with an attractive but frustrating man without doing anything stupid like kissing him or pushing him into the river.

“Okay. Fine,” I say, smacking away his hand as he attempts to reach for something else off my plate.

“I’ll hunt for the treasure. I’ll even try to have fun. But it doesn’t mean I have to like it.”