Page 25 of Finders Keepers

Quentin drops me back off at my parents’ house before continuing on to run some errands.

The discombobulated feeling plaguing me can’t be blamed completely on the grocery store sushi I had as a late breakfast. Sure, that might account for the bubbling in my stomach, but it doesn’t explain the bizarre urge I have to run upstairs the moment I walk into the house, close the door to my bedroom, and look at the Sprangbur wedding gallery until the images are permanently burned into my retinas.

It’s easy to tell myself it’s because I need to study for our upcoming venue tour, but the fact that I want to do it in secret and slight shame, like I’m a teen who’s just discovered porn, alerts me that it’s also probably not the healthiest impulse I’ve ever had. And speaking of porn…

“Is that a penis?” I find myself asking the question before I realize I may not actually want to know the answer.

“It is indeed,” Mom says cheerfully from where she has her tablet, zoomed in quite tightly on a man’s genitalia, propped in front of her on the coffee table as she uses light strokes to shade her approximation in a sketchbook.

“But. Mother. Why?”

She removes her reading glasses and sets them to the side. “I’ve signed up for a life drawing class at the new community center in Derring Heights. We’ll be working with nude models, and I wanted to practice the awkward parts on my own so I’m less flustered in person.”

“I…I think…Okay.”

“Oh, Nina! There are still a few open seats in the class. Why don’t you join me? Wouldn’t that be fun?”

“Ah, I’m…I don’t…” I don’t want to draw naked people with my mother is going to hurt her feelings, which I think are already a little tender after I turned down her neighborhood walking group invite this morning.

“I have plans then,” I say instead. “But maybe some other time.” A lie, of course, but I’ll just have to cross the excuse bridge for that when we get to it.

“But I didn’t even tell you when it was.”

“When is it?”

“The first class is next Saturday evening. On the twenty-first. It starts at eight.”

“Yep, I definitely have plans then.” The date does sound familiar, in truth.

Do I have something going on then? Other than the upcoming venue tour with Quentin, I’m not sure there’s anything on my schedule.

Oh, right. That fundraiser at Hanako’s. I hadn’t particularly wanted to go, but it’s a perfect excuse.

“I ran into an old classmate last week. Hanako Hughes. Remember her? The one who came right before me alphabetically, who was really good at cross-country?” I pause, waiting to see if my mom knows who I’m talking about.

Since she worked at the high school when I went there, she usually remembers my classmates better than I do.

“Hmm…Oh! Yes. I think I took a pottery class with her aunt a few months ago.”

I nod. “Yeah, exactly, her. She owns a cocktail bar in a converted old warehouse near Riverside Park. Quentin and I promised to stop by for this fundraiser thing.” I admit that it feels a little scummy, all this fibbing to my mother.

But the spirit—if not the details—of what I’m saying is true.

We did tell Hanako we’d try to come. Even if I didn’t really mean it then, it doesn’t mean I can’t now.

Mom’s smile is so bright and unexpected that I find myself repeating my words in my head in an attempt to figure out what I said that could have been so intensely pleasing to her.

As far as I know, my mom is ambivalent toward cocktail bars, converted warehouses, and Riverside Park.

Quentin and I promised to stop by. Dammit.

Yep, that would’ve done it. I invoked her current favorite person on earth and implied that he and I have repaired our relationship enough to make plans together.

“That’s wonderful. I’m so glad he and you have mended things,” she says, turning back to her enlarged penis image and picking up her pencil before exclaiming and sliding it behind her ear.

She looks so genuinely pleased that I can’t bear to tell her that Quentin and I haven’t “mended things” so much as I’ve decided to completely suppress all of my long-carried animosity and pain (and a surprising amount of fresh physical attraction) in pursuit of hopefully getting some extra cash and the heck out of Dodge ASAP.

I respond with a brisk, “Yep, me too. Anyway, I have to—”

“That reminds me. The class instructor sent out an email asking us to let people know they need models for the next few weeks…”

How did anything I just said remind her of that?

My mother’s thought processes are a mystery.

“I’m going to stop you right there, Mom,” I say, holding my hand up as if physically keeping the idea away from me.

I did a lot of work with various therapists around body neutrality over the years, and most of the time I feel pretty content with myself.

But posing nude in front of a bunch of people—one of them being my mother—is not a thing I’m up for at the moment.

Or probably ever. “If you’re about to suggest that I—”

“No, no, of course not. I know you get nervous in front of an audience. Like when you had to sing that solo at the fourth-grade chorus concert and you fainted right off the stage.”

God, Quentin made fun of me for that one for literal years.

His reenactment was an artful physical comedy piece that I would have appreciated a lot more had I not been the butt of the joke.

I think that’s also what prompted me to pay his older sister twenty bucks to freeze his favorite Game Boy game inside a block of ice (inside multiple Ziplocs; I’m not a complete monster).

“I remember,” I grumble.

“Anyway, when you see Quentin again, maybe you could ask him if he’s interested?”

“Excuse me?”

“What? He’s a handsome man, Nina. And he seems confident. Just ask him for me, okay?”

“Why don’t you ask him yourself at one of your daily breakfasts, since you two have apparently become such close friends?

” I immediately regret the bitterness in my voice as soon as the words hit the air.

My mother frowns at me in quiet admonishment, and I bow my head.

“Sorry. I’m still a bit…Yeah. Sure. I’ll ask him.

” It feels easier to break that promise—and I am not going to ask Quentin to be a nude model for my mother’s drawing class, it just isn’t going to happen—than to argue.

“Thank you. Tell him I can forward him the potential dates.” She grabs her pencil again, replaces her reading glasses, and zooms in even closer on the penis’s base. Mom sketches out a thick, veiny line as she says, “I’m going to make those little frozen IKEA meatballs for dinner.”

“Great,” I say. “And I’m going to pretend we never had this conversation.”

At least my interest in being extremely weird about the wedding photos on the Sprangbur site has now been obliterated by distressing thoughts of my mother and a naked Quentin in the same room. I head upstairs and throw myself on the bed. My phone buzzes, alerting me to a new text.

My heart jumps up a few centimeters at the thought it might be Quentin ( coping mechanism ) before plummeting to new depths as the name Cole Dixon appears on my phone screen.

Then it bungees back up an inch. What if he’s trying to mend our relationship?

Or at least put us on civil terms moving forward?

Maybe even good enough ones that we could manage to be roommates until I find a new living situation!

That would be immensely helpful—to have a Boston address on my résumés, to be easily and promptly available if I ever do get called in for an interview…

Of course, my luck being what it is these days, the message winds up being the exact opposite of that.

Emailed you a form to fill out in order to take you off the lease. Complete and return asap. Thanks.

Really? Not even a “How are you?” I would have even accepted a cursory “Hope you’re well.

” Like, that’s a bit trite, but it’s the bare minimum you should send before asking someone to do something.

Not that this is even an ask—it’s more like an order.

The kind of message he’d send to his department’s administrative assistant.

Although I bet she would at least get a “please” thrown in somewhere.

I have had a weird day full of treasure hunting and sneaking around a historic house and fake engagements and Quentin being…

enticingly, frustratingly Quentin-y. There was already enough going on without Cole adding his asshole-ish tendencies to the mix.

So I am deciding here and now that this text is the last straw.

I need to press pause on keeping it together for a moment, or I’m liable to burst at a much more inopportune time.

I’ll let Pathetic Nina back out. But only for a few minutes. Like letting a little kid go to the playground to wear themselves out before naptime.

Stomping heavily around my room only results in my mom calling up the stairs to ask if I’m okay and also if I could please stop because it’s distracting her from her drawing.

If that’s too distracting for her, then I assume releasing a primal scream is out.

I very responsibly take off my glasses before I throw myself back on the bed, folding my arms across my chest and kicking my legs as hard as I can against the mattress.

But after the initial burst of angry energy, I’m left pretty beat.

Which I guess was sort of the goal all along.