Page 5 of Finders Keepers

“Shit, Nina.” Contrite laughter. Now that one is new. I find myself adding it to the catalog as I watch him start to hoist himself over the divider before realizing he can simply step over it now. “Hey, come here.”

I move into his open arms, which wrap around my waist, bringing me against his warm, strong chest. It strikes me that this may be the first time we’ve ever embraced like this.

Cooties were a concern during the earlier years of our friendship, and later there was the possibility that a hug would give Quentin a prime opportunity to slap a Call Me Butthead sign on my back, or that it would provide me with the perfect angle to slip ice cubes down the back of his shorts.

Of course, there was that last summer, when we had a tentative ceasefire and everything felt strangely charged between us. I would remember if he’d held me like this then, though, because I would’ve immediately exploded into a million tiny ribbons of hormonal confetti.

“I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you,” he whispers into the hair piled atop my head.

I inhale deeply and find that he smells like soap and laundry detergent—an enticing and clean smell that, coupled with the heat of his body against mine, reminds me of snuggling into a freshly made bed, sheets still warm from the dryer.

I pull away, thoroughly abashed by both his pity and my wandering thoughts.

Once there’s distance between us, I clear my throat.

“It’s fine. Seriously. Nothing to be sorry about.

” I dab at my face with my sleeve, wondering if I might be able to somehow at least pass off the crying as bad allergies.

Considering how Quentin’s looking at me as if he’s afraid I might break like a cold glass dunked into boiling water, I doubt it.

Besides, who knows how much my mother already told him about my situation.

“I’m just…I’m kind of going through a rough patch right now,” I confess.

“No worries, I understand. Same here, actually.” Quentin, arms now unencumbered, puts both of his hands behind him on the railing and leans back casually.

There’s the tiniest pause. It really is dark out here, under the overhang of the porch’s roof, but we’re standing close enough that I can make out the tilt of his lips.

“In fact,” he says, “I’m pretty sure I’m going through an even rougher patch than you are. ”

I know what he’s doing. I know . But, even after all this time, I can’t resist. It’s that urge, like during that ill-fated playground climbing race and the Grape Juice Incident of ’01 and so many other challenges over the ten years that we were best friends.

It takes full control of me, triggering my long-dormant impulsiveness and competitive spirit, better judgment be damned.

“Oh, I doubt that very much,” I say, picking up the gauntlet. And boy, does holding that gauntlet feel good. Because I might have lost everything I worked for, the life I built out of meticulous planning and hard work, but here is something I can fucking win .

He tilts his head and holds a hand out at his side, as if offering me the first serve in the game of shitty-luck tennis we’ve agreed to play.

“I was promised a promotion at the college where I’d been teaching for years, only to be informed at the last possible minute that, not only was I not getting the multi-year lecturer position they’d dangled in front of me, but due to ‘unforeseen budget concerns’?”—I form air quotes with my fingers as I repeat Dean Bradbury’s explanation—“my usual nine-month contract wouldn’t be renewed either.

” There’s something perversely funny about someone who makes six figures telling you your $47,000 salary is the thing that’s going to bankrupt the whole school.

“Hmm,” Quentin hums in brief acknowledgment. “That sucks.”

“Yep.”

“I myself was ‘encouraged to part from’?”—he provides air quotes of his own—“my law firm because I broke off my engagement with the daughter of a major client, and they didn’t want to risk losing his business by letting me stick around.

Even though I was the one who brought the client to them in the first place. ”

I guess this is as good a transition as any into the personal stuff.

And boy, do I have this one in the bag. “My boyfriend finally moved to the same city as me after three years of being long-distance and didn’t bother telling me that he arrived in Boston two weeks early.

Not even after I lost my job and needed his support.

I only found out because I saw him in the background of a mutual friend’s Instagram story at a bar down the street.

He, of course, believed he didn’t do anything wrong and that I was a brat for getting so upset about it. ”

Quentin’s eyes go wider and his eyebrows shoot up in surprise at that, which makes me feel oddly warm inside. It doesn’t take long for him to recover and add coolly, as if I hadn’t even spoken, “The reason I ended my engagement, by the way, was that my fiancée cheated on me.”

“That’s unfortunate. I’m sorry to hear it,” I say. And I am sorry that Quentin went through that. But, in the context of this game we’re playing, I’m also thoroughly unimpressed by the cliché of it.

I know he hears the tepidness in my voice, yet my eyes have adjusted to the low light enough now to see every detail as the corners of his mouth curve farther upward, as if he’s confident that he’s about to win.

And damn, he might, because he says next, “My best friend was the one who broke the news. He knew, of course, because he was the one she’d been cheating with.

Apparently, the first time it happened was in my office.

On my desk. While I was busy eating cake in the conference room. Because it was my birthday.”

Geez. Can something be so cliché that it comes back around to being novel?

“My apartment was already sublet to someone else by the time I found out I wasn’t going to be moving in with Cole, and I can’t get another place without proof of income, so now I’m back to living with my parents in my thirties,” I say.

He responds so rapidly, it’s clear he’s been waiting for his turn.

“Without my job, I lost my work visa, and since I wasn’t marrying a French citizen anymore, I needed to leave or risk deportation.

So now I’m also back to living in my childhood home.

All alone.” He smiles wider, already amused by what he’s about to say. “Because I am a child of divorce.”

I almost muster a chuckle. That last summer living beside each other was haunted by the specter of his parents’ separation, and Quentin quickly began using it to win arguments between us.

I don’t think it was because he actually felt like he deserved special treatment; it was more because insisting he should get the last Oreo or that we should go to the record store before the bookstore since he was “soon to be a child of divorce” added a level of absurdity to it all that helped make it a little easier to bear.

Maybe that’s what this silly back-and-forth was too.

Because laying it all out like that, each of our respective bad luck streaks shared as matter-of-factly as playing a card in a game of crazy eights, certainly has helped me appreciate just how ridiculous my life has been lately.

And Quentin’s, apparently. We’re quite the pair.

He grins at my near-laugh, then forces his mouth back into a serious straight line. His eyes still crinkle a little in the corners, like he can’t fully hide his enjoyment. Pushing himself off the railing, he takes a step toward me. “You think it’s funny that my life fell apart, Hunnicutt?”

My laughter bubbles over in response to his nearness, almost like a fear response.

Not that I’m afraid of Quentin exactly. It’s more that, from this close, it’s easier to comprehend the transformations that took place during our time apart.

Where the gangliness of youth has turned to solid, defined angles, or how his almost orange wavy hair darkened to a shade of deep rust. His freckles are still there, in the same arrangement I remember, petering out just under his light blue eyes, but they’re more faded now.

He’s taller, of course, with broader shoulders, and while he isn’t muscular in a hangs-out-at-the-gym way, he seems strong.

A useful person to have around if you ever need a piano moved.

The similarities to and departures from the Quentin I remember conspire to make it feel like this is someone I’ve known all my life, and yet don’t truly know the first thing about.

It’s…strange. Comfortable and intimidatingly new at the same time.

An eerie echo of how it feels being back here in general.

“I mean, I think it’s hilarious,” he says. “But it’s rude for you to laugh about it. Especially when you’re not doing too hot yourself.”

I shake my head now, laughing to the point of needing to gasp for air, barely able to get words out.

“I’m really not! I’m doing… so …badly!” I have to admit, this is a nice change of pace from all the crying I’ve been doing, even if it is only exchanging one exaggerated emotional response for another.

My eyes close as I take a few deeper breaths, trying to calm myself.

When they open again, they land on Quentin’s throat.

He’s still wearing the dress shirt I spotted him in earlier, but the top few buttons are undone and his tie—which is the exact color of his eyes, I realize—is loosened.

His closeness is sobering. “So why are you dressed all business-y?” I ask, gesturing toward the half Windsor knot. “You weren’t at the office, I take it.”

“I had a virtual interview with a firm in Chicago this afternoon. Figured the T-shirt with the big mustard stain I’d been wearing for the past week wasn’t going to cut it.”

“Yeah, mustard stains are totally passé.” I pull at the hem of my hoodie to expose the large brown spot where the lid on my Dunkin’ cup popped off while I was drinking in the car this morning. “Coffee’s what’s hot now.”

“Oof. Bad pun,” he says.

“I wasn’t trying to pun at all, but now I’m going to have to stand behind it.” I don’t know what to do with my hands. They keep wanting to fiddle with his tie, or straighten his collar, or muss his hair. I shove them into my hoodie pocket instead. “How’d it go? The interview.”

He shrugs.

I follow the movement of his shoulders upward.

He’s staring down at me, as if he’s been watching my mouth this whole time.

It’s like the residual familiarity between us disappeared as the distance shrank, and now it’s just me standing a few inches away from a man with pretty eyes and an aura of magnetism.

The effect only heightens the longer we stand there, until he says quietly, as if sharing a secret: “It’s good to see you, Nina. ”

And that’s all it takes for everything to come whooshing back.

Our history. The silly competitions and pranks, yes.

But mostly that last sweltering summer spent roaming Catoctin together, hunting for a treasure that may or may not have even existed.

The night we lay in his backyard, looking up at the stars, and I thought maybe, just maybe, I could find a way to keep him.

The very next night, when everything fell apart.

Then all of the silence—seventeen whole years of it.

Our best and worst moments, everything that I’ve kept carefully folded and tucked away for so long, spring out all at once in an assault that nearly knocks me off my feet.

“Is it, though?” I ask, intending for it to sound playful.

But it doesn’t. In fact, I think I surprise both of us with not only the question, but the naked desperation behind it.

Quentin’s eyebrows furrow and his head tilts.

My stomach roils in the second of silence that follows, and I cross my arms, as if they might keep my insides from spilling out all over the place.

My brain—which generally takes great pains to avoid conflict—screams, What are you doing? ?

Quentin stares at me, his lips slightly parted.

He looks…stunned. Did he truly have no idea I’d still have some lingering emotions around what happened between us?

Or maybe he assumed I would never let them show.

It reminds me of the conversation I had with Cole when I confronted him.

How he seemed so taken aback that I was upset about his gigantic lie by omission.

Bewildered that I cared enough about our relationship to go through the trouble of ending things.

Maybe everything that happened between us didn’t matter that much to Quentin, but surely he can’t be that surprised to find out it mattered to me.

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly.

“For what exactly?”

“For…” His sentence stalls out, as if he isn’t sure how to describe exactly what happened.

For saying it was all a mistake. For ghosting you after I moved away.

For reappearing in your life at one of the very worst possible moments.

So many ways he could complete the thought, and yet he chooses a noncommittal gesture, a half-hearted wave that seems to imply the brushing aside of the past as if it were nothing but a tiny, annoying gnat.

“Very convincing apology,” I say with an eye roll.

His eyes drop to his feet—which I’m now noticing are bare—before coming back up to meet mine. He doesn’t say anything more.

I don’t have the emotional, mental, or physical energy left to continue on this journey to a destination I don’t really need to revisit anyway. “Good to see you too,” I lie briskly. “But I better get going. Had a long day. Good night.”

And, as I go back into my parents’ house, I let the old storm door slam behind me—the sound acting as an audial punctuation mark, ending the conversation.