I take Finn’s advice and dip the rest of my clam cake into the broth. “Also a good idea,” I concur, after I try it. We keep eating. Corn. Lobster rolls. The seemingly endless supply of clam cakes to go with the chowder. I pause in the activity of stuffing my face to ask Finn a question. “Are you ever going to tell me about your family?”
Finn picks up another clam cake like he hasn’t heard me. I wait while he eats it. Finally, he says, “I’m a little afraid to.”
“Why?”
“You might not like what you hear.”
“I want to know everything. Whether it’s good or bad.”
He turns his attention to his lobster roll, then picks a kernel of corn from the cob and eats it. “Okay. Well, it’s just my mother, and she and I are estranged.” He picks at another kernel. “She lives in the-middle-of-nowhere Oregon, and we haven’t spoken in years. I . . . I did something, and she can’t forgive me.”
“Oh, Finn! I’m so sorry.”
“Marlena.” Finn sounds strangled. “Please don’t ask me what I did. I don’t want to . . . I’m not ready . . .”
“Okay, okay.” I say this, because what else can I say? But it doesn’t change that I want to know whatever it is. “Why would you be so afraid to tell me that?”
He looks up from his plate. “Because I’ve worried what you will think of me, abandoning my mother.”
“It sounds more like the other way around, like she abandoned you.”
“That’s not how she sees it.”
“We really are more alike than not,” I say. “It isn’t as though my mother and I are the portrait of a happy family either.”
This elicits a bit of a smile. “I told you.”
“How old were you when you left home?”
“Sixteen.”
“Wow, that’s young.”
He nods.
I slurp a little of my chowder. “How were you able to afford living on your own?”
“I got a special scholarship, because of my aptitude for science. School and housing paid for.”
“Ah,” I say. “A genius scholarship.”
Finn rolls his eyes. “I’m not going to comment on that.”
I down another spoonful. “Does what you just told me have anything to do with why you and Angie are so close? I’ve often thought that she, I don’t know, treats you like you might be her son.”
Finn looks away. “For the most part, yeah.”
This question has him setting his lobster roll back on his plate like he can’t stomach it. “Finn, what?”
He wipes his hands on one of the napkins. There are already six, crumpled and used, strewn across the table, and the pile only keeps growing. “Angie is . . . not particularly happy with me at the moment.”
Something about the way he says this makes me feel implicated.
“Why?”
Finn stares at his plate. “I talked to her about us,” he says. “Well, she talked to me about us. She figured it out. All things considered, I guess it wasn’t that difficult.”
I think back to Angie watching us leave through her office window. “No. I thought she might suspect. Where does that leave you?”
“I’m not sure. Angie said I was too close to you to keep working on the study—”
“But that’s not fair!”
“It’s totally fair, actually,” he says. “I am too close. Though it is also possible that when Angie told me this, I shot back something along the lines of look who’s talking, since Angie hasn’t exactly stayed distant from you, either.”
I put down my spoon. “Oh.”
“Yeah. It’s also the truth, though. And Angie knows it.”
“Is that why she’s mad at you?”
Finn leans back in the old wooden chair and it creaks. “No. It’s more than that.”
“So tell me more.”
But he dives back into his food again, taking a huge bite of his lobster roll.
“Finn—”
“Can we change the subject? I think that’s enough complicated conversation from me for the day.”
I close my mouth. “Okay.” I’m uneasy letting this go. “You can tell me anything, Finn. Anything,” I repeat.
Finn stares at the messy tabletop. “I’ll tell you. I promise. Just . . . later.” He brightens a little. Reaches up and flicks my bathing suit ties, which are sticking out of my T-shirt at the back of my neck. “When you’re done eating, let’s go for a swim. We need to cross that off your list of normal, though it looks like you might have crossed it off on your own.”
I laugh. “That’s highly possible.”
“How do you feel about crossing it off once more? Just to make sure you got it?”
“I think that’s a great idea. We’re on borrowed time with this beautiful day anyway. It’s just warm enough to still go in the water. We should take advantage while we can.”
“I agree.” Finn gets up from the table and tosses his nearly empty paper plates in the trash can.
When I’m done, I clear mine, too, and after the two of us clean everything else from the table, Finn disappears into his room. When he comes out he’s wearing black swim trunks and a blue T-shirt. He reaches into a closet in the hallway and comes out with two beach towels. One of them has turtles on it and the other has little smiling snakes. “Don’t judge,” he says, when he sees me eyeing them. “There was a point, right around when I was nine, when I was sure I’d be a veterinarian, so that was the theme of my childhood. Animals, all sorts of animals, especially of the reptile variety.” He laughs, but the pain behind his eyes makes me wonder if the memory makes him miss his mother.
“Interesting new Finn tidbit” is all I say, letting the topic rest there. I take the towel with the turtles on it and drape it around my neck. We head out his front door and down the street toward the beach. “What other interesting new Finn tidbits are available for release today?”
We are so close to the water that we walk there barefoot, picking our way carefully over the hot road.
Finn sidesteps a big rock. “Let’s see. That you should be glad that I no longer keep a pet tarantula?”
“Ew, a tarantula? Really?”
“Yup, really.”
A rickety brown fence, tall thin slats of wood held together by chicken wire, marks the entrance to the beach. We climb up and over the dune. “You’re right, I think I am grateful for that.”
When we reach the high tide line we drop our towels. Finn pulls off his shirt and sets it on top of his towel. I try not to look at his skin, his bare chest. Try to act like it isn’t a big deal that I am essentially disrobing in front of the boy I can’t stop thinking about. “Any other Finn tidbits you want to share?” I croak as I pull off my top and slide my skirt down my thighs and off.
Finn’s eyes flicker over me from head to toe. Then he grins. “Wait, sorry, were you saying something I was supposed to answer? I got distracted by the sight of Marlena the Saint in a string bikini. You don’t look so saintly right now.”
I cover my eyes with my hands. “Shut up. You’re going to make me blush.”
He moves my hands away and plants a kiss on my lips. “I think I already did.”
“You were going to tell me about yourself,” I remind him. “Maybe something more recent?”
His eyes linger another moment on my neck, my stomach, then along my legs. “Right. Recent.” We walk toward the water. “How about the fact that I finally have a girlfriend?”