When The Rain Falls

26. All Sunshine

26 ALL SUNSHINE

FINN

"Finn, can we talk?"

A week after the incident, we tried again while watching a movie at her place. Things had gone worse the second time. I couldn't get hard. No matter what I did. No matter what she did. She got frustrated and I saw the writing on the wall, so I left. I didn't vomit this time. But my stomach did anxious flips for the rest of the evening.

The next day, I took matters into my own hands. Everything worked just fine. The finicky bastard. It was a relief. But only slightly.

Now, we're sitting at my kitchen counter after a dinner of sushi. Nicole's been pleasant, but unusually quiet. I thought maybe she had a bad day at work. Until now. When she asked if we could "talk."

"Uh, sure," I say, running a hand through my hair nervously. We're standing on opposite ends of the kitchen bar. I had just been about to pull down some wine glasses.

"I need to tell you something. I've been trying to get the nerve all evening."

"What." I stare at her. It's a statement, not a question. I hold my breath as the next sentence comes out of her mouth.

"I slept with someone else," she says. I had not expected that. My fists begin to clench around the counter's edge.

"You what?" I ask, dumbly. We've never defined our relationship. We never talked about being exclusive. But I had assumed.

"It was a slip," she says. "With an ex."

"A slip? Really, Nicole? A slip? Like, oops, your dick slipped inside me?" I growl at her. Rage is building up behind my eyes. Behind my temples. My heart pounds in my chest.

"Finn. I'm sorry." Her eyes are apologetic. "But it's just that, well, you know." She gestures to me.

"What do I know?" Oh, I know. I definitely know. But I'm not going to make this easy for her.

"You can't," she says. "And sex is really important to me," she continues. "My job is really stressful. And I need someone who is less complicated."

Less complicated? Excuse me that I've lost my wife and have been slowly trying to rebuild my life. I've been angry a lot since Laurel's death. Angry at the world. Angry at life. Angry at love. For the past year, I've managed to keep things in check, with the help of medication. But right now, anger is raging inside me like a furnace. I haven't been this angry in a long time. This anger surprises even me. It's coming on so hot and so fast that my eyes are starting to lose their focus. I don't know what to do with it all. It possesses me. I'm completely at its mercy.

Laurel would never have cheated on me. That was the one thing we both agreed would never be tolerated. No coming back from. No forgiveness. A line that could never be crossed. But Laurel is gone. And I'm stuck in some second-rate life without her. A life where my girls don't have a mother. A life where everything is just a shadow of all the beautiful things I once had. A life where people cheat.

"Fuck, Nicole!" I roar at her. I slam a fist on the counter between us.

"I honestly didn't think you'd care." Her voice is almost taunting. She didn't think I'd even care? What does she think I am? Less of a person? Less of a man? My hands begin to shake and my vision goes dark in the center. The wires between my brain and body fully sever. One minute, the vase is on the counter in front of me, full of flowers I'd given Ruby after her dance recital. The next minute, the sound of shattering glass fills the quiet house. The vase is on the floor, a pile of broken shards scattered across the tile. Liquid pooling at my feet.

Nicole gasps. She steps back and glares at me. "Oh, real mature."

But I'm not done. My chest heaves wildly, still in the throes of it. I give a sharp punch to the wall behind me. Pain surges up my wrist. A framed picture of the girls falls loudly to the floor. The wooden frame bends and the glass cracks.

"You keep having your little tantrum, but I won't stick around to watch it." Nicole takes quick steps down the hall. The front door closes.

"Dad?" I hear Vivian shout above the roaring in my ears. Her little footsteps patter down the stairs.

"Viv, stop!" I yell out to her. But I'm too late. She takes the final step from the staircase and lands into the debris field from my anger.

"Ouch!" she says, jumping back onto the carpeted stairs. She takes in the broken vase. The hole in the wall. Then she looks at me. She can only see one thing. Because there's only one thing I feel. Pure, unadulterated rage. But there's something in her eyes, too. Something I hope to never see again.

Fear.

Fear of me.

She runs back up the stairs and I hear her bedroom door close.

"It'll be hard, but we'll figure it out. We have each other," I say to myself, echoing the very words I told Laurel all those years ago. Except I'm alone. Doing everything by myself. And making a giant mess of it.

From the window, overlooking the office parking lot, I watch two seagulls fight over a French fry. I curse the day. I curse myself. I curse every fucking breath I take. And I curse the sun. Fucking sun. It never rains when you goddamn want it to rain.

“Can you brood away from the window? Your annoyingly muscular body is blocking out all the sunlight.”

Reluctantly, I pull my eyes away from the window and turn to Jane. She’s sitting behind her desk, some romance novel open in one hand, her other hand tucked under an elbow. There is zero indication that she is doing anything remotely resembling work. This is what happens the moment Rebecca steps foot out of the office.

Total anarchy.

But it’s not like I can criticize her. I’m staring out a fucking window because I can’t focus on a goddamn thing except the deep and ever-darkening black hole that is my heart. My eyes are red. I can feel it. They burn. Like someone threw a handful of hot sand into my eyeballs. I’m lucky no one’s said anything about it yet.

For a split second, something in my life was going right. And then my body robbed me of all of it. This is why you can’t fucking trust happiness. It’s better to be miserable than be tricked into believing in something that doesn’t exist. And then be crushed when reality sets in.

“I like the window,” I grumble, crossing my arms over my chest. The bigger seagull flies away with his prize. The smaller seagull flutters its wings and gives out a piercing, shrill cry of protest.

“Doesn’t sunlight make you shrivel up or something?” she asks pointedly.

“You know what? You can fuck off.” I turn and narrow my eyes at her in warning.

“Twenty-two,” she says calmly, her eyes falling back on the book open in front of her face.

“Twenty-two, what?” I bellow at her. If I had hair on the back of my neck, it would be raised in aggression.

“Twenty-two times you’ve said some iteration of the word fuck since you got to work, let’s see,” she rolls her wrist in front of her face to check her watch, “thirty-five minutes ago.”

“I don’t pay you to do that,” I say. “But it’s comforting to know you can count.”

Jane’s eyes lift to me again, her book dangling casually from her hand. “I’m being serious. I can’t work under these conditions.” She waves her free hand in my direction. “Sunlight is a basic human right. And right now, you’re being a sunlight fascist.” I have no idea what the fuck that even means. But I don’t get a chance to question her because Rebecca walks through the front door at that moment. She has a suit jacket draped over her arm and a pink cardboard box tucked under the other.

“Donuts, anyone?” she asks as she lets the front door glide closed behind her. When she smiles, the motion tugs at her hairline, which is up in her signature tight bun.

“Thank God,” Jane cries. “Rebecca, you almost make up for this one.” She jerks a thumb at me. I notice the romance novel is gone. Nowhere to be seen. How did she get rid of it so quickly?

“Good grief.” Rebecca looks between Jane and I. “Finn, what have you done this time?” Ann is out on vacation this week which has made the mood in the office tense. Ann is usually the intermediary between the two of us. And I find it fucking ridiculous that I even need an intermediary when I’m the boss. I’m mean, I’m scary and intimidating. Why the fuck is Jane always pushing my buttons?

“Goddammit, nothing!” I yell defensively. “I’ve just been standing here looking out the fucking window, for Christ’s sake.”

“Twenty-three,” Jane says quickly. “Yeah, and sucking all the life out of the room.”

I glare at her. I glare at her so hard.

“Twenty-three?” Rebecca checks the clock on the wall as she hangs her suit jacket on a coat hanger. “It’s not even nine o’clock,” she notes. Ok. So apparently counting my expletives is an actual thing. Do they do this every day?

“Right? He’s in a particularly bad mood today. We might even break the record.”

I feel a growl rise in the back of my throat. But I won’t deny it. I am in a bad mood. Bad doesn’t even cover it. I just keep replaying last night in my head. And each time I do, it seems to get worse. I feel like shit. Because somehow, I decided that hurting Aimee was better than hurting myself. I’m not proud of it, but what’s done is done. And things needed to end. They were going to end one way or another. And well, that was one way. Or another.

“For fu—for heaven’s sake,” I mutter.

“Good boy,” Rebecca and Jane both praise me at the same time.

“Have a treat.” Rebecca opens the pink box of donuts under my face, revealing an assortment of a dozen donuts. I try not to look at them.

“I don’t like donuts,” I declare. Rebecca smiles and her shoulders heave with silent laughter. Fucking women. Always laughing, and smiling, and grinning. Assholes. I push away the image of Aimee’s wide grin. The way she always looks like she’s just committed the most delicious sin.

“Oh my God. Yes, you do like donuts,” she says. “You ate three of them on Friday.”

“They were going to go bad,” I explain.

Rebecca is completely unfazed by my behavior. Which is probably the only reason we’ve stayed business partners this long. “Come on,” she coaxes, moving the box in a tempting circle under my nose. “I even got a chocolate one with sprinkles,” Rebecca says temptingly, her eyebrows wagging. “Your favorite.” I snort and push the box away.

Rebecca lowers the box on Ann’s desk and grows serious. “Finn, is this about the interview?” she asks.

“What interview?”

“Preston Flaherty’s interview. Didn’t you get the message from your lawyer?”

When Rebecca sees the confusion on my face, we both turn slowly to Jane.

Jane takes a bite of a large maple donut and shrugs. “Hey, Finn, your lawyer called. Some dude named Presto Farty wants to interview you this week.”

“Jane,” I growl at her. “Put the fucking donut down,” I command. Jane ignores me and takes a slow, deliberate bite with a rebellious glint in her eyes. I turn to Rebecca. “Rebecca, tell Jane to put the fucking donut down.”

“Finn, why?” Rebecca asks. It’s like she’s completely oblivious to the mild threat of mutiny hanging in the air.

“Because,” I explain, setting my hands on my hips. “No donuts until she can fucking do her job. We need to run a tighter ship, Rebecca.” Rebecca looks at me like I’m growing a third head and I realize I’m not going to win this one. “You know what? Fuck it,” I mutter as I stomp down towards my office.

“Twenty-six,” Rebecca sighs.

“Have a wonderful day, sunshine,” Jane shouts to my back.

“Don’t tell me what to fucking do,” I yell back at her.

“Twenty-seven,” Jane says.

“Maybe he’s on a diet. That explains why he refused a donut. You know how much he loves the chocolate ones with the sprinkles.”

I slam my door and cut off the rest of their conversation.

Goddammit. I do like chocolate donuts. With sprinkles.

But I can’t eat a fucking donut when my stomach is twirling like a fucking washing machine on spin cycle. I haven’t been able to eat anything all day, in fact. I can’t even stomach coffee. My insides are absolutely wrecked.