Chapter 118

"You're a natural, Madi," Clarke complimented her student as they headed downstairs after her lesson. "You really are."

"I'm a natural at most things," Madi said. "Not to brag, but . . ."

"You're totally bragging."

"Yeah, I am." Madi stopped at the front door and said, "Hey, some people in my grade were talking to me about . . . maybe starting a band?"

"A band?" Clarke echoed. "That's very cool, very hip."

"Don't make it cringey," Madi told her. "I volunteered to play piano or keyboard or whatever, and there's this boy named Ethan who knows how to play the drums."

"Ethan, huh?" Clarke wriggled her eyebrows.

"I don't have a crush on him," Madi said.

Clarke gave her a skeptical look.

"I don't," Madi insisted. "Anyway, then there's this girl named Charlotte. She's kind of annoying, but we all just kind of put up with her. And she said she wants to learn to play guitar. And she and I both wanna learn to sing. But I think I'm already a better singer than her."

"Well, I could definitely help you guys with that stuff," Clarke offered. "Tell their moms to give me a call."

"Okay, I will."

The prospect of getting more students put a big smile on Clarke's face. Plus, when she was little, she'd imagined herself as the lead singer of a band, so helping these kids start their own . . . so freaking fun. "Hey, what's the band name gonna be?" she asked.

"Oh, Ethan came up with a few, but I think they're really weird." Madi took out her phone and looked over some of the options. "Rusty Kuntz?"

Clarke felt her eyes bulge.

"Mike Litoris?" Madi made a face. "Hyman Shocker? What?"

"Oh, god. You probably shouldn't name your band any of those things," Clarke warned her.

"Yeah, they sound like people's names."

They probably were, which was so sad. Who would give their kid such a dirty-sounding name?

The back door opened, and in came a slightly sweaty Bellamy. He'd decided to go for a run on the beach while Clarke was busy teaching. "Hey, Madi," he said.

"Hey, Bellamy," she returned. "What do you think about this for a band name? Rusty Kuntz?"

He burst into laughter right away, but Clarke shot him a warning look that got him to quit. "I don't get it," he then claimed, an obvious lie.

"Madi, your mom's waiting," Clarke said, opening the front door. "You'd better go."

"Alright. See you next week," she said as she walked out the door.

"Practice," Clarke called after her.

"I always do," Madi responded, waving goodbye.

Clarke waved back at her and at her mom, then shut the door.

"Rusty Kuntz?" Bellamy said, heading into the kitchen.

"I think the boys in her class are seriously perverted." Clarke grabbed a towel, ready to dry dishes while he washed.

"She's in junior high, right?" he said as he started to fill the sink up with water. "Oh, yeah, I was really perverted at that age. Watched porn practically every night."

"Are you kidding? I was still having sleepovers with friends," Clarke recalled. "We were doing facials and having dance parties."

"Well, there were facials . . . in the porn . . ." he said. "I'll just stop now."

"Yeah, because picturing eighth grade you watching all of that is not exactly a turn-on."

"It's where I learned all my moves, though," he said. "So maybe you should be saying, 'Thank you, PornHub.'"

She rolled her eyes, then mumbled, "Thank you, Pornhub."

"There you go." He shut off the water and began to scrub at last night's dinner plates, smirking, as if his junior high porn days were a source of pride for him.

"Did you order that Halloween costume for Avery?" she asked, switching the subject.

"Yep. Should get here in time." He rinsed off a plate and handed it to her.

"Jasper texted me this morning asking if we were gonna do the Trunk-or-Treat thing again," she said as she began to draw. "But I told him we have to take Avery trick-or-treating. It's her first Halloween. It's like a rite of passage."

"Yeah," he agreed. "We can always stop by, though, if they're all doing it again, cast our vote for a winner."

"Yeah, we should," she said. She set the dry plate aside, took out her phone, and located the texts Jasper had exchanged with her. "Listen to this. He goes, 'Fine, if that's your story, but I think Bellamy's just too afraid to lose again,'" she read off the screen.

"Text him back, tell him I'm not afraid of him."

"Wait, then he also brought up how you were so mad about losing last year that you drop-kicked the baby doll you had in your costume." She couldn't help but laugh when she thought back to that.

"Oh, man, I did," he said. "I can't help it. I'm competitive. I wanna be the best."

"Mmm, you are the best," she murmured, giving him a kiss on the cheek before she got back to helping him with those dishes. Even the more chore-like domestic things in life were fun when she got to do them with him.

...

As predicted, Avery was the center of attention when Bellamy and Clarke brought her to the Trunk-or-Treating festivities. They'd costumed her in a pink and purple princess dress, complete with a crown headband and fancy little white shoes. Bellamy must have taken about fifty pictures before they'd even left the house.

"Oh my god, she looks so cute!" Harper squealed, bending down in front of Avery's stroller.

"Always does," Bellamy said.

"Yeah, but this is cuteness overload," Raven said, snapping a few pictures herself. "Look at our goddaughter, Murphy," she said. "She's now officially a princess."

"Damn right she is," Murphy said. "And wouldn't you know, that just fits in perfectly with our Trunk-or-Treating theme this year." He motioned to their vehicle, which they'd decked out like a castle. "Look at that."

"Yeah, I'll vote for you," Bellamy said.

"What the hell, man?" Jasper spat, throwing his arms in the air. "You're just bitter."

"I think I gotta vote for them, too," Clarke said. There were some creative ideas once again this year, ranging from an underwater theme to a funhouse. But the castle kind of just called to her. "Sorry, Jasper," she said, "but in this family, we're all about the princesses."

He threw his hands up in the air dramatically, and everyone snickered at him.

"This was total strategy, by the way," Raven told her quietly. "Murphy was like, 'If we don't get any other votes, at least we'll get Bellamy and Clarke's."

Once they'd cast their votes, they got a few more pictures, this in front of the castle setup, grabbed some candy, and headed on their way. They'd find out the results of the competition later. For now, they had some houses to hit up. Bellamy told her that his mom's neighborhood always had lots of houses that handed out candy, so they started there, pushing Avery along in the stroller, stopping at every house that had their porch light turned on.

"You know what's kind of funny?" Clarke said.

"The way this crown looks on my head? I knew it." Bellamy reached up to readjust his costume. It was literally just a crown, but it was enough to classify him as a king for the night. "I just wanted to recapture the glory days, you know? Fuckin' prom king."

"No, I love the crown. Keep it on," she said when he started to remove it. It was so funny to her that Bellamy actually still had stuff like that in his mom's house. Had Aurora been the one to insist they hold onto it, or had he? "I was just thinking how funny it is that she's gonna get all this candy," Clarke said, "and we're gonna be the ones who end up eating it."

"Yeah." He took the stroller from her to give her a break from pushing. "Not big enough yet."

Clarke looked into the plastic pumpkin they were carrying all her candy in, happy to see that there was some pretty decent stuff in there. Reese's, Sweet Tarts, Jolly Ranchers. Of course, there were a few lackluster Tootsie Rolls, but Bellamy could have those. "When she gets older," she said, "we have to inspect her candy when she brings it home."

"Why?" he asked.

"Because people put, like, drugs in it and stuff."

"What? No way."

"Yes!" she insisted. "You don't believe me? Watch the news. It happens."

He shook his head. "Man, parents gotta do a lot of shit."

"Yeah, we do," she agreed. "It's a full-time job."

"It's a great job, though," he said.

"Yep." When they got up to the corner, she nearly tripped over her own feet, because up ahead of them, climbing onto the porch of a house that didn't even have their porch light on, were two grown-ass adults who didn't need to be trick-or-treating on their own. One was a girl Clarke didn't recognize. The other was a guy she unfortunately recognized all too well.

"Oh my god, slow down," she said told Bellamy.

"What?" He followed her gaze, spotted Finn, and grumbled, "Oh, fuck. Really didn't wanna run into him on Halloween."

Clarke really didn't care that he seemed to have a new girlfriend—that was actually a relief—and she wasn't surprised that he was trick-or-treating without a kid and without a costume. Finn had always been immature like that. She really didn't know what she'd ever seen in him.

...

The Halloween party Raven had dragged Clarke to wasn't her scene. It was at the bar, where Clarke wasn't yet old enough to drink, and there seemed to be a lot of couples there . . . also something she couldn't be a part of. But it worked out well for Raven, who was twenty-one now, and who had a boyfriend. Murphy was . . . kind of weird, but obviously into her. They'd both dressed up as hippies, and they were sort of acting the part. Clarke just couldn't muster up their level of enthusiasm for a party that, in her estimation, seemed kind of lame, so she gave them space to have their fun and did exactly what she'd done at both her junior and senior year proms: go get some food and try not to be noticed.

Unfortunately, her plan didn't work, because even though there were a lot of couples at that party, there were still some single people, too. Mostly guys. And one of those guys noticed Clarke sitting at the bar munching on chips and pretzels. He sat down beside her and just started up a conversation like they knew each other. He wasn't horrible to look at, despite his weird hair, but he wasn't the most interesting to listen to, either. She halfway listened, mostly because she didn't have anything better to do, but she wouldn't have minded if he left to go flirt with someone else instead.

"I really like your costume," he said.

"Thanks." It'd been sort of a last minute thing, but . . . fringe and feathers. Typical flapper girl.

"Weren't they, like, 1920s hookers or something?" he asked.

"No." Even though she wasn't really a flapper, for some reason, she took offense at that. "They were fashionable young women who went out and danced and didn't conform to everything society wanted them to be."

"Oh, interesting," he said. "So why'd you choose that costume then?"

"Why do you wanna know?"

"I'm just curious," he said. "Are you not wanting to conform?"

She snorted. "Who is? But I do, though. I do." She popped another pretzel into her mouth. "Mom wants me to be a doctor, just like her. Lo and behold, what's my major? Oh, biology."

"Switch it," he suggested.

She'd thought about that before, but in the back of her mind was her mom's voice telling her that nobody serious about college got an art or music degree. "No, I've already started," she said. "Might as well finish."

"What year are you, though?" he asked. "Freshman? Sophomore?"

"Sophomore," she confirmed.

"It's not too early to switch then."

She'd thought about that, too, how if she was going to switch up her major, she pretty much had to do it now. "What would I switch to?"

"I don't know," he said. "Something you like. What do you like?"

She couldn't quite tell whether he was genuinely taking an interest in getting to know her, or if this was just some typical play of his to hook up with girls. "Here you are asking all these questions, and I don't even know your name," she said.

"Finn," he revealed.

"Finn." Wasn't exactly the sexiest name, but . . . now that she wasn't ignoring him as much, she could admit that he really actually wasn't a pretty good-looking guy. "You go to Arkadia?" she questioned him.

"Sometimes."

"Huh?" That didn't make sense.

"Well, when I feel like it," he elaborated. "I'll go take finals and stuff. I just might not always show up to class."

Clarke had met plenty of those people in college. Most of them had learned their lesson after first semester and had studied harder second semester, but some of them just continued to skate by. "Sometimes I wish I could be more like that," she said, slightly envious. "But I'm more of the bothered-if-I-get-a-B type."

"Responsible, huh?" he said.

She thought back four years to the only other sophomore year she'd had and shook her head. "No, not always."

Finn licked his lips, as though that intrigued him.

Taking a drink of her uber-tame and totally out-of-place water, she turned the questions back around on him by asking, "So what's your major?"

"Haven't declared yet," he said. "I'm just taking some gen eds for now."

She was pretty sure he'd said he was a sophomore, too. To be in his third semester of college and still have no real plan or direction in place . . . it wasn't exactly impressive, but he seemed fine with it. "Can I be blunt?" she said.

"Sure."

"Are you a slacker? You seem like a slacker," she remarked. "I mean, you didn't even dress up tonight."

"Sure I did," he claimed. "I got a costume on."

"Oh, really?" Was that hair actually just a wig?

Pulling back his jacket, Finn revealed a name tag over his heart. It said 'Hello, my name is' on it, and in all caps, he'd written BATMAN!

"That's so stupid," she said.

"I think you mean convenient," he corrected. "Affordable. Genius."

"Oh, Finn . . ." She sighed, shaking her head. She couldn't help but laugh a little, though she wasn't sure whether she was laughing with him or at him.

"You like me, don't you?" he said confidently.

"Honestly?" She was sort of . . . amused by him. Slightly entertained. Mildly attracted, but not enough that she'd picture him the next time she had a vibrator between her legs. "You're probably not my type."

His persistence was incredible, because he didn't seem dissuaded in the slightest. "But I'm not bad to look at, am I?"

"No," she admitted. She couldn't really gauge his body with his jacket on, and he hadn't mentioned being an athlete or anything, but he clearly wasn't scrawny. And even though his hair kept falling in front of his face, a little bit of a trim would bring out his features more.

"And I've made you laugh," he added. "So that's gotta score me some points."

It was more than anyone else had managed to do that night, so she reluctantly grumbled, "Maybe one or two."

"Nice. So how many points am I up to by now?"

"Six, at the most," she decided.

"And how many does it take to go home with you?"

"Oh, at least fifteen."

"Damn," he said. "I got some work to do then."

She wasn't sure if he was going to pull out some super cheesy pick-up line or ask her to dance, but either one seemed possible. He ended up being a lot more forward than that, though, when he leaned towards her and gave her a kiss. She was a little startled by it, and it would have been nice he'd asked for permission since they barely knew each other. But . . . it wasn't a horrible kiss by any means. Not the best, not the worst. Just kind of average.

When he pulled back, he had this excited look in his eyes, like he was sure he'd just sealed the deal or something. At most that had probably only added three more points to his total, but Clarke decided she was tired of sitting there. For the past couple weeks, ever since she and Lexa had broken up, she'd gone back to being miserable. Raven had probably invited her along tonight out of pity more than anything else, because she wasn't exactly a blast to hang out with these days. Her sophomore year of college was on its way to being a pretty depressing one unless she did something to liven it up.

"What the hell? Let's go," she decided on a whim, standing up. She assumed Finn would follow her out the door, and just like an eager puppy dog, he did.

They ended up going back to her apartment, where she found herself underneath him after very little foreplay. He hadn't asked her to suck his dick, although he also hadn't volunteered to lick her pussy. So it was a few minutes of making out, followed by undressing, followed by . . . sex. The first sex Clarke had had with a man in a long time.

"Go a little to the right," she told him. Unfortunately, he didn't follow instructions well, because he moved to the left instead. "No, the right, Finn," she repeated. He got it that time, and with his cock now hitting a little bit deeper, she was at least somewhat satisfied. "Okay, that's good," she said, trying not to think too much about the fact that a guy she barely knew was currently inside her.

"Are you close?" he panted.

The fact that he was asking her that meant that he had to be. "No," she answered. "But that's okay. You can cum. Pull out, though."

"But I'm wearing a condom," he protested.

"I don't care. I barely know you. Pull out."

He did as she requested, slid out of her, and jerked himself off pretty quickly. If he hadn't been wearing a condom, he would have squirted all over her stomach. She was happy to avoid that mess. Besides . . . better safe than sorry. Didn't hurt to take multiple precautions.

"Damn," he said, collapsing beside her. "You're amazing. Best sex I've had in a while."

Sadly, she couldn't say the same. Out of the three sexual partners she'd had, he was definitely the least fulfilling. But it wasn't like he'd only lasted two minutes or anything. He'd managed a solid . . . ten? Fifteen? It wasn't like they needed to go all night anyway.

"So do you do this a lot," she asked him, moving her legs back together, "hook up with random girls and have one-night stands?"

"Sometimes," he openly admitted. "If I like a girl, though, I'll date her."

She wondered how many girlfriends he'd had, and if the sex got any better when he was in a relationship. "I'm not saying we have to . . ." She trailed off, not trying to give him the wrong idea. "I'm fine if this is a one-time thing."

"Yeah, we don't have to put any pressure on it," he agreed. "Wouldn't mind having your number, though, just in case we decide we wanna do it again."

She had a hard time picturing herself calling or texting him, but if he reached out to her . . . maybe? It was hard to say. Sure, he was a slacker who hadn't declared a major yet and finished sex without getting her off, but he'd actually made her night . . . somewhat enjoyable? She felt better now than she had at the start of that party, so that was at least something.

"Sure," she said, "I'll give you that before you leave."

"Great." He hesitated a moment, then asked, "You want me to leave now, or . . . you want me to stay a while?"

She'd sort of assumed he would want to leave, maybe get back to the end of that party and see if he could pick up any other girls. But now it didn't sound like he did. And in a strange way, it felt nice not to be lying in bed by herself, to have someone there with her to talk to, even though she didn't know him very well. "I guess you can stay," she decided.

He smiled at her and said, "Good. 'cause I want to."

The way he was looking at her . . . it didn't exactly give her excited butterflies in her stomach, but it didn't give her the uncomfortable kind, either. So she just lay there next to him, staring up at the ceiling, wondering if it was possible for this pointless one-night stand to actually turn into something. It probably wouldn't, but . . . stranger things had happened. Maybe she'd met this Finn guy for a reason. Maybe it would result in something . . . surprising.

...

Thankfully, Finn and his girlfriend were too busy repeatedly ringing the doorbell on a house that clearly didn't want trick-or-treaters—especially adults ones—that Clarke was able to suggest, "Let's go the other way," and turn the corner with her husband and her daughter without being noticed. They made quick work of that next block, putting some space in between and bypassing several houses before deciding to stop at one again. When they did, an elderly woman answered the door, but some candy that looked like cough drops in the plastic pumpkin, and said to them, "She's adorable."

"Thanks," Bellamy said. "Say thank you, Avery."

Avery made a few babbling sounds, but . . . still no words.

"Bye," Clarke said, waving as the woman shut her screen door. She and Bellamy continued on down the sidewalk, having to do a little dodging and weaving around some particularly hyped-up elementary school kids who were running around with no parental supervision at all.

"So what do you think Finn's up to?" Bellamy bravely asked her. "You know, him and his lawyer. You think he still has one?"

"Yeah. I do," she said, forcing herself to be realistic. "We're keeping Pike in the loop, though. That's about all we can do right now." They were still in a bit of a holding pattern, wait-and-see mode.

"I think I'm getting my hopes up," Bellamy said, "but . . . what if Finn changed his mind?"

She'd been wondering about that, too, lately, because it just seemed strange that Finn had a lawyer but still hadn't made a move. It seemed logical that his lawyer would tell him that now was the time to make a move on this case, because Bellamy's DUI was still fairly recent. So either that lawyer was incompetent, or Finn was just dragging this out for some reason.

"He hasn't tried to see her," Bellamy pointed out, "hasn't taken any legal action yet. Maybe that's a good sign."

"Maybe," she agreed. It was tough to speculate, because she didn't want to get her hopes up, either. But at the same time, it didn't hurt to hope for the best.