Mistakes We Never Made

12 Thursday Evening

(Two days before the wedding)

FINN PULLS INTO THEcircle drive at Caesars Palace and passes his keys to the valet. Polished columns stretch toward the ceiling and rings of golden marble ripple out from a huge fountain in the middle of the very ornate lobby. The fountain depicts three women, none of whom were carved fully clothed. It’s not quite my personal design style, but I do always appreciate a theme. I pull up my phone again to check on Sybil’s location.

“I think she must be staying here,” I tell Finn, studying my app like I’m the investigator in some BBC detective series. “She’s been up and down the Strip, but she always ends up back here. Let’s start at the casino and then just work our way through the resort.”

“Got it. And, Emma?”

“What?”

“Don’t forget about our deal. If we can’t get her back to LA, you have to say something nice about me.”

He’s laughing, but for me, it’s game on. “Oh, we’ll get her back, Finn. And I look forward to driving the two of you all the way back to Malibu, without ever having to tax my mind to think of a compliment.”

The casino is to the right of the lobby, so we head straight there. We circle through wedding chapels and swimming pools—one of which I didn’t realize allowed topless sunbathing until we were neck-deep in nipples. I look longingly at a passing server carrying a tray full of colorful cocktails with swizzle sticks and umbrellas. I could use something to calm my growing anxiety now that we’re here. Deep down, there’s this worry nagging at me. If Sybil actually wanted us to find her, she’d be broadcasting it via text, social media, and a very loud singing voice. So what does it mean that she’s doing such a good job of not being found?

Finn and I wind through fake canals, and dozens and dozens of luxury shops, but there’s no sign of Sybil. We stop in front of what appears to be a reproduction of the Trevi Fountain in Rome. “Maybe we should make a wish,” Finn suggests.

“What—a wish for Sybil to finally appear?” I can feel a sense of hopelessness creeping into my voice.

Finn fishes into his pockets and hands me a quarter, keeping one for himself. “Is that really what you want to wish for?”

I’m startled by his question. “That’s literally what we’re here for, Finn.”

“True. But look around, Emma. We’re in Vegas. Surrounded by people throwing caution to the wind. Look at that lady.” He points behind me to a green-haired woman, who is laughing as she pretends to ride her friend’s back like a cowboy, while swinging a pink penis-shaped sword above her head. “Everyone else is here for themselves. Isn’t there something that you want just for you?”

For some reason his question is making my pulse pick up. “Why? Is there something you want?” I ask, a little defensively.

He shrugs. “Maybe. But the nice thing about wishes is they’re also secrets.” He kisses his coin as he turns his back to the fountain and, after a second, tosses it over his head and into the water.

I take a moment to think about my wish. My real wish. What is it I want, just for me? More success at work? For Liz to find a real job so I can stop sending her a third of my paycheck every month? To find someone who loves me for all my quirks, just like Sybil has found in Jamie? To not feel so secretly worn out all the time, like I’m chasing something invisible that I’ll never catch? Why is this so hard?

“Come on, Emma. I didn’t ask you to solve a calculus problem. It was just meant to be fun,” Finn says.

And that’s when the wish hits me. I just want someone to take care of me the way I take care of everyone else. With that, I kiss my coin and toss it toward the fountain, watching it sink swiftly to the bottom, where it quickly gets lost among the piles and piles of change on the slimy bottom. Then I turn to Finn. “Come on, I need a drink.”

I check Sybil’s location again while we wait for drinks at the least-crowded bar we can find, but the blue dot hasn’t moved. It’s still hovering in the general vicinity of Caesars Palace.

“She has to come out of her room sometime,” I say, squeezing lime juice into my tequila soda. “She’s an extrovert to the nth degree. There’s no way she could resist being out with all these people.” And suddenly, I know exactly where she’d go. “We should go to the roulette tables.”

Finn raises an eyebrow at me. “Well, if we’re going to the tables, we might as well play a round… right?”

“I suppose it couldn’t hurt…”

So we lay down some cash for roulette chips. Holding the little striped disks in my palm gives me a surge of adrenaline, like I’m about to pull some fun feminist heist, Ocean’s 8–style. Finn’s right—while we’re looking for Sybil, there’s no reason we can’t participate in some of the fun too. I’ve never been to Vegas, and it seems like it’d be a crime to come all the way here and not get the full experience. One table looks particularly rowdy, so we squeeze in beside a middle-aged Black couple speaking French. I let the heavy plastic click against my palm.

“I’m putting these on eighteen,” I tell Finn. “Saturday’s date. The day of the wedding.” I slide one of my chips onto the table and tap it twice decisively, willing luck to be on my side.

“Wedding?” the woman beside me says with a French accent. “Congratulations! You have the glow of a couple in love!”

“Oh no,” I start to correct this woman, who clearly misunderstood my reference to Sybil’s wedding as a reference to my own. Well, mine and Finn’s. “We’re not—”

Finn places a hand on my shoulder. “Merci beaucoup. Elle est très belle, n’est-ce pas?”

“Oui, oui,” the woman says with a knowing smile.

Then Finn bends down to whisper in my ear. “What if we make our bet a little more interesting?” The crowd around the table is nearly three feet deep, so he’s wedged in behind me. I can feel his breath against the back of my neck, and my mind flashes to the massage table from my dream.

“How so?” I turn to face Finn as the rest of the table places their bets, and I have to crane my neck up to look at him.

“If you win, you can drive the Singer and keep my sweatshirt.”

“Who says I want your ratty old sweatshirt?” I say, but I blush as my forearm brushes against Finn’s chest. He’s leaning in even closer to me. “And if you win?” My words come out in a whisper.

“I haven’t decided yet.” He mimics my terms from earlier. “You’ll just have to wait and see. But I might have an idea or two…”

My spine tingles. I’m shocked to find that not knowing is actually kind of a turn-on. I feel both tantalized by the thrill of the unknown, and safe enough to trust that Finn wouldn’t actually demand anything too far outside my comfort zone. Maybe instead of trying to control everything, what I really need is to just let go. After all, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right?

The croupier spins the wheel and drops the ball in. The clack, clack, clack of the ball pulls me back to the present, and I twist back toward the table.

“Sybil and I used to play roulette in our apartment all the time,” I say over my shoulder. “It was our favorite pregame.”

“I’ve been to that apartment. It was what, seven hundred–ish feet?” Finn asks incredulously. “How did you wedge a roulette table in?”

For a moment, I can’t help the rush of memory—Finn visiting our tiny New York apartment. The way everything went down between us that night makes me flush with heat. But I recover quickly.

“It’s an inlaid midcentury Italian games table only about thirty inches on each side. The top opens up to a roulette wheel inside the table.” I pull up an old photo on Instagram of Sybil spinning the roulette wheel with one hand and balancing a martini glass in the other. The table is one of my favorite pieces of furniture with some of my best memories, but it’s been covered in piles of fabric samples and unfolded laundry for nearly a year. I twist around to show it to Finn, and our bodies are pressed together in a way that makes me hyperaware of where our hips meet.

His hand curls around mine as he brings the phone closer to his face. It throws my balance off slightly, but just as quickly, Finn’s hand is pressed to my back, steadying me. “If you were my interior designer, could you get me one of those?” Finn asks quietly. His eyes dip to my lips, and my tongue darts out nervously. His eyes darken, and the hand against my back presses me even more tightly against him.

“Yes.” The word comes out more breathlessly than I intend. “Mine came from an estate sale on the Upper East Side, but I’m sure I could source one for you.” I hesitate. “To be honest, you don’t need me. Any designer could get one for you.”

“But I don’t want any designer. I want you.” The sincerity in Finn’s tone sends a thrill down my spine, and I’m locked into the intensity of the way he’s looking at me. A cheer goes up around us, but I can’t pull my gaze away. My whole body is on fire, an asteroid burning through the atmosphere; all I want to do is crash into Finn Hughes, to get even closer to him than I am right now.

The dealer taps me on the shoulder. “Ma’am, you’ve won.”

“Félicitations!” The French woman next to me motions Finn and me together. “Such a beautiful couple. You must kiss to celebrate your victory!”

The cry of “Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!” is taken up by the rest of the table, and Finn leans toward me. My mind goes brain-dead. Finn Hughes is going to kiss me. I want you, he said. And I want him too. My mind instantly jumps back to the summer after freshman year of college, the first time I felt Finn’s lips on mine. It’s like I’m right back in Katie Dalton’s pool, only now, instead of our slick bodies pressing against the swimming pool’s cement walls, my back is pressed against the roulette table—but just like before, my front is pressed against Finn. My entire body lights up like it’s won the slot machine jackpot, pulsing at each point of connection between us.

“Not here.” Finn’s lips graze the edge of my ear, and his hand slips beneath the hem of the sweatshirt. His thumb drags along the bare skin of my back, and my heartbeat ratchets up another twenty beats per minute. Not here, but soon. I can hear his unspoken promise, and I haven’t felt this out of control with lust since—well, since the last time Finn and I kissed.

The moment is broken by the roulette dealer. “Ma’am. The casino would like to comp you tickets either for the Ibarra-Kuzmin fight or Scarlett Westwood’s World-Famous Burlesque Show.”

I blink twice to clear my head, and spin toward the croupier, just as Finn starts to say, “We’ll take the burlesque show.”

I elbow him. “Excuse me, I won this game. We’ll take the boxing tickets.” The dealer hands me two tickets, and I fan them out and wave them at Finn, who pouts at me like I’ve just spoiled his night.

“I hate boxing.”

“It’s not like we’re going to go anyway,” I remind him. “The match isn’t until eleven thirty. We’ll have Sybil and be on our way back to Malibu by then. Besides, why would you want to go to a burlesque show? I thought you didn’t care about women in lingerie.”

“Well, of course. I just appreciate the athleticism and the showmanship of these women. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh, I think I understand exactly.” I swat his arm, laughing, and he grabs my wrist, lightly pulling me in closer to him.

“Emma,” he begins. And suddenly I’m taken back to the many times we’ve ended up like this before—face-to-face, uncertainty hovering between us.

“Yeah?” I ask quietly.

“Is that your phone ringing?”

Shit. He’s right. I reach for it, expecting it to be Liz telling me she missed the networking event, but anxiety and hope spike through me in equal measure when I see it’s Nikki. It’s either about #burritogate, or…

“Hey! Everything okay over there?” I ask, trying to keep my voice neutral despite the fact that I’m surrounded by an Elvis-themed mariachi band.

It’s so loud in here I have to make her repeat herself after she says something scrambled into the phone. “What?” I scream back.

“Jamie knows,” Nikki hisses into the phone. “And he’s coming to Vegas.”