Chapter Twenty-Six
Twenty-Six
I find Cecily on one of the couches, sipping on a soda. At my approach, she straightens, asks, “Ready?”
I nod, about to apologize for making her leave, but she’s already on her feet. I follow her to the front door and out, where a few partygoers are drinking and chatting on the porch.
“—said they still haven’t found a trace of her. But I heard the Halsteads hired this fancy private investigator—” says one of them.
“Another one?” asks the girl to his right.
“God, for once, can we talk about anything else?” the boy on her other side remarks.
Their conversation stalls as we slip around them. Someone tells Cecily goodbye, and she smiles politely, but it doesn’t reach her eyes.
Her relief at leaving is palpable. Social battery emptied out like mine.
“How was it?” she asks when we’re in the car, the engine rumbling to life.
“Good. Fine. Parties aren’t really my thing, but it was nice to see Nora,” I say. I grip the ceiling handle, and Cecily darts a glance at my hand.
“I promise, I’m good to drive. All Sprite all night.”
“Oh, it’s not—you’re fine. Cars make me nervous.”
“Right. Because of—” Cecily stops. “Right.” She clears her throat, and a few seconds of awkward silence thicken the air in the car.
“I saw you with Danica,” Cecily says, a teasing smile on her lips.
Heat climbs across my skin.
“We were just dancing,” I say, unsure why I’m defending myself. There’s nothing judgmental in Cecily’s tone, and it’s not like I did anything wrong. Crossed any boundaries.
It feels like I did, though. Because I wanted to be dancing with someone else. Even if Danica was pretty and nice and had a great laugh. It was the wrong laugh.
“Do you have somebody back home?” she asks. “Like, from before you moved, I mean. Or someone else here?”
“No,” I say firmly. “Nobody.”
Cecily drops the subject, thankfully, and instead turns up the radio.
She pulls into her driveway a few minutes later, and I thank her for the ride. She waits until I’ve hit the end of her driveway before she turns and heads into her house.
As expected, my house is asleep when I amble onto the overgrown front lawn.
Each window is dark, but the dim porch light remains on, like a lighthouse guiding sailors to shore.
It’s been on as long as I can remember, even when I visited as a kid.
If the porch light has an off switch, I still haven’t found it.
And sitting on the first wooden step, head tipped back, is Finn.
The alcohol buzzing in my veins shifts into a melody. Adrenaline sings under my skin.
In the daylight, Finn is dangerous, and I keep behind a pane of glass. Admittedly, that pane of glass gets a little thinner every day, but right now, it’s nowhere to be found.
My boots scuff the sidewalk as I step onto it, and I hiccup as I stumble.
Finn’s chin snaps down. A lopsided smile spreads across his lips, more dazzling than any of the stars wheeling above our heads.
“Waiting up for me?” I ask. “Gotta say, I’m flattered.”
“Can’t a guy stargaze in peace?”
I snort. “Admit it. You missed me.”
“Fine. You got me. I’m lost without you, Jo.” He holds his hands up in surrender, then pats the step next to him expectantly. Finn doesn’t comment as I stumble a bit on my way across the lawn. I drop down beside him, and after a beat, he adds, “How was it? Fun?”
“It was good.”
“Come on. You can do better than that.”
I frown at him. “You actually want to know?”
His frown mirrors mine. “Why wouldn’t I?”
Because when people ask how you are, they don’t really want to know. Because humans are experts at skirting around each other’s ugly feelings or thoughts.
I shrug.
“Do people in your life make a habit of asking questions they don’t want the answers to?” Finn asks.
“You’d be surprised.”
He presses his lips thin. “Yeah, that’s one thing about all this”—he gestures to the space around us, and I’m not sure if he means this town or life itself—“that I don’t miss. The bullshit goes away when it ends.”
I crane my head to look at him and point a finger an inch from his chest. “Not all of it,” I say.
He looks away, having the decency to be embarrassed. “So you’re even more antagonistic when you’re drunk. Noted,” he says, pushing to his feet. He holds out his hand, as if instinctively, and I reach out to take it, following the same impulse.
“I am not antagonistic,” I protest. I take my hand back and push unsteadily to my feet, catching my balance on one of the posts at the top of the steps.
“Whoa, whoa,” Finn says, jumping up on the porch. “If you go down, it’s on you.” He lifts his hands. “Nothing to catch you with.”
“So much for sweeping me off my feet,” I say, and clamp my hand over my mouth, eyes widening.
One side of his mouth twitches up. “Wish I could, sweetheart.” His tone is teasing, but the sentiment rings true.
The alcohol coils around my thoughts and holds those four words in place.
Finn clears his throat and jerks his chin at the door. “Now get a move on. I can’t shove a glass of water in your hand, but I can harass you until you drink one.”
I head for the door, taking care to avoid the creaky parts of the porch. I make it in the door and to the kitchen without too much sound. I pull two bottled waters from the fridge and head up the stairs, gripping the banister for dear life.
Once I’ve pulled the door shut behind me, I leap for the bed, collapsing face-first on the mattress with my arms spread. The lamp on the nightstand clicks on.
“Water,” Finn says.
I roll onto my back, the world spinning momentarily. I wait for it to stop and sit up, pouting at him.
I raise the first bottle and polish half of it off. I put the cap back on and give it a shake in Finn’s direction before setting it on the nightstand.
“You’ll thank me in the morning,” he says. He wanders over to the armoire.
He steels himself, reaches for the first drawer, and fails to catch the knob.
He tries again, and this time pulls the drawer out halfway.
Another try and he has it all the way. It takes more effort than usual.
Only now that I’m noticing do I realize how much harder it’s been for him the past few weeks.
As if his hold on this plane is slipping.
The longest anyone’s lasted is three years. And I passed that a week ago, he told me.
He plucks the first T-shirt he sees and tosses it my way.
Another few seconds of concentration and he sends a pair of sweats my direction. I understand what he’s doing.
I don’t think anyone has ever tried this hard to take care of me.
“Thanks,” I say, cheeks flaming. I slip off the bed and reach for the waistband of my jeans.
I shrug out of sticky clothes—sweat or alcohol, probably both—and into the ones Finn pulled out for me.
For a second, I hold them in my hands. I’m reminded of being a kid and thinking drinking out of the same cup as someone was the same as kissing them.
Holding the same cloth he did is as close as I can get to touching him.
I tug my comforter back and hop into bed. Only when I’m settled on my side, covers pulled against my chest, do I realize Finn is still standing in the center of the room. Like a life raft bobbing in the ocean. He clears his throat and averts his gaze.
“Get some sleep. Make sure you finish that water bottle before you crash,” he says, nodding to the half-full bottle on the nightstand.
“Thank you, Finn,” I say, and want to say more, but the alcohol still has a grip on my tongue, and I don’t trust myself to keep talking. I’ve already dug myself deep enough into this hole.
“Good night, Jo,” he says, and heads for the door.
Before he gets halfway, I jerk up, suddenly frantic. “Wait.”
Finn halts, turning to face me.
Before he can even ask, I say, “Stay.” My throat is so dry, it makes it hard to speak. “Please. Until I fall asleep.”
He frowns. Then, slowly, he makes his way over to the bed. I shut off the lamp and scooch out of the middle of the bed. He lies down beside me, his face aimed at mine, careful not to get close, as if he, too, is trying not to shatter the illusion of a world where his skin might meet mine.
“I wish you could have been there,” I say softly.
It’s too dark to tell, but I’d bet money he’s blushing. I know I am.
“I wish…”
“You wish…?”
His expression turns serious in a way that sends my pulse into a frenzy.
“I wish a lot of things,” he says. He shifts his head closer, close enough I’d feel his breath if he had any.
“I think about opening car doors for you and keeping you out too late.” He reaches a hand out, thumb ghosting over the dark strands of my hair splayed across the pillow.
“Tonight, I thought about dancing with you at that party.”
“I don’t dance,” I whisper.
“Oh, I’d get you to dance with me.”
“Just for you, then,” I say.
Something in my chest gives a tug, and I reach my hand out, letting it pass through his. I imagine it isn’t fabric under my fingers, but skin.
I want to feel him. I want to feel the calluses on his fingers from years of guitar.
I want to run my hands through his curls.
I want to press myself against his chest, feel the warmth of his skin, the thrum of his heartbeat, and stay as long as he’d let me.
All the thoughts I don’t allow myself to fall into during the day swirl around in my skull like pinballs.
How the melody of my life might change with him added to this next verse.
All the normal things I’d feel and wonder if Finn were alive and I weren’t afraid.
I can’t do any of those things, and I shouldn’t want to. I’ve worked incredibly hard not to.
But I do.
“I wish I’d met you when you were real, Finn.”
Finn’s eyes fall shut, long, dark lashes kissing his cheeks the way I wish I could. “Me too,” he says. His eyes flutter open.
He shifts closer, and my heart teeters on a blade’s edge as he leans in and ghosts his lips over my cheek. Not even the wind moves with him, and the hopeless part of me that always prays for the touch to land fractures once more when it doesn’t.
Unthinking, I bring two fingers to rest on the spot his mouth would have touched. He smiles and lifts two of his own fingers to his lips.
The ache in my chest and the curl of my stomach wage war on my insides.
We will never be more than this.