Chapter 20 #2
Yet, it had also felt good. And weirdly … right. ‘Comfort. Yes,’ Sweeney agreed. ‘Of course,’ she cautioned out loud for her benefit as much as his, ‘it can’t happen again.’
His knuckles tightened around the steering wheel as he shot her a quick, startled glance. ‘Absolutely not.’
Sweeney tried not to be offended by the look of alarm on his face or his swift agreement, as though repeating the experience had never crossed his mind. She knew she couldn’t have this both ways, but still, it rankled. ‘I mean, don’t get me wrong, it was a good kiss.’
She’d had her fair share of first kisses in her life but that had been, by far, the best. Not that it was their first. But it definitely needed to be their last.
One and done.
Fin’s shoulders sagged a little and he let out what sounded like a sigh of relief. ‘Yeah,’ he conceded, his gaze trained on the road. ‘It was very good.’
Betcha ass it was! But …
‘But it’d blur the lines too much,’ Sweeney murmured. ‘Between our mothers’ fantasy and the real world.’
He sighed again. ‘I know.’
‘We would run the risk of … catching feelings, or something equally catastrophic, and we can’t do that, Fin.’
‘I know, Sweeney.’ He bugged his eyes at her before he turned back to concentrate on the road. ‘I get it. What happens at the lake stays at the lake. Just who are you trying to convince—me, or you?’
Sweeney ignored him, suddenly desperate to get this off her chest. To speak it out loud so she knew they were on the same page.
‘I just … with me travelling all the time, everything in my life is pretty much temporary—jobs, places, guys—except for you. Apart from my mother, you’ve been my one constant for thirty-plus years and, even though we don’t keep in super regular contact, it means a lot to know that I can message or call you and you’ll answer. ’
And if it got weird between them, maybe he wouldn’t anymore …
‘Yeah.’ He nodded. ‘Same.’
‘And then there’s the long-standing friendship between our mothers.
If we were to keep fooling around like this and decide we—what?
Like it?—then what happens when I have to leave and we both go our separate ways again?
Fake breaking up is fine, real breaking up could be messy for everyone involved, especially our mothers, because you know they’ll take sides even if there aren’t any to take, and their relationship could be really damaged. ’
‘Agreed.’
Sweeney half turned in her seat, her hand sliding to the cushioned rest in the centre console as she studied his whiskery profile.
Her heart filled with a rush of affection.
He was so familiar and dear to her, they couldn’t let a stupid, heat-of-the-moment kiss ruin their lifetime relationship by recklessly ignoring the danger.
‘You’re my friend, Fin,’ she murmured. ‘My best friend. I’ve spent most of my adult life in relationships with guys I can love and leave and not look back. You’re not that guy. In fact, you’re the one guy I can’t love and leave.’
‘Sweeney.’ His hand found hers on the console and gave it a squeeze. ‘It’s okay. I am one hundred per cent on board with everything you’re saying. I value what we have far too much to screw it up because of a kiss. No matter how good it was.’
He shot her an eyebrow waggle and she laughed, the release of tension welcome.
‘And besides,’ he said as his hand returned to the wheel, ‘my father would kick my ass if he knew about it. He loved you like the daughter he never had and he would not approve of me doing anything that might screw things up between us or between our mothers. And that little bit of wisdom seems particularly pertinent today.’
Sweeney nodded. The ghost of Michael Murphy had felt very close this afternoon. ‘So, that’s it then,’ she said, much relieved that he was on the same page. ‘Friends only.’
Shooting her a sideways look, he smiled. ‘Friends forever.’
And, hell, if Sweeney didn’t like the sound of that. She held out her crooked little finger. ‘Pinkie swear.’
Removing his hand from the wheel, Fin also crooked his and, glancing briefly her way, looped their fingers together. The sizzle from his touch was instantaneous, as if her skin remembered how he’d felt pressed against her, even if her brain was determined to forget.
‘Pinkie swear,’ he muttered, his eyes back on the road.
It was the briefest of holds, then they were separating and Sweeney turned back to the window, watching the headlights pick out trunks of trees in the darkened bush as they rushed past. They’d be back in Ballyshannon soon and the lake would feel like a distant memory.
Or an alternate universe, anyway.
One where they’d briefly forgotten they were fake engaged and childhood friends and succumbed to a very strange moment, the muscle memory of which still sizzled beneath her skin. Just as a faint trace of him lingered on her tongue. And his deep, guttural groans still echoed through her brain …
*
Any hope that Sweeney and Fin could move on from the incident at the lake died a nasty death the next morning, when they arrived at Connie’s house for pre-church Sunday pancakes.
Sweeney hadn’t slept well and Fin didn’t look like he had either.
Had he replayed their little tete-a-tete on the beach over and over, too?
Or maybe it had been the letter from his father that had clearly kept him up as he yawned his way through their morning coffees, which had only been slightly awkward. But they’d gone through the motions of everything being normal and it soon felt that way.
Their mothers, however, were definitely up to something, grinning at them both, practically bouncing on their toes in excitement. Sweeney side eyed Fin, who was frowning slightly.
‘Okay.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘What’s going on?’
They both managed to look a picture of innocence as Ronnie said, ‘Anything you two care to share?’
Uh oh … Sweeney suddenly got a very bad feeling. She exchanged a look with Fin. They couldn’t possibly know about last night, right?
‘No.’ His frown deepened.
‘Are you sure about that, Finley?’ Connie asked, her voice a little sing-songy, as though she had a delicious secret she was dying to spill.
He folded his arms. ‘Yes.’
‘Not according to the WhatsApp group,’ she replied.
Ronnie produced her phone, already displaying a paused video on the screen. It was them. On the beach. Someone had filmed them and put it in the chat.
Ugh! This freaking town.
Accepting the phone, Sweeney hesitated, not wanting to watch it because it had already played on a loop in her head all damn night. But it’d been dark—maybe they had plausible deniability?
Pressing play, Sweeney was cheered by the initial grainy, unfocused footage, and so was Fin if his long, relieved exhale was anything to go by.
Plausible deniability.
But that soon corrected, coming into sharp focus. Not yet fully dark and with an obviously superior phone camera, it was apparent from the get-go that the couple kissing for Australia and Ireland were her and Fin.
Well … shit. So much for what happens at the lake stays at the lake …
It was also apparent that it had been filmed from the water.
From the jetty, to be precise. Which meant that at some stage the teenagers—one of whom must have been a Murphy for the video to be in this chat—had looked up from their snog-fest, realised they had Feeney in their presence and started recording.
Dandy. Just dandy.
There was no point watching the rest of the video, and yet Sweeney couldn’t drag her eyes off the screen. Nor Fin either, apparently. There was something compelling about the passion between them even at a distance. It looked very, very real.
Nothing fake about it.
It had certainly felt that way—intensely so—her world narrowing down to just his mouth, his intoxicating aroma and the solid weight of his leg at the juncture of her thighs. Thoughts of him being her friend subsumed by the reality of him being a man.
But it looked it too. They were, clearly, completely into each other.
No wonder their mothers were looking at them, twin thought bubbles above their heads, one containing a wedding carriage, the other a baby carriage.
That expression of hope on their faces? That was why she and Fin had to keep things strictly as friends. Especially now.
‘There’s pictures of you both, too,’ her mother said.
Sweeney glanced up, alarmed, remembering her flash job, but then she realised that her mother wouldn’t be standing here all excited if there was a half-naked picture of her daughter in the Murphy family chat.
She’d probably be giving a lecture about public decorum.
Closing the video down, she navigated to the pictures, relieved to see it was only a few snaps of them racing along the beach. The message read: #Feeneysighting at the lake last night. These two should seriously get a room.
The messages that followed were colourful but gleeful.
Fin cleared his throat as he handed the phone back to his mother. ‘It’s not what it looks like.’
‘Oh, really?’ She quirked an eyebrow.
Rhonda quirked an eyebrow better than anyone Sweeney knew. One little raise that could silently compel an over-exuberant child to hush at the library or shame teenagers making out in the shelves to show some decorum.
Fin had once called it his mother’s eyebrow of doom.
It was clearly working this time as he glanced at Sweeney for support. Like that eyebrow didn’t terrify her as well. ‘It was for show,’ she blurted.
A nerve just under Fin’s eye started to twitch. ‘Right,’ he said, nodding vigorously to make up for the lack of conviction in his response.
‘We knew we were being filmed so we figured we might as well give them a show.’
‘Right,’ Fin repeated, sounding more confident now. ‘It was just an act. That’s all. Like the mistletoe kiss.’
Except, as he had been at great pains to explain last night, the mistletoe kiss had been an exercise in chaste. Not the hot, wild beast that had roared to life between them last night.