Chapter Nineteen
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Gem
I spent Sunday moping around The Lost World, wishing I wasn’t at work. I could have called Jay and told him something had come up, but that felt shitty considering everything he’d done for me. Plus, I didn’t really have a reason beyond wanting to spend time with Finn.
He’d insisted I stay the night because by the time we’d finished the fish and chips and watched Encanto with Kelsey, I’d had another glass of wine. Once Kelsey had crashed and Finn and Chantelle had had a whispered argument, that Finn lost, about who would take which room—Finn trying to insist they take his bed and Chantelle saying they’d be perfectly fine on the sofa bed in his office—the idea of driving home had really lost its appeal. Maybe Finn had been able to see it on my face, or maybe he’d wanted me there, but when he’d offered, I immediately said yes.
The three of us had stayed up late with Chantelle and Finn sharing old stories but never making me feel like a third wheel. I could see what Chantelle meant when she said she and Finn would have made the best and worst couple in the world, and a huge chunk of me was pleased it had never worked out between them.
When Chantelle had gone to bed, Finn had pulled me into his room, and we’d ended up snuggled up together in the middle of his bed. It had been one of the warm, soft relationship moments I hadn’t experienced in a long time, and I’d wanted to cling to it for as long as possible. Finn had drifted off quickly, but I’d lain there for hours holding him close to me and watching him sleep.
We’d been woken up at seven by Kelsey knocking on the door and asking very sweetly if she could come in. Finn had thrown me a pair of his jogging bottoms, which had just about fit, before saying yes, and Kelsey had ended up sitting between us explaining that Chantelle was still sleeping. It had been cute she’d let her mum sleep, even if it had been at our expense, so we’d sat there reading books on Finn’s tablet while Kelsey clutched her seal toy and snuggled into me. Apparently my years of role-play games had equipped me with a good variety of voices for stories, and eventually I’d ended up regaling Kelsey with overdramatised and highly censored versions of various games we’d played.
Her favourite had been a recreation of the time our characters had faced off against two evil sorcerers who’d been kidnapping people and had to fight them in a magical house. I’d given the story a magical, fairy-tale feel, and Kelsey had been enraptured as I talked about two of our female characters saving the day with their magic and freeing all the people. I’d even worked in a kiss between the heroines, one of whom was actually a princess.
Kelsey had been thrilled, and when Chantelle emerged from the other room, Kelsey had jumped out of bed to tell her a slightly warped version of the story. It had been adorable, and by that point, my desire to go to work was at an all-time low. But I’d still heaved myself out of bed and helped Finn make breakfast. They were off for lunch with his family, who had insisted on seeing Chantelle again, and I almost wished I could go with them, even if I was ninety-nine percent convinced his family would come to the same conclusion Chantelle had about our relationship.
I hadn’t been able to get it off my mind as I’d driven to Lincoln, making a quick stop at my flat for some clean clothes.
Did Finn and I really act like we were already in a relationship? And what did that mean for our friendship?
“Earth to Gem! Come in Gem.” I looked up to see Jay waving his hand in front of my face, the smile on his lips not completely hiding the worry in his eyes. “There you are. You okay?”
“Yeah, sorry.” I shook my head and looked around the shop, glad it was quiet and I hadn’t just been ignoring a customer. Luckily for me, it had been pissing it down all day, and not many people wanted to venture outside. “Just, er, thinking about something.”
“The game shop?” Jay asked, putting a stack of books on the counter. Several of them had slips of paper sticking out the top, and I guessed Jay was making a start on the weekend’s online orders. “Anything I can help with?”
“No, it’s not that. For once.” I could have lied and made up some bullshit reason to cover my moping, but I was too distracted to even consider it. Jay frowned.
“Everything okay at home? With your family?”
“They’re fine. At least I think so.” Although that did remind me I needed to message them and check in. It had been a while. “No, it’s… Well…” I sighed. “Can I be honest with you?”
“Sure.”
“Can it be under a cone of silence?”
“Of course,” Jay said, looking more worried than ever.
I rubbed my hand through my scruffy stubble, trying to decide where to start. “I think I’m falling in love with Finn,” I said. “And I have no fucking clue what to do about it.”
Jay stared at me, his smile turning sarcastic. “Was this supposed to be a surprise?”
“It’s a surprise to me! How does everyone else already know?”
“Everyone?”
“Well, Finn’s friend Chantelle. She thinks it’s really bleeding obvious.”
“I kinda have to agree,” Jay said. “But I’m on the outside looking in, and I know you at least a little. Sometimes I think it’s harder when you’re the one it’s happening to. You don’t really get the external perspective, and there’s more internal stuff to work through.”
“Yeah, I guess.” That didn’t make me feel any better. If anything, it made me think I should have noticed by now.
“Also, you were with Jesse last year, and even though he was a…” Jay reached around for a word. “A person…”
“You can say dickhead,” I said dryly.
Jay snorted. “Okay, a dickhead, you’re a pretty committed person, so it’s not a surprise you didn’t really notice it until recently, even if it was there before.” Jay shifted some of the books around, and I noticed him playing with his lip ring, which was what he often did when he was thinking. “What changed?”
We started having sex .
Was that it though? I wasn’t sure it was. The sex had helped, but I think it had started before that. I just couldn’t put my finger on when. The past couple of months had all blurred together, and separating everything out would be like sorting grains of sand.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s all… soupy.” I sighed and rubbed my stubble again. It really needed tidying up if I was going to keep it, otherwise I was going to look like some sort of wild man. “Maybe it’s because he’s always been there. I know we haven’t known each other for long, but if I need anything, Finn is always there. And when I started talking about the shop, Finn just supported me and helped make it real. He didn’t think anything of giving up all his free time to help me. He just did it.” I smiled as various memories from the past few weeks floated into view like some overdramatic film montage. “Like last week, he came up and brought me a takeaway because he knew I’d be there late. And he helped me with all the painting and building shit, even though it’s very obvious I shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near IKEA instructions.”
“You and me both,” Jay said with a soft laugh. “Edward built most of mine.”
“He told me.”
“He tells everyone. He’s never going to let me forget it.”
“I don’t think Finn’s that bad,” I said. “He’d probably just tell everyone he gave me a hand, even though he was the one who built most of them. Probably would have helped if I’d looked at the instructions properly from the start.”
“I’m just clumsy. I don’t think Edward trusted me not to nail or screw myself to them.” He pursed his lips. “I mean, I only dropped a few bits on my toe. It wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t like I broke anything.”
“The way Edward tells it, you were two seconds away from destroying everything, including yourself.”
Jay scoffed. “He would.” He looked at me studiously. “You know, when you talk about Finn, you sound happy. Unstressed. And I don’t think it matters how long you’ve known someone. There’s no mandatory waiting period. Feelings change. It happens all the time. Look at… look at Edward and Izzy. They were convinced they hated each other for years, now they’re sickeningly in love.”
“Yeah, but they were fucking in secret for most of that,” I said. That story had always made me laugh because I’d never understood how someone could be so unaware of their own feelings. Now, I was starting to realise how easy it was.
“True, but they still thought they were enemies,” Jay said. “My point is, it’s okay if your feelings for Finn have changed and you’re starting to want something different. You’re allowed to want that, and you deserve to be happy. You and Finn are good together, and I can’t imagine him feeling differently about you. I’ve seen you together.” Jay grinned at me slyly. “Besides, how often does being fuck buddies with your best friend lead to zero feelings developing?”
I stared at him, my mouth hanging open in shock. “How did you know?”
“That you’re doing the dirty?” Jay shrugged. “Lucky guess. Well, that, and it’s really obvious. I mean, you’re practically moping around here like some lovesick teenager, and when he stopped by last week, the looks you were giving him were a combination of sickening puppy love and wanting to jump him in the middle of the shop.”
“When did you get so good at reading people?” I asked. “You’ve always been shit at it before.”
“Have not!”
“Yeah, you have. Edward said you had no clue about him and Izzy until he told you, and you thought he was making Jason up until you met him.”
“Yeah, but come on,” Jay protested. “How the fuck was I supposed to know he was telling the truth. He’s Jason Lu. I had a crush on him for years and then suddenly he’s dating Edward’s PA? How does that sound remotely realistic?”
Jay had a point there, and I hadn’t really believed it either when he’d first told me Lewis’s boyfriend was the sexy as fuck demon prince from Celestials , but I wasn’t going to tell him that. There was something I was missing because there was no way Jay had figured it out on his own. I loved him, but observant he was not. Then I realised what the missing piece was.
“Edward told you, didn’t he?”
Jay sighed and rolled his eyes. “Fine, he did. He came up to me when you and Finn were talking last week and said—and I quote—‘If those two aren’t fucking, I’ll eat my hat’ and then he mentioned something about me giving him twenty quid if he was right.”
“I guess you owe him twenty quid, then,” I said, trying not to be annoyed that I’d been so obvious with Finn or that Edward had figured it out so easily. “Just, er, don’t tell Finn you know. And don’t let Edward tell him either. He’d be really upset if you knew. He’s private for a reason.”
“I promise. And I won’t even tell Edward he was right, and not just because I don’t want to give him money.”
“Cheers. I appreciate it.” I also didn’t want Finn knowing that everyone knew until I’d had a chance to talk to him, whenever that might be. It probably needed to be sooner rather than later, but I didn’t know how to even start that conversation. Telling him I loved him right off the bat wasn’t going to work, and telling him while we were fucking felt like it would cheapen the moment. I didn’t want Finn to think I was falling for him because of the sex, even if that was amazing as fuck. I wanted him to know I was falling for him because he was so goddamn amazing I couldn’t imagine myself with anyone else.
I had the words. I just had to figure out how to use them.