Chapter 20
CHAPTER 20
H OW LONG DID YOU DATE HER?” I ASK WHEN WE’RE in our beds. I switched to water after my completely unhinged effort at PDA. My body is exhausted from the marathon day, but my mind is on high alert.
“On and off for three years.”
“That’s a long time,” I say.
“It wasn’t very serious. Not until she saw how great I’d look in miniature on top of a wedding cake. It was a good time for me to go and try to see myself someplace else, where I wasn’t part of the pack, you know?”
“I don’t know, actually.”
“I just mean my family. We all look alike, and when we were little, my mom even dressed us alike. We were lumped together, the Finnegan brothers, but I was the one who was different. People always asked me what was wrong, why I wasn’t roller-skating in a toga in the talent show, doing keg stands on a Fourth of July float. I grew up feeling like everyone was trying to fix me. I didn’t understand why, because I didn’t feel broken. I knew I had to leave. I was afraid that the thing that made me different—the thing my dad thinks is a little off— I was afraid I was going to lose it.”
I turn to look at him, and he’s turned back to stare at the bunk bed above him. I wonder if he’s scribbled “please, please, please” up there.
He turns his head to me. “It’s like when you finally light a match on the beach and you have to cup it with your hands so it won’t blow out. I was getting a sense of myself and wanted to keep it.”
I can feel this. I think back to the light I saw in myself at fourteen and how quickly it died. “But how did you know? How did you know that the thing that makes you different was a good thing? It would have been easier to sort of blend in. Stay.”
“Easier, but kind of awful.” His eyes are serious. “Even when I was little, I knew that the thing that was inside me, that made me myself, was worth protecting. Aidan knew it too, which really helped. And honestly, Jane, it’s all I have, besides a beat-up car with two hundred thousand miles on it. I have a point of view. I follow my instincts around because I know they’ll lead me to something worthwhile. It’s probably what you hated about me, that I don’t want to just do the easy thing. I know people say it all the time, but I actually follow my heart.”
The moment hangs between us. My heart is treacherous and historically wrong about everything, it is the weakest muscle in my body, but Dan and his family and our script are conspiring to whisper it back to life like it’s an ember worth restoking.
“So when Brooke lumped me together as the exact same person as Aidan, I realized even she had no idea who I was. Like I was just another Finnegan brother, interchangeable.”
His arm is outside his covers and the sleeve of his T-shirt is riding up just a bit so that I can see the light hit the top of whatever muscle that is. “I’m sure she didn’t think you were interchangeable.”
“She actually did. As soon as I left she tried to date Connor.”
“Seriously?” I ask.
“No joke. She didn’t love me, she just loved the idea of me.”
“Gross, and tonight she was asking about Brian,” I say. “That sucks.”
“Yeah, she married and divorced the guy who owns the Subaru dealership in Montauk, so she’s in the market for a replacement. Any Finnegan will do, I guess. And it was fine because I didn’t love her, but it sort of proved me right. I left for LA right after. I needed to get away, you know?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry about Star Crossed ,” he says and turns his head toward me.
“You’re about to take it back.”
“I was, yes.” He laughs. “I hated it. But part of why I hated it was that it gave me that feeling. They’re attracted to each other and become a couple, but for no reason. They just sort of like the idea of each other, they see each other in broad strokes. And I think I hate broad strokes. Broad strokes and generalities remind me of when I was a kid and I was worried I’d disappear.” He turns onto his back. I watch him in the dark, his arm flung up over his head. It’s my turn to say something, but I don’t. I’m not going to tell him why it feels so safe to play a role.
He closes his eyes and I guess that’s it. We’ve been talking for the entire day, but I want to hear more.
“I was going to take you to Shanty’s,” he says from the darkness. “That Friday night we never went out. Have you ever been?”
“No.”
“Me neither, but it’s in the marina and I’ve driven by it. Always thought it would be cool to take a first date there. I wasn’t totally sure about it, but then Aidan said to just risk it, and if you hated it, it could be something we’d laugh about later when we were a couple. Like the food poisoning you got on our first date or whatever.”
He told his brother about me.
“That is seriously romantic.” My eyes are closed, and I am picturing the two of us on a couch I don’t own laughing about a disastrous but memorable date. He remembers what it felt like to hold my hair while I threw up at the gas station on the way home. I remember the way he wet a paper towel for the back of my neck. I have the strangest feeling that I would have acted entirely different on a date with Dan. I say to the ceiling, “I was going to wear jeans and my blue-and- white cotton blouse. It’s a confident sort of blouse, and it hits at the right length so you don’t have to worry about tucking it in.” I can feel him looking at me, daring me to go on. I feel like we’re playing a game, so I do. “I hate being on a date in a fix-it outfit, where you’re adjusting your bra straps or pulling your top down so your stomach isn’t showing. I usually wear a dress for this reason, but with you, I was going to wear jeans and a blouse. It felt cooler.”
“I’m honored. That I was considered for the alternate outfit.” I turn to him and he smiles at me in the dark. His mouth is in shadow now, but I can see it in his eyes. He turns back to the ceiling and I keep watching him. “I hadn’t thought about what I was going to wear, but I was going to clean out my car. I actually walked into that meeting with Nathan stressed out because I thought I was going to run out of time and then you’d see that I was driving around in a big gym locker.”
I laugh. “I don’t love a dirty car, your instincts were good.”
He turns back to me. “Thanks for tonight. And for hyping my movie to the haters.”
I laugh. “That part wasn’t even acting. Nathan’s obsessed with Grapevine .”
“And the rest of it?” he asks. His gaze is heavy on me, and I feel something change; it’s the molecular composition of the air, thinner somehow. He’s vulnerable asking this question.
“The rest of it?” I ask. The feeling of my mouth on his and the smell of the salt air on his skin return to me in force. I went way out of my comfort zone tonight, but I don’t think anyone in the world would regret a kiss like that. He reaches out for my hand across the small space between us, and I take it. He has strong hands, and the little squeeze of his palm against mine moves directly to my stomach. I should say something now to affirm that the rest of it is a thing that I want. But I can’t say it. I’ve already extended myself too far tonight, and I’m terrified of going any further.
“So tomorrow? We look for Jack at the beach?” I say. It has nothing to do with what’s happening here between us. But I say it because the alternative is telling him how I feel. The alternative is climbing into his bed and risking my heart.
Dan’s expression changes, like shutters pulling closed. “Okay, yeah,” he says and lets go of my hand.
“Good night,” I say and roll over toward the wall.