Chapter 6 #2
“Don’t say it.” I stalk in the other direction. The last thing I need to hear is that I’ve forgotten what the word “fun” even means.
* * *
By eleven, the party's dead. Finn and I walk back to 6042 through hallways that hum like the inside of a refrigerator. I tried to escape without him noticing, but no dice.
Neither of us talks in the elevator. In the cabin, we orbit each other.
I change in the bathroom. He changes while I'm in there.
I come out in the tank top and inside-out sweats.
He's sitting against his headboard in those unholy boxer briefs with his reading light on, and it's all so weirdly domestic that my chest aches.
This is Dahlia’s life. Coming home to someone who feels comfortable. A witness to her life. All I have is the stray cat that sometimes stops by on my porch.
I get in my bed and pick up my book, but before I can open it, Finn says, “I don’t have a problem with Dahlia marrying Theo.”
I perk up. Okay, so not deflecting.
Finn sets his phone down. “I have a problem with the timing.”
“The timing? They've been together for four years.”
“That's not the kind of timing I mean.”
I wait. He doesn't elaborate. He laces his fingers behind his head and studies the ceiling.
Finally, he continues, “You've seen the numbers on this wedding closer than anyone. Nothing about the last few months strikes you as . . . off?” He sets that word down like he's walking on a finished floor in work boots.
I frown. “Off how? Like with the budget?”
He waits.
I think back through the planning sessions I had with Dahlia. There wasn’t any hesitation there. They’d been saving up for years, and Mom was pitching in a little. But . . . “I guess it was a little strange that they suddenly started worrying about everything a week before. Like—”
“With the cabins,” Finn finishes.
Yes. Exactly what I was thinking. He and I were only sitting here because Mom and Dahlia were suddenly tightening the purse strings. “Wait, did Theo lose his job or something?” Dahlia would’ve told me about something that serious, wouldn’t she?
“No.” Finn adjusts on the bed, and I work to keep my eyes above his midpoint.
“Then what?”
He shakes his head. “Nothing. Never mind.”
I scoff. “Seriously? You’re going to tell me there’s this big issue, and—”
“I didn’t say—”
“Yeah, I’m aware.” I slump back onto the bed and pick up my book.
This doesn’t even matter. If he has some issue with Theo and Dahlia’s timing, it’s a moot point.
Yet, with the images of him chatting away with Marisol and Sadie all night, I can’t quite let it go.
“You have no problem talking to everyone else, but when it comes to me?” I shake my head.
“What?”
I give him a look. “Nothing. Never mind.”
His jaw tightens. “What did I do to make you hate me?”
“I don’t hate you.”
“It’s like I’m trying to talk to a pissed-off badger.”
I bark a laugh. “Yep, bring on more animal comparisons.”
He sits straight, leaning forward on his hands so his triceps pop. “What. The. Hell, Harper?”
I don’t know if it’s the alcohol from the party or the emotional overload from that stupid slideshow or my mom and Finn throwing shade on this wedding that they, of all people, should be championing, but the floodgates burst.
“You named me after a cartoon platypus! I was thirteen with a unibrow—”
“You didn’t have a unibrow!”
“Only because Dahlia waxed it for me! I had a retainer that pushed out my lips, and the boy every girl on the block was in love with looked at me one day and compared me to a bright blue, frumpy, duck-billed animal that somehow feeds its young without nipples.
And it stuck for years, Finn. Dahlia used it, Theo, and my parents—ugh!
And every single time I hear it, for one second, I'm thirteen again and ugly and—” I stop short, my eyes burning. I'm breathing like I ran here.
Finn stares at me, his eyes dark. “That's what you think it was? A punchline?”
“That’s what it always is with you, isn’t it? I’m a big joke? And now I can’t even be that since I’m not fun anymore.” I curl my shoulders and stare at the blurring page of my book.
I’m not sure how much time passes with me trying to swallow the lump in my throat before Finn says, “No.”
I can’t look at him. As an act of mercy, he turns off his lamp. When he speaks, the darkness takes his voice and sends it straight through my chest.
“If that nickname bothered you that much, maybe at some point in the last fifteen years, you should’ve asked why I gave it to you.”
I sit there in the half-dark with my heart slamming, tears threatening to spill out onto my cheeks.
I hate that I’m sharing a room with Finn, but not because I hate him.
I hate that seeing him brings up all of my worst memories.
I hate that I’m not over that time in my life, and worse, that I’m clearly not over him.
I hate that this is supposed to be such a joyous occasion and I can’t be a good enough person to get over all this crap and enjoy it whether my dad is here or not.
I hate that whatever he just said about Theo and Dahlia is making me remember the last few weird conversations I had with her before we left.
I hate that I didn’t pay attention to it, and that there might be a problem with Dahlia and Theo that I’m oblivious to.
I hate that I can’t rise above this. That I can’t—
“Night, Harper.”
Tears stream down my face as Finn’s body moves against his sheets. I can’t catch my breath fast enough to say anything back.