Chapter 11
Finn McCarthy was out of sorts, an unusual state of being for a Friday night. He lived for Fridays and a whole weekend to do whatever he wanted, but with a snowstorm looming and his brother spending all his free time with his girlfriend, Finn’s usual weekend elation was missing.
“What crawled up your ass and died?” his cousin Janey asked as she moved around the kitchen preparing trays of food for the family due to descend any second.
“Huh? Nothing.”
“You’re all dark and stormy and pissed. How come?”
“I’m not pissed, dark or stormy.”
“You’re all of the above, so don’t try to deny it.” She bumped him with her shoulder on the way to the sink. “I know you too well.”
Janey was a couple years older than he and Riley, and the three of them had run around together as kids, getting into all sorts of trouble.
Those had been good times. He took a deep drink from his beer bottle, knowing she was someone who wouldn’t be easily turned off the scent of disquiet within him.
“What’s going on, Finn?”
“Nothing.” He nudged at the floor with a toe of the Timberland boots he favored this time of year. “Much.”
“Do I have to drag it out of you?”
He laughed, because if anyone could do that, Janey could. “Missy’s been calling and texting—a lot. She wants me to come home.”
“Ugh,” Janey said, her reaction not unexpected. “I thought you’d moved on from her.”
“I have. I did.”
“So why are you still talking to her?”
“We were together five years.”
“And it’s been over for two. Why’re you looking to go backward?”
“I’m not, but she says we’re both older and wiser now, and it’d be different this time.”
“Different how?” Janey asked as she dumped ranch dressing into a bowl surrounded by veggies.
“We wouldn’t be quite so…”
“Horrible together?” Janey asked, raising a brow in amusement.
“Yeah,” Finn said, huffing out a laugh.
Janey wiped her hands on a dish towel. “Can I tell you a little story from my own biography?”
“Sure.” Finn opened a second beer and leaned against the counter.
“David and I were together for thirteen years, so long we lost all sense of perspective. It wasn’t until we were with other people that we were able to see what’d been missing in our relationship. The first night I spent with Joe as more than friends was a major revelation.”
Cringing, Finn held up a hand. “Stop right there. No disgusting details that’ll scar your baby cousin for life.”
“Shut up,” she said, laughing. “And grow up, will you?”
“That’ll never happen.”
“Yes, it will happen, and when it does, I’ll be the first one there waiting to say, see, I told you so.
Missy is the past, Finn. If you were meant to be with her forever, you wouldn’t have spent the last two years apart.
Trust me when I tell you, when the right one comes along, you will know it—and you won’t want to spend one day away from her, let alone two years. ”
Her husband, Joe, walked into the kitchen with a pajama-clad child in each arm, their hair still damp from the bath he’d given them.
Janey lit up at the sight of her little family and took her daughter, Vivienne, from Joe, who snuggled their son, PJ. “Are my babies all ready for night-night?”
“No,” PJ said.
Joe laughed. “That’s his only word so far. Some kids start with Dada or Mama. Ours starts with no.”
“That’s awesome,” Finn said, laughing.
“Not if you’re his parents, it isn’t,” Joe said, tickling his son, who responded with a deep belly laugh.
“No bedtime riling,” Janey said, kissing her son and handing her daughter back to Joe.
“Say good night to cousin Finn,” Joe said.
“No,” PJ replied.
“Am I allowed to laugh?” Finn asked.
“Not if you want to live,” Janey said, scowling. “He has to get another word one of these days, doesn’t he?”
“No,” Finn said, earning a punch to the biceps from his cousin.
As Joe went upstairs with the kids, Finn’s cousin Mallory arrived with her fiancé, Quinn James. She hugged her sister, Janey, and then hugged Finn, too. He marveled at how Mallory had fit right into the family after learning that Big Mac was her father. Now it was like they’d always known her.
“What’d we miss?” Mallory asked, pouring herself a glass of seltzer as Quinn helped himself to a soda.
“I’m giving our baby cousin Finn a lecture on the downside of recycling,” Janey said.
“There’s a downside to recycling?” Quinn asked, popping a carrot into his mouth.
“There is when we’re referring to relationships that’ve run their course but keep coming around for new drama,” Janey said with a pointed look for Finn, who scowled at her.
“Ah,” Mallory said. “Gotta agree with my sister here, Finn. Some things are better left in the past where they belong.”
“So I’ve been told,” Finn said, returning Janey’s pointed look.
“I firmly recommend waiting for the right one to come along,” Mallory said with a warm smile for Quinn. “There’s nothing quite like getting it exactly right.”
Quinn took her hand and brought it his lips. “What she said.” The look he gave her was positively indecent.
Finn was quite certain that in all their years together, he’d never looked at Missy in quite that way. “No need to rub my face in all your happiness, people,” Finn said in a teasing tone, ready to change the subject.
“You’ll get your turn, Finny.” Janey ruffled his hair and kissed his cheek. “And I, for one, can’t wait to see that happen.”
“Don’t hold your breath,” Finn said, not in any particular rush to settle down.
The house began to fill with family members, each of whom inquired as to whether anyone had spoken to Shane.
Everyone was concerned about him in light of the day’s events.
What a bitch, Finn thought, to lose someone the way he’d lost Courtney, more than once now.
The awful senselessness of it all had contributed to Finn’s general feeling of gloominess.
Courtney had been a beautiful, sweet woman, and what’d happened to her—and to Shane—was heartbreaking.
It made Finn want to steer well clear of anything resembling true love.
Speaking of true love, when his dad arrived with Chelsea, he asked for a second alone with Finn. The three of them stepped into the dining room, which was the only room in the downstairs part of the house that wasn’t overrun by McCarthys and their friends.
“What’s up?” Finn asked Kevin.
Kevin glanced at Chelsea, smiling. “We wanted to let you know that we’re expecting—and we’re getting married. At the end of the month.”
“Oh,” Finn said, feeling all the air leave his body in one big whoosh. “That’s great. Congrats.”
“I was hoping you and your brother would stand up for me.”
“Sure.” Steeped in a sense of the surreal, he leaned in to kiss Chelsea’s cheek and to hug his father. “Happy for you guys.”
“Thanks, bud,” Kevin said, smiling at his intended. “We’re pretty damned happy for us, too.”
It had been a very long time since Finn had seen his father look so happy.
When the right one comes along, Janey had said, you’ll know it.
His father with Chelsea—that was what finding the right one looked like, he decided, even as he continued to grapple with the way his parents’ marriage had ended.
Life was too short to spend it unhappy. Finn honestly believed that, but his parents’ divorce had rocked him nonetheless, and the shockwaves continued to reverberate almost two years later.
With hindsight, he could see how miserable they had been for a long time before they split, but since he hadn’t lived at home since leaving for college, the breakup had still surprised Finn and his brother.
Riley arrived with Nikki a few minutes later and came over to where Finn stood with their dad and Chelsea. “Hi there,” Riley said, his arm around Nikki. “You know my dad and Chelsea. This is my brother, Finn. Finn, this is Nikki Stokes.”
Gorgeous, Finn thought, even more so than her famous sister, if that’s possible. “Nice to finally meet you,” Finn said, shaking her hand.
“You, too.”
Raising a brow, he gave her an assessing look. “I’m going to call you Nicholas.”
She returned his assessing look with one of her own, immediately earning his respect. “And I will call you Finnbar.”
Riley cracked up laughing at the same time Finn, Kevin and Chelsea did.
“Touché,” Finn said, raising his beer bottle. “To Nicholas.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Riley said meaningfully as Nikki’s face turned bright red.
She elbowed him playfully in the gut, making him gasp and taking her up another notch in Finn’s estimation.
“Did you hear we’ve got a wedding to go to later this month?” Riley asked.
“I just got that memo.”
“We’ll need a bachelor party,” Riley said, eyeing Kevin shrewdly.
“Oh no, we won’t,” Kevin said.
“Oh yes, we will,” Finn said. “No one gets out of that ritual. Not in this family.”
“I don’t think we should,” Kevin said, his expression serious. “With Shane and everything.”
“We absolutely should, and Shane would agree,” Riley said. “We’ll show our respect for him and for Courtney, and then we will continue to live. That’s all we can do, or so says my father, the shrink.”
“I hate when they use my words against me,” Kevin said to Chelsea, who laughed behind her hand.
“You can’t laugh at them,” Kevin said. “You’re either with me or you’re with them. You can’t have it both ways.”
“I’m with you, babe,” Chelsea said, curling her hand around Kevin’s arm.
“Suck-up,” Finn said, teasing.
“He’s my baby daddy. I need him.”
If you’d asked Finn a couple of years ago if his dad would want more kids, he would’ve said no way, but then along came Chelsea, and everything changed. Like Janey said, being with the right one made all the difference.
Missy was not the right one for him. He knew that. Hell, she knew it, too, but they continued to stay in touch out of habit more than anything else. It was probably time to cut that cord and move on, even if the cutting of the cord would be painful.