13. Grey
Finley recovers remarkably fast from the zero-gravity ride, although she avoids fried food the rest of the afternoon. The air is hot and sticky, so we buy water bottles every thirty minutes and share them, and when we pause for lunch, we both order mediocre salads from the one healthy food truck in the entire fairgrounds. I haven’t held her hand since the ride, and she hasn’t reached for mine either, but it still feels like something has changed between us.
There’s an awareness that wasn’t there before, and I don’t think either of us knows what to do about it. For my part, I’m forcing myself not to hope, not to read into things. But I can also feel the change, even if I don’t quite know what it means.
When the afternoon heat begins to become unbearable, June asks to go look at some of the show animals in the barns, but Finley and I decide to take a ride on the Ferris wheel to try to catch the breeze.
“You feeling okay?” I ask, looking down at her beside me. She looks overly warm and a little sunburned, but not unhappy. She’s quiet, though, and I wonder if she’s as in her head about everything that’s happened today as I am.
Before she can respond, the woman in front of us spins around, and I recognize her immediately. “Grey, I thought that was your voice.”
“Hey, Marie,” I say, surprised when she leans forward to give me a hug. I return it, although it feels unnatural with Finley beside me.
“How have you been?” she asks, pushing her long hair over her shoulder. “It’s been so long.”
It’s been seven months. Marie was one of the women I went out with a few times, although I can’t remember what all we did. I do remember that she was fun and easy to talk to. I thought maybe there could be something there. I was going to ask her out again.
But then Gus and Finley broke up, and for the first time in two years, I thought I might have a chance. I was planning to bring her to Wren and Holden’s wedding, introduce her to the people important to me, but instead, I went alone and left with Finley. I slept in her bed, woke up beside her in the morning. I had my hopes up so high, only for things to go back to normal the next day.
I thought about calling Marie again after that, but I couldn’t bring myself to. Because I didn’t regret not asking her out again, if I was being honest with myself. As long as she was in the picture, no one else had a chance. Which is exactly why I’ve been considering this move to Maine.
“I’ve been good,” I respond. “What about you?”
Marie smiles, and it brightens her entire face, making her green eyes stand out even more against the tan of her skin. Her smile was what drew me to her in the first place. “Good, good. I switched to day shifts at the hospital, which has been a really good change. And I got a puppy—a goldendoodle.” She pulls her phone from the back pocket of her tiny high-waisted denim shorts and shows me her screensaver, a picture of a little dog that looks more like a teddy bear.
I grin at it, and she says, “Adorable, right? His name is Bear.”
“Fits perfectly,” I reply.
“Oh my gosh,” she says. “I’m being so rude talking about myself so much when I haven’t even let you introduce your friend.” Her attention turns to Finley, who looks decidedly less sunny than she did a moment ago.
She reaches out her hand to Marie. “I’m Finley, Grey’s girlfriend .”
I don’t miss the emphasis she puts on the word, and neither does Marie. Her eyes go wide, along with her smile. Finley’s expression darkens at the sight of it, and I stare at her, confused.
“It’s so nice to meet you, Finley,” Marie says, sounding genuine. I hope she’s happy, that she’s found someone who can love her the way I couldn’t, not when my heart was already taken. “I remember Grey talking about you a lot.”
Finley’s eyes jump from Marie to me, and I can feel heat creeping up my cheeks. “Really?”
“Yeah,” Marie says. “You’re his best friend’s sister, right? Or have I mixed things up?”
“Right,” Finley responds, nodding, and for some reason, I think I hear a hint of disappointment in her voice. “The best friend’s sister.”
“And now the girlfriend.” Marie says this with a kind of happiness I don’t deserve after how abruptly I ended things.
Finley just smiles, dips her chin in a nod. To anyone else, it would look real, but I can tell it’s fake, and I want to know why.
“Next,” the ticket ride operator says, ushering Marie forward. She spins around, rejoins her group. They split up into three buckets, two to a seat, and then it’s our turn.
We climb in side by side, pressed up against each other from shoulder to thigh. I never really notice our size difference until we’re close like this. She isn’t petite by any means. She’s tall and lean, but beside me, she feels small. There’s hardly enough room in the bucket, so I let go of the lap bar and put one arm behind her, resting it on the back of the seat.
Finley is stiff, looking forward, and I almost draw my arm back, thinking I’m making her uncomfortable, but that seems too obvious.
I’m not like this with other women. I don’t get nervous or question my actions. Things are easier with everyone else, but with her, they’re better.
“Fin?” I ask, and she finally looks in my direction. Her eyes are shuttered, and I can’t read the expression on her face. “Are you okay?”
She nods as we begin our ascent to the top of the wheel. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
“You don’t seem fine,” I say. This is another difference between my time with her and my time with other women. With her, I never feel like I have to hold back. It’s probably what causes most of our arguments, but I like that I feel free to be myself with her.
“Well, I am,” she replies, but I watch her hands tighten on the lap bar. “Marie seemed nice. When did you date?”
I stare at her for a long moment, trying to puzzle out her body language. “How do you know we dated?”
She gives me a pointed look, and I can’t help it, I laugh. This, at least, seems to make some of the tension ease from her body. She leans back into my arm, but she doesn’t take her eyes off mine.
“Seven months ago,” I say, and she seems to search my face for something.
When the Ferris wheel stops and we’re at the top, able to look out over the entire fairgrounds, our gazes stay fixed on each other. She asks, “Was it her? The one woman you’ve ever wanted in Fontana Ridge?”
My heart stops dead in my chest, because I know those words. I remember repeating them in my head as Finley fell asleep beside me the night of Holden and Wren’s wedding. I beat myself up for saying it, stared at the ceiling most of the night, fretting over whether she’d remember it in the morning, if she’d start to piece things together.
I’m surprised by how steady my voice sounds with the way my head is spinning. “What do you mean?”
She swallows. “The night of the wedding, when you were holding my hair. You said there was only one woman you’d ever wanted in Fontana Ridge. Was it her?”
I want to climb out of this socket seat and scale down the ride until I’m on solid ground again, far away from this conversation. I scramble for something to say and plaster an amused smile on my face that I hope she buys. “Careful, Fin. You sound jealous.”
Heat licks up into her cheeks, and I marvel at it. Twin splotches of perfect pink. She looks embarrassed, eyes darting from mine, and that stupid hope takes up residence in my heart again. I try to squash it down, but just like every time, it grows without my permission.
“Are you?” I ask, leaning closer. “Jealous, that is.”
I don’t expect her to look me in the eye, to let out a shaky breath and say, “I don’t know. Maybe? What does it mean if I am?”
If I thought my heart wasn’t working properly before, I was wrong, because now it stops functioning completely. My lungs too, as the breath stalls in them.
Just once, I allow my gaze to slip from her whiskey-colored eyes, down the slope of her nose, and settle on her mouth. It’s perfect—full, a natural dark red.
When I meet her eyes once more, I know she noticed, because there’s more color in her cheeks. That she hasn’t moved away and has maybe even leaned closer.
“I don’t know, Fin. You tell me.”
She swallows once more, and I follow the movement with my eyes. I want to drink in every single moment of this, scared that it’s all another one of my dreams, that I’m going to wake up disappointed.
Finally, she says, “I don’t know either. But I know I liked it when you held my hand earlier, the way you haven’t stopped touching me all day, even now.” For the first time, I realize my thumb is swiping across her back. “And I know I didn’t like it when Marie hugged you, when you forgot I was there when she started talking.”
This makes my mouth twitch up into a smile, and her eyes track the movement.
“It’s not funny,” she says, looking even more embarrassed.
“It is funny, Finley, because I could never forget you’re around.” If she only knew how hard I try. “I always know exactly where you are.”
Her expression softens into something more vulnerable. “Why?”
I want to tell her everything, to reassure her, but I also know I need to protect myself, not let myself get confused by her jealousy, by the way she likes my touch. It’s been months since she went on a single date. Of course she likes it. It doesn’t have anything to do with me.
“I don’t know.” It’s the most truthful thing I can say. I don’t know why I’ve been drawn to her so strongly. I don’t know why, after fifteen years, I haven’t been able to shake this feeling, why no one else ever measures up.
The shutters settle back over her eyes, and she finally looks away, face unreadable. She’s looking out at the fairgrounds, but I’m still unabashedly watching her. It’s why I can tell that what I said wasn’t the right thing, although I don’t know what she was looking for. All I know is I can’t tell her the whole truth, at least not yet. Maybe in another few weeks, when, if she turns me down, I can be on a plane to Maine so I don’t have to face her rejection.
The Ferris wheel starts turning again, and she doesn’t look back at me. I stop the unintentional path my thumb was making on her back, but I don’t move my hand away. My stomach feels heavy as I wait to see if she will turn the conversation back to what we were originally talking about—the night of the wedding—but she stays quiet. And when I extend my hand to help her off the ride a few minutes later, she pretends she doesn’t see it.