CHAPTER 2 NORA #2
“Do you want…” I hold out the hair tie I’ve pulled from the small clutch around my wrist. It’s the only one I have, and normally I’d never give it to Finn.
But my hair is barely long enough to hold a pony anyway.
I brought it mostly for Bea, or for a girl in need in the bathroom.
But hair troubles are gender-neutral, so I can give it to Finn, I guess. “For your hair?”
He smiles, slow, looking from me to the hair tie and back again. “Are you sure?” he asks, like he knows, like he understands the importance of bestowing a hair tie unto the poor and hair tieless masses.
He reaches for it and I hold it back, just an inch. “You have to give it back,” I say.
He nods, eager and wide-eyed. “I will.”
And then he pulls his hair into a bun. He doesn’t even look for a reflective surface to do it in. He just puts his hair up, standing here, in the hallway, and he looks good. He looks…he looks…
I turn away. Drag my hand down the side of my dress to feel the scratch of the sequins against my palm. He looks hot, and god, I hate Finn Collins, and I add this to the list of reasons why: Can put his hair up without a mirror and still look objectively and unfairly beautiful.
“You okay?” he asks again, to my back.
And I nod and turn back to him and smile.
“What were you saying?” I ask. “About almost not coming?” I arch my brow, because that’s something Nora would do. She would tease Finn about him not coming, she would wish he wouldn’t arrive at all.
He grins, shrugs. “Oh, just sometimes I wish I could stay home. In the quiet.”
I open my mouth, quick to agree with him, but stop myself before I can say a word. That’s what I want too. But Finn and I aren’t supposed to want the same things.
Some former version of myself might have latched on to that fact. That Finn was willing to ditch us, his friends—the nerve!—for what he wants more. But instead of being mad at him for it, I can only be jealous. He’s far braver than me.
A shout goes up in the ballroom, muted through the walls but easily identifiable: The countdown has begun.
“I guess we should…” I point over my shoulder. “Get back in there.”
He sighs, running his hand along the top of his head, somehow not messing up his bun in the process. “Yeah. I guess we should.”
It will be dark in there, hot. Bodies on top of bodies, reaching, grabbing, touching.
We’d have to find our friends, probably packed deep into the masses.
In the rush, the crush, we wouldn’t reach them until after the clock struck midnight.
We’d be stuck in the crowd, stuck around all those other people, kissing, hugging, touching.
Finn still stands just out of reach. He’d be much closer if we went back into the ballroom.
Out of necessity. Finn would walk next to me, perhaps, just a step behind.
He’d have his hand at my back. He wouldn’t touch me, but he’d be there.
A guide, a gentle navigator, a compass. I’d probably feel him, the silk of his shirtsleeve on my back, the thrum of his voice in my ear when he leans down to tell me he sees them—on account of not being able to hear each other over the cheers and the music.
I came out here to get air, to cool off, but I’m suddenly hot, a little breathless. I press my palm to my chest to feel the pump of my heart.
“Remember last year?” I ask as the countdown starts on the other side of the wall.
Finn narrows his eyes, pauses. “I…yes.”
I nod, not looking at him. “Maybe…maybe we could just do that again. Instead of…you know…”
Finn nods too. “Going back.”
“It’ll be so loud.” My words are punctuated by the cheer, the arrival of a new year.
He steps toward me, one of his steps one and a half of my own. “And crowded.”
“We should—”
The doors open and people stumble out, no one I recognize, just a group of partiers whose partying can’t be contained by those four walls. I grab Finn’s wrist. “Come on.”
Finn follows me without question. He walks with me exactly as I predicted. My hand on his wrist, his pulse just there beneath my fingers, his hand at my back, a firmer presence than I’d thought, warmer than I could have imagined.
“Where are we going?” he finally asks as I turn us down a second hallway.
“Just…shhh.” It’s not that I’d be embarrassed to be caught kissing Finn by our friends…again. It’s just that it’s one thing to get caught kissing Finn and another thing completely to explain kissing Finn again.
We are deep in the bowels of the hotel now; we’ve passed through enough doors that we may potentially be in a Staff Only area. But it’s dark and quiet and, most importantly, empty.
“Eleanor.” Finn stops, effectively stopping me since I cannot release his wrist from my grip. I turn to face him, our arms stretched between us. “Are you ashamed of me?”
“No.” Because I’m not. “It’s complicated.”
He makes a point of looking around, closing the gap between us, twisting his wrist until I’m no longer holding him, until we’re holding each other. “This is where you want me to kiss you at however many minutes past midnight?”
“It’s quiet. Like it would be if we were at home.” And then, because that sounds not right, I say, “And we’d both rather be at home. Our own homes. By ourselves. Tonight.”
“Ahhh.” But he somehow manages to make even that sound teasing. He takes a step forward and he’s so close now that I have no choice but to take a step backward, then another, until the wall is at my back. His arm comes around my waist, his forearm a gentle buffer between me and the wall.
“Have you been drinking?” he asks, gently, curious. Like he’s trying to find an explanation for why I suddenly seem to enjoy his company.
“Yes. A little bit. I’m not drunk, if that’s what you’re asking,” I say when he lifts his eyebrow. “Have you?”
“Yes. A little bit,” he parrots. “I’m not drunk.”
“Good.” That takes care of that!
A piece of hair falls loose from Finn’s bun. I tuck it behind his ear. Finn tugs gently at my earlobe, my earring, his fingers more toying with the blunt ends of my short hair rather than putting it anywhere.
“Well,” he says. The space between us is warmer, heavier, than anything we could have felt in the ballroom. My hands have found their way back to his biceps. I squeeze them, just to feel his flesh between my fingers, his thickness.
He opens his mouth, like he is about to finish whatever he started to say, but instead of speaking, of filling this already full space between us with words, Finn gathers me to him, his arm around my back, his hand at my hip, and he kisses me.
My hands flutter from his arms, a sound of surprise rising from my throat, loud enough that Finn pulls away to see me, gauge my reaction. But it’s not his kiss that’s a surprise. It’s not when he did it—on a cliffhanger—or how. The shock is that we still fit together.
Kissing Finn is punctuated by the span of year.
A year in which I’ve kissed other men, had sex with one of them.
These are his same lips as last year, grinning, pouting, teasing lips, and his same hands, safe and warm.
But now that I’m kissing Finn a year later, I realize how much I’ve missed kissing him, how hungry I am for the taste of his tongue in my mouth.
I follow the sharp edge of his jaw with my fingertip before I pull his mouth back to mine. And this time, he is the one with a sound of surprise caught in his throat as I pull him off balance. His arm reaches out to hold us up against the wall, his hand splayed above my head.
I put my hands where they’ve been aching to be all night: on his chest, his nipples, through this tease of a shirt.
He crowds me against the wall, leaning into my hands, until I have to move them to wrap my arms around his neck, my breasts pressed into his chest. One of his hands grips my ass, squeezing me, pulling me closer until his hips are against me, his hard cock through his pants a hot presence against my stomach.
I lift my leg, wrap it around his hip to pull him closer to me.
It feels illicit and far too much for what is supposed to be just a New Year’s Eve midnight kiss.
But it’s because of that, because it’s been a year since I kissed Finn, and because I’m kissing him again, that I have to.
I have to wrap my leg around him, have to feel the wisps of his hair with the tips of my fingers.
I’m kissing Finn and he hooks my leg higher on his hip and I have to, I have to accept the thigh he presents, interjects, between my own legs like a belated birthday gift.
It’s for the data. Some way to compare kissing Finn now and kissing Finn last year.
My dress clicks and clacks as we move against each other, his poor silk shirt catching on the sequins.
His hands at my waist, pushing and pulling my hips over him.
My skin is hot, and it should be too much, unbearable, except I suck on Finn’s tongue, and he groans into my mouth, and I could stay here forever, an ice cube melting in his generous mouth, against these pink lips, if it means I get to bask in this heat, his glow.
The strap of my dress slides down my shoulder and I let it, relish the feel of the smooth silk against my skin, my upper arm, until Finn hooks the strap in his finger, draws it back up my shoulder—rude, honestly!
He can’t do that. I am kissing Finn and if the pattern holds it’s something I get to do only once a year.
I can’t wait another year to feel my strap fall, to let my dress shift, for my exposed nipple to pebble against the cold air.
I can’t wait three hundred and sixty-five whole days and nights for the chance that Finn might reach out, might brush the backs of his fingers against my nipple, palm my breast in his big hand.
I can’t wait to find out if he’ll be rough with me or let me guide his mouth down to my skin. I need to know. Now.
“Finn.” I gasp his name against his mouth. “Finn.”