Chapter 2
Chapter Two
FINN
My parents finally returning home after a year away brings mixed emotions. I love my family more than anything in this world, but they have certain quirks that are better experienced when there’s some physical distance.
It’s always been the four of us ever since my birth parents passed away.
Well, the four of us when Oakleigh wasn’t crashing family dinners and movie nights.
Now that I think about it, I can’t remember a time when Oakleigh wasn’t around.
She and Wren only became friends fifteen years ago, but it feels like it’s been forever.
Like if I try hard enough, I’ll picture memories of them playing together when they were five.
Oakleigh’s like a tic that has buried itself into the heart of my life.
“My darling boy!” my mom squeals as she rushes over to my truck.
I breathe a sigh of relief as I lean down to hug her, because this summer heat is not doing wonders for my skin and I hate to just sit in the truck and wait.
She hugs me tightly and the familiar scent of all-spice and cardamom wraps around me just as tightly as her arms are.
When she pulls away, I can see the tan that stains her already dark skin, the brand-new crow’s feet that envelop each eye and the additional wrinkles that decorate her forehead.
I look up at my dad who is standing behind her, watching us both with happiness spread across his pale face. Mom moves out of the way so that we can hug.
“How are you, son?” he asks as he pats me on the back.
“Not too bad,” I reply, grabbing their suitcases and chucking them into the back of my truck. I decided to bring the truck since it’s the only way their luggage is fitting. “How was the flight?”
“Long,” Mom sighs. “I honestly forgot how much I hate planes.”
“At least Dad was right next to you the whole time, right?”
“That’s why it was bad,” she says in jest.
My parents chuckle as we all climb into the truck and I pull away from the airport and head toward their house.
While they’ve been away, I’ve been house-sitting.
When they left, I’d been having the urge to sell my flat for a while, so the timing worked out.
Now they’re back and I want them to have their own space again.
Being mainly trapped on a cruise ship for months on end can’t have been an ideal living situation.
I’ve taken up Wren’s offer for me to stay with her until I find a place of my own.
She’s barely at the house anyway, choosing to instead spend most of her nights with her fiancé at his farm—Goldleaf Pumpkin Farm.
She’s decided to move there eventually, but with Gus’s autism, they’ve had to do the moving thing in stages.
“So, how has everything been while we’ve been away?” Dad asks as I pull onto the highway.
“Yes, we want to know!” my mom shrieks. “You both barely told us anything while we were gone. Now we come back there’s a new fiancé for Wren? What else has happened?”
The back of my neck prickles as my mom’s tone takes on the high-pitched squeal that always makes me feel uneasy. Because I know exactly what she’s going to ask.
“Have you started seeing anyone? Maybe a certain brown-haired girl?”
Oakleigh has dirty-blonde hair, but if I correct Mom, it’ll only further convince her that Oakleigh and I are destined to be together, and I really don’t need another conversation in which I have to lie and say that any feelings for Lee will forever be an impossibility.
It’s not that I don’t believe it; quite the opposite, in fact.
The problem is that I spend so much of my time believing it and then having to remind myself that Oakleigh is not interested that I don’t think I’d be able to handle both of my parents encouraging my delusion as well.
It’s also fucking embarrassing having to say, “Hey, guys. This whole time I’ve been on Team Oaklinn, but I didn’t tell you because I know that Oakleigh doesn’t feel the same way because she’s hated me since the moment she met me.
Oh, and let’s not forget the fact that no one really wants to date someone who has a fractured mind. ”
“Mom, please,” I groan, my grip tightening on the steering wheel.
“I’m just asking!”
“All you do is ‘just ask’, and then I say no, and then you give me an hour-long pitch as to why dating Oakleigh would be a good idea.”
“Because it is a good idea!”
“Cherry and I would end up killing each other before we even made it to our one-month anniversary.”
“You’re just competitive, that’s all,” she argues.
I let out a frustrated breath, but refrain from answering, hoping that if I do, she’ll drop the conversation for at least one more day.
After Oakleigh and I kissed last year, I’ve been forcing myself to ignore my feelings even more than I did before.
A chance to tell her how I feel was dangling in front of me and I’d chickened out, instead ordering her to go inside, far from where she could break me more than life has already broken me.
All it did was solidify my reasons for never making a move before that night—Oakleigh deserves someone whose mind isn’t as fractured as mine.
Thankfully, Dad rescues me from both my mother and my own head by asking, “How’s the company coming along?”
“It’s going really well,” I say, pride blooming within my chest. I take a deep breath as I add, “I was … uh … actually thinking of selling it.” I pretty much mumble the last part.
“What?!” they both exclaim.
Since we’re now sitting at a red light, I allow myself a second to close my eyes and breathe deeply.
I hate disappointing people. It’s a bad habit that unfortunately both Wren and I adopted when we were young.
Even if there’s no evidence to show that they would be disappointed, my mind still manages to wrangle up a reason that only makes sense to my anxiety.
“It’s just an idea I’m considering,” I rush out. “Nothing is set in stone, I just—”
“What brought this on, Finley? I thought that the business was really lifting off,” my mom cuts in, surprise coating every word, turning them into poison-tipped arrows lodging themselves into my chest.
“It is, Mama. It really is.”
“Then why the sudden decision?”
We’re driving down a winding road now, so as much as I’d love nothing more than to hang my head in shame, I have to keep my eyes ahead. All I can do in the moment to keep my feelings in check is grip the steering wheel just that little bit tighter and count to ten in my head.
Even though the AC is on in the cab, I roll down the window.
Bad for the environment, I know, but I find a driver choking on tension and crashing to be just as bad.
She doesn’t even sound mad or disappointed, just confused and eager to know my thoughts.
Logically, I can compute that, and yet the only thought racing its way from one side of my mind to the other is that she can’t believe that I’d let her down like this.
“Wanda,” my dad mumbles under his breath.
“What?”
I try my best to zone out while they whisper to each other loud enough for me to hear every single word.
Dad telling Mom to stop asking questions.
Mom asking what’s wrong with asking. My father trying his best but inevitably coming up short.
He’s always been the only one able to see when my mind is straying.
She means the best, my mom, she really does, but I’m her golden boy.
In her eyes, doing something wrong just isn’t in the cards.
Wren has always been a little bit rebellious, but a well-behaved kind, meaning that my parents were always expecting some kind of pushback from her.
I was always too afraid to break the rules.
Wren was, too, but at least she was smart enough to simply bend them instead.
I just couldn’t bring myself to do that, even though I wanted to.
Is it because of my diagnosis? Probably not, but I like to blame it anyway. At least this way it’s not my fault I’m a tight-ass.
If your wheel touches the line, you’ll crash and die, my anxiety tells me.
I shake my head subtly, trying not to concern my parents.
While the compulsions have improved, the same can unfortunately not be said for the intrusive thoughts.
Lately, it feels as if the only thing distinguishing this fucking OCD voice from genuine auditory hallucinations is that the voice is my own and not some low, villain-like asshole convincing me of things that just aren’t real.
At least, that’s how I’m imagining an auditory hallucination would present itself to me.
The last five years have been rough, but the therapy has been helping.
It would probably help a lot more if I had actually told my therapist that the intrusive thoughts weren’t improving.
Even so, that point has been null and void for the past few months since my therapist’s husband passed away, leading him to take a bunch of time off.
The thoughts have been creeping back in through the gaps in my mind since then, offering the most unhelpful advice and threats that it could possibly think of.
Thankfully, by the time it decides to add another little tidbit about my driving, I’m pulling into the driveway of my parents’ house where Wren’s SUV is already waiting.
I jump out of the truck before Mom can revisit the conversation. I take a deep breath, grateful for the space and the fresh summer air brushing over my face.
“Hi!” Wren squeals as she runs over to our parents, wrapping her arms around both of them at once. They hug her back with equal ferocity, my dad’s back bending so she can reach him. “Oh, I missed you guys so much!”
Mom chuckles as she lets my sister lead her into the house. My dad decides to check out the small garden that decorates the front of the house. I’ve been maintaining it as best I can during their absence, but there’s only so much a Google search can do.
He’s much like me, my dad. Or, rather, I’m more like him …
and he’s very much like my birth dad. We prefer our own company most of the time because we know that there’s peace in silence and tranquility within peace.
He won’t sit around for the “what did we miss during the last year?” conversation.
He’d rather wait for something that Wren and I find worthy of coming straight to him about.
“You really took care of these,” he says to me, looking at his rosebush with an air of pride.
“I tried my best, but my green thumb isn’t exactly as good as my metallic thumb, it would seem.”
He chuckles softly, a small smile stretching his thin lips and pale skin.
He’s aged very well, and in times like these, I watch him and wonder if this is exactly how my birth dad would have looked were he alive today.
They were twins, after all. When our parents died, he and Mom adopted Wren and I straight away, and they’ve been as much parents to us as our real ones would have been were they still here.
“It’s better than you think,” he assures me. He kneels down to inspect the smaller flowers, and I follow suit. If there’s anything I know about my dad, it’s that if he talks to you first, it means there’s something he wants to talk to you about.
It takes him a minute to get to it. “Tell me why you’re thinking of selling.”
The request is calm, unlike my mom’s shocked response.
I breathe in deeply, letting the smell of the roses tickle my nose. I know that I can tell him the honest truth, that he’ll listen and give good and clear advice, even if he doesn’t agree with what I’m doing.
“The business is doing really well. Better than I thought it would, actually. Where I expected to be a three-team kind of company, I have ten and I just—I don’t know, I suppose I still feel like there’s something missing.
I miss my family, and now I actually have friends.
Friends that all live in Eaglewood. And when I was told that the company could sell for five times what I paid to build it, I couldn’t help but feel excited for the first time in a while.
I thought maybe … maybe I could finally do what I’ve always wanted to do: start an architecture firm. ”
He ponders on my words, staring at each individual flower as he takes in all that I’ve said. Worry grasps at my skin making it itch.
Eventually, however, he says, “Then do it.”
“What?” I turn to him.
“It’s your business, Finley. Only your money went into it and only your hard work built it. Therefore, only you can decide what happens to it.”
I huff out a breath because damn, I did not expect that.
“The one thing I think you need to hear is that sometimes it really doesn’t matter what your mother and I think. Even if we don’t agree with the choice you’ve made, we will always be proud of you for making the decision yourself and going after what you want.”
Fuck, I did need to hear that. I had no idea just how much.
“I will always be here to support you, son. So will your mother, and Wren…” He looks over at me with mischief in his green eyes. “And Oakleigh.”
“Oh, God, not you, too.” I groan.
He laughs with his shoulders, and I let a smile stretch my lips. “I’m sorry but you have to admit it makes sense. From what I hear, it’s exactly the situation your sister went through. Two people who pretend to hate one another because they really, really don’t.”
“I’ve never hated Oakleigh, Dad,” I admit. “I just think she’s the most annoying human on this planet.”
Change the word “annoying” to “interesting” and then it will no longer be a lie.
“Oh, really?” he teases. “So when you said, and I quote, ‘I really hope that she gets a paper cut every time she signs a form at work.’ Or ‘I think she just needs a really good, non-fatal fall down the stairs to get her head working again…’”
“Alright, I get it—”
“Oh, or my personal favorite, ‘I hope that she manages to stub her toe every time she steps through a doorway.’”
I groan and stand up, leaving my annoying father laughing his ass off on the front lawn.