Page 10 of Brad & Finn (Gomillion High Reunion #3)

brAD

Brad liked to think he was a rather adaptable person.

What had he done when the general store owner lowered his mom’s hours, and Brad could no longer afford to go on the wildly popular freshman school field trip? He’d taken himself on his own trip out to Yellow Branch Falls, and it had been fine. After all, he liked hiking alone!

What about when his career in sports medicine ended because the doctor he was shadowing was slapped with a malpractice lawsuit? He’d treated it as the kick in the pants he needed to finally begin pursuing his dream of being a coach.

Now, the somewhat aloof co-captain of the cheerleading team, who Brad had always had a tangle of feelings about, reappeared as a gorgeous, still somewhat aloof, yet also open and warm trans man?

Brad tripped over a root in the sidewalk and just barely managed to stifle a string of curse words that would have ruined the day of an elderly couple walking by.

Everything was fine.

After his brain kept him up until 5 am, dissecting a running loop of every memory he had of Finn, he’d still managed to get a little over three hours of sleep. Sometimes when he had to travel overnight on a recruiting trip, he’d run a full day of school visits on less than two hours of sleep.

So what if he’d woken up to some R-rated thoughts about the man across the hall? It just made him take a cold shower, and now he was better prepared for the day!

See? Adaptable.

The Roll, the cafe he was meeting his mom at, had some of the worst coffee this side of the Mason-Dixon Line, but their cinnamon rolls had been voted Best in State for the past twenty years.

The sugar was bound to help him, and if it didn’t, he could always go back to his hotel room and try for a nap later on.

Finn was most likely going to be with Chloe for the day, so at least his proximity would no longer be a distraction.

Brad nearly ran face-first into a low-hanging branch. He dodged around it and executed a perfectly calculated, not at all abrupt stop right in front of his mother.

“Hi, honey,” she said, laughter and affectionate judgment evident in her voice and the curve of her smile.

He bent his head down to receive the mandatory cheek kiss, and—because she had definitely witnessed his near-decapitation—he also received a gentle pat on the cheek.

“Hi, Mom. Does it look like there’s a wait?”

“Of course it does. You know they’ve only had those same few tables and booths since you were a boy,” she said, which was the same thing she said every time they ate here.

Brad held the door open for her, and the smell of cinnamon and burnt coffee nearly bowled him over.

When Brad was around twenty-five, he’d had his first real relationship with a guy.

His name was Enzo, and he sold candles at the local farmer’s market.

While candles weren’t really Brad’s thing, even he could recognize the guy had a raw talent for it.

He told Brad a story from his childhood, about making pasta with his nonna, and spending evenings pressing tomatoes for canning with his nonno.

He’d made a candle called “My Summers in Brooklyn,” and Brad could have sworn he could smell the powdery flour and taste the sweet tomato pulp.

Enzo hadn’t asked, and Brad hadn’t volunteered, but he was pretty sure he knew what his childhood candle would have smelled like.

It would have smelled like this cafe, with the funk of teenage boys pressed too closely into tight corner booths and the sharp tang of the football grass still clinging to their jerseys.

The perfume his mom had always worn would have tied it all together, and he would have called it “Home.”

As he stepped up behind his mother, he could almost pick out the soft notes of lilac underneath the cloyingly sweet smell of the cafe.

That is, until the door opened behind them, letting in the crisp morning air, as well as a brief flash of a fruity perfume and something a little darker, almost oaky.

There was something familiar about the smell.

“Ms. Willson! It’s been too long!” a bright feminine voice said.

Brad turned around and felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. Standing less than a foot away was Chloe, in a flouncy sundress and jean jacket, and Finn, looking tired but sharp in a blue canvas jacket over a magenta polo. He couldn’t help but notice that they matched almost too perfectly.

His mom turned to exclaim excitedly at Chloe, and Finn met Brad’s eyes for about the length of three of Brad’s stuttered heartbeats before looking away. He wrapped his arm around Chloe’s shoulders, and she leaned into his side like she belonged there.

Brad stared at the line their bodies made, pressing together like pieces of a puzzle, completely missing whatever his mom was saying to Chloe.

“Thank you, Ms. Willson. It’s been tough without Dad, but we’re excited to get Mom up north with us.

We were actually on our way to her house, but we walked by The Roll and couldn’t pass up a batch of cinnamon rolls to take with us,” Chloe said, and his mom turned to Finn, the other member of the “us” and “we” Chloe kept throwing around.

“And who might you be, dear?” his mom asked, completely unaware of the chasm that question opened up in Brad’s chest.

At the bar last night, he’d promised Finn he’d help them uphold their fake dating scheme, but that had been before their late-night talk—and before Brad’s tumultuous night.

“Mom, this is, uhm…” Brad started to say, but his eyes met Chloe’s, and he lost whatever he was going to say.

She’d always had pretty eyes. They were nothing compared to Finn’s, but they were a soft brown, with hints of gold that used to be set off by the yellow Gomillion cheer uniforms. He remembered Kendall having rather flat blue eyes that always reminded Brad of a cloudless sky: full of potential, yet also somehow empty whenever she looked at him.

As an adult, it was easy to see that he and Kendall had never been right for each other.

They’d started as best friends and had let their teammates push them into dating over and over again.

Their friendship slowly degraded until they broke up one final time before graduation and fell out of contact until their early thirties.

He’d sent her a few Facebook messages over the years, congratulating her on getting married and having her first two children.

She’d commented on every LinkedIn job update he made and DMed him happy birthday every year.

Truthfully, he felt closer to her now than he had back then.

Chloe’s pretty brown eyes narrowed at him, and she stepped forward, sinking her bright purple talons into the sleeve of his Henley.

“This is Finn, my boyfriend. He was asking me about some flowers we saw on the walk over, and I know you used to keep that gorgeous garden out back of the house. Would you mind entertaining a few of his questions, and Brad and I will get us all some coffee while you wait for a table?” She turned and glared up at Brad.

“Assuming you still drink coffee? You used to drink a whole gallon in first-period history.”

Brad looked to his mother and then to Finn, hoping one of them would object to what he was beginning to suspect might be a kidnapping. Unfortunately, Finn had already turned to his mother and was listening to her say something about petunias or begonias or some other flowering plant.

“Uhm, I was planning on getting coffee with breakfast,” Brad began.

“That’s alright. Extra caffeine might do us all some good,” Chloe said as she dragged him towards the counter.

Brad was rather concerned for the safety of his shirt, so he stumbled after her, roughly knocking his hip against the counter when she wheeled to a stop in front of the cash register.

“Four coffees, please,” she said, whipping out a credit card from seemingly thin air and slapping it down on the counter.

Ethan, the owner's son, who’d graduated a year after them at Gomillion High, grinned widely and said something or other about the reunion and how excited he was to see folks over the next few days. Chloe nodded along; meanwhile, her nails continued to carve grooves into Brad’s forearm.

They stepped off to the side of the coffee bar, where a divider blocked them from Ethan’s view, and the only thing around them was a supply closet and a brick wall. Chloe stepped into his space, forcing him to back up against the wall.

“What exactly are you planning on telling your mother about Finn?” Chloe whisper-shouted, her voice somehow having a growling quality even at such a low volume.

Brad blinked a few times, his sleep-addled brain stumbling to keep up. Was she talking about how he hadn’t been able to get Finn out of his mind for the past twelve hours and counting? Why would he tell his mom that?

“I wasn’t planning on telling her anything ‘cause, I mean, nothing happened. We had a drink and went back to his room—to talk! We just talked, that’s all!”

Her eyebrows furrowed, and she opened her mouth to speak, but for some reason, Brad couldn’t seem to stop talking.

“I mean, even if something had happened, I wouldn’t tell my mom about it.

She’s way too eager for grandbabies,” Brad babbled.

“Seriously, the last time I had even a semblance of a boyfriend, she started sending me adoption paperwork for Illinois. I wouldn’t want to get her hopes up about me dating Finn or anything. ”

Brad was finally able to shut his mouth, but it was clear the damage had been done.

Chloe’s mouth was hanging open, and her fingers were slack on his arm.

He didn’t mind that he’d, in essence, just come out to her.

They were friends on social media, and while he didn’t have his sexuality in his bio, he liked a lot of pride posts, shared the queer crisis hotline whenever it made the rounds, and donated to publicly visible fundraisers.