Page 17

I hardly recognize Finn without the jeans-and-crop-top combination he usually sports. Not that his current attire is anything to complain about.

Not at all. It’s not exactly bar-appropriate—I picture him standing next to Yasmin and internally snort—but as someone who often had to actively fight the urge to wear pajamas to work, I’ve got no room to judge.

Besides, who would ever complain about a man in gray sweatpants? And a titanium blue long-sleeve compression shirt? I envision lots of swooning, drunk women in his future.

Shit, even I can admit I do a little of that when, instead of walking to the front door like a normal person, he decides to do a drive-by candy theft.

Squeezed in the thin gap between the couch and the coffee table, he gives me a real good look at thick thighs and bulging biceps, but I don’t get to enjoy it.

Not when he’s peering down at me in a way that drags yet another sigh from between my lips. “Ask me if I wanna come with and I’m padlocking the front door behind you.”

Bent at the waist with his hand in my candy— God , that sounds wrong—his laugh brushes the top of my head. “I was gonna ask if you’re mad at me.”

“I—”

“But,” he interrupts, smirking, “then I remembered that’s kinda your default, huh?”

I do what any mature young lady would do when faced with such slander—I pinch the inside of his wrist until he yelps.

He does what any mature young man would do in response—he yanks on my ponytail. And then he’s gone before I can retaliate, before I can tell him to get gone, his voice muffled from a mouthful of candy corn as he calls over his shoulder, “See ya later, princess.”

I shift to watch him leave—so he feels the full force of my scowl, not so I can get a better look at his ass. “Stop calling me that.”

His laughter lingers even after the front door slams shut.

Through the wide expanse of windows, I watch him jog towards his friends.

I watch them welcome him with clamors and howls, act like they didn’t just spend all day together, like they don’t spend all their days together.

I wonder what it’s like to have friends like that, to feel so comfortable around people. For it to be so easy .

All week, I’ve been wondering. I’m no stranger to feeling left out, but fuck me.

I haven’t been this much of a fifth wheel since…

well, since I lived here last, ironically.

Even more ironic when you take into account I’m supposed to have a built-in, genetic sidekick, Grace and Jackson have always been more alike like her and I have ever been.

And Lux and Jackson are Lux and Jackson, two sides of the same coin, and Eliza is the baby so she’s everyone’s favorite, and I’m just… me. It’s always been just me.

I try to tell myself it’s comforting that nothing’s changed, but who the fuck am I kidding? It almost makes me miss Ricky, Ethan, and Vic, and that is concerning.

Pushing the friends I haven’t so much as heard a single peep from in over a month now out of my mind, I snag the TV remote from the coffee table, fiddling around with it until Vanderpump Rules plays on the flat screen hanging above an over-grouted stone fireplace, letting someone else’s messy life numb my mind until I forget about mine for a little while.

I only make it through a single episode before I’m interrupted.

Squinting against the darkness rapidly falling outside, I can’t quite make out the truck pulling up, but I assume it’s one of my siblings.

Jackson, most likely, oh-so-discreetly checking that I’m not partying it up, at home or elsewhere.

Scowling at the TV, I make sure my huff is extra loud, extra annoyed when the door creaks open. “You’re unbelievable.”

There’s a pause. Then, a laugh. “Thank you?”

My head whips around, narrowed eyes tracking Finn as he strolls to the kitchen. “I thought you were my brother.”

“Might wanna get your eyes checked.”

If I weren’t on the receiving end of it, I think I would appreciate his quick, snarky wit. As it is, it just pisses me off.

Slouching against the armest, I discretely give him the finger beneath the knitted blanket pulled up to my chin. “Get bored already?”

“I was just dropping them off.” Head in the fridge, Finn starts pulling out ingredients for a late-night snack. “I’d rather not spend my day off nursing a hangover.”

As my eyes drop to the beer in his hand, my brows rise.

Those full lips smile around the lip of the bottle. “One beer isn’t gonna kill me.”

See, it’s funny how when it’s coming from him, there’s nothing wrong with that statement. Yet when he holds a Heineken out towards me in a silent offer and I find myself thinking the same thing, everyone would call that a problem.

I picture Lux’s ears pricking up like a dogs as her supernatural Lottie is about to do something bad sense tingles.

I wouldn’t be surprised if, before I even took a single sip, she bust through the door and slapped the bottle out of my hand.

She’d know, somehow, like she always knows.

That’s why I shake my head, what little pinky fingernail I have left slipping into my mouth as I go back to watching my show.

Ten minutes later, the clanking sounds from the kitchen come to a stop. Thirty seconds after that, Finn sets a couple of plates on the coffee table. I eye them skeptically, but before I can comment on the presence of two grilled cheeses rather than one, I get distracted.

Because instead of sitting on the other sofa or the empty armchair or literally anywhere else in this big-ass house, Finn chooses to sit beside me.

Under me.

He lifts my outstretched legs and flops down before dropping them again so my calves hang over his thigh, my feet dropping to the space between his spread legs. Before I can rectify the position—before I can even really process it—he’s pressing something to my bad ankle.

Finn holds an ice pack wrapped in a dish towel to the swollen joint that’s been giving me hell all week, and he doesn’t say a single thing while doing it.

I don’t say anything either. I just stare, dumbfounded, mouth quite literally agape, until his head starts to turn my way and I abruptly snap my jaw shut and look away. And then he’s the one staring for a minute. And then he looks away.

And then… nothing happens.

Another episode starts. Finn watches it.

Beside me. Silently. Eating one grilled cheese while offering me the other, and I don’t even joke about it being poisoned or something, I don’t have it in me, I have nothing but shock and confusion and a lump in my throat because I can’t remember the last time anyone…

took care of me? Is that what this is? Fuck, I don’t even know. I don’t know what’s happening.

I don’t know why, even after the ice pack melts and Finn tosses it onto the coffee table, he doesn’t move. He slouches. Tosses an arm over the back of the sofa. One set of fingers still loosely, lazily bracketing my ankle.

I don’t know why it affects me so much.

I don’t know why, when three more episodes pass and Finn finally moves, I feel so fucking deflated when he goes to bed and I’m alone again.