Page 38

For half of the second movie, she falls asleep with her head on his shoulder.

For half of the second movie, he doesn't move an inch.

“Excuse me.”

One foot out the door, I look over my shoulder and frown at the oddly expectant expression painting my roommate’s pretty face. “What?”

Eyes wide, Yasmin tugs at the rolled cuffs of the denim jacket she shrugs on. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“To the stables.” My gaze flits to the stairs. Footsteps are going to thunder down them any minute, and I really, really need to be gone before they do. “I’ll see you later.”

“You’re not coming with us?”

My frown deepens. “Coming where?”

“To Sally’s,” Yasmin names the local farm that runs a pumpkin patch this time of year. “Finn didn’t tell you?”

A disconcerting sense of disappointment makes me twitch. “Nope.”

“Oh. He was supposed to.”

“Well, he didn’t.”

And fuck , don’t I feel some kind of way about that.

I feel like an idiot. I want to turn back time so it’s about a minute earlier, so I can stop myself from sneaking into a room that isn’t mine and leaving a fucking present on the bed left unmade by the man only a closed bathroom door away.

The same man who sat beside me on my bedroom floor not just for one movie, but for two—though I fell asleep during the second one.

Who shared a mug of sweet, floral tea that tricked me into thinking things I shouldn’t, expecting things I shouldn’t.

Like, evidently, an invitation to Sally’s fucking Farm. “I gotta go, Yas.”

“Wait— Finn .”

“ Don’t ,” I hiss, a hell of a lot quieter than Yas’ fucking holler. “It’s fine. I don’t wanna come anyway.”

“I want you to.” Hands on her hips, she marches to the bottom of stairs and yells, “Finn Akello, get your ass down here.”

A door opens and closes, husky laughter preceding heavy footfalls. “What did I do?”

Get out of here, my instincts insist yet I find myself rooted to the spot. Fucking gulping as Finn comes into view wearing a dark red baggy sweatshirt that’s rolled up to his elbows and sits along the waistband of loose Levi’s—that lifts a couple of inches higher when he palms the top of his head.

Like he’s making damn sure I see a matching knitted beanie.

The one I stayed up half the fucking night making.

“It’s what you didn’t do.” Yas pokes his chest, completely oblivious to how much his shit-eating grin is making me wish I could sink beneath the floorboards. “You didn’t tell her about Sally’s?”

Finn tugs the brim of that stupid, stupid beanie a little lower. “Yes I did.”

Liar. “No, you didn’t.”

A clean pair of brown boots thump against the ground as Finn crosses the living room, stopping a few inches short of me—a few inches not short enough. “I did.”

“When?”

“At the market.”

“You did not.”

“I did,” he insists. “Joy asked if we were going, I said maybe—if I could convince you.”

“What?” I don’t remember that. The first part, yeah, but the rest, no. “I didn’t hear you.”

“Hm.” Broad shoulders lift with utter, fake nonchalance. “Well. You were a little distracted.”

Unlike last night, I catch the shitty, smarmy, incorrect implication instantly.

I was not jealous , I shriek internally.

Externally, I grunt and try to shove him away, but he grabs my wrist and uses it to tug me closer instead. Close enough that even if her attention hadn’t been suddenly stolen by her boyfriend entering the room, Yas wouldn’t hear Finn mumble, “Thank you.”

I flex my fingers, but I don’t shake off his light grip. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I know exactly what he’s talking about, and he knows it too. I don’t know how he knows I made it myself—maybe the rough edges and uneven stitching gave it away—but he does. “Must’ve taken you all night.”

“I had it lying around,” I half-lie.

I did, technically—it just wasn’t complete.

After Finn woke me up when the second movie ended and went to bed himself, I couldn’t fall back asleep.

I couldn’t get my mind to shut up, to stop replaying the past couple of hours and noting every finer detail, like the warmth of the body that never wasn’t touching mine in some way or the little chuckles he made whenever something funny happened or the density of the shoulder that ended up beneath my head or why he let me fucking drool on him for I don’t even know how long.

So I started rifling through the box holding all my old knitting stuff and I found the simple, chunky, half-started pattern, and I thought it would be good practice.

I thought the color would suit Finn. I thought…

well, I thought it would be a nice fucking gesture or whatever.

A thanks without having to actually thank him.

Something friendly . “It’s not a big deal. ”

Clearly, Finn disagrees. Jesus, he’s gazing at me like I just handed him the moon on a silver platter.

Twinkling irises and happy lines around an uplifted mouth and one, single dimple indenting a full cheek.

“Hypothetically,” he murmurs, his breath warming the tip of my nose.

“If I tried to hug you, what would happen?”

I might freeze. I might hate it. I might even let him. “You might lose the ability to ever have children.”

He dips even closer and I get even more intimately acquainted with that fucking joyous expression. I get distracted by it, it disarms me, it grants Finn a chance to sneak past my defenses and drop a damn kiss to my temple.

“You’re sweet,” he says like he didn’t do anything at all, like I’ve ever been called that in my life. “And you’re coming with us.”

Fingers twitching with the urge to touch the tingling skin near my hairline, I shove my hands in my back pockets and grunt at the man grabbing my leather jacket from the hook by the front door. “I have plans.”

“Ruin will forgive you.”

“Yeah, he’s not really known for his compassion.”

“Give him a chance.” Shaking my jacket out, he drapes it over my shoulders, long fingers dipping beneath the collar to free my hair. “Might surprise you.”

I first start to suspect I’ve made a very bad decision on the car ride, when I’m smushed in the backseat between two big, male bodies and in the direct path of a relentlessly blaring radio.

We arrive and I recognize a truck, I recognize more than one, and that’s my second sign.

The third is that buzz beneath my skin, in the back of my head, swimming in my stomach, a biological warning sign that I should’ve listened to, but I don’t.

I regret that now.

I’m exhausted. Mentally, emotionally, everything in between.

Nothing against the group, but I’m just…

not built for this. Not used to it. Socializing.

The extrovert of it all. God, I don’t know how they all do it, how they always have something to talk about, how they never stop smiling as they wander from a dusty parking lot littered with food trucks to the pumpkin patch we came here for to the endless field of flowers that stretches out before me now.

Juggling the heavy weight of what Yasmin deemed ‘the perfect pumpkin,’ I try to be discreet as I survey the group meandering a few feet ahead of me.

When I hang back, needing a second, they let me.

Wanted it, probably. They’re likely relieved by my absence because while they haven’t intentionally excluded me, not even a little bit, it’s hard to include someone who doesn’t want to be included.

Who doesn’t know how to be. No matter how valiantly they try, it’s still painfully obvious that I just don’t fit.

They have what they have, their overarching friendship, and then these little separate branches too, and I am a withering leaf hanging on for dear life.

Yasmin has Theo, and Yasmin has Finn too, and then there’s Finn and Adam with their own special little bond, and I’m just there.

A hard rock disturbing the flow of a river. The dark cloud threatening their day.

Joy isn’t like that.

Joy, we stumbled upon an hour or so ago. Joy, in her pretty dress with her pretty face, and her pretty friends too, slot right into the group like she’s always meant to be there. Welcomed with open arms.

By Finn’s open arms.

Finn, who I haven’t spoken to since the girl he’s not dating or sleeping with, allegedly, started occupying every ounce of his attention. Stole it away from me.

No, not stole . Can’t steal what isn’t mine.

Just… is more worthy of it, I guess. Shinier.

Easier to look at, to deal with. Because I really, really tried to be pleasant when we first got here, I really tried to be interesting and tolerable and friendly, but a girl can only do so much, y’know?

Can only fake a personality for so long.

And as the crowd and noise and the strangers wore on me more and more, I lost my…

composure, I guess. My will to have any.

I want to leave. I want to go home. I want to cry just a little which is so pathetic, so fucked, so I won’t. And I can’t do either of the former—I didn’t drive here, and even if I did, even if I was fucking allowed to drive, I’m not sure anyone would let me slip away.

Yasmin wouldn’t let me slip away.

“Hey,” she calls carefully as she diverges from the ever-growing group of people her and her friends are amassing and hesitantly approaches. “You okay?”

I don’t even try to smile. To lie, neither. My tank is officially empty. “Not really.”

Blatant concern makes me feel like shit. A gentle hand on my arm makes me cringe, burning even through thick, vintage leather. I try to be subtle as I shake her off, but I’m pretty sure I fail—thinly-veiled hurt only makes me feel worse.

“I, uh,” I lick my lips, clear my throat, stab the thumb of my free hand over my shoulder before patting the pumpkin I offered to haul around so Yasmin could take her job as group photographer seriously. “I’m gonna go put this in the truck.”

When I take a step back, Yasmin follows. “I’ll come with you.”