Page 17 of Persuaded

For Finn, Thanksgiving—and family—had always meant Sean. Now it meant Sean and Tejana. Usually they all went to her folks’ in Arizona, but this year Sean and Tejana had wanted to spend the holiday in their new home.

Ordinarily, that would have been fine with Finn. As long as he and Sean were together, he didn’t care where they spent Thanksgiving. This year, of course, it was different.

It wasn’t even the memories that haunted Sean’s house that bothered him. It was the fact that Josh was ten minutes away, in his tiny little cottage, all alone over the holiday. It was the fact that Finn shouldn’t care. And it was the fact that he did—a lot more than he wanted to.

“So...” Sean said, hip braced against the counter while he sipped a beer and watched Finn prepare the turkey. “You were home pretty early last night.”

“Hey, I have manners. It was a first date.”

“Uh-huh.”

“What?”

“Finn—since when do you even wait for a first date?”

“I dunno,” he grumbled, covering the bird in foil. “Since I passed eighteen? Anyway, Liz is an elementary school teacher.”

Sean laughed. “So?”

Finn shrugged. He liked Liz, he did, and maybe she was exactly what he needed—a cute, unpretentious small-town girl.

She certainly made a refreshing change from all the actresses he’d dated recently.

It was just that, last night, finding Josh sound asleep on Liz’s sofa had been something of a mood-killer.

Josh, Josh, Josh : he couldn’t get the sonofabitch out of his head.

“I like Liz,” he said. “I do. She’s hot. ”

Sean was silent in that way he had of saying nothing loudly.

“And I totally respect her, so I didn’t want to—you know—screw that up.”

“Finn—”

“Ah!” He raised a hand to stop him and opened the oven. “Thanksgiving, man. Can we drop the inquisition?” Sliding the bird into the oven, he set the timer. “So, we’ve got time for at least one movie before we need to start on the sweet potatoes—”

Sean looked suddenly guilty. “Ah, about that...”

“What?”

He nodded toward the picture window, at the clearing skies and weak fall sunshine. “Tejana thought it would be nice to go for a walk before dinner? Get some exercise before the feast.”

Finn stared. “Seriously? It’s Thanksgiving .”

“Come on,” Sean said, setting down his beer. “A walk won’t kill you. We can watch movies later.”

Finn made a show of protesting, although in truth he didn’t really mind. It was a beautiful morning and a walk might clear his head. He hadn’t slept well last night. He hadn’t slept well for a long time. Eight years, maybe.

Sean and Tejana walked hand in hand, and Finn let himself fall behind as they headed past the garage—Newton’s cars were still frozen in aspic inside—and out the back gate onto the cliff top.

He remembered meeting Josh out there. Then, there had been crickets in the grass and the languid heat of summer. Now, a chill breeze ruffled his hair and bright sunlight glittered on the water. It was so long ago, though, he wondered that he remembered it so vividly.

Memory was a funny thing. Dreams aside, he’d all but forgotten about Josh while he was living in LA.

Or so he’d told himself. But he was beginning to wonder whether he’d ever forgotten him at all, whether the memories had just hidden beneath the glitter of his new life, whether he’d spent the past eight years staring straight ahead so as not to glimpse them out the corner of his eye.

Tejana took them left onto the cliff path and down toward the bay.

Finn knew the path well and treading it again felt surreal, like a trip down memory lane that he couldn’t share with anyone.

He’d walked this path many times with Josh, hand in hand until someone else approached and they’d slid away from each other, tender and awkward in their newfound intimacy but reluctant to give it up.

Everything with Josh had felt so heightened, so raw and new. He’d not felt anything like it before or since, for anyone. Shame, then, that Josh had turned out to be such a douche, ready to throw everything over for the sake of family pride. A real fucking shame.

“Hey,” Sean said from up ahead. “Who’s that?”

He and Tejana slowed and squinted down through the fall sunshine toward the beach. Finn looked too, stopping when he caught them up.

Someone was down there, walking along the foreshore on his own. The waves, high and capped with white after the storm, crashed down hard onto the pebbles and sand.

“Dude’s gonna get wet,” Sean laughed as a high surge of water sent the guy running backward up the beach and out of the way. It didn’t seem to bother him, though, as he stooped to pick up a handful of stones and prepared to skim them over the waves.

Finn snorted. “Yeah, good luck with that, pal.” And then, “Sonofabitch!” as one of the pebbles bounced off the crest of a wave and into the ocean.

The figure punched the air and Finn laughed out loud.

“You know,” Tejana said, “I think that’s Joshua Newton.”

Finn swallowed his laugh, almost choked on it, because, yes, of course it was fucking Josh. But this wasn’t the quiet, closed-in Josh he’d seen in New Milton. This was more like the guy he remembered, full of energy and life.

With a sinking sensation it occurred to him that Josh might only act so reserved around him. That, when he wasn’t there, Josh might still be the funny, mercurial guy he’d once known.

Once loved.

“I thought you said he was going to New York?” Tejana asked Sean, pushing a strand of dark hair out of her face as the wind caught it.

“He was,” Sean said. “Maybe there’s been a problem? We should go down, see if there’s anything we can do. His car looked like it was—”

“Wait,” Finn said, before Sean could charge down. “He wasn’t going to New York.”

Sean turned, head tilted in curiosity. “He wasn’t?”

“Nah, he hates his family.”

“How do you know?”

“I—” How might he know? “I gave him a ride home last night—he was babysitting for Liz. His car broke down so I said he could borrow yours if he was driving today, but he wasn’t.”

Sean let a beat fall. “So he’s, what? Going to Dee’s or Liz’s?”

“I dunno.” Finn let his eyes drift back to Josh, who was still trying to skim pebbles off six-foot waves. “Maybe.”

“Didn’t you ask?” Tejana said in that tone she adopted when Finn had done something really not fucking okay.

He scratched behind his ear. “He, uh, said it wasn’t any of my business.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound like Joshua,” Sean said. “What did you say to him? Were you rude?”

“No!” He shoved his hands into his pockets against the freezing wind, colder now they weren’t walking. “I guess he just wants to be on his own. He, uh...” He cleared his throat. “Liz says he’s kind of a solitary guy, I guess.”

Sean sighed. “Man, I wish I’d known. I’d have invited him over.”

“It’s not too late,” Tejana said. “It’s not like we don’t have enough food.”

“Yes!” Sean turned to Finn, as if he was somehow the arbiter. “We could go down and—”

“No.” Fuck—as if that wouldn’t be the most awkward Thanksgiving dinner since the Pilgrims stole all the turkeys. “Seriously, no. Leave the guy alone.”

“But—”

“He won’t want our pity, Sean.”

“It’s not pity!” Sean objected. “I like Joshua. He’s smart, and funny in this weird, dry kind of way. I think you’d like him, too, if you made the effort.”

Finn had to swallow and turn back to the beach, blinking behind his sunglasses. Josh was walking again now, heading into the wind. Suddenly, he spread his arms wide and tried to lean into it, as if it might take his weight or lift him into the air.

It made Finn’s chest constrict. He remembered Josh doing that exact same thing on the top of the dunes.

I’m the king of the world!

And suddenly he missed him so bad, missed that so bad, his throat closed and his eyes burned.

And he thought, Just go down there. Just go down there and talk to him.

Kiss him. Do something. But then he remembered how it all ended—how Josh chose to end it even when Finn had begged him not to—and he twisted down the cap on his feelings.

He couldn’t put himself through that again.

Tejana said, quietly, “You know what? Finn’s right. We don’t want to embarrass him—and maybe it would be weird to spend Thanksgiving with us? He doesn’t know us that well and we’re in his family home...”

“I guess,” Sean conceded, because he’d always listen to Tejana. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“But maybe we should invite him over at Christmas?” she added. “If he doesn’t have other plans.”

Finn closed his eyes behind his sunglasses, but didn’t object. He didn’t have the heart, not if Josh really was alone. “Maybe—” He had to clear the gruff from his voice. “Maybe we could invite Liz and Matt over too?” Like a shield, like armor against his own treacherous heart.

“Oh!” Sean said, running with the idea. “We could have, like, an open house and invite everyone!”

Finn forced a smile. “Yeah, that sounds awesome. Then Josh—Then no one would feel awkward.”

And so it was decided.

* * *

Everyone went shopping on Black Friday. Joshua sold three pieces of his parents’ furniture listed on eBay—as well as his mother’s grand piano.

He sighed when the notification came through on Saturday morning.

That it should come to this, selling his mother’s piano to pay his father’s debt.

He didn’t even know whether it was going to someone who’d appreciate its beautiful mellow tone; the buyer was Sovereign Business and Wealth Management, based out of Los Angeles.

On the plus side, it meant another thirty thousand dollars of the debt paid off. Legally and ethically he couldn’t refuse the sale, so he emailed the buyer his details and asked how they wanted to handle the shipping. It seemed like a long way to send a piano.

After breakfast, he headed up to Sean’s to tell him about the sale, and, he hoped, to spend an hour playing. He tried not to think about it as saying goodbye. That would be stupid and sentimental—but he knew he could be both.