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Chapter twenty-seven

Foxx

“Oh fuck, I’m gonna… Yes, yes, fucking yes,” Finn cries out as he successfully flips the pancake in the air, landing it back into the pan with a slap. “Did you see that?”

I grin as I sip my coffee, my mind already corrupted because he moaned those exact words last night, but a whole lot messier.

Bruno Mars’s voice distracts me as his music hums through the speaker.

Finn informed me it’s the only way to spend a morning—dancing in the kitchen to his songs.

I’m starting to agree, because I’m learning things about him, like he absolutely cannot sing, but he does it anyway.

“What do they say, fourth time’s the charm?” I chuckle, still fixated on him.

He throws a grimace over to the trash, where the other three pancakes lay discarded and broken. “I can’t be amazing at everything. Some things I have to learn.”

“You’re definitely improving,” I say, lifting my coffee in a lazy toast. “This one might actually be edible.”

He flashes me a grin. “Well, you get the first taste.”

The glint in his eyes tells me he’s teasing, and I’m gonna take that bet. I place my cup down and step up behind him, running my hands down his bare stomach, settling them on the tops of his boxer-clad thighs. “We still talking about pancakes?”

Melting against me, his head lolls onto my shoulder. “I was, but now I’m ready to abandon all of this for all of that,” he says, pushing back into my growing erection.

My fingers flex on instinct, and I growl into his neck, nipping the delicate skin. “Later, I need sustenance to keep up with you.”

Finn groans dramatically. “You’re the worst kind of tease.”

I bite down gently on his shoulder, just enough to make him shiver. “And you’re the one who got me hard while talking about pancakes, so really, who’s to blame here?”

He laughs, breathless, and leans forward to flip the pancake with a spatula this time. “Fine. Food first. Sex later. Like responsible adults.”

“Look at us.” I back off just enough to reach for my coffee. “So mature.”

“Yeah,” he says, sliding the pancakes onto a plate. “If by mature, you mean half-naked, semi-aroused, and unsupervised with a hot stove.”

I watch him drizzle syrup over the pancake, then he sets the plate in front of me with a little flourish. I pick up the fork, cut a bite, and try to keep my face neutral, because he’s watching every micro expression on my face and that’s slightly unnerving.

Popping a chunk into my mouth, I chew. The first thing I notice is that it’s not sweet like I expected.

It’s got an unmistakable savoriness to it.

Not just a little over-seasoned, but more like it’s heavily salted instead of sugared.

The syrup softens the blow, but only just. I manage to swallow without comment, then meet his assessing eyes.

Finn’s face falls. “That bad?”

I guess I wasn’t as good of an actor as I was trying to be. “Not bad, just unexpectedly savory.”

His eyes widen as realization hits. “Shit.” He moves to the ingredients on the counter, until he gets to the bag of salt.

“Oh, double shit, I used, like, 1/4 cup of salt instead of sugar.” He groans and buries his face in his hands, laughing at himself.

“God, I was so proud of that fucking pancake too.”

I cut another bite.

He peeks through his fingers. “Wait. You’re actually eating more?”

“I said I needed sustenance,” I say simply. “Didn’t say I was picky.” I’ll just have to make sure I have nothing salty for the rest of the week, or the rest of my life, because my guy was liberal with it.

He watches me for a second, like he’s trying to figure out whether I’m serious or just humoring him. I don’t offer clarification. I just eat.

“You’re eating salted pancakes to make me feel better,” he says quietly, looking perplexed.

“I’m eating salted pancakes because you made them for me.”

There’s a pause, long enough that I finally look up from the plate. His expression has morphed from shock to something I can’t quite read. His mouth is still quirked up at the sides, though, so I cut another slice of the pancake.

“That’s kind of unfair,” he says, voice soft.

I swallow thickly, feeling the salt dry out my tongue. “What is?”

“You doing shit like that. Makes it really hard not to fall for you.”

The statement is said so easily, but it packs a punch I wasn’t expecting.

My next mouthful has paused halfway in the air as I catch sight of his eyes.

They’re delicate, the blue flickering brightly, but there’s no hesitation, nothing that indicates he may have accidentally let that slip.

It’s way to fucking early for either of us to be thinking that way, and a little part of me thinks that maybe he said it for the shock factor, but still…

I don’t speak. Not because I don’t have anything to say, but because whatever it is wouldn’t come out right.

Not now, while I’m still sitting here, with a fork in my hand, trying to figure out why my chest feels tight.

So instead, I take the bite.

Salt and all.

***

A little while later, we managed to fall back into bed, leaving the kitchen in a mess that would usually make my eyes twitch, but he’s been excellent at distracting me.

He’s lying half on top of me now to one side, one leg hooked over mine, head tucked into the space beneath my jaw as I trace patterns over his back.

“So…I feel like I want to know more about Eugene.”

I hum, dragging my fingers gently through his hair.

“How long have you been friends?”

“About four years,” I say. “After the divorce, I moved into this place. He lived across the hall and made it his personal mission to get me to stop eating frozen waffles for dinner, hence why he always brings me leftovers.”

Finn smiles into my chest. “And now you go to the farmers’ market every weekend?”

“Yeah,” I say. “He gets cranky if we miss it.”

“He’s pretty cool. I like him.”

“He’s persistent,” I say, but it’s soft. “And loyal. I think he saw something in me when I didn’t.”

Finn shifts, propping his chin on my chest to look at me. “You do that, too.”

“Do what?”

“See people,” he says. “Even when they don’t see themselves.”

I blink at him, thrown by the honesty in his voice for the second time this morning.

But I try not to read into it. I guess having Eugene as my best friend over the years has taught me a lot more than I realized.

Not just how to cook an actual meal, but how to show up.

How to be patient. How to see past whatever someone’s trying to hide and wait for the truth to catch up. It’s all he’s ever done for me.

“When we first met, he immediately called that I was a teacher,” I say through a chuckle of the memory.

“How is that possible?”

“Well, I had to go straight from work to collect my keys, and I was wearing my three-piece suit. I had a few I used to rotate. He popped his head out, seeing a grand total of about ten boxes with my whole life inside, looked me up and down, and said ‘math teacher or undertaker.’”

Finn laughs, the sound muffled against my chest. “No, he did not.”

My body shakes with laughter beneath him. “I told him it was math, and he just nodded and said, ‘We need to get you new suits.’”

Finn’s shoulders shake with laughter. “God, I love him.”

“I didn’t know what to make of him at first. He was just this nosy, wildly opinionated guy with a cat who kept showing up. But he never asked for anything. He just…stuck around.”

I think back to those early days when Ryan had left and all I had was two garden chairs in my living room. Eugene found an old coffee table, the one that I still have today. He made me feel less alone.

“He also used to get mad at me, still does sometimes, if I’d work late. So eventually, I let him have access to my calendar so he could see when I’d be at work. Now we even have a playlist that we share.”

Finn tilts his head so I can see his face. “Well, now I’m going to have to make one for us too. Eugene better watch his back.”

A chuckle rumbles in my chest. “He’d rise to that challenge.”

“Good thing I’ve got Friday through Sunday with you to make our playlist the best ever then.”

Running my hand slowly over Finn’s back, I feel the rise and fall of his breath under my palm. It’s quiet between us, for long enough that I wonder if he’s fallen asleep, just as he speaks again.

“You ever think you’d end up teaching?”

“Yeah,” I admit. “I always had a plan. Math was the one thing I was good at. The one thing I could trust to make sense. I knew if I followed it far enough, I’d end up somewhere stable.

Predictable. Safe.” Finn shifts to look at me.

“Teaching was always part of that. It wasn’t a fallback.

It was the goal. I never did the traveling thing. At the time, it didn’t cross my mind.”

Finn watches me for a beat, like he’s seeing something new.

“But the thing no one tells you,” I continue with a sigh, “is that you can plan your whole life down to the decimal point, and it still won’t stop the floor from falling out. You can do everything right and still lose the things you thought would stay.”

Finn presses his lips to my chest again, just over my heart. “Would you want to travel now?”

“Maybe. It depends on a few things…”

“Like?” he asks, resting his head on me.

“Like the right window of opportunity. How my life looks at that point.”

And maybe the thing I never saw coming is the improbable outcome. The one variable no formula accounted for.

“I always thought I’d travel more, but I’m finding more and more that I don’t want to miss Rosie while she’s young. I like being here around family again.”

I could tell him that makes sense. It’s good he has roots here, and people who care about him.

That wanting more but choosing to stay isn’t as much as a contradiction as he might think.

But I don’t, because I don’t know where we’ll be a few weeks from now, let alone a year.

I don’t know how this plays out; there’s so much that could sabotage anything we build that, as much as I want him, I can’t count on him staying for me.

***

It’s strange seeing him in the same clothes from Friday night, like hitting rewind on a weekend I don’t want to end. They’ve been washed, dried, folded neatly, but largely, he’s been in my clothes for the last two days.

There’s something about seeing him in his own clothes again that unsettles me more than I’m willing to unpack.

One weekend spent together, and I’ve already gotten used to him padding barefoot through my kitchen in my sweats that hang too low on his hips, or sprawled across my couch, wearing one of my old shirts like it was made for him.

And now, I watch from the doorway as he runs a hand through his hair, trying to flatten the waves that have dried unevenly from his earlier shower. He glances up and catches me staring.

“What?” he asks.

I shake my head. “Nothing.”

The left side of his mouth tips up as he stalks toward me. “You’re gonna miss me, aren’t you?”

I scoff, letting him wrap his arms around me. “I am not.”

He snorts and pulls me closer still, forcing my arms to wrap around him too. “You’re gonna miss me, you’re gonna miss me,” he sing-songs, and I’m sure that my cheeks turning pink, mostly because he’s not wrong.

My eyes might be rolling, but I’m more concerned with the fact that my heart is jumping around my chest like a ping-pong ball.

I’m suddenly hyper-aware of everything: the way his arms fit around me, how warm he is, how easy it would be to lose a few more hours to this. To him. And how badly I want that.

I bring my hands to the front of his hoodie, fingers curling into the soft cotton, and the scent of my detergent releases with the scrunch of fabric.

He smells like my laundry, like my space, like me , and some irrational, needy part of my brain is absolutely feral for it.

It’s possessive and inconvenient and probably premature, but I don’t care.

“I was going to miss you,” I murmur, brushing my nose against his in a way that’s entirely too affectionate for the amount of distance I was pretending to keep. “But then you started singing, and I realize I need the peace.”

He laughs against my cheek. “That so?”

I nod, but I don’t move away. “Tragic, really.”

He nuzzles into me, clearly unbothered by my thinly veiled attempts at self-preservation. I hum, fingers tightening on the front of his hoodie. “You’re lucky you’re cute.”

“That’s what people keep telling me.” Lifting his head, his mouth brushes the corner of mine, soft and fleeting. “I’ll let you get back to your peaceful, singing-free existence.”

Something about that suddenly doesn’t feel so appealing, though.

He moves toward the door, but turns back at the last minute. “I’m babysitting Rosie Tuesday night. Do you… I mean, if I check with Daph and Huds, maybe you’d wanna babysit with me?”

The lilt of his voice when he asks the question hits my solar plexus with a thud.

He’s nervous, and it’s going to make me more obsessed.

It also serves to remind me how different our lives are and the fact that he’s still figuring out parts of his, helping his sister because he can, back at home with his parents at the moment.

While mine is pretty set, there are very few surprises or dramatic turns…

unless you count for the six-foot-three man in my living area right now and the ideas he effortlessly planted in my head about a life outside of teaching, about living again, about just… more.

It’s probably a bad idea, but that’s not what my brain has me responding with.

“I’d like that.”

His head bobs once, and the smile plastered across his face stays with me for the rest of the evening… Even as I grade what feels like a hundred papers, I find myself smiling.