Mistakes we never made, p.15
Mistakes We Never Made, page 15
“Emma?”
“Yes?”
And then, just like he had in the pool that night, he asked, “Can I kiss you?”
It was as if the word drifted up from the noise and laughter in the streets below, and somehow ended up on my tongue. Yes.
As he closed the distance and our lips touched, I felt myself melt into his body, his hands drifting to my hips and pulling me against him. I’d convinced myself that I’d built up our last kiss in my head—but if anything, this was better than I’d remembered. It was natural. We fit together seamlessly. I could tell by the way his breath hitched, a slight moan escaping from somewhere deep within him, that he could feel it too. Finn kissed me again and again and again. Each kiss grew more and more desperate until he pulled me off the ground and carried me over to one of the two foldout lounge chairs that Sybil had found on the street weeks ago and dragged up there. He laid me down on the chair, then braced himself on his elbows above me, and kissed me again. This time, it was slow and deliberate. His knee pressed into the space between my legs. I heard a sharp inhale, and realized it was me.
He pulled away, and his hand ran up my thigh, skimming along my tights. “Can I take these off?”
I nodded mutely, too dazed by the thought of what was coming next to use words. Something fluttered in my chest at the thought that anyone in the surrounding buildings could look down from their window to see us, but despite all the city lights around us, the roof itself was a pool of darkness; we were exposed and alone at the same time.
Finn smiled and kissed me again. He pulled off both of my boots and let them fall on the rooftop beside us. Then, reaching beneath my skirt, he hooked his fingers into the waistband of my tights and used both hands to roll the thin material over my hips and down my legs. Every inch made me gasp with anticipation. My shirt was still on, but somehow most of its buttons had come undone, and the look in Finn’s eyes intensified, his knuckles grazing the edge of my bra as he leaned over me again, his chest warm and solid above mine. One hand cupped the back of my neck and pulled me toward him for a deeper kiss. The other dragged along the inside of my thigh. I gasped against Finn’s mouth, breaking the kiss as his fingers, cool from the night air, slipped beneath the soft cotton of my panties.
“Is this okay?”
“Yes, it’s okay.” It was more than okay. Finn’s fingers worked slowly and deliberately, as if he had all the time in the world. With each movement, he watched my reaction, moving slowly and then more quickly bringing me to the edge, but not letting me go over.
He slipped a second finger inside of me, and I lifted my hips so his fingers reached even deeper. It was nothing like sex with Preston, which was nice enough, but felt like paint by numbers. Simple strokes of soft pastels in pleasing shapes. With Finn it felt like I’d dipped the canvas in turpentine and lit it on fire. It was like oxygen, like water. Through the lace of my bra, Finn’s mouth closed around my nipple, and I bucked against his hand as I came apart in a thousand pieces. Falling limply against the back of the lawn chair, I reached for the zipper on Finn’s pants, but his hands stopped me.
His breathing was ragged. “Fuck.”
“What?” I whispered. “What is it?”
“We shouldn’t,” he said, his words grazing my skin. He kissed me again.
“What do you mean?” I was in agony; stopping was the last thing I wanted.
“I mean Preston,” he whispered. “Crew captain extraordinaire.”
“I never said he was captain.”
Finn laughed quietly, and so did I, reaching up to touch his jaw. But even as I did, reality was starting to come back to me in waves.
“You never said you were in an open relationship,” he pointed out.
It took me a second to think through the lust fogging my brain, but of course, Finn was right.
“No. We aren’t.” Guilt sliced through me.
Shit.
I had cheated. Had I cheated? Of course I had. What the hell else could you call this? Hooking up with an ex, or an ex-whatever-we-were, wasn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card. In fact, it was worse. Because I knew this was not just a hookup. I couldn’t lie to myself and say it wasn’t more than that. The want that was coursing through my body was not just because of the way Finn made me feel when he touched me, when he looked at me. It was all of that and something else too. I didn’t want a hookup; I wanted him.
But he was already sitting up, straightening his shirt with shaking hands, and as I started to sit up and shift my skirt back down, I couldn’t believe myself. This was a completely un-Emma thing to do. Preston might have been a self-important snob from time to time, but he didn’t deserve to be cheated on. What kind of person does that? An image of my father popped into my mind unbidden, fully ruining the mood like a cold bucket of water. I began rebuttoning my shirt, feeling vaguely frantic. Was one of the buttons missing? Why couldn’t I find my tights? How had it gotten so dark?
As if he could see me about to spiral, Finn whispered, “We’ll figure it out.” His lips brushed against my forehead. “Right?”
I found myself saying it for the second time that night: “Yes.”
And despite the guilt, the self-recrimination, and the anxiety coursing through me, I believed him, believed myself. We would figure this out. Whatever this was. We would make it work, make it okay. We folded up the lawn chair, pulled the cheese board from the doorjamb, and took the steps back down to my apartment. Finn walked me to my bedroom door, pressing a featherlight kiss to my lips before saying good night.
Lying in bed, I replayed what happened on the roof in my head, my body coursing with tingly heat all over again. The knowledge that Finn was just a few feet away in Sybil’s room, and I was right on the other side of a thin door, in only a soft T-shirt and underwear, made it impossible to fall asleep. Then, my phone lit up the dark with an incoming text from Finn.
I’ve been thinking about what you said about “setting the terms.” Maybe you’re right. Maybe the best move is to just not be in a relationship with someone who doesn’t want to be in one with me.
I took a deep breath, my fingers flying across my phone keyboard before I could second-guess myself.
Especially when there’s someone else who does.
Finn hearted my response, and I rolled over, a giddy smile overtaking my face.
In that moment, it felt like we would figure it out. Like maybe now, with the air cleared, and all our miscommunications resolved, the time was finally right for Finn and me. He was clearly planning to break up with his girlfriend. And Preston? I knew in my heart that it was over. It should have been over sooner. I’d been playing along, playing a role, playing the girlfriend while some deeper yearning in me lay dormant.
Until now.
Of course, what I didn’t know then, that night on the rooftop, was that trusting Finn would become just another horrible mistake.
15
THURSDAY NIGHT
(Two days before the wedding)
THE VEGAS EIFFEL TOWER straddles the Paris casino, and even in its cheesiness, it still manages to be romantic. It’s helped by a glow that sparks off the windows of the hotels and settles into every crevice of the city. We’re well past sunset now, but with all the manmade light around us, everything is infused with a luminosity. The Strip seems to wink back at the sky, providing its own glitter in a million twinkling lights and flashing neon signs. New York might be the official “city that never sleeps,” but I think they got that one wrong—clearly that moniker should belong to Las Vegas, Nevada.
Finn is already there when I arrive. It looks like he was able to find somewhere to steam his jacket, and I’m grateful for the host’s forcing him into it. For a moment, guilt spikes through me when I realize how happy and relieved I feel to take a break from chasing Sybil, but I try to push it down. Of course I still want to find her, and help her repair whatever went wrong, get her back on track, and make this wedding happen. It’s my duty as a friend. But there’s this quiet voice in my head, one that doesn’t get a lot of airtime, that’s saying, What about me? When does it get to be my turn to be top priority? Maybe it’s the wish in the fountain, or just Finn’s presence, but I feel myself wanting to pause time and stop running to fix things for other people. Just for this one evening. Not even the whole evening—just this one dinner. The world won’t come falling down around me if I take this one little break to actually enjoy myself.
With Finn.
And besides, we may have missed the welcome party but we still have all day tomorrow to find Sybil and bring her back in time for the rehearsal dinner Friday night—and, of course, the wedding on Saturday.
We will just have to figure out a way to keep Jamie feeling positive and distracted. And what better place to do that than Vegas?
“You look really beautiful,” Finn says, when I’m close enough to hear. We start walking, and his fingers barely graze my elbow, like he doesn’t trust himself or he’s worried I’ll bolt.
“Wait!” I say, and Finn’s hand pulls back like he’s been stung. “Shouldn’t we snap a picture for Sybil?”
Finn blinks as if he’d completely forgotten, which prompts a crooked smile from me. He’s basically just admitted that the whole thing was a ruse, and that he’s gotten swept up in the moment as much as I have. “Yes. Right. A picture for Sybil,” he says, nodding. I stand beside him and try to angle our two bodies so that the Eiffel Tower sparkles behind us, but I can’t get enough of the background in the photo. “Here, my arms are longer, I’ll take the selfie.” Finn slips the phone from my hand and pulls me to his side. I’m looking up at him as I hear the camera app click. Startled, I turn toward the camera and put on my happiest and most carefree smile. After a few more shots, Finn hands me back my phone, but leaves his arm around me. As we walk under the Eiffel Tower and into the Paris casino, Finn says, “I managed to get us a reservation at a place called Chez Nous. Is that okay?” He smiles down at me. “I know you love pommes frites.”
“I’ll eat anything.” And I mean it. The boxed turkey sandwich from the Del hasn’t been enough to make up for the fumes I’ve been running on for the last few days.
“Anything except pure unadulterated kale,” he says.
“Anything but that,” I agree.
The restaurant Finn chose is unequivocally French. The ceilings are high, and the mostly white floors are peppered with small black tiles. The mirrors that ring the restaurant double, triple, and quadruple the twinkling of the chandeliers. but the lights are dim enough that it still feels intimate as the host leads us to our table. Finn’s hand settles on the small of my back, and I feel the warmth of it through the thin silk of my dress. We slide into either side of a small booth upholstered in a soft peach velvet.
“I have to say, I would have been okay with food court Panda Express, but this is nice too.” Nice? More like the most frickin’ romantic evening I’ve had in far too long. “Besides, I need to refuel so I can be at full strength to cheer on my guy, Ibarra, later. Or maybe I’ll root for Kuzmin. Who’s the underdog? I’ll root for whoever that is.”
“I really do hate boxing,” Finn says.
“Aww, your kind, otter-and-fox-loving heart just can’t take a little pugilism, huh?”
“No, it’s actually because I got into a pretty awful fight on Sixth Street the fall before my dad died. It was me and this white kid, and of course, I was the one that got dragged to the police station.” Whatever quippy zinger I planned on tossing his way next dies on the tip of my tongue, anger rolls through me at the injustice, and I grip the napkin in my lap. “That was a really rough time for me,” Finn continues. “I didn’t know how to deal with everything I was feeling…” He trails off but I remember his black eye, from back at Katie Dalton’s pool party all those years ago.
“That makes sense.” I swallow, my mouth suddenly dry.
“After he passed, I was in a pretty bad place for a while. Got into a few more fights. None as bad as the one in Austin, but it’s like…” He shakes his head and looks around, as if hoping the right words will appear on the tray of a passing waiter. “Strange as it sounds, it felt like the only way to make the pain stop.” Finally, he looks straight at me, like he’s desperate for me to understand. “I’m not like that anymore, Emma. Therapy helped a lot. And anyway, that’s why I can’t stand to watch violence now—even stupid boxing matches make my stomach churn.”
I remember Finn’s words from years ago: I haven’t been making the best life choices. I think back to all the nights senior year when he and Sybil had holed up with plastic bottles of Azteca tequila and cheap weed. I thought they were just slacking off—feeding off each other’s worst impulses. But maybe there was something more going on. At the time, I was too close to it and too in my own head to really see what Finn was going through. But when you’re a teenager and your dad is dying, maybe reaching for another cold drink or another warm body—to punch or to kiss—makes the most sense. I look at him in his freshly pressed suit jacket, and for the first time, when he says he’s changed a lot since those days, it sinks in. I actually believe him.
“I’m sorry. I was just teasing about the match.” I release my death grip on the napkin, and reach across the table to grab his hand. “We’ll be on our way back to LA with Sybil by the time the fight starts.” At least I hope we will.
Finn squeezes my hand, and I expect him to let go after a beat. Instead, heat sparks up my arm and through my whole body as Finn’s middle finger begins making small circles on the inside of my wrist. My mind races back to the roulette table. My body arched against Finn’s, and his lips against my ear: Not here… but soon. I inhale sharply at the memory, and Finn’s finger pauses. His eyes meet mine, and the small smile on his lips makes it clear he knows exactly how he’s affecting me. His finger starts circling again. My lips part, and I press my thighs into the soft velvet of the booth. I wish he would grab my wrist and pull me across the table. It’s taking every ounce of my self-control to stay on my side of the booth, and my mind flashes to the hotel room just a block away.
Just when I feel myself starting to break, the waiter comes by, and I pull back my hand and swallow, thankful for the opportunity to get control of myself. Finn looks down at his menu with a devilish grin.
We order drinks and mussels to start, and the tension between us fades to a physically survivable level. It’s still crackling, but it’s banked enough that my brain is once again able to access its use of the English language. “So, what are you going to do with yourself now that you’ve sold your company? Doesn’t that basically make you unemployed?”
“I’m thinking of going home for a bit. I need to help Mom get her house ready to sell. She’s been making noises about moving to Vail for most of the year and just getting a condo off Turtle Creek.”
I straighten immediately. “She’s selling the Dilbeck?”
The first time I ever saw a Charles Dilbeck–designed house was when I’d gone over to Finn’s for a middle school science project, and it was an epiphany. I realized that houses didn’t have to be boring square boxes with one central hallway. They could have a sense of humor. They could list to the side or pull you up a turret. They could be anything you wanted. Every Dilbeck looks different, but my favorites are straight out of a storybook with hand-carved mantels surrounding oversized fireplaces, detailed brickwork, leaded glass windows that glint like melted sugar, a maximalist’s dream. It’s not at all the normal Dallas look of bright, shiny, and new. Though, if you take a step back and realize that the city’s vibe has always been “more is more,” then Charles Dilbeck is a quintessential Dallas designer. His houses are whimsy piled on top of whimsy. Sometimes more whimsy than people know what to do with. They’re getting torn down at an astonishing rate.
From what I remember, Finn’s parents never really leaned into the fancifulness of their Dilbeck farmhouse. Their home was always beautiful, but they were minimalists. The interior was white and gray before white and gray was all the rage. No knickknacks or unnecessary pillows. It was so different from the house I grew up in, which had dozens and dozens of wine corks stashed in glass vases that my mother was going to “do something with someday.” Liz’s and my childhood art, framed as if it were as precious as a Picasso, hung all over the house. So many pillows on the couch that you needed to shove half of them onto the ground to have room to sit. My mother could never walk past a handmade quilt without taking it home. She couldn’t stomach that something someone had put so much time and care into might end up homeless and unloved. She’d always meant to buy a chest for them, but never found one she really loved, so one corner of our living room became a landing zone. For most of Liz’s elementary school career, she would come home, burrow into the nest of quilts, and do her homework on her lap while I pulled together dinner in the kitchen.
Finn’s voice cuts through my thoughts. “A builder reached out to her about it, so she may just sell to him instead of going through the hassle of listing it.”
A lead weight drops through my stomach. “You can’t let her sell to a builder. That house is a treasure. A builder would just tear it down to build some lot-line-to-lot-line McMansion.”
“I can’t just tell her to hold on to it in this market. Not when she wants to be in Colorado most of the year.”
The waiter comes by with our mussels, and Finn and I both order steak frites.
“Please, Finn,” I say, once the waiter has gone. “Promise me you won’t let her sell to someone who’ll tear it down.”
I imagine a world in which I have the funds to buy it myself and totally redo the interior as a proof of concept for my own design firm. But I’m barely able to save with my current gig—and with keeping Liz afloat. Mom certainly doesn’t have the means to contribute to a down payment.
