Mistakes we never made, p.19
Mistakes We Never Made, page 19
“Oh, we’re not sleeping in the car.” From the back seat of the Singer, he pulls out a Yeti blanket and a small nylon pouch, in which I assume must be a tiny pup tent or something. I step out from the driver’s seat, but the green silk dress that had been the perfect thing for Vegas is deeply out of place in the woods.
Sensing my discomfort, Finn hands me a soft cotton shirt. “Here, you can wear this if it’s more comfortable. I’ll… um… turn around while you change.”
I put on my shorts and slip Finn’s oversized T-shirt over my head, but it’s been worn so many times that the fabric is nearly translucent in some spots. I reach back into the car for the sweatshirt and put it on too. “I’m decent.”
Finn turns back around and smiles. “You’re all kitted out in Duke gear.” He pauses. “It looks good.” He clears his throat and shakes out the vinyl pouch into a large rectangle. He knots it between two pine trees, and in less than two minutes, we have a hammock. “It’s not the cushiest, but it’s better than the ground or trying to squeeze into the car.”
“I’m incredibly impressed.” I sit sideways on the hammock and give it an experimental swing. My feet leave the ground, and I’m looking up through a web of pine needles to the night sky. There’s enough moonlight that I can see banks of clouds floating gently above us.
Finn produces a bottle of tequila from the car. “A night-cap?”
“Is that the tequila that sent Sybil into a tailspin last night?” I can’t believe it was only twenty-four hours ago that Sybil went off the deep end. Only twenty-four hours since Finn Hughes came back into my life.
The hammock rocks as he takes a seat beside me. “It’s one of many she tried.” He passes me the bottle, and I focus on unscrewing the lid instead of the fact that the entire right side of his body is pressed against the entire left side of my body.
I take a small sip and let it linger on my tongue. There’s a burst of flavor that almost tastes like my mom’s gingerbread loaf with a hint of orange blossom. After I swallow, the faint taste of cloves lingers. It does taste remarkable. Score one point for snobby man-bun bartender. I guess some tequila should be sipped. I hand the bottle back to Finn.
“So why do you think Sybil is going to Albuquerque?” I ask.
Finn pauses with the tequila bottle halfway to his lips, as if he’s not sure he wants to say.
“Come on, Finn. Just tell me.”
He exhales. “I think she’s going to see Liam.”
“Liam Russell?” It’s a name I haven’t thought of in years—Sybil’s high school boyfriend who broke up with her the night of prom and then proposed before graduation. “That was a million years ago. Why would she go see him?”
“It’s just a hunch. I hope I’m wrong. He’s bad news.”
My mind races. I’d never liked Liam, but I hadn’t realized that things between him and Sybil were that bad. The worry etched around Finn’s eyes is real though.
“What happened with them?”
“That’s Sybil’s story to tell, Emma.” His words sound familiar, but I can’t place them. “I just have a hunch that she went to see him. He’s a personal trainer in Albuquerque now.”
“How do you know that?” I ask, pulling the tequila bottle back from Finn and taking another small sip. I know Finn still isn’t on any social media, because every now and then I check—just to see what he’s up to, just like I would with any old friend…
“He’s an incredibly active LinkedIn user,” Finn explains with a half smile. “A lot of multi-paragraph motivational posts.” I grimace, and Finn nods. “Yeah, it’s pretty cringey.”
I pass the bottle back to Finn and pull the sleeves of his sweatshirt down over my hands, balling them into fists for warmth. “I can’t believe she’s chasing down an old boyfriend two days before her wedding,” I say. “Honestly, I’d be a lot less surprised if she was trying to chase down Sebastian. That would at least make sense.”
“Maybe she just needs some closure.”
A breeze slips through the trees, and the susurration of pine needles slipping against each other fills the space between us. When I look up again, the cloud bank has moved with the wind, traveling westward. The vastness of the sky and forest settles on me, but it doesn’t overwhelm me. Tucked beside Finn in this hammock cocoon, I feel rooted and safe.
“You know, my dad lives out this way. Around Flagstaff.”
I don’t know why I bring this up. Maybe Finn’s talk of closure just now. That’s something I never got with Dad.
“Do you get to visit a lot?” Finn takes a sip of tequila and leans back in the hammock, wedging the bottle between us.
I lean back, too, and the hammock sways softly. “No. This is my first time in Arizona. It’s been”—I do the math in my head—“almost eight years since I’ve seen him. He came to Austin for a football game junior year, and we got breakfast. It was super awkward because I hadn’t really seen him for years before that—and I haven’t seen him since. He’s not a bad guy, he’s just like a nonentity.”
The silence from Finn is heavy.
“What?” I ask.
“I think leaving your family makes you an objectively bad guy.”
“Yeah, definitely in some ways.”
“I mean, I can understand a marriage not working out, but your kids are your kids. That’s not something you can walk away from.”
“And yet…” I let the sentence trail off, and reach for more tequila. “Do you want kids?”
“Not right now, but definitely someday. My dad and I had our differences, but there’s never been a minute of my life that I doubted how much he loved me. Everyone deserves that. At least one person to love you completely unconditionally. I don’t think you should have kids if you can’t be sure you can do that.”
“My mom is like that,” I say and then tip the bottle back.
“Good.”
His hand closes over mine, and he takes the tequila back for another pull. “I told you I got in a big fight in Austin when I was nineteen?”
“Mm-hmm.” I don’t know if it’s the tequila, the rocking of the hammock, or being this close to Finn, but I feel totally at peace right now.
“They booked me and took me down to the station. Those blue couches are burned into my brain. Even though my dad was dying, he drove down 35 and picked me up. It was a super-shitty drive home, but you can afford to make mistakes when you know you have a parent like that. I don’t know that my mom has ever fully forgiven me. He took a pretty bad turn a couple of weeks later, and just never got better.”
“Oh, Finn. I’m so sorry. It wasn’t your fault.”
He clears his throat. “Anyway. I think that if you can’t love a kid unconditionally like that, then you shouldn’t have one.”
“I don’t know if I love my dad unconditionally.” It feels good to get the words out of my body. I’ve never been this candid with anyone before. Not Willow, or Sybil, or Nikki. Not even Liz. The anxiety that normally curls around my neck eases up, and I take a deep breath of mountain air.
“It’s not a two-way street,” Finn says. “Parents have to love their kids. Kids get to choose if they love their parents.” He closes his eyes, and then, almost as if he’s talking to himself, he says, “But I don’t think romantic love always works like that. Sometimes, it’s just… inevitable.”
For some reason, this thought makes it hard for me to swallow. I reach for the tequila bottle just as Finn reaches out for it… and slips his hand around mine.
“But don’t you think we can choose who we love and who we don’t?”
I wait for him to let go of my hand, but he doesn’t.
“I guess I just don’t think we have as much control over our feelings as we’d like to believe.”
“I disagree. You always have a say. No matter how tempting it may be, you can choose not to make the mistake of letting yourself love someone.”
“I challenge your stance.” He looks into my eyes. His face is serious, but his eyes are sparkling with something like laughter… or maybe it’s something else.
I smile—I’m enjoying the references to our debate days. It feels right to accept the challenge. Natural. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“So what’s your counterargument?”
Now he’s grinning, definitely. “Sometimes, Emma, making the mistake is the best part about love.”
19
EARLY FRIDAY MORNING
(One day before the wedding)
FINN’S WORDS SEEM TO linger in the cool mountain air. One word in particular… love.
I swallow, and he tucks a strand of hair behind my ear.
“Well, it’s pretty late,” he says, his voice barely more than a whisper. “I’m sure you want to get some sleep.” As I swing my legs into the hammock so I’m settled the right way, Finn stands up, caps the bottle, and begins to tuck the Yeti blanket around me.
“Wait, where are you going to sleep?” It feels so nice, having him tuck me in so gently, like he really… cares.
“The car will do for me.” The hammock gently sways as he stands and begins to walk away, and I feel the darkness of the night wrap around me, the piercing intensity of the stars, so far away—light-years. And even though he’s only feet from me, Finn feels just as unreachable.
Maybe he’s right about people not being fully in control of their feelings. Maybe the two of us are a ticking time bomb. What was the word Finn used? Inevitable. The memory of our kiss tonight in the elevator comes crashing back, and suddenly I don’t feel a bit tired. Energized by this electric something that keeps pulling me to Finn, even though I should almost certainly know better by now. Maybe all I need to do is finish what we started in the elevator. What we started on the rooftop in New York. In Katie Dalton’s pool. Really, what we started in the back of that debate team bus when Finn first slipped his hand into mine.
“Finn, wait,” I call out.
“What, what is it?” he asks, backtracking until he’s sitting perpendicular to me on the hammock. He pulls my legs across his lap, and the hammock sways slightly. “Are you warm enough?”
“Yeah, I’m just… I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep,” I tell him truthfully. Despite the fact that I’m exhausted, my heart is racing, my mind numb with some feeling I can’t name, some need I can’t say out loud.
“Why not?” he whispers. His hand moves to my ankle. “Scared of the woods?” he asks, a slight, playful taunt in his voice.
“I just…” How do I say it? How do I make him understand? That I don’t want him to stop touching my ankle, don’t want him to walk away, to sleep in the car, to let this moment just slip away like all the other moments between us before. “I just—I don’t want to make another mistake.” My voice breaks, and I feel foolish for blurting that out. “I don’t want to get hurt.”
“I don’t want that either,” he says softly. In the darkness, I can’t read his expression.
“I want to be able to trust you.”
He sighs. “But you never seem able to.”
The pain is in my throat, but I push past it. “And why do you think that is?”
He shifts. “Look, I know there were times when you felt like I wasn’t there for you—”
“I ‘felt’?” I interrupt. I hate that kind of bullshit non-apology. He wasn’t there for me. That wasn’t just my perception of the situation, it was a fact.
“But I’ve changed. Only you can’t see that because you—”
This time Finn cuts himself off.
“I what?” I demand.
“Forget it.”
A wave of boldness holds me to the spot. “Come on. Tell me what you really think.”
He shifts slightly so he’s facing me, his hand on my knee now. “What I really think is that you don’t let yourself trust me; you don’t trust most people, in fact. You’re afraid of anything—or anyone—that you can’t control.”
His words make me want to cry, but I refuse to let him see that. “Screw you, Finn.” The words don’t come out as venomous as I want them to—more just deflated.
“Am I wrong, then?”
I wish I could say he was. But what I’m feeling now? The mix of desire and confusion and… dread? He’s right on the money. I’m terrified to let myself fall.
In the silence, he inches slightly closer to me, pulling my knees toward his lap. “I’m sorry, Emma, but you don’t get to control me. That’s not on offer.”
There’s something so sure, so powerful and confident in him, it takes my breath away. “I never said that’s what I wanted,” I protest, pushing the blanket off me, unsure whether to be angry or pleading.
My face is mere inches from his now as he asks, “So what do you want, then, Emma?”
The words are too hard to say, and so I don’t say it, I show him instead. I lean forward, slowly, until our lips touch. There’s no hesitation from Finn. He returns my kiss hungrily, opening my mouth with his tongue. Kissing him feels so good, I let the knot that had been forming inside me begin to unravel. He pulls me gently onto his lap. My legs are on either side of him. The hammock sways, driving my hips into his, and he lets out a soft groan. In this moment, the truth overpowers me, how much I want this, to be this close to him—out here in the middle of nowhere, where we could be the only two people on earth.
His hands reach for the hem of my sweatshirt; I help him lift it over my head, along with my T-shirt, both tossed to the ground in seconds.
I remember the last time I was bared to Finn like this. The mild crispness of a September night cut through with the heat of his breath against my skin, the lights of the city sparkling around us. Now it’s cool mountain air and the sparkling of stars, but the heat is the same. And it’s the same flicker of hope sparking in my chest that flares to life again. The intensity that I’ve spent the last two years trying to find with other guys, but never did.
Finn’s words about Sybil and Liam echo through my mind. Maybe she just needs some closure.
Is that what I need too? But it doesn’t feel like closure, it feels like another new beginning.
Through ragged breaths he says, “If you want to stop, just tell me. I’ll stop. We’ll stop.”
“Do not stop.” It comes out as more of an order than I mean it to.
He smiles against my mouth. “Yes, ma’am.” And with that, he rolls me onto my back, switching our positions, and he’s on top of me, kissing me, moving his mouth down the length of my body. He gets off the hammock and kneels on the ground, sliding me to the edge, slipping my shorts off. My breath hitches at the sight of Finn on his knees in front of me, and I lean back into the hammock. Slowly, he kisses one knee and then the other.
“Emma.” I feel his lips now grazing along my inner thigh, and I nearly unravel in that moment. “Let me be the one in control this time,” he whispers.
He drags his tongue along my skin, my thighs trembling, as he’s kissing and licking, up, up, until I can hardly breathe, feeling like I’m coming undone at the seams.
“Can you let me take charge?”
“Yes.”
My underwear is gone in seconds, strewn somewhere I may never find it.
Just as I feel like I can no longer hold on, he pulls away, and I can’t help reaching for him. I tug at the neck of his shirt until he pulls it off. Bare chested, he grabs my hand and presses a soft kiss against my wrist. His tongue flicks briefly along my skin. When he releases me, a breeze blows across the damp spot where he’d pressed his lips, and a shudder racks my body.
“Emma.” He stands, looking down at me. Exposed beneath the full moon, I feel luminous and otherworldly. And the way Finn is looking at me, it’s like he thinks I am those things too. I don’t feel any closer to closure. I just want more of him. All of him.
“Are you sure?” Finn rasps, reaching smoothly for a condom.
I nod, and then gasp as he pulls me back in, against him. A small sound escapes from him too.
“Emma,” he whispers, moving deeper, holding my hips. Totally in control. Even though I’m completely naked, Finn’s body is a furnace against mine, keeping me warm. He cups one of my breasts, and I gasp as his mouth closes around my nipple. His tongue swirls around it, and there’s a soft scrape of teeth. I buck, and the hammock rocks me further into him, forcing him even deeper inside me. He lets out a soft curse, and the puff of air against my damp skin sends a shiver through me.
“You are so beautiful,” Finn breathes into my neck, and then he begins moving against me with more urgency, and I begin to let go of everything, of all control, until my whole body breaks apart in shivers, and I’m free.
After, we lie together for a long time, my legs wrapped around his body and my cheek pressed to his chest, where I can hear the beating of his heart.
A FEW HOURS LATER, I wake up to birds chirping and the warm glow of morning brushing over the tops of the trees. I don’t know exactly what time it is, but it’s clearly well past dawn. I smile to myself. I guess there are ways to turn off my body’s internal alarm clock after all. I’m tucked against Finn’s chest, and his breathing is still deep with sleep.
For once, my mind is soft, languid. I want to hold on to this sense of calm, to be fully present in this moment. I start running through the 3-3-3 rule like Finn taught me. See: Slate-colored mountains. The Singer. My discarded shorts… Hear: Birdsong. A car starting in the distance. The wind rustling through the trees… Feel: Warm skin. Soft skin—
Finn moves beside me, and I look up to see his eyes on me.
“Good morning,” he says. His eyes search mine while his fingers find a lock of my hair. He begins twirling it, and something flutters in my chest.
“Good morning,” I say back, smiling. He returns the smile, and something like relief flashes briefly across his face. For a few more minutes we lie suspended in the hammock, listening as the forest around us begins to wake up too.
