Mistakes we never made, p.2
Mistakes We Never Made, page 2
As I turn to thank my rescuer, the smile on my face ices over, but I can still feel the heat of his hands around my waist. Hands I know well. Hands that have skimmed up the bare skin of my calves toward my knee, and—
No. Stop. It’s not like that anymore.
I shut my eyes, as if my lids have the power to change the reality before me.
But when I open them a second later, I’m staring straight into deep brown eyes—dark but flecked with amber so they look like light through a glass of whiskey.
The eyes of none other than Finn frickin’ Hughes.
2
WEDNESDAY NIGHT
(Three days before the wedding)
SHAKING MYSELF OUT OF the unwanted memory, I slip my foot back into my shoe, darting a look from the lime to the ribbons of my left espadrille puddled on the floor.
“Allow me.” Finn drops down to one knee, matter-of-factly reties the bow at my ankle, and stands. Despite my six-inch platform heels, he’s towering over me. I decide any flutter I feel is annoyance at being loomed over by someone so unreasonably tall.
Finn Hughes, my former debate team partner turned unforgivable asshole.
Okay, that might be slightly harsher than he deserves. He wasn’t that bad for most of high school. But then he shot up six more inches, filled out to his current man-shape, and started making his way through the female half of our entire senior class. Once his soft smiles and serious eyes were paired with broad shoulders and a chiseled jaw, girls suddenly found him irresistible. Even smart, slightly cynical, redheaded girls were not immune.
I can chart my history with Finn in a series of almosts. We almost dated in high school. We almost hooked up, that summer after freshman year of college. We almost left our significant others for each other after things went too far one magical night on a rooftop in New York. And we would have never spoken again after that big blowup fight at Katie Dalton’s wedding a few years ago, if it were up to me. Our story is a sequence of mistakes almost made—times when I thought Finn and I might be something more than just friends—but thankfully I’ve managed to avoid making the one mistake I know would be fatal: falling for him. He’s a heartbreaker and a mess, and I’ve learned that the hard way more than once.
“What are you doing here?” I straighten up as much as possible and place my hands on my hips, tucking the lime and saltshaker to my side.
“Hi, Emma, I’m good, how are you? Why yes, it has been a long time.” His voice is tinged with sarcasm, but he seems the slightest bit uneasy. He slides his hands into his pockets, rocking back as if he’s trying to take in all of me. Feeling his eyes linger, I can’t help the flush that blooms across my skin. I wonder for a moment if his brain is flipping through the same highlight reel of PG-13- to R-rated memories. His hand slipping into mine on the back of the debate team bus, his lips closing around my—
He clears his throat, and I’m jerked back to the present. “Seriously, though, it’s good to see you,” he adds in a casual, friendly tone.
I stare at him, steely eyed, willing my blush away. If he can stand there and be completely unaffected, then I can too.
It’s been exactly four and a half years since I last encountered Finn Hughes—and I’d happily have gone four and a half lifetimes without seeing him again, if it weren’t for our mutual friendship with Sybil. I knew Finn would be coming to the wedding, but I’d hoped to avoid him by busying myself with maid-of-honor duties and keeping my distance with the help of the nearly two hundred guests Sybil and Jamie invited. But I hadn’t planned for an ambush before the wedding weekend officially got underway at the welcome party tomorrow night.
“Why are you here, Finn?” I repeat.
“I drove down early for a meeting in LA this afternoon. Sybil told me to swing by.” Finn invented a healthcare app and is now a Silicon Valley tech bro who apparently zips down to LA to attend meetings and crash bachelorette parties. He rubs a hand along the nape of his neck. “The real question”—he steps forward to block me and my pilfered lime from the host—“is why are you stealing produce from a five-star resort?”
I suppress a shiver and force myself to take a step away from him. “The bartender refused to give me a lime, so I had to take matters into my own hands. You can’t have a tequila shot without lime.”
“Oh, of course. I’m pretty sure that’s in the Constitution,” he says with mock solemnity.
I nearly rise to the bait, but then remind myself that Finn and I don’t debate for fun anymore. Unlike our teenage verbal sparring, which was clearly just a pretense for the flirting we were too shy to attempt, our adult arguments have the potential to wound for real. Your Honor, I submit for evidence the complete and utter shit show that went down the last time Mr. Hughes and I saw each other. But we need to keep our drama to a minimum this weekend for Sybil’s sake. So I take a deep breath and lead him back to the group. “Come on. We’re sitting on the deck out back.”
We make it back to the girls, and I motion at Finn. “The stripper I hired is here.”
“That’s not on the itinerary.” Nikki raises her eyebrows.
“Itinerary?” Finn’s lips quirk up into a half smile. “Is this a bachelorette party or a corporate retreat?”
My grip on the lime tightens, and I set the saltshaker down more forcefully than I mean to.
“Finn!” Sybil leaps up from her seat and barrels into him. “I’m so happy to see you! You know Willow, of course. And do you remember my college roommate, Nikki?”
Finn lifts his hand in a wave. “Of course I remember Nikki,” he says with a smile.
I settle onto the rattan love seat across from Nikki and Sybil, as Nikki cranks her own smile up to dazzling. “So this is what took you so long, Emma. I was beginning to wonder if you had decided to get the bartender’s number after all.”
“Nope. No man buns for me.”
Finn gives a wry chuckle and settles into the seat next to Willow.
“True.” Nikki nods. “You’ve always had a thing for guys with shorter hair. Who was that actor you loved from Grey’s Anatomy?”
“Jesse Williams,” I supply easily, but I regret it the moment I see the catlike grin on Nikki’s face.
“Right! Actually…” she says, as if the thought is just occurring to her, “Finn, you look a bit like him.”
Yup. I walked right into it.
“Oh, really?” Finn raises an eyebrow, clearly enjoying this. “Is that so?”
Finn doesn’t look anything like Jesse Williams, unless you count the fact that they’re both biracial, and built, and generally hot as hell.
“So I guess your type is someone a bit more like Finn,” Nikki says, her wide blue eyes the picture of innocence, “wouldn’t you say, Emma?”
I don’t know what game Nikki is playing at, but I’m putting an end to it.
“Finn could be the actual chief of plastic surgery at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital, and he still wouldn’t be my type. Never has been. Never will be.”
The playfulness disappears from Finn’s face, and he says, “Wow, okay. Noted.”
Tension hangs in the air. I fumble for something to do, and suddenly realize that I have no way to turn my hard-won lime into lime wedges. “I forgot a knife. I’ll be right back.”
Leaning over from his chair beside the love seat, Finn gently removes the lime from my hand and produces a small pocketknife.
“Don’t worry. I know you can be a little single-minded when you’re on a mission,” he says.
“Do you just carry knives with you everywhere you go?”
“It’s helpful to have a tool on hand.”
“Well, thank the Lord we found you,” I say sweetly.
He rolls his eyes but lets the insult roll off him as he quickly halves the lime, then cuts it into quarters.
“Here you are. Can’t have a tequila shot without lime.” He repeats my words from earlier and flashes me a smile. The sea breeze ruffles his shirt in a way that makes my stomach clench.
Sybil, Nikki, and I take our glasses, and Finn reaches for the remaining fourth.
“That’s Sybil’s bonus shot,” I nearly growl.
“Finn can have it,” Sybil says.
“You two are going to play nicely this weekend, right?” Willow asks Finn and me, a crease of worry forming on her brow, as if she too is remembering the shouting match that occurred four and a half years ago.
“Of course,” Finn says quickly.
“Sure,” I grit out.
And I can play nice with Finn. We’re grown adults, after all. I’ll just treat him like a demanding client with exceptionally bad taste—politely, yet firmly, pointing out when they are dead wrong. Still, might be best to stick to just one more drink. Three-Drink Emma can’t be trusted to remember the “polite” part, and we don’t need a Katie Dalton wedding repeat.
Finn swirls the dark gold liquid and brings it to his nose. “You know, you should really be sipping this tequila—not shooting it.” I’m not a particularly violent person by nature, but I look longingly at the still-open pocketknife sitting on the table and then at a vein pulsing in Finn’s neck.
“Come on, are we doing this or not?” I lick the side of my hand, sprinkle on a little salt, and pass it to Nikki. When she’s ready, I raise the glass, “To Sybil!” And we both take the shot.
Lick. Shoot. Make a weird coughing noise. Blink back tears. Fumble for the lime. And, finally, suck.
Sipping might have been the right move after all, but I would throw myself off this balcony and drag my broken body into the ocean before I’d admit that. My only consolation is that Nikki seems to have had as hard a time as I did.
Willow winces at us, rubbing her belly. “I don’t think I could throw back a shot like that, even if I wasn’t pregnant.” She sighs. “Didn’t I used to be cool, once? Now I’m just a circus tent,” she says, gesturing down at her patterned sundress.
“You are cool,” Nikki insists, running a hand through Willow’s dark brunette waves. “I don’t know anyone else who can pull off a red lip the way you can.” It’s true. Willow has that chic, effortless Parisian vibe mastered. Of course, it helps that she is, in fact, French, and grew up summering at her aunt’s château in Provence.
“You’re stunning,” Sybil adds. “And on top of that, you’re a badass goddess, growing human life inside you. What’s cooler than that?”
“Totally,” I say, reaching over to rub her hand reassuringly. “You’re still the epitome of chic. Nothing like a circus tent.” Then I move my hand to her belly. “Just maybe don’t wear stripes for the next three months.”
Willow lets out a laugh and swats my hand away. She looks longingly at two men leaning over the rail of the deck and smoking. “I just want a cigarette.”
“Willow!” My wineglass clinks against the table. “I thought you quit.”
“I did quit. For a while.” At my incredulous look, she adds, “I’m obviously not smoking while I’m pregnant, Emma.”
“You shouldn’t smoke ever,” I say firmly.
“What am I supposed to do after I have sex, Emma? Just lie there?”
“You should go to the bathroom so you don’t get a UTI,” Nikki says sagely.
I make eye contact with Finn and raise an eyebrow as if to say, Still glad you crashed our girls’ night? But to his credit, Finn does not seem fazed by our talk of post-sex self-care.
“You could always try vaping,” Sybil suggests.
“Vaping is for children.” Willow waves away Sybil’s suggestion and takes a long sip of her mocktail, making a face as she sets it back on the table. She places a hand on her stomach and rubs absentmindedly.
“I will say one thing in the pro column for pregnancy,” Willow says, as if the thought just occurred to her. “More-intense orgasms.”
“Oh my god, Willow,” I groan as Finn lets out a choked noise. Looking over, I expect him to be blushing, but he just looks amused.
“I’m just saying, Emma! As the first to embark on this journey, I want to give you three all the facts. Don’t you want to know?”
Nikki nods seriously. “Yes, tell me everything. I hate surprises.”
Finn leans forward with both elbows on his knees, his empty tequila glass dangling from his hands. His eyes crinkle with curiosity. “I’m definitely all ears.”
Willow brightens and opens her mouth to respond—
“Time for the Newlywed Game!” I interrupt, willing away the shrillness in my voice.
The game is relatively simple. There’s a series of questions to see how well the couple knows each other. If Sybil guesses Jamie’s answer correctly, the three of us—four since it looks like we’re stuck with Finn—take a drink. If Sybil guesses Jamie’s answer incorrectly, then she has to drink. I sent Jamie the questions early last week, and he sent me back a video with all his answers.
I prop my phone up against Nikki’s still-mostly-full bottle of Whispering Angel so everyone can see, and press play. The floor-to-ceiling windows of Jamie’s corner office come into frame as he sets his phone up against his desktop computer.
Jamie smiles at the camera and settles back into his chair. “First question I have is: When Sybil says, ‘They’re playing our song,’ what song is she referring to?”
Sybil answers before I can reach my phone to pause it: “‘Heart Beats Slow’ by Angus and Julia Stone.”
“Angus and Julia Stone’s ‘Heart Beats Slow,’” Jamie says, nearly in unison, so we all drink.
“You guys are so meant for each other,” Willow coos.
We make it through five more questions, and each time Sybil rattles off Jamie’s exact answer to the trivia question. The four of us throw back swig after swig, while Sybil’s undrunk cocktail threatens to slosh onto her white romper with every cross and uncross of her legs and frustrated flip of her hair. Each time the liquid comes right to the edge of the glass, but never spills over. By this point, I would be a sticky mess of rosewater-infused gin, but the universe always seems to keep Sybil from suffering anything too dire. I can’t begrudge her though. If I were the universe, I’d go out of my way to make Sybil’s life easier too. She makes everything sparklier. Since she left New York for LA, the city has lost some of its shine. There’s no one to force me away from answering work emails or to suggest sneaking up to rooftops. But right now, Sybil’s looking decidedly less than sparkly. I should have thought through this game a bit more—with every aww-inducing perfect answer, we all get tipsier while Sybil remains sober. No wonder she almost seems like she wants Jamie to get a question wrong.
Jamie’s voice buzzes out of the speaker of my phone against the table. “Okay, here’s the last one: What is Sybil’s guilty pleasure TV show?”
I pause the video. The answer is obviously Secrets of the Bizarre. In middle school Sybil was obsessed with this sci-fi show that explored weird theories like where bigfoot lives and how aliens built the pyramids. If you don’t know Sybil well, it seems pretty off-brand. I’m actually not sure if Jamie will get this one. In my anticipation to find out, I hit play a second too early.
“Secrets of the Bizarre,” Jaime says on my phone.
“Happiest Place,” Sybil overlaps.
“Wait, what?” I’m looking at Sybil, but she’s looking at Finn. The two of them have dissolved into fits of laughter.
“Remember Tony from season three?” Finn asks.
“With the”—Sybil gasps for air—“loose tooth?”
Finn nods, and Sybil bursts out a tinkling laugh that somehow becomes a snort.
Nikki and Willow look as confused as I feel.
“That reality show about the sex lives of theme park workers?” Willow asks.
“Oh, right,” Nikki says. “I know a girl who auditioned for that.”
Wiping tears of mirth from her eyes, Sybil goes to take her drink, but I reach out a hand to stop her.
“I’m sorry, what the hell are you talking about?” I’m growing indignant—on Jamie’s behalf, of course. “You loved Secrets of the Bizarre!”
“Yeah, but I don’t really think of that as a guilty pleasure.” Sybil shrugs. “It was just a phase. Happiest Place is…”
“A way of life,” Finn finishes.
Irritation prickles along my spine. Clearly this show is something Sybil and Finn bonded over during what I only half-jokingly call “the dark years”—the brief period when my friendship with Sybil faded into childhood friends who have years of shared memories, but who don’t talk on a regular basis. In some ways it was a natural, normal drifting apart—Sybil started hanging with a cooler crowd senior year, I threw myself into academic pursuits—but nothing about it felt normal at the time. Maybe because that’s also around the time Finn and Sybil became close—despite the fact that Finn and I had already suffered a disastrous junior prom incident the year before that all but obliterated our friendship, which Sybil well knew. In some ways, it felt like she was choosing him over me. And that stung.
But this isn’t about Finn Hughes temporarily usurping my role as Sybil’s best friend. This is about the fact that Sybil is objectively wrong about this trivia question, and I grab my phone to prove it.
“Dictionary.com says a guilty pleasure is ‘something one enjoys despite feeling that it is not generally held in high regard,’” I read off the screen. “I’m sorry, Sybil, but Secrets of the Bizarre is not held in high regard by anyone except you and the tinfoil-hat makers.”
“Well, actually,” Finn interrupts with perhaps the two most obnoxious words in the English language, “according to their IMDb, Secrets of the Bizarre won two Janner Awards for television production, so you could argue that—”
“No.” I’m standing now, like I’m at an invisible podium. “You have to define the terms within the context of the social sphere in which they’re—”
“Oh, here we go.” Finn rolls his eyes, but he’s standing now, too, both of us assuming the debate team stance. Willow steps between us.
