Mistakes we never made, p.21
Mistakes We Never Made, page 21
Finn gets out of the car and circles around back, bending down to take a look at the rear tires. Seconds later, I’m out of the car too. I may have a million conflicting feelings about Finn swirling around inside me, but I have nothing but love for his vehicle. I walk around to the back of the car and hover over his left shoulder.
“Do you need any h—”
“I’ve got this,” Finn says coldly.
And that sends my blood boiling. Sybil might need me to be her anchor, but spending all this time with Finn has left me drowning. The best thing I can do for Sybil is get back to LA and get my head on straight. “You know what? I think we should just call it. We should go back to LA and help the Rains with whatever damage control they need to do, and I can figure out how to help Sybil from the resort.” And then I can handle my own damage control. I thought I could handle sleeping with Finn and staying friends, but I clearly can’t. I need to put an end to this road trip from hell and get back to my real life.
“We can’t stop now,” Finn says. “We’re so close.”
I almost bark out a bitter laugh. It’s a complete role reversal of the positions we’ve held for the past two days. Just when I’m fed up with the chase, Finn hooks his claws in.
“We’re no closer now than we were when we left Malibu,” I say. “At this point, Sybil’s going to make it all the way to the Atlantic before we’re able to pin her down. Give me these.” I yank the keys from his hand, and before he can stop me, I’m in the driver’s seat with the door locked. I crack the window down an inch. “I will let you in the car if you agree to head back to LA.”
Finn crouches down, and a muscle in his jaw twitches. I’m upset that even angry, Finn manages to look gorgeous. My skin is flushed a mottled red from my hairline down to my chest, but he just looks like a knight heading into battle.
He exhales once, and his nostrils flare. “Fine.” He makes his way over to the passenger side and tugs at the door handle. It’s still locked. I roll the passenger window down one inch, too, and say, “And you promise not to take the keys from me.”
Very deliberately, he unclenches his fists. I can’t see his face, but through the passenger side window I watch his chest fill with air and this time when he exhales, it’s laced with a growl. “Yes, Emma. I promise not to take the keys—to my car—from you.” The low rumble of his voice sends a shiver through me. My eyes dart to the hood of the car, remembering the feel of Finn’s hands holding me steady, keeping me from slipping to the ground. I shake it off and unlock the car. He slides into the passenger seat, buckles his seat belt, and looks straight ahead. I plug the resort’s address into my map app, point the car west, and we’re off. In eight hours we’ll be back in Malibu, and we’ll both go our separate ways.
The mood in the car is heavier than it’s been the entire trip. This stretch of Arizona highway is a flat expanse of nothingness—scrubby little brown plants stretch out in every direction. The occasional semitruck is the only sign of life. Finn hasn’t said a word for twenty miles, so I nearly run off the road when he yells, “Stop!”
I slam on the breaks. “What?”
“There’s a raccoon.”
“Are you serious right now, Finn?” This should be sweet, Finn’s eagerness to save another little furry animal’s life, but for some reason all I can think of is all the times Finn was sweet to me, and in the end, it didn’t mean anything. Sorry, Miss Raccoon, you might think he loves you now, but tomorrow you’ll be roadkill.
“You have to try to save everyone, don’t you?” I say, pulling back onto the road. “No creature is safe from Finn Hughes, Boy Scout extraordinaire: stray animals, Sybil, your dad.” I regret the words as soon as they’re out of my mouth.
The silence in the car hangs heavily until Finn breaks it. His voice is soft as he says, “Maybe you’re right, Emma. But at least I don’t avoid my own problems by trying to run the lives of everyone else around me.”
“Excuse me?” I demand.
“You’re bending over backward to keep your sister afloat instead of just letting her learn by failure. You forced Nikki to go on LovedBy, and she got her heart broken. You’re constantly badgering Willow to stop smoking. You drag us across three states trying to force Sybil to get married.”
“I don’t force my friends to do anything. I just know what’s best for everyone.”
“And what about what’s best for you?” Finn challenges. Then he sighs and rubs a hand across his face. “God, Emma. Sometimes I swear you don’t even know yourself. You push everything down but expect people to read your mind.”
I flinch, knowing that the words wouldn’t sting so much if they weren’t true. But I can’t deal with being lectured by Finn right now. “This whole trip has been a mistake,” I mutter to myself, thinking back on everything that’s gone wrong over the past thirty-six hours. The kayak fiasco at the Hotel Del Coronado, all the Vegas mishaps…
“Well, maybe your life would be a little better if you were a little more willing to make mistakes,” Finn says, “and forgive other people for theirs,” he adds pointedly.
“The only mistake I’ve made this trip is feeling like I could trust you. Especially after what happened the last time we saw each other.”
Again, images of the Dalton wedding spring into my mind. The dripping of an ice sculpture and the loud banging of a commercial kitchen. The hot wash of shame slicing through the sting of winter cold.
I turn to look at Finn, daring him to tell me I’m wrong, and in that moment, I lose control of the wheel.
21
MISTAKE FOUR: THE OTHER WEDDING
(Four and a half years before the wedding)
IT WAS DECEMBER 31; a new year was just on the horizon, and in a few months, I’d be turning twenty-four. I was full of glittery, naive optimism. Sunlight burst against white-topped mountains, and the gently drifting snowfall made it seem like crystals were dancing everywhere in the air. That amazing feeling of being on vacation after months of the hard grind in New York settled into my bones as Nikki and I traipsed in our heavy ski gear onto the shuttle heading to the lodge.
Katie Dalton’s wedding was tonight, and a bunch of us had made plans to arrive early and spend the day skiing. Wasn’t that the point of a wedding in Vail?
To be honest, though Katie Dalton and I ran in the same friend circles in high school, we were never super close, so I was a little surprised to have rated an invite to her wedding—surprised and thrilled. And not just because it gave me an excuse to travel to Vail for the first time. But because Finn was invited also.
“He’s totally in love with you,” Nikki said. I had brought her along as my plus-one, since Willow and Sybil had been invited as well, and we never missed a chance for the Core Four to reunite. Currently, Nikki was wedged between me and the window of the ski shuttle, scrolling through the last three months of my text chain with Finn—everything since that night on the rooftop back in September. Though I couldn’t see the screen, I could probably recite most of the messages verbatim, I’d reread them so many times:
Things are complicated with Pilar
I want to make it work.
You’re one of the most important people in my life. I can’t lose that.
After those initial texts from Finn, it was like a dam broke open. We’d text all day and into the night like teenagers—sending funny memes, having heated debates about our favorite TV shows (Mine: anything Shonda Rhimes. His: a 1970s show called M*A*S*H that he swears still holds up). But it was more than just that. Finn confided in me his insecurities about the next round of funding for his company. I told him how worried I was that Liz wasn’t taking her SAT prep seriously. Maybe it was the buffer of sending messages through a screen instead of talking on the phone or speaking face-to-face, but it felt like we were finally able to open up to each other. Like we were connecting on a deeper level and growing the intimacy that had sparked to life on my rooftop three months ago.
I’d broken up with Preston the day after he returned to the city from his trip. He’d been slightly taken aback. I don’t think anyone had ever broken up with him before. But it wasn’t fair for him to be with someone who wasn’t all in. And there was no denying that I had fully moved on.
Beside me on the ski shuttle, Nikki squealed as she read, and I forced her to show me which texts had elicited that response.
Sybil and I went up to the roof tonight…
Oh yeah?
Thought about you.
Emma, please don’t do this to me.
Finn clammed up whenever I tried to steer the texts to a flirtier place, which I understood. Sexting wasn’t really my thing either. And like he had said, things were complicated. The logistics alone were tricky—we were living on opposite sides of the country, for starters. But even so, it felt like we could work through all those issues together. Like maybe this would be the weekend where we’d finally talk about making us official.
After all, there were only so many times you could hook up with a friend before they stopped being a friend and started being something more. Right?
AFTER A COUPLE OF runs (blues only, since I did not want to risk injury before getting to enjoy the dance floor with Finn tonight), Nikki and I stowed our gear in a locker and broke for lunch at a cozy German restaurant at the foot of the mountain.
“What am I going to do if I can’t text you for eight weeks?” I asked, blowing on the steaming cup of cider our waiter had just set in front of me. Nikki had just been cast on LovedBy and would have her phone confiscated once filming began. After months and months of listening to Nikki complain that none of the guys in LA wanted something serious, I decided to sign her up, and just as I predicted, she’d sailed through auditions with flying colors. But now that it was really happening, I found myself almost regretting having sent in her application… and giving yet another friend a reason to move away without me.
Sybil had been grumbling about suffering through another New York City winter, and I could sense that she was itching to move back to the West Coast, where she’d had four years of seventy-five degrees and sunny during college. And then there was Willow, who had been spending more and more time abroad, dealing with family stuff over there, and now Nikki was going to be sequestered in a TV mansion for the next two months. Instinctively my hand reached for my cell phone, itching to text Finn. I wanted to tell him how I felt like adulthood was pulling my friends in all different directions, and how I hoped that he’d be the one exception to that rule.
“Don’t worry. I won’t forget you while I’m gone,” Nikki said, taking a sip of her cider. “And I won’t replace you either. After all, I’m not here to make friends,” she said with exaggerated bitchiness, holding up her manicured claws. I snorted, and she released her cat pose and slouched back in her seat. “What? You don’t think I’d make a good villain? I could totally flip a table or something.”
“I think you would be the worst villain of all time. You’d flip a table and then be back two minutes later with a mop and broom,” I said. “I think you should just be yourself, and then whoever the guy contestant is, they’re guaranteed to fall in love with you.” Our waiter was back, placing our orders in front of us. I dove in immediately, smearing a forkful of spaetzle and schnitzel with lingonberry sauce before dipping it in gravy.
Nikki picked up her knife and fork, but didn’t make a move to eat. “What if I don’t fall in love with him?” she asked softly. “Everyone on these shows acts like it’s a foregone conclusion that all the girls will fall for the guy, but what’s the likelihood that the one guy they pick is my soulmate?”
I set my fork down and reached across the table for her hand. “I guess you just have to be honest—with yourself, and with him. But either way, it’s going to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”
We decided to try to squeeze one more run in before we had to start getting ready for the wedding. The packed snow squeaked beneath my ski boots as I walked over to the rack where we’d left our skis. I had just clicked my boots into my bindings and was pushing over toward the gondola when I spotted him.
Finn was just a few yards ahead of us, standing in dark ski pants and a hunter-green jacket, his helmet tucked under his arm.
My heart rate ratcheted up as I called out his name. He seemed startled at the sound of my voice, then smiled and gave me a small wave. The sight of him, live in person and not just a series of gray bubbles on my phone screen, made me suddenly nervous. I tried to skate over to him, and promptly crossed my ski tips and fell flat on my face, even though I was basically standing on a flat patch of ground. I could see Finn chuckling behind his neck warmer. Nikki pulled me up and unclipped my boots from my skis, thrusting them into my hands and not so gently pushing me toward him and the gondola that went to the summit.
“Oh, man. Y’all, I realized I forgot my… ski… goggles,” she said.
“They’re right on your—” Finn motioned to the goggles on her head, but Nikki was already moving away from us, blocked by the next scrum of skiers jockeying for a gondola.
“She’ll figure it out.” I shrugged, quietly grateful that I’d get this time alone with Finn before the onslaught of wedding activities. Nikki might have been worried about being villainized on LovedBy, but she’d clearly be adored by the other women because she had the wing-woman role down pat—including when to bow out not so subtly.
“Allow me.” Finn pulled my skis and poles from my hands and put them in the ski rack of the slow-moving gondola. The group in front of us had filled up the previous gondola, and there was a gap behind us, so Finn and I ended up in a little cable car by ourselves. The liquid caramel sensation of finding myself alone with him for the first time in months seeped through my veins, warming my frozen toes. We sat on the bench seats opposite each other, our knees almost touching, our breath mingling in little puffs of cold air. Even though I was wearing about a dozen layers, including a very unsexy set of thermal long underwear, I suddenly felt naked in front of Finn. Probably because the last time we were together, I was naked in front of Finn. Well, half-naked, at least.
As the gondola started up the mountain, I turned my gaze out the window, trying to slow my racing heart. Below us, little kids in ski school were pizza-wedging their way down an easy green trail, led by their instructor. I watched their wide slalom path down the hill for a minute, trying to regulate my breathing in time with their turns.
“So, how have you been?” I asked as casually as possible.
But Finn was glancing at his phone. A gust of wind hit the gondola. As it swung slightly on its cable, I felt the lump of spaetzle from lunch shift in my stomach. Finally, Finn finished with whatever he was reading and tucked his phone into the sleeve pocket of his ski jacket. “Sorry. Just wanted to make sure my group up ahead was okay.” There seemed to be tension radiating off Finn as he turned back toward me. “Um, I’m good. Great.”
“Great.” The sound-deadening snow that blanketed the mountain amplified the silence filling our small space. I looked around for something to say.
“That’s a nice coat.”
“Have you been down any black diamonds?”
We spoke at the same time, then smiled sheepishly. Finn’s face relaxed, and I could feel the awkwardness starting to evaporate, and in its place, I felt that that familiar Finn feeling: safe, but with a crackle of excitement, like walking a tightrope, but knowing there’s a net to catch you. I realized that I was so keyed up about seeing him that I must have been projecting that sense of tension I thought I had seen on Finn’s face. He was probably just as nervous as I was. Like with Nikki and LovedBy, it was one thing to fantasize about something, playing out all kinds of scenarios in your head—but when you’re actually in the moment and the reality hits you, it can be kind of nerve-racking. And besides, the short ride up the mountain was probably not the time to do a deep dive into our future plans. Or even our plans for later that night… though I’d had more than a few fantasies already about the dance floor, and the after-party, and maybe having our own little after-after-party. Still, it was better to just let things unfold naturally, I decided. Like I’d been doing with our texts over the last few months, it was better to take things slow and let him lead.
“We didn’t really grow up skiing,” I said, trying to keep the lustful thoughts off my face by answering his question about the black diamonds, “so I’m more of a blue square kind of girl. Have you been skiing a lot?”
“Not really as a kid. Pilar’s family had a place in Deer Valley that we used to go to a couple times a year, but they sold it.”
“One less reason to date her,” I joked weakly.
A slight frown formed across Finn’s brow. “About Pilar, Emma—”
But just then the gondola jerked and slowed as we reached the summit. Finn and I stood up, stepping out of the car and onto the landing, grabbing our skis and carrying them over to the trailhead.
“What were you going to sa—”
But the words froze on my tongue, and I felt my imaginary high wire snap along with the stomach-dropping realization that there was nothing to keep me from slamming into the ground.
Because there, at the top of the lift, wearing skintight black ski pants and a silver puffy coat, skiing over to plant a kiss on Finn’s lips—was Pilar. Beautiful, effortless, and very clearly not his ex.
“DO YOU WANT TO talk about it?” Nikki asked me carefully from the bathroom as she swiped mascara onto her lashes.
“No.”
On the mountain earlier that day, I had sent Finn a look of utter shock and disgust, then strapped on my skis and flown down the first trail I could find—which happened to be a black diamond. Somehow, I’d managed to make it down safely. Too upset by what I’d just seen to worry about dying, I was fueled down the steep hill by a surge of hurt, anger, and adrenaline. Feelings that were still coursing through my system now, hours later.
