“It really is,” Sarah says, nodding, thrilled to have finally found a captive audience somewhere other than her stay-at-home moms group. She looks from me to Finley. “Still not interested in joining? It’s really great for weight loss.”
She says this so pointedly that I watch the smile fall from Finley’s lips. It makes everything inside me pull taut, and anger courses through my veins.
Without thinking too much, I trail my nose along the slope of her neck, so close I barely have to move, just a tilt of my head. I speak directly into her skin, loud enough for Sarah to hear and Finley to feel. “I think Fin’s perfect just the way she is.”
I linger at the juncture of Finley’s neck and shoulder for just a moment, reveling in the way goose bumps break out over her skin. When I finally look back up at Sarah, her face is flushed.
“Of course.” She says this in the way of someone desperate to backtrack. “But guys never understand that no matter how thin a woman looks, she always wants to lose a little more.” She looks at Finley for confirmation. “Right, Finley?”
“Sarah.” Wren interrupts the conversation. “How is Bayleigh?”
“Bayleigh?” I ask Finley when Sarah turns her attention to Wren. Holden is staring off into space, clearly trying to avoid conversation with Sarah. He’s probably trying to calculate how long he has to stay here before he can whisk Wren back home. I give him another twenty minutes, tops.
Finley shifts in my lap, turning her body to face me more. “Her daughter. She’s in June’s class.”
“Ah,” I say, searching her expression. She doesn’t look hurt by what Sarah says, and it relaxes something inside me. I nod in Sarah’s direction. She’s still deep in conversation with Wren about dance classes. “Great girl.”
A smile twitches at the corners of Finley’s mouth. “Oh, the best. Did you know I could join her company for just the cost of a cup of coffee a day?”
“What a steal,” I respond brightly.
“The products cost the same amount as my rent, but it seems worth it to have a slightly smaller ass, don’t you think?”
“I like your ass,” I say before I can think better of it.
Thankfully, a laugh rockets out of her. “You like everyone’s ass.”
“Holden’s especially.”
Holden turns at the sound of his name, but it’s too loud in here for him to hear our conversation, so he returns to staring at a point on the wall.
“I’m surprised she believed the rumors,” she says.
“She probably wouldn’t have, but you are sitting on my lap.”
She waves me off. “I do this with all my friends.”
I lean into her space a little, desperate to know the answer to something Sarah said. “Plus, you apparently had the biggest crush on me in high school.”
She stares at me for a long moment, and I see pink forming on her cheeks, twin cherries I want to taste. “Yes, well, I did until you called me annoying.”
I roll my eyes. “So you would have been madly in love with me until this day if that hadn’t happened?”
It’s her turn for her to roll her eyes. “Gosh, no. That’s when you started your serial dating. I could never be with a player.”
It’s true—Holden had caught me staring at Finley one too many times that summer and had asked if I liked his sister. I lied to his face and said no, that she was like an annoying little sister to me. Finley had overheard, and she still gave me shit about it to this day. I’d spent the next fifteen years trying to get her out of my head. At first, I was dating to date, working to think of someone other than my best friend’s little sister. But then,as I got older, it changed. She was still there in the back of my mind, and I wanted—needed—to find someone to kick her out. I needed to find my person, the one I’d be with for the rest of my life, my partner. I needed to find someone who wasn’ther.
And because of that, Finley would never feel anything for me. I’d put my shovel to the ground at nineteen and spent the better part of a decade and a half digging my own grave. It’s why I need to leave town, to get away from her and whatever spell she’s cast on me. I won’t ever move past her when she’s there at the end of my dates, at family dinner, at my best friend’s house, or on the street.
I can’t keep doing this to myself.
“I’m thinking about moving to Maine,” I pant on Monday morning.
Holden stops on the street next to me, his arms hanging by his sides, brow scrunched in question. I prop my hands on my hips, breathing hard. We’re on mile three of our five-mile run, and I’m not sure what prompted me to spit this out right now, but the weight that was building in my chest seems to ease now that I’ve said it.
“You’re what?” Holden asks.
I let out a shaky breath, hoping he takes it as overexertion and not nervousness. “Charlie called me last week. He said there’s going to be a job opening at his station in a few months. He wants me to come out on Labor Day weekend and see the town, meet the guys at the station. See if it’s a place I’d like living.”
