“Read a book about it.Starting a Bookstore for Dummies.I’m sure they have it. Let me look.” I reach for my phone, but she puts her hand on mine, stopping me. It sends bolts of lightning running up my arm, feeling her skin on mine. Such simple contact shouldn’t affect me like this, but it’s Finley. And things have never made much sense where she’s concerned.
“It’s too hard, Grey. I can’t do it.”
I pin her with a look, feeling equal parts stern and tender. “You can do anything, Fin. You’re the smartest person I know.”
Her expression changes then, turning into something soft and vulnerable, like she’s surprised by my statement. I can’t fathom why. Finley likes to downplay her intelligence, but I wasn’t lying.
She may have learned to garden from her mom, but I remember the books about flowers that she would check out from the library, the flower shows she would attend in the city, the business classes she took at the community college. She built Unlikely Places from the ground up, all on her own, and it’s flourished.
“This is different,” she says finally.
“How?”
She seems to struggle with the words for a moment. “I knew what I was doing with Unlikely Places. Everyone trusted me, and I trusted myself. I’m the flower girl, you know?” She pauses, eyes catching on mine. “I don’t know how to do this, and everyonewill immediately hop on board and want to help out, and if I fail, I’ll let everyone down.”
Her words slice through me because I can see where she’s coming from, but I also see what she doesn’t—her competence, how good she would be at this, how everyone’s confidence in her is well-placed.
I don’t get a chance to respond, because Buddy is back, knocking on the window with our order. Rolling down the window, I take our drinks and the paper bags of food, grease already seeping through the bottom, and hand Buddy a five-dollar bill as a tip.
She takes half of it from me. She digs into one of the bags and pulls out food, then places it on every free surface in the truck—the console between us, the dashboard, the cupholders. We definitely ordered too much, but that’s just the way to order at Buddy’s.
“I can’t believe they got it out so fast,” she says, popping a fry into her mouth. “It looks like the whole town is here.”
I nod and punch my straw through the lid of my drink.
“Wait,” she says, sounding like she’s had an epiphany. “Do you think we need to make out in the bed of the truck so everyone sees us?”
I roll my eyes, although my head is filled with all kinds of tempting images. “Yes, Finley, because that would seem very natural.”
“I don’t know what you’re into,” she says with a shrug. “Maybe you’re an exhibitionist.”
“I’m not.” I refrain from telling her that I’d do whatever she asked of me. “You know, for as much as you bust my balls about my dating life, you’ve seen very little of it.” Because truly, there hasn’t been that much. Sure, I’ll go out on dates with women here and there, but it never goes anywhere. Not when I run into Finley after and am reminded of everything I’m missing.
“That’s because you never go out with anyone more than a handful of times. You’re a playboy.”
I cut my eyes to her, taking a drink of my root beer to give myself time to form my thoughts. “Is that really what you think?”
She doesn’t answer for a long moment, fiddling with the straw of her own drink and watching me carefully. “Should I not?”
Based on everything, she probably should, and I hate that. I hate that in my attempts to get over her for more than a decade, I’ve also ruined any chances I could have had with her. She is nota dater. She’s had one long-term boyfriend after another for as long as I’ve known her. She dated the same guy throughout high school, and they only broke up because he went away to college. And then she was with someone else for a year and a half before they parted ways on good terms. There was one more person before Gus that I really thought was going to be the one, but when they broke up, she admitted to Holden and me that something never felt quite right between them, that as well as they got along, there was always something missing.
Meanwhile, I dated my way through this town and the next and the hordes of tourists that visit each year, hoping to find someone who would make me feel the way she does. And I burned every hope of a bridge between us in the meantime.
I don’t know how much I want to share with her, how much I can say without baring my entire heart and my deepest secret, so I finally say, “I’ve been looking, Finley, just like you.”
She blinks, takes a deep breath. Looks at me as if she has never seen me before. I feel laid bare, exposed, vulnerable.
I can’t look at her anymore, so I let my gaze trail out the window, the paper bag crinkling as I reach inside for more fries. She was right when she said the place is packed; it feels like the whole town is here. Yet we feel so utterly alone in the cab of my truck. Just Finley and me and this overbearing love for her that I don’t think I’m doing a good job of keeping hidden anymore.
You, I think.You. You. You.
The quiet is interrupted by the notes of some sad country song about looking for love crooning through the truck speakers. When I look back at her, she’s holding her cup out across the console to toast. She’s got a smile on her face, one that’s soft, understanding. Like she finally cracked open my chest and saw my deepest desires carved right there on my heart.
“We needed an anthem,” she says, and a laugh escapes me. “To finding the one of our dreams.”
I knock my Styrofoam cup with hers, the sound as hollow as I feel.
The sky is just beginning to lighten from deep, starry blue to the color of the ocean on a clear day when I show up at Holden’s the next morning, ready to run. I didn’t sleep well, tossing and turning, and when I finally did drift off, I woke up from a dream of Finley, just like all the others. But this morning felt different, more personal, more difficult to wake up from, after the conversation we had last night. For the first time, I think she sees me as more than her older brother’s playboy best friend. She peeled back one of my layers last night, and I’m terrified that she still won’t like what’s underneath. It has me feeling jittery and guarded and on edge.
