I don’t know how long we stay like that, our knees bumping and thighs sliding together as we tread in the water, but eventually, my heart starts to slow. My breathing starts to even out. Some of the tension that has been weighing my shoulders down for decades dissipates.
So I continue, speaking into the sliver of space between our lips, my eyes still closed. “About a week before that, I’d seen a story on the news about a little girl that had been dropped off at the fire station. She was adopted by this couple who had been trying for years to have a baby. The three of them looked so happy. I thought my parents would be happier without me, and that maybe there was a family out there who would really, really want me. So the next morning, I rode my bike to the fire station and told them I wanted them to find me a new mom and dad so mine would be happy again.”
When I open my eyes, I see tears streaking down Finley’s face, little droplets that glisten in the moonlight.
“Hey,” I say, pulling back enough to move my hands between us, catching the tears as they fall.
She shakes her head in my hands, swallowing thickly. Her voice comes out as a croak. “Don’t comfort me right now. All I want is to go back and hold childhood Grey and tell him how loved he is.”
This makes my lips tug, and she looks startled by it. “Why are you smiling?”
“You love me.”
She coughs out a choked laugh. “You’re ridiculous.”
“I know,” I say, leaning forward until my mouth is pressed to hers. It’s a chaste kiss, nothing close to what I want, but it’s the only way I can think to thank her.
When I pull back, I say, “The story gets better from here. The chief was Charlie.” Recognition dawns in her eyes. She doesn’t know him personally, but she’s heard me talk about him enough over the years that his name is familiar. “He must have called my parents, I know that, but he let me stay for a few hours. He showed me around the station and told me all about his job, then he let me sit in the truck and pretend to drive and turn on the siren. He made me feel important, which is something I don’t think I’d felt before. He told me I would make a great firefighter, and when we went back inside, he set me on the counter while they all made lunch. And for the first time, I saw what family could be like, you know?”
She nods against my hands, her eyes softening like melting ice cream, because she does know. It was the way she was raised, the way I discovered in her house as a teenager.
“I decided that day that I was going to be a firefighter. I think my dad always assumed I’d grow out of it, but I didn’t. After that day, I just tried my best to be as unproblematic as possible sothey wouldn’t have anything to argue about. I didn’t want to give them any reason to regret me.”
“Grey,” she says after a long pause, seeming to search for the words.
“You don’t have to say anything.”
Her eyes find mine, so earnest it makes my chest ache. “I have so, so much to say that I don’t know where to start.”
Her words feel like sunshine being poured inside me, lighting up all the dark, shadowed places that have been festering since that day when I was a broken five-year-old boy. I want to stay here in this water with her forever. Until our skin grows pruny and the sun starts to brighten the sky. I don’t want this to end, this feeling, this moment, this blip in time where I feel lighter than I ever have before.
But then I notice the goose bumps prickling her shoulders, the way her teeth are starting to chatter. Despite my comment earlier about how the lake felt like bathwater, it’s actually pretty cold. And we’ve hardly been moving, letting the water chill us to the bone.
My hands slip down the slopes of her shoulders, squeezing her arms periodically until I get to her hands. “Let’s go inside and get warm.”
She nods enthusiastically, and I feel a stab of guilt in my abdomen that I’d gotten so wrapped up in the tangled mess of my childhood that I hadn’t noticed her growing cold against me.
We swim back to the dock, and I let her climb up the ladder before me, trying very hard not to watch the way her matching floral bra and underwear cling to her body. I don’t think I do a good job, because when she’s back on the dock, she turns around and smirks at me as she picks up her dress.
“You’re staring again.”
“I’d have to be dead not to, Finley.”
This makes her rich laughter echo across the lake, seeping beneath my skin and warming me in a way heavy clothes and blankets never could. I want to capture that sound and keep it for the days when memories threaten to swallow me whole.
She’s already dressed, her sundress sticking to her wet undergarments, as I tug my shorts and T-shirt back over my wet skin. By the time I’m buttoning my pants, she’s running up the dock for the back door, yelling over her shoulder about how she’s got dibs on the shower first.
“I have two showers,” I yell back, following after her at a leisurely pace.
“Yes,” she calls as she stops at the back door, her hand on the knob. “But I distinctly remember you going on and on about the custom shower you and Holden installed last year and how when you die, you hope you go in there, underneath your rain showerhead.”
A laugh climbs up my throat, and I tip my head back, letting it disappear into the sky. Her mouth stretches into a grin, and she watches me for one long moment, as if memorizing the sound of my laughter the way I did with her just minutes before. Then she hurries inside to take over my shower. Through the windows, I can see her stripping off her now damp dress as she runs toward the bedroom, and my laugh turns into a groan, because, damn, I’m in trouble.
I will never admitit to Grey, but his shower is as good as he always claims it is. I want to stay here forever. Or at least long enough for him to come knocking, asking me what’s taking so long. I want to drag him in here with me, show him in all the ways I can think of that he’s important. Cherished. Worthy. Loved.
There’s a sticky feeling in my chest when I think of him. Something I don’t want to name. Something that feels too vulnerable to acknowledge. But I can’t ignore it for much longer, or it will devour me.
Deciding to shut the shower, and hopefully the path of my thoughts, off, I wrap myself in one of the giant charcoal gray towels I found in the linen closet, finally feeling warm and clean. Grey’s bathroom is just as stunning as the rest of his house. Something I was actually a bit surprised by. I knew he and Holden had been slowly renovating it over the past few years, but I couldn’t have imagined it turning out anything like this. Despite the bachelor-esque lack of decor, the paint and finishes and overall aesthetic of the home is immaculate. Exactly the wayI would have designed it if it were mine. Warm and cozy, while still modern and clean. It’s a lot like Unlikely Places, a modern twist on the vintage mountain-town feel of Fontana Ridge.
