On the rare occasions when I’d see him around the street when we both happened to be home for holidays, it hardly rocked my world. I’d just think,Oh, there’s Finn. Who I used to have that insane crush on.
But now, seeing him in person—under the influence of this highly specific new theory thathe was the only man I’d ever love…It shifted things back. As Finn joined the group, all my old full-body Pavlovian high school reactions to him revved up again, and my rib cage felt like it was clamping down on my heart. Not to mention my lungs.
I forced myself to take a breath—terrified that I might audibly gasp.
But nobody would have noticed anyway. We wereallwatching Finn.
He came straight over to the neighborhood kids, and he fist-bumped everybody—which took a minute, because on our street, everyone had a signature fist bump. Ashley’s was “snail,” where instead of bumping your fist, she’d put up two fingers like antennae. Sean’s was “squirrel,” where he scampered his hand up your arm. Pete’s was “stick shift,” where he moved your forearm like he was shifting gears. Cooper’s was “shark attack,” where he made his two hands into a shark’s mouth andthen ate your fist. And mine was “narwhal”… where I just held up one finger.
Everybody had a particular fist bump.
Everybody—except Finn.
Guess what Finn’s was?
Nothing.Just a fist.
Because Finn was our undisputed alpha. And he didn’t have to go any harder than that.
He was a benevolent alpha, though. He patiently bumped everybody after he arrived, shining his star power on each of us in turn like sunshine—and he said everybody’s nickname as he went.
If the person he was greeting didn’t have a nickname, he just made one up.
“Coop,” he’d said to Cooper, stretching out theooo. His brothers, Evan and Sean, got “E-van” and “Sean-o”; Pete got “-ster” added to the end of his name to make “Pete-ster,” which made Pete glow with pride; and Ashley got “Bride of the Century” and a gallant kiss on the back of her hand.
Through it all, I hung back shyly—the way you do when you come face-to-face with your future while wearing wobbly stilettos on a carpet of Astroturf—wondering what my nickname would be. I wound up the very last fist-bumper, after Finn had made eye contact with every other neighborhood kid and made each one feel like a million bucks.
And then he got to me.
At my turn, right there at the end, he looked at me blankly and then frowned around at the crowd for clues before squinting and saying, “And who’s this?”
Are you kind of hoping it was the glow-up? That maybe I just looked so different in that too-tight minidress that he couldn’t recognize me? That I was, in that moment, perhapstoo beautiful for my own good?
Yeah, no.
“It’s JoJo,” Sean said.
But Finn just blinked, like that name didn’t ring a bell.
“JoJo,” Evan offered next. “From across the street.”
Still nothing.
“She’s the one,” Evan explained, “who had a crush on you for like eight years.”
Six, actually. But point taken.
“She fell out of the tree in the side yard while trying to spy on you?” Sean said.
“She used to call you all the time and hang up?” Evan offered.
“She got your school photo printed on a pillowcase?” Pete added, right behind me—before I kicked him.
Wow. I guess everybody really knew everything.
But still nothing from Finn. No recognition at all.
So brutal.
