I watch as I fiddle with my hands, intertwining my fingers and then sliding them apart in different ways.
“Let’s not forget the reason we both share,” I say.
“What’s that?” he asks and the fracture spreads just a little when I hear how down he sounds. The words come out on a sigh that holds a lot of weight.
“Wren.”
He pulls up to my house, turns off the engine and stairs at the steering wheel with a broken kind of calm. Eventually, he nods and turns to look at me. His hazel eyes are dull, more of a dark brown, the green and honey tones completely gone.
“Wren,” he echoes.
The world passes us by as Finn and I remain in the car. I could get out, hide away in my bedroom and spend hours reminding myself of the reasons why Finn and I can never be. That’s actually exactly what I should do, and yet here I am, forcing myself to sit in this questionable void, relaying every moment with Finn from that very first second that I met him.
Now that I’m looking at it all in a new light, our first encounter feels…strange. Out of place, as if the entire two-second interaction went against everything I now know to be a part of Finn’s personality. Now, it’s easy for me to put it down to immaturity, or nerves.
“Can I ask you something?” Finn asks, shattering the external silence and my internal turmoil.
“Sure,” I reply.
He clears his throat and shifts, almost like he’s preparing himself for something that’s about to spectacularly fail.
“That first night that I stayed round, and I asked you what was wrong, you told me to stop acting like I care. Is that the reason you’re taking your hiatus from dating? Because you think people don’t care?”
Every bone in my body feels like it’s breaking in warning, trying to fend off the impending vulnerability that I’m genuinely considering allowing. I’m not particularly used to opening up, not just to Finn but to anyone. I’ve tried in relationships, but it’s always been met with a brick wall.
Stiffly, I nod. “I guess.”
“You guess?”
“It’s a complicated question to answer, Finn.”
“Try,” he says gently. His hand finds its way on top of mine. “Please, try, Cherry.”
His voice is pleading, but not pushing, and maybe it’s that subtle tinge of desperation that makes the words spill out.
“I thought that relationships were supposed to be easier. Mine always ended up being hard work—but the type of work that you do because you love it; because you love them.” Finn’s fingers curl around mine and squeeze. “Even when the guys were clearly walking, talking red flags, I would always just try. I always reminded myself that the person you meet when you start dating is merely a representative, not the real person underneath. I always pushed myself to open up, partly as a way of extending that olive branch, but also because there were parts of me that I thought were visible to those around me and yet always ended up feeling indiscernible.”
“You wanted people to understand,” Finn summarizes.
“I wanted people to see. Maybe it’s ignorance from all the romance that I write, but I always thought that people who genuinely are interested in you, could just see you; the real you. I thought that if you showed the bravery to open up, then the other person would at least look at you; really look.”
I gather up the courage to look over at him then; brave the possibility that, once again, Finley Southwick will look at me as if I’m the strangest puzzle he’s ever laid eyes on.
He’s not. If anything, he looks…unreadable.
“Finn?”
He blinks a few times and stares out the windscreen. “I see you, Oakleigh. I’ve always seen you.”
I mean for my scoff to sound lighthearted, but in the end, it’s bitter and wry. “Yeah, sure.”
“You loveThe Nightmare Before Christmas.” I’m sure he can feel me freeze beside him, can most likely feel the tension in the hand he’s holding, but he doesn’t let it stop him. “You hateScary Movie, because even though it’s a parody, you still think that it’s scary, but you don’t want to admit that, so you constantly come up with an excuse not to watch it whenever the guys suggest it. You love the smell of rain in the summer and freshly mowed grass. You’re allergic to cats and yet you love Ollie so much that you take antihistamines every single day just so that you don’t feel like death in your own home. Yes, you’re obsessed with cherries, but the cherry-scented lotion that your mom keeps sending you from Australia smells like shit and you know it, so they’re slowly multiplying and collecting dust in your bathroom because you can’t bring yourself to tell her—because you don’t want to hurt her feelings—and you also don’t want to throw them away because they’re still cherry-scented at the end of the day and that’s just blasphemy.”
I’m really not sure when I moved closer. I’m honestly not even sure that it was me who did move closer. All I know is that, right now, Finn’s mouth is but an inch from mine and I have a clear view of the honesty in his eyes, now with more green in them than ever.
“And the cherry on top?” His lips brush over mine, a whisper that screams so loud, I’m deafened. “You’re in love with love, Cherry; and ain’t a damn thing wrong with that. So please don’t give up on it, because if I were worthy of you, if my thoughts weren’t blistered and bruised? Cherry, there wouldn’t be a single thing that you would want for because I’d bend this Earth to give it to you. Hell, I still would, even if what we have right now is—” something flashes across his face “—fake.”
“You know all of that about me?”
