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September 27 - October 2, 2024
Fresh linen and the same cheap bar soap he’s used since high school. Grey Sutton, my brother’s longtime best friend.
His laugh is loud and booming, and to my surprise, it’s the first thing to bring a genuine smile, rather one tinged with sadness, to my face for the first time in a week.
“Can we cuddle?”
“There’s only one woman I’ve ever wanted in Fontana Ridge, Finley.”
There’s no place in this town that Finley hasn’t touched, that she hasn’t made bloom in that way that only she can.
“I just want him to know I’m enough for someone.”
She is the first flowers in spring, sunshine after weeks of clouds, everything I’ve never allowed myself to hope for. And she thinks she’s not enough.
He really can be magnetic when he tries.
He’s so big, broad and towering over me in a way that makes me feel small, which I rarely do.
Having his attention focused squarely on me is heady, like the moment you dive into water, and it’s everywhere all at once.
The two hours I spend at book club every month make me feel alive in a way not much else does.
There’s something about reading books that are guaranteed to end in a happily ever after. Sure, they’re sometimes over-the-top or unrealistic, but for a romantic like me, they’re hopeful. Everyone always gets what they’re looking for, or at least what they didn’t know they needed. Everyone gets their happy ending. Everyone is enough.
He’s too magnetic. I always thought we were repelling sides, but lately I feel like his opposing pole, drawn inexplicably closer without my permission.
Such simple contact shouldn’t affect me like this, but it’s Finley. And things have never made much sense where she’s concerned.
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.
“I don’t know what kind of books you want to stock, or if these are even any good, but I saw them at a garage sale today and thought they could be the first of your collection for the shop.”
Stunning in all the imperfections, the way art that’s flawed and rough around the edges tends to be the most treasured.
“Who says I’m pretending, Fin?
I also think I might just want to kiss him.
I just made out with my older brother’s best friend, with the man I had a massive crush on when I was too young to even have an idea of what I wanted.
“I have no control where you’re concerned, sweetheart.”
“If you want someone to carry you, Fin, just call me, and I’ll be here.”
He reads people so easily, adjusts his approach according to whatever they need.
“If I stay, I’m going to kiss you again,”
“All the good relationships are complicated, Grey. If they’re not, there’s no reason to fight for them.”
She looks at me like I’m someone important to her, like I mean as much to her as the people she loves most.
Maybe hope won’t be dew on grass. Maybe it will be a sunflower, and she’s the sun that I turn my face to, blooming for her.
Her fingers settle on a particularly light one, a remarkably similar shade to what I see when I look in the mirror. “But I finally figured out what they remind me of. Himalayan blue poppy. My favorite.”
“Do you have some kind of thing for housewives?” I’m so close to her that I barely have to tip forward to speak directly into her ear. “No, just a thing for you.”
That picket fence dates back to the weekend after Wren and Holden’s wedding, back to when she told me she always dreamed of a house with one.
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 catch sight of his ribs. Of the dainty flower inked there. A poppy. My heart stutters in my chest as I stare at it. My favorite flower. Tattooed on his skin.
That when eleven-year-old me met handsome fourteen-year-old him, the color of my favorite flower changed to match his eyes. That the next year, I planted a whole bed of blue poppies and thought of him every time I tended to them.
“So you’re saying you liked my dress so much you got it tattooed on you?” I ask, lips curling into a smile. He just shakes his head. “It wasn’t the dress, Fin. It was you.”
It’s the kind of desire you feel to know someone, to want to memorize them. To know them better than anyone else and be their person, the first one they call when they get good news or bad. The one they want to celebrate with and share their secrets with and hold on to when their world is falling apart.
“It’s you, Fin. You’re the only woman I’ve ever wanted, here or elsewhere. I couldn’t get you out of my head that summer, or any of the ones after. I was so gone for you that I drove two towns over and had someone tattoo your favorite flower on my ribs. And rib tattoos are a bitch, Fin.”
“I was trying to find someone who could compare to you. And I’ve come up short for so damn long, Finley. There’s no one like you. There’s no one I want more than you.”
“If you’d shut up, I could tell you that I want you too. That I’m not sure I ever really stopped.”
“I don’t know how you got so lucky to snag a man with a secret tattoo,”
That maybe we could be each other’s home, that we feel like home for one another.
Waking up with you beside me is more than enough to assure me that all my dreams have come true.”
“Just by existing, by being the person you are, you deserve happiness.” I swallow, my gaze darting from his. “Love. You don’t have to change yourself, mold yourself into someone other people want. You’re worthy, as is. I hate that people have made you feel otherwise.”
I told you: just being with you—the real you—makes me feel like magic, like someone special. Like someone’s most important person.”
Committing your life to someone means learning to love all the versions of them over time. The Finley you fell in love with years ago isn’t the same person she is now. She’s changed, and you have too. You have to keep learning to love each other through it.”
She hasn’t figured out that she’s the sunshine breaking through the storm clouds that have hung over my life so far.
What we have is special, remarkable. Once in a lifetime. The stuff of dreams.”
