Page 95 of Finding Him
I’ll just have to keep kissing him to find out how many there are.
When he pulls away, he rests his forehead against mine again, his eyes closed and his breath mingling with mine.
“Can you promise me? That if you ever feel like you need to drink, you’ll call me or something instead?” I ask, voice trembling.
He hesitates for a moment before nodding, his eyes still closed. “Yeah. I promise.”
I smile, pressing another quick kiss to his lips before pulling away completely. “Good. Now, can we go inside? I’m freezing my tits off out here.”
He laughs, shaking his head as he stands up and offers me his hand. “Yeah, c’mon. Let’s get ya warmed up.”
38
Crush Culture
Niall
November, 2007
FINNMARSHALL ISafraid of a lot of things.
Spiders, snakes, heights, needles (though he deals with them, being diabetic and all, but he hates them), enclosed spaces (mostly in regards to elevators), germs (also mostly in regards to elevators), hospitals, doctors, dentists, the dark, loud noises, fireworks, balloons popping, the ocean, boats, planes, trains, buses, cars, motorcycles, bicycles, horses, cows, sheep, goats, cats, mice, rats, bats, birds, fish, insects, reptiles, amphibians.
And most especially—women. And, you know, commitment and the likes.
There’s really no telling why. Someone like JJ, it makes sense. His father was a bad guy and his Mam stayed single for the rest of his childhood. I think deep down JJ is scared of a relationship that ends like his parents’ did—messy and with broken pieces everywhere.
But Finn’s parents—Bobby and Lottie—are the most in love people you’d ever meet. They’ve got four kids (Finn included) and a fifth on the way, and they’re both genuinely kind people who love each other and their kids.
So why is Finn like this? Why does he treat women like they’re landmines and he’s walking barefoot through a field?
He doesn’t know. Neither do I.
But apparently he thinks that I’m just brimming with profound relationship wisdom. It’s not like I’m walking around wearing a bleeding diaper and carrying a bow and arrow, so I wasn’t sure where this idea came from.
“I’m just saying Nialler, it’s getting way too complicated for my liking,” Finn mutters, leaning against the row of fifth year lockers beside mine. “Like, one second she’s tutoring me and thenextI’m agreeing to be her dance partner.”
“Her what?” I look up at him. He’s been rambling about Chloe Holland—his little sister’s baby sister, and who (most notably maybe) I almost hooked up with at a party last November right after Gemma Byrne ripped my heart to pieces by cheating on me with this rugby lad in her year.
Chloe had just been visiting from London in November, to see her Dad (who lives here and works at Finn’s Da’s auto shop), but over the summer she moved here to stay. Since I was home with my fucked up knee most of the time, I got a front row seat to watching (and hearing about) Finn pine over her all summer while she was babysitting his little sisters.
The thing was she wasn’tsupposedto stay in town or go to Morrigal after the summer was over. So ever since then Finn has basically been a basket case whenever the girl was around. (For the record, he buzzed his hair offbeforehe found out she was staying in town. He had figured it would grow back normal by the next time he saw her).
About a week ago, Finn told me that our year head, Mr. Toal, called his parents’ and him in for a meeting about his marks. He has dyslexia, and though he gets a lot of help and leeway for that, he still has to maintain a certain average if he wants to stay on the footie team. I think for everyone else, they need tomaintain at least a B3 average in all their classes, but for Finn, he just needs to get above a 50% in his weakest classes—Maths and English—and keep his marks above a 65% in his others (which he does fine in).
But apparently his English mark dropped below the 50% threshold (what he needs in order to play) and Lynch told him he could either get extra tutoring from his English teacher (who Finn hates) or get tutored by another student in his grade—one with good marks—who would sign off on tutoring sessions (which would be also be signed off by one of his parents, for proof).
I help him most of the time, since I'm in higher level English (Finn is in ordinary level), but I'm not sure how much help I am. I just let him copy my homework sometimes and tell him what books to read for extra credit (he hates reading). His mother didn't think I'd be a good tutor, and she didn't want him to choose one of his friends on the off-chance that he would goof off the whole time (it was a good chance).
So of course, without knowing her son had an infatuation with her (and vice versa, I think) she asked Chloe Holland to tutor Finn.
“Her dance partner quit,” he explains. “And she was so upset—she wascrying, you know I hate crying—because she was gonna have to drop out of the competition so I just... kinda...”
“Offered to dance with her even though you have no ballet experience?” I finish for him.
“Come on, it’s easy street. I’ve seen them practice, the lad was just doing lifts and stuff, she’s the one prancing on her toes, not me. And we all took classes with Fitzy’s Mam in her old Dublin studio back in primary, I’ll be fine.”
“Fitzy’s Mam teaches little children,” I remind him. “You know, like your sisters'. And the only one of us good at thoseclasses were JJ and Claire. And besides that, we were learning Irish dancing, not ballet.”
