Page 30 of So This Isn't Love
"I'm not asking." She squeezes my shoulder, and her face goes open and honest. "Whatever happened with Finn Bardot this weekend, it doesn't undo the years before. You're a good person, Darcy. He's a grown man. He's probably laughing his billionaire ass off about everything by now."
I really don't think so, but I give my friend a weak nod.
She points at me. "Thursday night. Be there. Don't make me come to your place and drag you there."
She gives me a wink, then leaves. The library settles around me. Lunch is over. In a minute the bell will ring and I'll stand up and walk back to my classroom and teach literature to teenagers for the rest of the afternoon and I will be fine. By Thursday night this week, I'll be at the local pub answering trivia questions and drinking whatever Annie puts in front of me, and the weekend will become a story I sand down until it fits in the drawer with everything else I've outlasted.
The problem is, I miss him. And how crazy is that? The boy who tormented me and shackled me to a nickname I haven'tbeen able to shake all these years later is now the man I want to see more than anyone else.
But he's gone.
I tell myself it's for the best. Annie's right. Finn's probably shaken off the weekend already and forgotten about it all. Forgotten about me.
I need to forget about him too.
Something I haven't been able to do since grade school, but now it's for an entirely different reason.
The bell rings and the chaos of student footsteps and conversation jolts my body into action.
Time to get back to real life.
CHAPTER 13
FINN
By Thursday, the tango video has more than twelve thousand views.
Evan has checked twice in the last hour while Colton and I work in the north vineyard, and each time the view tally climbs he acts like it's a personal accomplishment. He's sitting on the quad runner with his cast propped on the handlebars, holding his phone in one hand, grinning like each new view is paying him royalties.
"Twelve thousand, two hundred and fifteen!" He flashes the phone in my direction. "You're trending locally. And the comments are outstanding. Here's my favorite so far: 'Check his face during the dip. Rich City Dude is NOT okay.'" He scrolls, delighted. "They're really savaging your form, bro. Justified."
I roll my eyes. "I'm glad my misery can amuse you, Evan."
He chuckles while I consider tying his bum leg to one of the grape vines I'm working on.
"Oh, there's a whole thread debating whether the dip was choreographed."
"It wasn't."
"Obviously it wasn't. You can't choreograph panic." He grins. "Though I have to say, for a man who has jumped off most of themajor cliffs in the Southern Hemisphere, one AP English teacher really put you through it."
I should have a sharp comeback for this. Normally I'd have several. But the bit stalls, because the image in my head isn't Darcy putting me through it. It's Darcy in a parking lot with wet eyes and her arms around herself, sayingI didn't know. That one doesn't come with a capper.
"She was thorough," I say, and clip the supply pouch shut.
Thorough. That's what I went with. The real word is somewhere in the neighborhood of devastating, but I am not handing Evan that ammunition.
"Thorough." Evan looks at Colton, who is racking a pruning saw and minding his own business in a way that is never actually minding his own business. "He called the woman who made him tango, scrub kennels, and express a bulldog's anal glands 'thorough.' Note the tone, Col."
I glare at him. "There's no tone."
"There's absolutely a tone. There's a whole fucking symphony. You've been out here all week doing vineyard work you don't know how to do?—"
"I know how to do vineyard work."
"You retensioned wire that was already tensioned, Finn. You restaked posts that Colton staked in March. Yesterday you asked me what varietal we're growing on the east block, and the answer is the same one we've been growing since Dad planted it. You are not out here because you love agriculture."
I almost have a line. Something about how at least I'm being productive, unlike the man watching TikTok from a quad runner with a broken leg. The setup is there, the angle is there, and then it's not. The joke dies somewhere between my head and my mouth, same as it's been dying all week.
