Page 32 of So This Isn't Love
"One beer." Evan fires up the quad. "Colton drives the truck. You shower. And wear the blue shirt."
"Why does it matter what I wear to the pub?"
Evan grins, wide and badly concealed. "It doesn't. I just think you should look human for once this week." He swings the quad around one-handed, cast bouncing on the running board. "See you at the house."
The quad rattles off down the row. Colton tosses his tools into the truck bed and climbs behind the wheel. I grab my phone off the fence post and get in beside him.
We bump along the access road in silence. Colton drives the way he does everything—steady, unhurried, not asking questions he already knows the answers to. At the house he parks and kills the engine, and we sit there for a second in the quiet.
"If someone means something to you, you should let them know, Finn," he says. Eyes on the windshield. Then he gets out and goes inside.
I sit in the cab alone with my phone in hand, knowing that Darcy is somewhere in this town right now. Grading papers, probably. Living her life, the one that ran just fine before I showed up after a decade and reminded her why she stopped liking me in the first place.
What she's definitely not doing is waiting around for a call or message from me.
I know that the way I know the wind direction when I'm hanging from a cliff's edge with nothing but my fingers and a carabiner holding me in place.
I tap the screen and start composing a text to her anyway. But what the hell should I say? I'm sorry. I was an asshole. Still am, at least as far as she's concerned.
"Shit." I stare at the blinking cursor for a minute before closing the text window.
Then I go inside. I shower. I put on the blue shirt like Evan told me to do, and I get ready for a night in town that I'm not feeling at all.
CHAPTER 14
DARCY
Trivia night at the local pub is one of my few sacred institutions, and Annie treats it accordingly.
By the time I arrive she's claimed our usual table by the front window and is dealing out answer sheets and stubby pencils like a Vegas croupier. Jules has a basket of fries she's guarding with her elbows, and Cathy comes straight from the clinic with her hair still in its work knot and a hint of antiseptic on her clothes.
"Les Quizerables," Annie says, writing our name across the top of the sheet with a flourish. She names the team every season, and it wouldn’t be an Annie team name if it wasn’t a bigger groaner than the last one. "Two seasons undefeated, ladies. Tonight we go for the three-peat."
"You say that like we're athletes," Cathy says.
"We are athletes of the mind." Annie slides a beer in front of me and points at it. "Drink. Get ready to slay like the trivia queens we are. And nobody sulks through the music round."
"I don't sulk."
"You've been sulking since Sunday and don't pretend I haven't noticed."
I let that go, because she's not entirely wrong, and because the beer is cold and the pub is warm and golden and full of people I've known my whole life. For the first time in days, the ache behind my sternum starts to loosen.
This is what I need. Questions with answers. My friends, a normal Thursday night, the comfort of being very good at something small. By the time the host starts testing his microphone, I'm laughing at Jules's impression of her recital moms and feeling almost like myself again.
Then the door opens, and Evan Bardot swings through it on his crutches.
My first thought is a friendly one, honestly. It's hard not to like Evan. Seeing Annie beam in his direction is its own form of entertainment too.
Next through the door is Colton Bardot, whose appearance in town, on a weeknight, must be some kind of miracle. He holds the door and scans the room like he's calculating the fastest route back out of it.
Then I see the man walking in behind the two brothers.
Finn.
Finn, who I'd assumed was back in Manhattan by now. Gone home to his real life, a fact I had finally come to accept after nearly a week with no sign of him anywhere in Mattichogue.
Except he isn't in Manhattan. He's standing in the doorway of my pub with his sleeves rolled up over his forearms, his tousled hair pushed back, and a blue shirt that has turned his eyes impossibly green, and my heart does not consult me at all. It lifts. That's the terrible truth of it. Before the shock, before the scramble for composure, there's one clean second of pure, unwilling gladness, because he's here, and I have missed him more than I've been willing to admit to anyone, including myself.
