His phone number pops up.
I stop in the middle of the sidewalk. My bravery wavers. Finn is a man. He’s in his thirties. He won’t like being jerked around. If I go up to his apartment this late at night, and he has certain expectations—am I ready to take things to that level?
Breathe. I’m being ridiculous. Jumping to conclusions. I don’t even know if Finn will want to see me. Despite the temperature, I begin to sweat. I unwrap my scarf and ball it under my arm before dialing.
Finn picks up after the first ring. “Hey.” His voice is scratchy, even deeper than I remember.
“Were you sleeping?”
“Nah. Just been working all day since I saw you.”
“Oh.” A snowflake lands on my nose as a couple more drift onto my coat. He doesn’t say anything else. “Do you maybe want some company?” I ask.
“Where are you?”
“Close,” I say. “I walked from the East Village, and now I’m by the café.”
He sniffs. “Hmm.”
Clearly, I didn’t think this through. It occurs to me that he might not even be alone. “I mean, if you’re busy, it’s fine, or if you don’t want—”
“I want,” he says so low, I almost miss it. “You know I want.”
This afternoon, he basically admitted to fighting his attraction to me because of Rich. Finn doesn’t want to get hurt. But the way I left things with Rich is as close to breaking up as we’ve ever come “It’s over. We had an argument.” I play with the fringe of my scarf. “So can I come up?”
“I’ll come down.”
I hang up, part triumphant, part scared as shit. I don’t know how to be with someone like Finn. I’ve written about it, I’ve fantasized about it, but what if I can’t actuallybeit?
I need coffee, if only just to smell it, hold it. As fate has it, Lait Noir is only two blocks from Finn’s—but I turn the corner to find it closed. I continue toward Finn’s, where there’s a twenty-four-hour diner across the street. I can be in and out in a minute flat.
I’m about to step into the crosswalk when Finn exits his building a half block away. He comes toward me, passing under yellow streetlights. In sweatpants, sneakers, and a jacket, he’s not dressed for snow. He cups his hands over his mouth to warm them and nods at me. “Who do we have here?” he asks as he approaches. “Halston—what’s your last name?”
“Fox.”
“Fox,” he repeats, stopping in front of me. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I say.
“What was the fight about?”
Sharing the details means getting into some heavy stuff with Finn. It’s more than enough to scare him off. I shake my head. “It’s complicated.”
“In other words, it isn’t my business.”
“No. I mean yes, it is. Well, it’s not, but I can make it your business if you want to know.”
He crosses his arms under his pits. “I do.”
“I’ll tell you more, but can we go to your place?” Maybe if I can get him upstairs, he’ll forget all about it. “It’s cold.”
He tugs my scarf from under my arm and shakes it out. “Tell me now.” He wraps it around my neck with extraordinary care, as if he’s dressing a queen for her coronation. He wants to know about the fight before he invites me up. It’s fair, but the thought of telling Finn the truth has my stomach doing flips, my nose tingling. Unlike Rich, who wanted in good with my dad, Finn has no reason to take on damaged goods.
I glance at the ground a few seconds while the words bubble up—and then fizzle out. “Can we at least go get a coffee?” I ask. “The diner—”
“I’ll make you some upstairs.” He slips a hand under my hair, freeing it from the scarf, and brushes some flakes away. “Just give me the rundown.”
He basically said we’re going upstairs no matter what. I might as well get it over with. “You might think less of me.”
