“Mating habits of the Arctic Ice Worm?”
“I know.” He sniffed. “I’m brilliant.”
As they walked, Hailey recalled laughing with Holly as they wrote their ridiculous Bear Towne essays, and it made her chuckle.
Fin looked at her expectantly. “What’s so funny?”
“I was just thinking about Holly,” she told him. “She was hell-bent on finding a school we could both go to, and she wasn’t afraid to come to Alaska.” She raised her eyebrows. “I was, but those ridiculous essays we wrote… ‘gave impetus to my spirit of adventure’,” Hailey told him, repeating some of the verbiage she’d written for his “scholarships.”
“Don’t use that word.”
“What word?”
Fin shot her a wry grin. “Impetus.”
“Why?”
“Because, it makes me want to prove to you that I am not what that word sounds like.”
Still smiling, Hailey shook her head. “You’re a juvenile. You’re a four–hundred-year-old, twelve-year-old, juvenile.”
“I’m a four-hundred-and-sixty-year-old, twelve-year-old, juvenile,” he corrected. “And I amfarfrom dysfunctional,” he added.
Hailey lowered her head, her smile widening.
“Impetus,” she whispered, and Fin growled.
“I never washed my shirt,” he said quickly.
“What shirt?”
“The one you cried all over.”
“Which one?” She’d snotted on several of his shirts…and he…never…washed…
“Ew,” she said, scrunching her nose.
“Hm,” Fin pursed his lips. “Is that creepy?”
“I think so. Or funny. I can’t decide, but it definitely rises to at least weird.”
“I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again. Guess I wasn’t ready to let go…” He sighed heavily then brightened. “Your turn,” he said, bumping into her.
Haileytucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I once told a girl at Hullachan’s that you used to be a woman,” she confessed.
“What?”
“She was really pretty,” Hailey said, going red in the face, “but she wasn’t very nice, and she wanted me to introduce you to her and get your number and set her up on a date, and I just couldn’t stand the thought of you going out with…”Another girl, Hailey realized.
“With what?”
Hailey shook her head. “She just wasn’t very nice,” she said, her heart pounding. “At least I didn’t tell her you were the impetus for the—” Fin cut her off by throwing her over his shoulder. “—oof—condom machines in the ladies’ room.” She laughed as he threw her in a pile of snow and plopped down beside her. Seeing the last bit of sunlight paint the indigo sky reminded Hailey of Holly’s funeral and how Fin stood next to her, hugging her tight when she wept.
“You’re the only person I want around me when I’m sad,” she said. “And you’re the first person I want to find when I’m happy.” She sat up and looked at him.
“I didn’t want to stay away from you after Holly’s funeral,” Fin told her, still lying in the snow. “Asher and I had an argument, and he made me go away. Eventually, we agreed you should choose who you wanted to…hang out with…”
He moved his hand across the snow and next to Hailey’s, reaching his fingers close to hers, but not touching them.
