Josie smoothed Finn’s hair back from her forehead. “It’s not totally your fault. You unexpectedly reconnected with someone you used to care about. It sounds like it got really intense, really fast, and you probably didn’t know how to handle it because it didn’t fit into the goals in your Bullet Journal. Then I came home and made things worse. Your guy left, and you forgot how pants work. The end.”
“That’s… actually pretty much it.” Finn snuffled. “I will say you got him right in his most vulnerable spot.”
Josie shrugged, the motion jostling Finn’s head. “That seems to be my specialty.”
Finn sat up and took one more swipe at her wet eyes. “Is your other specialty fixing things after you and I worked together to screw things up for me with the guy you brought home?”
Josie slapped her hands on her thighs and then stood. “Absolutely not. My specialty is pouring the wine until you forget about your woes. I take it you were planning to stay home from work today?”
Finn nodded. “We were going to—”
Her roommate held up a hand. “I know what you were planning to do. I saw those abs.” She tapped out a quick text message, then looked up with a raised eyebrow. “The only acceptable alternative is getting good and day drunk. Richard’s on the way.”
Three hours later, Finn was impervious to pain.
“Thatguy wore my pants?” Richard grabbed the laptop from her and held it to his nose, barely avoiding dribbling wine on the keyboard.
“Yep,” she said, grabbing his glass and stealing a sip for herself when she found her own empty. “And I swear to God, if you accidentally like a single thing on his timeline from my account, I will murder you.”
“Girl, you think I don’t know how to social media stalk?” Richard snatched his glass back and took a closer look at the screen. “It’s actually a miracle that Calamity Josie found him without me around to nudge her away from the marrieds and the Marys.”
Josie smacked Richard’s arm and swiped the laptop, scrolling on Tom’s Insta until she found a shot of the man in question in swim trunks at Oak Street Beach. “Oh my God. Those arms.”
“He looked amaaaaazing in Richard’s shirts.” Finn had reached the swoony, dreamy stage of drunkenness where everything was rosy around the edges. “He also looked amazingoutof Richard’s shirts.”
“Staaahp. You’re making us all jealous.” Josie returned with a fresh bottle of wine to top off everyone’s glasses.
“Not me.” Richard raised his newly full glass in a salute. “I proposed to Byron last night. We’re getting married!”
Finn shrieked, and Josie shoved the laptop at her so she could wrap Richard into a hug. “Congratulations! Let me be your ring bearer? Please please please?”
Richard ruffled Josie’s curls. “You can absolutely carry a white satin pillow down the aisle. But I now speak from a place of authority as a happily settled man. That means you all have to listen.”
He paused to take a long gulp from his glass, and Finn leaned forward so she wouldn’t miss a word. But she misjudged her wine-enhanced ability to keep her balance and ended up toppling sideways, taking her full glass with her. Normally she’d freak over the stain seeping into her sweatshirt, but today she couldn’t bring herself to care. Too bad she was drinking merlot and not chardonnay.
“Finn, my dear, the thing you have to understand is—” Richard began, only to be interrupted by a knock on the door.
Finn’s soggy, foolish heart lurched. Tom had come back. She’d get the chance to apologize. They could try again. Well,againagain.
“Finn! Are you here?”
Everything in her wilted. She knew that voice, and it didn’t belong to the man she most wanted to see. Still, its owner would probably remove the screws on the hinges if she didn’t let him in pronto, so she rolled her boneless self off the couch and slouched to the door.
“Jake,” she muttered. “Why aren’t you at work? Is it a national holiday? Christmas was last month.”
Her corporate-polish brother looked ragged round the edges, his black hair spiked in tufts around his head. “You weren’t. Answering. Your phone,” he ground out. “We discussed this.”
He pointed an accusing finger at her, but she batted it away.
“Pssht. I turned off my phone. Big protective brother isn’t the boss of me.”
Jake’s nose twitched. “Are youdrunk?”
A noise inside the apartment made them both turn to see Josie’s and Richard’s heads pop over the back of the couch like a pair of lemurs.
“Looking gooooooood, Jake! My replacement trifecta!” Josie accompanied her happy shout with a salute from her half-full wineglass.
In response, Jake plowed his fingers through his hair, which explained its current state of dishevelment, and visibly counted to five before turning to her. “Grab your coat.”
