“Remember that you said you’d go easy on me, Finn,” she calls out, spreading her feet.
I smirk before throwing the first ball. It’s as easy as I’ve got in me, but she still misses, swinging just a second too late.
“Start talking, baby cakes.”
She lowers the bat and stares at where it presses into the red dirt. There’s a heavy silence around her that I feel from the mound. The immediate denial is right there on her face, but asevery second passes, she holds it back. It’s not until I’m ready to storm over to her and force her to speak that she does, her voice almost too low to hear.
“I didn’t think it was possible to feel like I’m not enough but too much at the same time.”
My skin pulls tight over my bones, my pulse slowing in my ears.
“I’ve spent so many years of my life around men who have done and acted in the worst ways, so now, when I look at the ones that I go out with, all I see is abandonment, infidelity, and betrayal. It’s not that I want to see every situation with a half-empty glass. I don’t have terrible childhood trauma to blame my personality on. It’s simply natural. I’m not the easiest woman to be with, and I won’t make excuses for why that is, but I just . . .”
She cuts herself off, anger sparking as her knuckles turn white around the bat. “I hoped that I’d be able to find someone who could handle it. Handleme, with the bad attitude, the tendency to self-destruct, and the trouble with trusting included. Today, I realized that if I don’t want to be alone for the rest of my life, it isn’t just my lack of dating patience that I have to change, but myself entirely. I’m never going to find someone the way I am now.”
I don’t know the exact moment I move.
But when she blinks to hide her tears, I’m already in front of her, my thumbs gliding over her pink cheeks and body shielding her from not only the sun but as much of the world as I possibly can.
17
Now that I’ve spoken,I can’t stop. The seal is ripped wide open.
Finn’s thumbs stroke my heated cheeks, trying to swipe away the hot liquid that won’t stop pouring from my eyes. He can’t keep up with the tears, and that only makes my embarrassment worse. This is horrifying. Best friend or not, I’ve never, ever enjoyed anyone seeing me like this—so vulnerable and fragile when that’s not the person I am ninety-nine percent of the time.
Showing emotion doesn’t scare me. That’s not what I hide my hurt beneath a mountain of sassy comebacks and nonchalant shrugs. It’s because I’m a woman in a world where men are still seen as superior. Because I have a vagina, I will always be viewed as less than someone with a swinging piece of meat between their legs, both in the workplace and outside of it. I have to work twice as hard as any man fighting for my position at the firm, Spencer specifically, and am not allowed to show a single person in my vicinity that I’m anything more than a focused, career-driven woman who won’t think twice before bringing the axe down. One flinch at a board meeting can put doubt into whoever is paying me. It can show them that I don’t have what it takes to win.
No matter my GPA, experience, age, or position, people will always underestimate me. While that gives me an advantage in the courtroom, it hurts me everywhere else.
Sure, Finn’s known me since long before I was accepted into law school, but I’ve been this way longer than that. I put the most unrealistic expectations on myself in middle school and only increased their intensity in the years that followed. Almost every single night was spent in my bedroom or the library studying, and on the off chance Finn got me outside, I always fought with my mind when it told me that he’d understand if I slipped away and went back.
In university, I convinced myself that working myself to the brink of utter exhaustion was just the cost of success and that once I graduated and found my dream job, I could finally ease off. That was partially true. I have since relaxed a bit, but I’m learning that it hasn’t been as much as I’ve gaslighted myself into believing.
I’m still so young, but I can feel the walls closing in on me. They’re skimming my fingers now. The air is thinning with every week that passes and I’m still here, stuck frozen in this moment of time where I’m alone and aching for some sort of intimacy. A reward for how hard I’ve worked in the form of a sweaty night tangled in sheets or the hard, strong body of a proud man wrapped around me on my balcony while we overlook the ocean, soaking in each other’s presence.
I’m so close to having everything I’ve ever wanted with my career, but my life still feels so empty. Like I’m drifting in a dark blue sea all alone, shivering with no lighthouse in sight.
“You do not need to change yourself for anyone, Aubrey,” Finn declares, his voice hard, almost angry.
“Something has to give. I’m not willing to give up my job, so either I continue going the way I am and continue to push and shove every man who offers me a sliver of attention, or I try tofigure out a way to change how I behave and the way I think. I’m not confused about why I’m alone, Finn. I know exactly why.”
His hold becomes firmer, and for the briefest moment, I wonder if he might have welded his palms to my cheeks. “The right person will love you exactly the way you are. Your personality isn’t the problem, sweetheart. It’s them. The men you’re choosing are completely wrong for you. It’s not a crime for you to have preferences and hard boundaries that you aren’t willing to settle on. You’re successful, protective, loyal, and gorgeous in a way that will always intimidate those around you. It’s not your fault if they can’t handle all of that. Someone will.”
My throat is sticky, keeping the words I want to say stuck in place. I hold Finn’s grey-blue eyes and let a weighted breath escape, my shoulders rolling forward in relief. Still, he doesn’t take his hands away. If anything, he shifts closer and drops a hand to my slouched shoulder, urging me into his chest.
The warm air seems to still as I go without a fight, letting the bat fall to the dirt with a muffled thunk. Slowly, I press my face into the column of his throat and inhale as my damp eyes close. His touch drifts to my nape and then down my spine, following the line of it until he reaches where most of my tension lies just above the band of my leggings. The skin beneath his palm crackles, and I feel each static pulse ricochet through me on its way to my chest. My pulse skips too many times to be normal.
“No more fake dates or experiments,” he says firmly. “We’re done with that.”
I burrow closer to his warmth, unable to stop thinking about my actions before making them. His touch grows more confident the longer we stay like this, until suddenly, I’m being pulled tighter, completely against him. I suck in a sharp breath, my muscles melting at the heat moving between us.
We’ve hugged a thousand times before. Maybe even more than that.
This isn’t a regular hug. At least . . . it isn’t to me. The same way his kiss on the cheek at minigolf wasn’t, or the anger beneath my skin at the aquarium wasn’t.
There’s something very wrong with me. I’m too afraid to put a name on a potential diagnosis.
“What is your plan, then?” I ask, my words muffled a bit by his shirt.
