Page 47 of It's a Love Story

“No, because you’re cool.”

Words I have literally never heard before. This makes me feel so bold that I turn completely to face him and lean in like I’m going to whisper something in his ear. The smell of his skin and the brush of the stubble on his cheek make my body go hot, like it’s been switched on.

“What?” he asks, just an exhale of a word.

“Is she watching right now?” I ask.

“Probably.”

“Good,” I say and lean in so that our mouths are a breath apart. “Because she’s the worst.”

“I thought I was the worst,” he says.

We have both turned completely toward one another now, as if we have left the party and started our own. I can almost feel his lips on mine and taste the lemony lobster that got there before I did. This is as close as I’ve ever come to initiating a kiss in my life. I am acutely aware that this is all on me. I leaned in. I did the whispering. I am the one who turned her head so there’s just the butterfly touch of his lips on mine. If he kisses me, this kiss will take.

“You’re definitely the worst,” I say.

Dan laughs, and the laugh pulls him an inch away. I can’t help but think how I knew this would happen, my making him laugh actually moved him away. There’s cool air between us and I want him to come back.

“Come back,” I say so quietly that he leans back in to hear.

My eyes watch his mouth, the way I’ve been doing for days now. I just want to know what it feels like, just for a second. I think I might be ravenous for the taste of him. His breath is on my lips and I brush mine against his and liquid heat floods my body. It’s barely a kiss, but his eyes go dark, like he felt it too. I could leave it there, a touch as casual as an arm resting on a thigh, but I cannot. I lean in and kiss him for real, tasting him for the first time, all salt and sunshine, and a current runs through my core with such force that I grip his thigh to ground myself. It’s as though my hand on him is a starting gun, the signal he was waiting for. His hands are in my hair to pull me closer, and I pour myself into him. Dan parts his lips, and I see colors behind my eyelids, a sherbet sunset, a deep blue ocean. The kiss is explosive. He cups my face when he pulls away and smiles into my eyes. It should be raining and we should be standing in front of the house he built me. We’re both breathing hard, inches apart, staring into each other’s eyes as he takes his hands from my hair.

“Danny, come help with the fire,” says the most annoying voice in the world.

Dan holds my gaze for a second. My heart is hammering, and my hand rises to touch my still tingling lips. He looks over his shoulder. Everyone’s gotten up from the table. They’re carrying bottles over to the pit where the lobster cooked. He offers me a hand, helps me up, and then releases it too quickly. “I think you got her attention,” he says, as if that were the whole point of that life-changing kiss.

“Yes,” I say. I am vulnerable, open and wanting in a way that is not safe. I feel a shifting of the earth beneath me. The words bubble up inside of me:Kiss me again, a million times. And this terrifies me. I want something too much, so much that it will burn in the fire of my want. I need to snuff it out. “Trained actress,” I say. “You’re welcome.”

He narrows his eyes in a questioning way, but then turns toward the fire. “Right. Well done,” he says.

CHAPTER 20

HOW LONG DID YOU DATE HER?” I ASK WHEN WE’REin our beds. I switched to water after my completely unhinged effort at PDA. My body is exhausted from the marathon day, but my mind is on high alert.

“On and off for three years.”

“That’s a long time,” I say.

“It wasn’t very serious. Not until she saw how great I’d look in miniature on top of a wedding cake. It was a good time for me to go and try to see myself someplace else, where I wasn’t part of the pack, you know?”

“I don’t know, actually.”

“I just mean my family. We all look alike, and when we were little, my mom even dressed us alike. We were lumped together, the Finnegan brothers, but I was the one who was different. People always asked me what was wrong, why I wasn’t roller-skating in a toga in the talent show, doing keg stands on a Fourth of July float. I grew up feeling like everyone was trying to fix me. I didn’t understand why, because I didn’t feel broken. I knew I had to leave. I was afraid that the thing that made me different—the thing my dad thinks is a little off— I was afraid I was going to lose it.”

I turn to look at him, and he’s turned back to stare at the bunk bed above him. I wonder if he’s scribbled “please, please, please” up there.

He turns his head to me. “It’s like when you finally light a match on the beach and you have to cup it with your hands so it won’t blow out. I was getting a sense of myself and wanted to keep it.”

I can feel this. I think back to the light I saw in myself at fourteen and how quickly it died. “But how did you know? How did you know that the thing that makes you different was a good thing? It would have been easier to sort of blend in. Stay.”

“Easier, but kind of awful.” His eyes are serious. “Even when I was little, I knew that the thing that was inside me, that made me myself, was worth protecting. Aidan knew it too, which really helped. And honestly, Jane, it’s all I have, besides a beat-up car with two hundred thousand miles on it. I have a point of view. I follow my instincts around because I know they’ll lead me to something worthwhile. It’s probably what you hated about me, that I don’t want to just do the easy thing. I know people say it all the time, but I actually follow my heart.”

The moment hangs between us. My heart is treacherous and historically wrong about everything, it is the weakest muscle in my body, but Dan and his family and our script are conspiring to whisper it back to life like it’s an ember worth restoking.

“So when Brooke lumped me together as the exact same person as Aidan, I realized even she had no idea who I was. Like I was just another Finnegan brother, interchangeable.”

His arm is outside his covers and the sleeve of his T-shirt is riding up just a bit so that I can see the light hit the top of whatever muscle that is. “I’m sure she didn’t think you were interchangeable.”

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