Page 82 of Chaos

Clearly, Finn disagrees. Jesus, he’s gazing at me like I just handed him the moon on a silver platter. Twinkling irises and happy lines around an uplifted mouth and one, single dimple indenting a full cheek. “Hypothetically,” he murmurs, his breath warming the tip of my nose. “If I tried to hug you, what would happen?”

I might freeze. I might hate it. I might even let him. “You might lose the ability to ever have children.”

He dips even closer and I get even more intimately acquainted with that fucking joyous expression. I get distracted by it, it disarms me, it grants Finn a chance to sneak past my defenses and drop a damnkissto my temple.

“You’re sweet,” he says like he didn’t do anything at all, like I’ve ever been called that in my life. “And you’re coming with us.”

Fingers twitching with the urge to touch the tingling skin near my hairline, I shove my hands in my back pockets and grunt at the man grabbing my leather jacket from the hook by the front door. “I have plans.”

“Ruin will forgive you.”

“Yeah, he’s not really known for his compassion.”

“Give him a chance.” Shaking my jacket out, he drapes it over my shoulders, long fingers dipping beneath the collar to free my hair. “Might surprise you.”

I first start to suspect I’ve made a very bad decision on the car ride, when I’m smushed in the backseat between two big, male bodies and in the direct path of a relentlessly blaring radio. We arrive and I recognize a truck, I recognize more than one, and that’s my second sign. The third is that buzz beneath my skin, in the back of my head, swimming in my stomach, a biological warning sign that I should’ve listened to, but I don’t.

I regret that now.

I’m exhausted. Mentally, emotionally, everything in between. Nothing against the group, but I’m just… not built for this. Not used to it. Socializing. Theextrovertof it all. God, I don’t know how they all do it, how they always have something to talk about, how they never stop smiling as they wander from a dusty parking lot littered with food trucks to the pumpkin patch we came here for to the endless field of flowers that stretches out before me now.

Juggling the heavy weight of what Yasmin deemed ‘the perfect pumpkin,’ I try to be discreet as I survey the group meandering a few feet ahead of me. When I hang back, needing a second, they let me. Wanted it, probably. They’re likely relieved by my absence because while they haven’t intentionally excluded me, not even a little bit, it’s hard to include someone who doesn’t want to be included. Who doesn’t know how to be. No matter how valiantly they try, it’s still painfully obvious that I just don’t fit. They have what they have, their overarching friendship, and then these little separate branches too, and I am a withering leaf hanging on for dear life. Yasmin has Theo, and Yasmin has Finn too, and then there’s Finn and Adam with their own special littlebond, and I’m just there. A hard rock disturbing the flow of a river. The dark cloud threatening their day.

Joy isn’t like that.

Joy, we stumbled upon an hour or so ago. Joy, in her pretty dress with her pretty face, and her pretty friends too, slot right into the group like she’s always meant to be there. Welcomed with open arms.

By Finn’s open arms.

Finn, who I haven’t spoken to since the girl he’s not dating or sleeping with, allegedly, started occupying every ounce of his attention. Stole it away from me.

No, notstole. Can’t steal what isn’t mine. Just… is more worthy of it, I guess. Shinier. Easier to look at, to deal with. Because I really, really tried to be pleasant when we first got here, I really tried to be interesting and tolerable and friendly, but a girl can only do so much, y’know? Can only fake a personality for so long. And as the crowd and noise and the strangers wore on me more and more, I lost my… composure, I guess. My will to have any.

I want to leave. I want to go home. I want to cry just a little which is so pathetic, so fucked, so I won’t. And I can’t do either of the former—I didn’t drive here, and even if I did, even if I was fucking allowed to drive, I’m not sure anyone would let me slip away.

Yasminwouldn’t let me slip away.

“Hey,” she calls carefully as she diverges from the ever-growing group of people her and her friends are amassing and hesitantly approaches. “You okay?”

I don’t even try to smile. To lie, neither. My tank is officially empty. “Not really.”

Blatant concern makes me feel like shit. A gentle hand on my arm makes me cringe, burning even through thick, vintageleather. I try to be subtle as I shake her off, but I’m pretty sure I fail—thinly-veiled hurt only makes me feel worse.

“I, uh,” I lick my lips, clear my throat, stab the thumb of my free hand over my shoulder before patting the pumpkin I offered to haul around so Yasmin could take her job as group photographer seriously. “I’m gonna go put this in the truck.”

When I take a step back, Yasmin follows. “I’ll come with you.”

“No,” I practically yell. Loud enough to draw some attention, a few stares from ahead—Theo’s narrowed one, namely. “I’ll be fine, seriously. I’ll be right back.”

Any protest, I quite literally run away from. I put my healing ankle to the test by putting as much distance between me and the others as possible in the quickest time possible, listening intently for following footsteps and emptying my lungs in one, relieved gust when none sound. I make it off the path cut into the field of wildflowers in record time, waiting until there’s a building I can duck behind before pausing.

Slumping against the wooden exterior of the small cabin serving as a souvenir shop, I try to catch my breath. Not lost due to exertion, but to frustration. Irritation. Hopelessness because why do I even try? Why am I here? Why did I think I could be here, why did I get my fucking hopes up that this would be a good day?

Why can’t I have one good day?

“Lottie?”

At the sound of a bewildered, familiar voice, I freeze.

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