Page 18 of Best Friends, Tennessee

He handed it to me and I took a bite. The jam had a fresh flavor, probably the best one I’d ever had.

“Damn. That really is good. Is that just regular grape jam? Where is that from?”

“Christina makes them herself. All sorts of different fruit flavors. She’s good at that stuff.”

“She should sell these.”

“I tried to tell her that, too, but she doesn’t have time,” Finn said, taking another bite. “She’s always at the hospital. She’s a pediatrician.”

“Jesus Christ, Finn,” I said. “You’re hooking up with a woman who’s nice, beautiful, great at making jam, and a fuckingdoctor?You’re the luckiest guy in Tennessee.”

“Not hooking up. Ex-girlfriend,” he murmured, polishing off the last of the bread.

“Oh,” I said.

He gave me a look.

“What?” I protested.

“Assume much?”

I rolled my eyes. “You could have told me earlier that she was your ex. Not my fault I assumed you two were fucking each other’s brains out before I walked in.”

“What was I supposed to say?Ori, this is Christina, my most recent ex? We broke up because she’d rather date her hot doctor colleague?”

Damn.

There was an iceberg of history underneath the things Finn said, sometimes.

I wished he would just talk about things with me again, like he used to, but… as usual, everything had changed.

“I mean, you could have mentionedsomething,” I said.

Finn breathed deep. “We broke up a few weeks ago. She needed to grab some clothes she’d left here. End of story.”

“Sorry. I didn’t know.”

He cocked his head to one side. “Well, maybe there’s a lot of shit you don’t know about me, these days.”

I paused, feeling the barb in his comment. “I know the important stuff.”

I felt like he was thinking something that he wouldn’t say.

For the first time in years, when I looked at him right now, I saw Finn—the Finn I knew, not just some guy trying to look like a cowboy.

Weirdly, it made me soften a bit to the idea of his Western-style clothes and cowboy hat, though.

Like maybe, he was using that style as a sort of armor.

Maybe it made him feel like he was a part of something, like he belonged somewhere. In high school he’d had the football team, but now, he needed somewhere to belong.

Finn had always needed that.

“Sorry I assumed, then,” I told him. “And sorry it was a rough breakup.”

I reached into the fridge and grabbed one of the bottles of electrolyte water that Finn always had near the front. I took a sip of the cold, lemon-flavored drink and Finn leaned on the kitchen counter.

“Not as much of a sob story as you’d think. She did want to date the hot doctor, but I also…”

---