Page 2 of You Weren't Mine Then

Chapter 2

With an ashen heart, Finn squinted under the glare of the sun and ran a hand through his hair that was always a bit stiff from the chlorine of the pool water that he spent so many hours in. He skimmed his eyes over the crowd that strolled the closed-for-traffic Ocean Avenue, the main street of his hometown. Color and sound burst over him from every angle, but he didn’t see any of it. All he could see was the tall woman who had turned as pale as the tiny white flowers on her wine-red summer wrap dress at the sight of him. The woman he had promised himself that he wouldn’t go near, even after his divorce from her cousin. He had kept his promise for three years.

Even after she had moved back to California.

Until he broke.

Until today.

“Sorry.”

“Excuse me.”

“Pardon.”

He stood in people’s way, and after a few bumped into him, Finn moved to the side and tried detecting his son among the food stands, gift booths, and the balloon arches that decorated the sidewalks. Max wasn’t near the T-shirts booth where he’d left him with his mother when an unkillable urge gripped him and catapulted him into the bakeshop.

For two years, knowing Anne had been back in town to work with her parents after years spent on the other side of the country, he had avoided going near the bakery, even when he had to be in Riviera View.

Unfortunately for him, Avery had moved back there, too, soon after, following her promotion to vice principal at the local school. Whenever he drove from Blueshore, the town he and Max still lived in, to drop Max off or pick him up from his ex’s, he was grateful that Avery’s house was close to the town’s entrance, so he could avoid driving farther down Ocean Avenue where Bert and Linda Drecher’s bakery was located. He had no other reason to come to Riviera View—his mother had moved to Florida years ago.

“Do you want one of those red velvet cupcakes you love from Grandma Linda’s bakery?” he’d asked his son a few minutes before, using the family terminology that coined Linda Drecher, Anne’s mother, as Max’s grandmother, although she was only his grandmother’s sister. He felt like shit using his son as an excuse to finally succumb to the urge he had resisted for so long—to go near the woman he hadn’t stopped loving all these years, even when he had forced himself to do the right thing, even when he had forced himself to stop loving her, even when he had convinced himself that he had succeeded despite constantly dreaming of her only to wake with his mouth dry and his chest empty.

He spotted Avery first. With her back to him, standing at a booth that carried a sign announcing it to be a “Real-Life Etsy Shop,” his ex-wife was unmistakable. Her hair, which was dark brown even at the age of forty-one, was the only similarity she bore to her cousin, who was four years younger. While Avery’s hair was long, wavy, and highlighted, Anne’s rested just above her shoulders, smooth and unburnished, just like it had been in her junior year in high school when she had tutored a senior year swimmer so he could get into the college with the swim team of his dreams.

The two cousins looked like their fathers and unlike the twin sisters who were their mothers. Sisters who couldn’t be closer; the exact opposite of their daughters. This closeness had made everything so unbearable. And it would have been even more painful if Anne—his Jane—hadn’t moved to the other side of the country soon after his marriage. For years, he had prayed for some relative to get married, baptized, christened, or even buried, so he’d have an excuse to see her, just so he could stand next to her, exchange a few public niceties, and whisper a private, “Jane,” her old name, which he hoped she could decode to mean I love you. The guilt that ate at him for failing to let go of her was almost the size of his love for her.

“There you are! Brought you these,” he said, placing an arm over his son’s shoulders and handing him the box that Janehadpacked.

“Thanks, Dad!” At twelve years old, Max’s voice was still childish, and his face hadn’t lost the boyish roundness, though he was as tall as his mother and tall enough to reach his dad’s shoulders. No common feat, given that Finn was six-foot-three.

“Didn’t find anything at the T-shirt stand?” Finn asked, unable to stop himself from patting his son’s hair, though Max had begun shunning PDAs. As an only child himself, Finn knew that his son had probably been wanting to dodge these uncool parental affections earlier but had kept quiet for his parents’ sakes. If the pregnancy that had forced Finn to marry Avery had survived, Max would have had an older brother or sister.

“Everything was about surfing, not swimming,” Max said. He had recently joined his school’s swim team in Blueshore, in addition to the club team that Finn coached.

“Surfing is big in beach towns,” Finn said with a smile. “You and I should do more of that.”

“And it was all either too large or too small,” Max added, opening the cupcake box.

“Keep on practicing, and you’ll grow into the larger ones, I promise,” Finn replied, ruffling his son’s light brown hair, a mix of his and Avery’s colors.

“Eli’s mom says we’ll develop swimmers’ bodies like yours,” Max said, taking a healthy bite from one cupcake.

Finn let out a silent scoff. He was aware of the way some of the mothers eyed him, even some of the college girls when he joined his alma mater’s practices twice a week. But he couldn’t care less. He wasn’t looking for attention, or meaningless hookups, or even love. He’d had enough of the first two when he had been much younger, which had landed him where he was now, ironically making the latter impossible, though it still gripped his heart.

“You’re already better than I was at your age. And smarter. So, stick with it but don’t forget your grades.” He spoke from experience. By the time he had reached his senior year in high school, his grades hadn’t been enough to land him at Cal Poly—California Polytech—whose swim team, one of the best in the nation, he’d aimed for. And, as the son of an older single mother, he had needed a scholarship. That had led to the hard decision to repeat his senior year. He had been assigned a tutor. A seemingly quiet and shy girl from junior year by the name of Jane Anne Drecher.

“Yeah, I know, Dad. Academic and athletic excellence both start with an A,” Max chanted over another mouthful of cupcake, rolling his eyes with a smile.

Having never known his own father, Finn reeled in the fact that his son remembered the things he’d taught him and wanted to engage in the same activities. Since he had learned he was going to be a father, he had read every parenting book that he could get his hands on. While his mother was amazing, he didn’t know what having a father was like and had wanted to make sure he did it right. He had over a year of book reading before Max was born.

“That’s right, buddy.” He made sure to let his son know, not only of his wins but of his losses, too, the hard work it had taken to win, as well as the failure to sustain the career he had dreamed of. He hadn’t told him about the biggest loss of his life, because that was directly connected to Max’s mother. And if there was anything he knew without any book telling him, it was that he should never ever show any regret about marrying her. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have had Max, and Max was the best thing in his life.

“So, did you see anything you like here?” he added, one hand on his son’s shoulder, the other pointing at the selection of gifts in the Real-Life Etsy booth—whatever that meant.

“These are nice. They have these swimmers painted on them, and there are enough of them for everyone.” Max pointed at laminated swim bag tags and shower kit pouches.

“They are. We can get those. I think your friends will love this.” Finn knew he was stretching the term “friends” a bit. Max was still finding his way socially in middle school. Buying gifts for his new swim team members at the fair had been Max’s idea, and Finn had promised that when he would bring him to Avery’s for the weekend, he’d stay for the fair and help him pick.

---