Only in Your Dreams (The Mountains are Calling #2)

10. Finley

This morning is one of those rare mornings that I get Nora all to myself. She texted me before sunrise and told me that she had gotten her mom to watch the kids and that we were getting breakfast. I was still asleep when she showed up at my apartment, pounding on my door. She picked out my outfit while I was in the shower, which is how I ended up in the tiniest pair of denim shorts I own and a slim-fitting ribbed tank that makes me look like I have a lot more going for me than I actually do.

“This outfit is ridiculous,” I say, staring at my cleavage as we settle down for breakfast at a pancake house that has been here since before the town was officially incorporated, back when Fontana Ridge used to be a lumberjack camp. It’s directly across the street from Unlikely Places, so every time I walk outside, I get to smell warm pancakes and sugary sweet syrup.

Nora smiles widely at me from over the top of her giant, sticky menu. “You look great. Very come and get it.”

I give her a flat look. “I’m supposed to be gotten already.”

“How is that going, by the way?”

I wish I had an answer for her, but lately, everything has felt jumbled. Grey doesn’t feel like the person I’ve known forever. He’s different, and I think I like him more for it.

Nora’s eyes narrow. “Do you like him?”

“ No ,” I protest. Maybe a little vehemently, because she looks even more suspicious. I lower my voice and repeat, “No. But things feel fuzzy, I guess. He’s different from what I expected.”

I’ve been looking, Finley, just like you .

That threw me. Made me adjust my view. Look at the past years in a new light. And then there was everything else. Sitting in his lap, feeling his hands and breath on my skin. Showing him my idea for the bookstore, watching his eyes light up with enthusiasm. The way he calmed me down in the wake of the conversation with Gus. How he held my hair back when I threw up after Wren and Holden’s wedding, then stayed with me when I asked.

All of these things are so him , but in a way that feels different and new, and I don’t know what to make of it.

“Good different?” Nora asks, lifting one brow.

I pause for a long moment before nodding, just a dip of my chin. “Yeah, good different.”

She takes a sip of her water, smiling over the rim. “Is this resurrecting your high school crush?”

“No,” I say, and it’s the truth. That crush I had in high school was based on his looks, his charming personality, the way he seemed larger than life in a way that was extremely appealing to someone more reserved like I am. I spent my weekends in the garden with my mom, and he spent them at parties on the lake, with pilfered alcohol and no shortage of female attention.

Whatever confusing feelings I’m wrestling with now are wholly unrelated. That version of Grey soured to me in high school, when he told Holden I was like an annoying little sister to him. But he’s different from the person he was fifteen years ago, and I don’t know why I was so convinced he couldn’t change. Why all these little facets I’m discovering are so surprising to me. Why I’m shocked to be drawn to them.

I feel myself slipping, and I don’t even know if it’s a bad thing.

“Enough about me. How is Veer’s toddler music class going?”

Nora lights up, a Christmas tree in the window, and launches into a story about Veer playing the drums in his class. Our pancakes come shortly after the waitress arrives to take our order. Mine are stacked high with blueberries and powdered sugar, while Nora’s are covered in pecans and syrup. It’s the same breakfast we ordered when we would come here on Saturday mornings in high school or between classes at the community college, where we both got our associates degrees.

It’s nice to have Nora all to myself. I knew the day she met Raj that he was the one, that the little bubble we’d created around ourselves to keep out the rest of the world had popped. It was no longer just Finley and Nora. It was Nora and Raj, with me on the side. I made room in my heart for Raj, and I’ve grown to love him like a brother. And when they had Veer, I felt my heart open again. And then Devina. I love them all so fiercely, but I miss when it was the two of us. When we were each other’s only priority. Nora has an entire family now, and I’m still alone, without even her in my bubble.

The more time that passes, the more desperate I’ve felt to find someone, to find the person who will share my life with me, take on a role even more integral than the one Nora vacated. She’s still my best friend, but Raj is her person now. I want a person of my own.

Nora launches into a story about something Devina did, and it brings a smile to my face, drawing me out of my thoughts. We sit at that table long after our plates are cleared, drinking terrible coffee and laughing loud enough that we garner looks from other patrons. Nora has syrup on her boob, and I have powdered sugar on my shorts, and we’re a mess, but we’re together, and everything feels simple again.

“I love you, Finny,” Nora says on a sigh, reaching for my hand and squeezing it. The dark circles have disappeared from under her eyes, and her cheeks are a rosy pink. She looks like the best friend I grew up with, and it makes something warm in my chest to know that I can still be the one to bring her back to life, just like she is for me.

“I love you too,” I echo, gripping her hand back, giving it three squeezes like we always used to do.

It makes her smile stretch. Her eyes focus on something behind me for a moment, then widen. Her grin turns mischievous. “Grey is standing in front of Unlikely Places.”

I spin around so fast that I know she’s going to give me shit about it later. Sure enough, he’s there, reading the note I taped to the door that says Be Back Soon . I stopped in two hours ago to scribble it quickly, figuring Nora wouldn’t have long before she had to head back home.

My heart ratchets when he starts to turn, heading back down the street.

I swivel back to Nora, but she’s already waving me on, looking just as frantic as I feel. “Go, I want to know what he was there for. I’ve got breakfast.”

The chair squeals across the floor as I stand. I smack a kiss on Nora’s cheek and hear her laughter behind me as I power walk toward the door.

I don’t know why I’m rushing, why I’m trying so hard to get outside to see him, but I want to know why he came by. I want to know if he’s as jumbled up as I feel, if I’ve been on his mind the way he’s been on mine.

“Grey!” I yell the second I’m out the door. He turns at the sound, wind whipping his hair, making it even messier than usual. As I cross the street, drawing closer to him, I have the overwhelming urge to lift my hand and smooth it down, see what he would look like if I did.

“Hey,” he says when I’m close enough to speak at a normal volume. Something about the rasp of his voice, the deep timbre of it, makes heat climb up my chest, a blush I hope he doesn’t notice.

But then his eyes drop, and I remember what I’m wearing. The damn cleavage tank, stark white against my tomato red chest. His gaze snaps back up to mine, and he palms the back of his neck.

“Hey,” I manage to choke out, not sure why my stomach is twisting, why butterflies are taking flight. It’s Grey , but also not. He’s a Grey I don’t know, one I think I want to discover.

“Where you coming from?” he finally asks, breaking the heavy silence hovering between us.

I nod in the direction of the pancake house. “I was having breakfast with Nora.”

He follows my line of sight right as Nora is coming out, waving at us before heading to her car. “Oh, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“You didn’t,” I promise. “We were done.”

When he looks back at me, he’s smiling, one side higher than the other. It makes my breath hitch. When I said the charming, swaggering version of Grey had soured to me, I wasn’t being entirely truthful. Because this version, when directed right at me, is potent.

“I brought you something.” He holds up a plastic grocery bag that I hadn’t noticed in his hand. He gestures at my shop with a dip of his chin. “Let’s go inside, and I’ll show you.”

My hands are shaking as I unlock the door to my shop. I hope he doesn’t notice. I’m not sure why I feel so on edge, why I’m noticing things about him that I haven’t in so long. The breadth of his shoulders as he moves sideways to fit through the narrow doorway. His large, calloused hands setting the plastic bag on my countertop. The messy, windblown waves of his hair, desperate to be smoothed down. The striking pale blue of his eyes, lit up like the sun peeking through the clouds into the sky on the first day of spring.

Grey peels open the plastic bag, revealing half a dozen or more books. Worn paperbacks with cracked spines. He looks up at me through the fringe of his lashes. “I don’t know what kind of books you want to stock, or if these are even any good, but I saw them at a garage sale today and thought they could be the first of your collection for the shop.”

I stare at the books, watching my fingers reach out and trace the covers. If I were to crack them open, I know exactly what they would smell like. The same scent I want baking into the walls of my dream bookshop.

Something stirs in my chest, an ache that feels unfamiliar, as I look up at him. He’s smiling, but it’s not the charming one he uses when he’s trying to pick up tourists at Matty’s. It’s something softer. Maybe even a little bashful. If I look closely, I think I can even see a hint of pink on the tips of his high cheekbones, over the curve of his ear.

He’s nervous , I think, and it makes me feel unbearably tender toward him. Unbearably tender in general. Like taking off the bandage of a wound that’s freshly healed, exposing the new flesh to the harsh world, hoping it doesn’t get injured again.

“Grey,” I say, lost for any other words.

“You don’t have to use them,” he says, quick to respond.

I shake my head, fighting back tears that I can feel forming behind my eyes. I don’t know what makes me do it. Maybe it’s his uncharacteristic self-consciousness. Regardless, I want to reassure him. Want to reassure myself that he’s different from what I thought, and that maybe I am too.

So I press up on my tiptoes and wrap my arms around his middle. He stands stock-still for just a moment before melting against me. It’s the only way I can describe the way his body softens, curling around mine. Not just his arms, but his shoulders, his back, his head, dipping into the curve of my neck.

“Thank you,” I say, directly into his ear. “That’s one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me.”

“Then you have shitty friends.”

“You’re my friend,” I say, and when he laughs, I can feel it slipping down my spine.

“I’m your boyfriend, remember?” His tone is teasing, but we’re still holding each other, arguably way too long, and it feels intimate. Flirty.

“In name only,” I say, wondering if he can hear how breathless I sound.

“I don’t know, Fin,” he says, his voice still light. “This doesn’t feel like in name only.”

He’s right, and it should make me pull back, make some kind of snarky comment. But I don’t, and I think I feel a rush of air seep out of him when I slide my hand over the length of his spine. I don’t know what I’m doing, what we’re doing, but I don’t want to stop.

The bell above the door jangles, and we snap apart, eyes wide as we stare at each other. Maybe it’s because I’m so lost in whatever bubble we’ve formed around ourselves that it takes me so long to notice who is standing in the shop. Who the customer is that interrupted whatever was going on between us.

Gus. And Eloise.

When I finally look at them, Eloise looks like she’s watching the end of her favorite rom-com, her hands steepled beneath her chin, a sappy smile on her face. The way Gus is watching us is different, his expression hard and unreadable, twin divots creasing the space between his eyes. I don’t understand it.

“You guys are so cute,” Eloise bursts out. That makes me finally snap to attention, breaking the last vestiges of the spell I’d fallen into with Grey.

I plaster on a smile I hope they can’t tell is fake, then I practically jolt out of my skin when I feel Grey’s hand land heavily on my hip. A gesture so simple and easy that it shouldn’t send wavelengths through my body, lighting up my every cell.

“Thank you,” I manage to get out. “What can I do for you?”

Their expressions change then, turning into something disappointed, toddlers told they can’t have ice cream for dinner. Eloise moves closer, her bottom lip jutting out just the tiniest bit. Almost like a pout.

“We had a florist booked for the wedding, but she had to back out due to a family emergency and left us totally in the lurch.”

Grey’s fingers tighten on my hip, pulsing, like he, too, knows exactly where this conversation is headed, and he wants to comfort me. Or warn me to stand my ground.

It’s Gus who speaks next, and I feel his voice like a pinprick to my heart. “I know it’s a huge ask, and you can say no, but do you have availability? We’d pay extra.”

Everything about those sentences feels like a knife to my ribs. We . We will pay extra, for the flowers we need for our wedding. The one that doesn’t involve you . I used to be the other half of the we with Gus. I used to think that one day, I’d make the floral arrangements for our own wedding. I even practiced them when things were slow. I knew exactly what flowers I would use, that we would have a spring wedding at Misty Grove, in the flower fields at dusk. It would be magical.

And now he’s planning a wedding with someone else. Marrying someone else. And he wants me to make the bouquet for her to hold.

I want to say no. I want to throw a fit, to rage, to tell him this is too far, too much. That he shouldn’t have asked this of me. But I can’t. There’s a lump in my throat so thick I know I won’t be able to say anything but yes.

So I do. And I manage to tell them I’ll email them before my throat closes up. They leave, the happy jingle of the bell sounding too loud in my ears.

When I turn around, Grey is still there, watching me with hard, concerned eyes. His jaw ticks, and I know he’s angry. At Gus for asking this of me. At me for not standing up for myself. At himself for not stepping in.

“I’m fine,” I lie, waving the whole thing off with a twist of my wrist.

“You’re not,” he says. His voice is so different from the way it was when it was pressed into my skin just a few minutes ago. That was a mistake, I know. Holding on to him like that shouldn’t have happened, not when I’m so obviously not over Gus. Or maybe I’m over him, but I’m not over what he did to me, how it made me feel. Like I’m not enough.

I can’t fall into Grey, into whatever feels like is growing between us, not when I’m still so broken. He’s looking, he said, and I think I believe him. I think I can reframe the past few years, see him searching for love the way I was. Trying people on for size and never finding the one that fits just right.

But that’s the problem. There’s no guarantee that I will fit, and I’m still too shattered to handle being rejected again. Especially by someone who is such a big part of my life. Losing Grey would hurt worse than losing Gus, because Gus wasn’t a long-time fixture.

I need to shut down whatever has been changing between us, get back to the way things used to be. The teasing, the banter, the arguments that usually ended in laughter. That was easy, familiar.

This isn’t, and I’m not ready for change.

I reach for the plastic bag, taking it with me as I round the counter, putting three feet of butcher block between us. “Thanks for the books,” I say.

But I know I won’t use them. I’m not in a place where I can open myself up to failure, to not being enough. I’ll put them on the bookshelf in my apartment, and maybe, one day when I’m better, I’ll give this dream a chance. But I can’t now. I’m too broken.