25. Finn

Finn

“Oh! Cinderella !”

I’m posing with my hands on my head like a crown. Before this, I’ve mimed little mice and the transformation scene. We’ve spent less than five seconds on this clue, and managed to get another point in the nick of time.

“Yes!” Fallon lets out a loud laugh and fist pumps.

Brett says, “That’s time!”

“ Nine points?” Devon asks, tutting and writing it down. “You guys have to be cheating.”

“Women are just better at charades,” Lola says, taking a sip of her eggnog. “Everyone knows that.”

“Come on, guys,” Brett says, standing and shaking out his shoulders. “We are literal teammates. We should be able to read each other’s minds.”

“I’m your coach,” Grey says, crossing his arms.

“And I’m retired,” Devon says, relaxing into the couch and smiling when Lola puts her arm around his shoulders.

“You know what I mean—”

“No talking!” Fallon says, eyes sparkling confidently as she leans toward Brett. “Your time has already started.”

“I didn’t know she was this competitive when we got married,” Brett mutters to his team, already starting to act out whatever is on his scrap of paper.

“He knew,” Fallon whispers, checking her phone for the hundredth time. All the kids are asleep in a shared room. One of those Claymation Christmas movies is flickering on the screen. The babies are tucked away in cribs, and Clementine is cuddled with a giant teddy bear on the floor, her little chest rising and falling.

“The video quality on this is amazing,” I say, and Fallon smiles when she looks up at me.

“I swear Brett bought every single baby gadget that exists,” Fallon says, laughing under her breath as the guys throw out guesses, desperately trying to get their first point before time runs out. “Most of the time, it’s annoying. Right now it’s pretty useful.”

We pause together, watching the little bodies on the screen, and I feel something tight and uncomfortable twisting in my chest.

Since the moment I first realized I was out on my own—that my adoptive parents didn’t want me—I wanted to be a mother. Some people say they can feel their frontal lobes develop in their twenties, and the knowledge of wanting to be a mother was like that for me. Something certain. Part of my identity as a person.

But I would never adopt. For obvious reasons, I wanted my baby to be mine . To belong to me in the fullest sense. To be biologically linked to me so the courts couldn’t mistakenly take them away.

Of course there are adoptive families that make it work, that love their children and care for them fully, but once you’re on the wrong side of something, it’s hard to put all your faith into that system again.

The game of charades has devolved into a laughing conversation between the guys, Ellie, and Lola. Lola is saying something about being the undeniable champion of charades, while Ellie is laughing and trying to open a bottle of champagne.

“It’s weird because I never thought I’d be a mom,” Fallon says, under her breath, almost like she didn’t mean to say it. I blink, that sentence rolling through me, reminding me that there are some people who get babies without even wanting them, while there are so many people—like me—going through hell to make a family. How unfair.

“Sorry,” Fallon says, eyes darting up to mine and widening. “Is that—is that too personal? I’ve had a bit of the champagne.”

“No, it’s not,” I laugh, surprised at how relaxed I feel. Normally, I’d be shying away from this interaction. But something about being here with these people—with Sammy on the other side of the room, laughing at something Devon’s just said—makes me feel safe. And the champagne I’ve had tonight might also be helping to blur some of the lines, soften that new-person feeling between Fallon and me.

So I surprise myself by saying, “I’ve always wanted to be a mom.”

“ Always ?” Fallon asks, surprised, tilting her head toward me. The look on her face is like that thought is impossible.

“Since I was sixteen years old.”

“Specific...”

“Maybe I can share my trauma with you some other time,” I say, then drop my voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “It’s too dark for the holidays.”

“It’s a date,” Fallon says, reaching out and clinking her glass against mine. “We’ll trauma-dump together.”

There’s a beat of silence, then I give her a look, “How old are you?”

She laughs. “Isn’t that supposed to be a rude question?”

“Not if I’m worried you might be too young for me to trauma-dump on.”

“Dumping transcends the lived experience—besides, just think of it as giving me some of your boundless wisdom.”

“Okay, I’m not that old.” I laugh so hard I snort, and Fallon’s laughing, too, until something goes far away in her eyes.

I stop, taking a breath and sip of my drink. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she says, clearing her throat. “It’s stupid, I just—I wish my friends had been able to make it out here. This is the first Christmas I’ve spent apart from them.”

“From your friends?”

“They’re more like a found family—it’s a trauma thing, right?”

I open my mouth to respond, but someone’s turned on Christmas music, and Brett sweeps her off the couch and into his arms to dance. She waves over his back at me like what can you do?

If found family is a trauma thing, maybe I’m not doing it right. I watch Fallon and Brett dancing—horribly, all left feet—and mull it over in my head. I’ve never been the kind of person to have a huge group of friends. Throughout school, I always wanted to find that one person—a best friend forever. And then, in college, I found her.

And look where that got me.

The bitter, aching thoughts catapult through me, and I have to swallow them down. Now is not the time to be thinking about it—about her.

“May I have this dance?”

When I look up, brain returning to the present, Sammy is standing there, his hand outstretched to me. He looks impossibly handsome—the stubble on his cheeks glinting in the twinkling lights from the tree.

“I don’t…” I start, glancing around, not sure what the others in the cabin would think if they saw us dancing. But nobody is watching. Brett and Fallon sway together quietly, Fallon’s head against Brett’s chest, their eyes closed. Grey and Ellie have disappeared. Devon is passed out on the sofa, Lola asleep with her head in his lap.

“Okay,” I whisper, “only because it’s Christmas.”

He pulls me to my feet, smiling warmly at me and tucking me into his chest. It’s warm, and he smells like cinnamon. I shouldn’t be dancing with a client. I shouldn’t be in this cabin at all.

But I’m here, and he’s warm, and I let myself drift away in the rhythm of us swaying quietly together while the snow falls steadily outside.

***

“Put your Christmas pajamas back on,” Sammy says, voice low when he pulls me into his room. His lips are on the crook of my neck immediately, his tongue warm against my skin.

I don’t know how long we danced before he finally pulled back, whispering something about going upstairs. My entire body had felt the rush of heat at those words, attraction sparkling between us as we ran up the steps.

Now, I start to laugh. “What—” but it morphs into a moan, the sound fluttering out of me. “Doesn’t this usually start with us taking out clothes off ?”

“I want to see you in them,” he says. There’s something about Sammy after the lights go off, in the dark, that’s completely different that his day-time self. His alter-ego appears, a man full of confidence.

A man that I sometimes, impossibly, actually let boss me around.

He settles himself on his bed while I dart into the hallway, looking back and forth before hurrying to my room and finding the pajamas. Rather than risk someone coming back, I bundle them in my arms and hurry back to Sammy’s room, shutting the door behind myself breathlessly. His eyes are on me, dark and serious, as I walk to his adjoined bathroom.

The man has seen me naked, so there’s no reason to get dressed in privacy. But it just feels right.

When I emerge from the bathroom, Sammy is under the covers, his hands up behind his head, his eyes still locked on me like he could see me changing through the door. His bare chest shows above the blanket, and I feel like I’m showing off my prom gown.

Or like I’m naked. Like this man can see right through me.

“Hi,” I say, surprised at the nervousness in my own voice. What is happening here?

“Come to bed,” he says, pulling down the other corner of the blanket and patting the flannel sheet. Slowly, I obey, walking to that side of the bed and climbing in. He pulls the cover around me and puts his arm over my shoulders, gesturing for me to come in close.

I shouldn’t cuddle into him—this is a friends with benefits situation, not anything else. We should be naked, gasping, simply looking for pleasure. I shouldn’t be sinking into his embrace, letting the rest of the tension in my shoulders and back fall away.

He shouldn’t be brushing the backs of his knuckles over my hairline, making me shiver. I shouldn’t be tracing a path down his chest with the tip of my finger, loving the way his skin feels under my touch. Alive. Real. Here, with me.

“You had quite a lot of champagne, didn’t you?” he whispers, so quietly I almost think I might have imagined it.

“No,” I protest, but when I try to think backward, I lose count of how many times Fallon giggled and topped up our glasses. “Maybe.”

“I thought so,” he says, shifting and kissing the top of my head. I realize, with a certain clarity, that he never had any intent of having sex with me tonight.

A beat passes, then Sammy says, “Seemed like you and Fallon were getting along great.”

“Oh, yeah,” I laugh, brain feeling bubbly and light. It shouldn’t—Sammy doesn’t want to have sex with me. So what am I doing in his bed? I need to sort this out, to keep clear boundaries between us.

But I can’t. Instead, I go on, “We have some shared trauma, apparently.”

“What, Fallon was adopted, too?”

“No.” I realize I don’t actually know what her trauma is about. And then, before I can run the decision through any logical part of my brain I say, “About being a mother.”

He pauses, like he needs to think that through. “…You’re not a mother, are you?”

“I am not.” The tone of that sentence must be enough. Sammy studies me for a long moment, then tightens his arm around me, pulling me snugly into his side. I brace myself, even in my warm, drunken haze, waiting for the million and one questions to come my way.

They always start with logistics—people want to know what the process is like. What does it actually look like to go through it? I think of a thousand needles and the vitamins. The consultations and the examinations. Then, when they get their fill of that, it inevitably shifts into more personal questions. Things people feel emboldened to ask, for some reason.

Why do I think I can raise a baby alone? Did I always think it would be like this? Did I even try to settle down the old-fashioned way, or am I some sort of strong feminist who only wants a woman in her child’s life? I am a feminist. But it has nothing to do with this decision.

“Finn,” Sammy says, and I realize I’ve sat up and away from him, my breathing coming a little faster.

His voice is so soft, so empathetic and reassuring, that it breaks something inside me. A tear slips down my cheek, and the words start to fall out before I can catch them and stuff them back inside.

“I got married just out of college,” I say, watching Sammy go still. My hands pick at the blanket, and my eyes focus on the fireplace flickering just under the mounted flat screen TV. “He was—I thought he was the love of my life. He…he was a professional athlete. My first client, actually. Accidentally. I was never really sure what I wanted to do with my life, but I loved being in school. I had a dual master’s degree in anatomy and physiology. Had just gone back to school to get an MBA, thinking it would help me narrow things down. We met while I was doing an internship with the baseball team.”

From the corner of my eye, I see Sammy’s mouth tighten, and I wonder if he has a grudge against baseball players. I’d laugh, if I wasn’t suddenly gripped with grief.

“I’d started getting into this idea of human optimization—reading up on productivity and mental wellness and all this stuff, but specifically the study of reaching for perfection. This idea that, by fixing tiny things, you could improve the huge picture astronomically. I had this vague thought that I’d end up working with politicians, or other like, elite people. It never occurred to me to try it out on athletes until I met him.”

I can feel the weight of the question sitting between us—who is him ? There’s no way I can say it out loud.

“Anyway,” I sigh, still picking at my blanket. “Did the internship. Fell in love. I was practicing things, trying out theories on him. He went from a guy near the bottom middle of the roster to a sensation by the end of the year. Called me a miracle worker. We got married right after graduation. And then…”

I pause, voice choked up, remembering how happy I’d been. How a year went by of trying and trying, and I thought eventually I’d set up some cute way to tell him that I was pregnant. We were starting our family, I was starting my elite athlete coaching.

“And then it didn’t work out,” I say, voice tight. When I look down, I realize I’ve collected a little pile of lint on the blanket. And I’ve started to feel a lot more sober than when I started the story.

“It didn’t work out,” Sammy echoes. I meet his eyes, and they’re filled with genuine curiosity. “How could a man let you go?”

It sounds like a line, but comes out as a true question—something he’s finding hard to understand. It cuts through some of the pain of reliving the past and makes me laugh wetly. I return my gaze to the blanket.

“He, uh—well something came up.”

“Something came up ?”

“He got my best friend pregnant.”

There’s a thick, heavy pause. I can hear the crackling of the fire, and faintly, the heavy thudding of Sammy’s heart. Or maybe it’s more that I feel it.

“Okay,” Sammy says, and I feel his hand under the blanket, forming a fist. “ What ?”

“We met in the dorms freshman year,” I allowing myself to think of Clara. Allowing myself to imagine her. Every version of her that I knew. The one sitting on her bed when I walked into our dorm room. The one holding my hand when I cried about not getting a scholarship I needed. The one who invited me back to her house for break, because she knew I had nowhere else to go.

Sammy is still looking at me, so I go on. “We clicked. I’d always wanted a best friend. Like, to have my person. I was so jealous of any TV show with an inseparable duo. And I thought I found mine. Clara and Finn. She was at our house all the time, hanging out with me. Then I started to travel for work, and she’d bring food over because he didn’t know how to cook, and…”

“What kind of man doesn’t know how to cook?” Sammy grumbles, and I laugh, wiping my face on my shoulder.

“The day I found out was the worst day of my life,” I whisper. “They sat me down together. To tell me that she was pregnant. And that he was leaving me. He really framed it like it was his duty—that he had no choice. Never mind the fact that he made the choice to cheat on me in the first place.”

“What did she say?”

“Nothing,” I whisper, remembering the haunted expression on her face when I’d sat there, stone-faced, not even looking at my husband. Just looking at her. “I told her that I never wanted to hear from her again.”

“Jesus, Finn,” Sammy says, the words coming out as a hiss. Reaching out, he puts a hand on my shoulder and pulls me back so I’m nuzzled into him again.

Usually, I’d shy away from this. From physical comfort. But right now, it feels too good to say no. Even to a client. Even to the man who’s supposed to be no-strings.

We stay like that for a long moment. I feel his heart thudding steadily under my cheek. Our legs intertwine, and his hand rubs up and down my back, like he’s trying to ground me to him.

“Sammy,” I whisper after a long time, afraid he might be asleep.

He responds, almost immediately, like he was just waiting for me to go first, “You can call me Sam.”