Like Gravity(57)

“Hi,” I whispered back.

Finn brushed a curl back from my face and tucked it behind my ear. “Was it a nightmare?” he asked.

I nodded, not wanting to explain or knowing how to begin to.

“Do you want to talk about it?” The gentle look in his eyes told me that I could’ve shared anything with him at that moment, even the story of my mother’s death and the twisted path my life had followed ever since. But I knew, once I told him, the soft look would leave his eyes – replaced by sympathy or, worse, pity.

I shook my head no. I wasn’t ready to see that look in his eyes. I didn’t think I’d ever be ready for that.

“Okay,” he said, leaning down to kiss my forehead gently. I snuggled into his side and felt his arms tighten around me. When his hands started to wander down my body and his mouth found mine, I allowed my mind to go blank and forgot all about my strangely vivid dreams. And as Finn made slow, achingly sweet love to me, the boy with sad eyes, who’d given me the happy endings he was far past believing in, disappeared from my mind altogether.

***

When I woke, the first thing to enter my consciousness was the pungent, unmistakable scent of paint fumes. Cracking open an eye, I saw that it was already midmorning and bright rays of autumn light were streaking across my bedspread. The second thing my bleary mind registered was the fact that I was still naked, and Finn was no longer in bed next to me.

So he left. That’s good – great, even. It’s what I wanted all along.

Isn’t it?

My inner voice sounded unconvincing even to myself, and I couldn’t quell the disappointment that was beginning to bloom in my chest like a cancer – a sharp pain radiating quickly from my heart out through my limbs.

I was an idiot.

Sex with Finn had been so different for me – more intimate and so far removed from what I’d experienced in the past – that I’d simply assumed he’d felt it too. Apparently he hadn’t. Maybe last night had been nothing to him; maybe I’d been nothing to him. No different from any other girl he’d – how had Lexi termed it so eloquently? – hit-and-quit.

This is fine. This is better, in fact. Now, things can go back to normal and I’ll forget all about the emotional, tear-ridden months I’ve had with Finn in my life. I’ll go back to having fun – who wants to cry all the time, anyway? He’s just a boy, nothing special. It isn’t like he took my virginity, for god’s sake. This will be no different from any of my other hookups. Snap out of it, Brooklyn.

They were paltry consolations, but they were all I had left. I clung to them desperately, my lifeline in a storm – unwilling to be dragged out into the endless ocean of my disappointed hopes. Breathing deeply into the pillow I clutched tightly to my chest, tears immediately prickled my eyes as Finn’s scent washed over me. I wondered how many other stupid girls’ empty pillows had smelled like the warm breeze of an early fall day, and how long they’d waited to wash them after he’d left. A day? A week?

I groaned at the ridiculous thought. I was being such a girl – what the hell was happening to me?

Don’t get me wrong, I was fully aware how hypocritical it was for me to feel this way. After all, hadn’t I pulled this exact maneuver on countless one-night-stands of my own? I was the expert at it; so good, I could probably teach classes at the university– How to Escape Your Awkward Morning-After: Avoiding the Coyote-Ugly and Sneaking Out the Window 101. I had no right to expect anything different from Finn; in fact, I was na?ve for thinking it could have ever meant something more to him than just sex. He was Finn Chambers, after all.

Two months ago, I would’ve balked at the idea of sex meaning anything other than the mind-cleansing fulfillment only an orgasm can deliver. Now, here I was, brought down by the idea that sex hadn’t been meaningful – that I’d been nailed-and-bailed on.

Damn, karma really is a snaggletoothed, hairy bitch.

I took another deep breath, through my mouth this time, and decided to stop being a whiney, pathetic, doe-eyed little girl. I had things to do, like finish painting my room.

When memories of painting with he-who-must-not-be-named began to play through my mind in vivid high-definition color, I did my best to shove them way down into my triply-reinforced mental box labeled Narcissistic Assholes. He finally fit in the box, I realized with a despondent, detached sort of acceptance – a pyrrhic victory if there ever was one.

Flipping over onto my back, I startled when I caught sight of the deep blue ceiling above me. When I’d finally fallen asleep, utterly wiped out after Finn and I had finished getting acquainted for the third time, the ceiling was an unadulterated shade of midnight. Now, it was littered with a galaxy of white stars, so detailed and painstakingly crafted that they must have taken several hours to hand paint.

Finn.

As if thinking his name had conjured him, my bedroom door swung open and Finn strolled in, looking annoyingly bright-eyed and cheerful, clothed once-again in his paint-spattered coveralls. He clearly hadn’t just undergone a slightly embarrassing, utterly dismaying spiral into the land of self-doubt and rejection.

Crap.

Propped up on my elbows, a sheet covering my chest, I warily watched him enter, unsure what to expect.

“Sleeping Beauty awakens,” he said, smiling crookedly at me and coming to a stop at the end of my bed.

He was still here. He hadn’t left at all.