Like Gravity (17 page)

This was useless; I wouldn’t be able to maneuver my arms, let alone paint an entire bedroom.
I trudged back out into the bedroom, concentrating on not tripping over the extra material around my feet. Hearing the sound of Finn’s choked laughter, I drew to a stop and slumped my shoulders.

“This isn’t going to work,”
I said, windmilling my fabric-swathed arms in circles in the air. “I look like an idiot.”

“You’re adorable,”
Finn said, a soft look in his eyes as he took in the sight of me swallowed up by the enormous coveralls. “Come here,” he whispered, crooking a finger to beckon me over to him.

Crossing the room, I
stumbled on the bunched fabric and fell forward. Finn’s arms shot out and he caught me before I hit the ground, steadying me with his large hands resting on my shoulders.

“Let’s fix you,” he said,
squatting down in front of me and deftly rolling each long pant leg into a cuff I wouldn’t trip over. He repeated this with the extra material of each sleeve, making sure I had full range of motion before releasing me. A funny feeling built in my chest as he adjusted my sleeves so painstakingly. There was something intimate about him dressing me, something that went beyond
just friends
or even
friends with benefits.
I looked down at the top of his head and realized something that floored me.

Finn
really cared about me.

Not just in friendly way, or an
I’d-like-to-know-what-color-your-panties-are
way. He actually cared.

And it didn’t feel impossible, or ridiculous, or even terrifying.
To be honest, it felt pretty damn nice.

Finger Painting

We painted.

I
turned on The Civil Wars, an indie duo whose music we both enjoyed, and we covered the walls with primer. The repetition of my roller-brush striking the wall was soothing, and I could feel myself relaxing with each passing minute, finding comfort in the monotony and mindlessness.

Finn
began to sing along with the male vocal part and before long, I’d unconsciously picked up the female versus. We sang and painted until there were no more walls left to prime and the CD player had fallen silent after the final track.

“I didn’t know you could sing until I saw you up there on stage last night. I thought I was hallucinating at first,”
Finn laughed, breaking the silence that had descended on us. 

“I don’t really,” I replied, turning
in a slow circle to see if we’d missed any spots with the primer. We’d have to wait awhile for it to dry before we could start covering it with the blue shades I’d picked out.

“That’s not what it sounded like last night, or just now,”
Finn noted skeptically. “You’ve got talent. Why not use it?”

“Singing is something I do just for myself. I don’t
do it for the applause, or the audience, or the spotlight,” I tried to explain. “It’s an outlet for me, I guess.”

Finn
nodded. This, he could understand.

“Why were you there?” I asked. It had
n’t escaped my notice that he had his own band, with real fans and scheduled performances; he didn’t need to be singing at an open mic night. “It’s not exactly Styx.”

“Styx is great for when I’m playing with the guys,
blowing off steam,” Finn said, walking over to lean against my draped bedframe. “But sometimes, when I need a reminder of what’s important in my life, I need to play alone and reground myself. Music’s one of the only things that can clear my mind. ”

“
One of? What else works?” I asked, genuinely curious.

“Sex.” One side of his mouth curled up in a dark smirk, and he waggled his eyebrows at me playfully.
“Don’t suppose you want to help me out with that method?”

I glared at him, but there was no heat behind it. His smile became a full-fledged grin
, complete with dimple.

“What’s all this about? The sudden urge to paint?”
he asked, switching topics abruptly and gesturing at the whitewashed walls.

“I needed a change,” I said, shrugging. “
I looked around this morning and realized how bare my walls were – how empty it made my life seem.”

Finn
set down his brush and pulled off the paint-spackled plastic gloves covering his hands. Making his way over to my desk, which sat in the hallway just outside my bedroom door, he gently lifted up one of the canvases I’d had printed earlier – the photo of Lexi and I in costume – and examined it.

“You look happy here,” he said, smiling as he looked at the photo. Picking up the second canvas, the one
of my mom on their pier, he stilled and his face grew serious. “This is your mom?” he asked quietly.

“How’d you know?”

“You look like her,” he said. “The eyes, the smile – on the rare occasion you show yours – even the hair. They’re the same.”

Warmth erupted in my chest at the thought that I might look a little like my mother. I wasn’t like her in other ways – not artistic, or forgiving, or kind. I didn’t possess her open heart or her capacity for love. But if I looked like her on the outside, maybe it meant that buried deep down beneath my cynicism, trust issues
, and jaded bitchiness, I had a little of her within me after all. Maybe, if I looked for hard enough, I could find pieces of her inside myself.

Finn
had moved on to examine the third picture, and he looked sad as he took in the sight of the little girl I’d once been, wrapped in my mother’s arms. His eyes shifted to me, where I leaned against my bedframe watching him.

“You don’t talk about her.” It wasn’t a question.

“No.”

“I didn’t talk about my parents for a long time.”

“What changed?” I asked, genuinely curious.

“I met you.”

That threw me for a loop. “What do you mean,
you met me
?”

“You were the first person I ever really
talked to about my parents’ death.”

My mind was reeling. How could it be that
Finn had never discussed his parents before the other night on my rooftop? Granted, I never really talked about my mother either, but he seemed far more adjusted and normal than I ever hoped to be.

“Do you want to
– need to? Talk, that is?” I asked, taking a hard swallow to calm my breathing. Jeeze, I was terrible at this. I didn’t know the first thing about properly dealing with my own grief, let alone other peoples’.

“Do you?” H
e turned my own question around on me, pinning me in place with the weight of his intense stare.

Did I?

“I don’t know. Sometimes, I think that if I don’t talk about her, it will be like she never existed at all. Like she’s just some figment my psyche conjured, or an imaginary friend I dreamed up during my childhood. And other times, I think I’d rather not remember anything about her at all, because then it wouldn’t hurt so damn much. I’d be free, normal, just like any other college girl. Worried about normal things like boys and homework and whether I’ll be invited to the Sig Ep party next weekend.

“
But I don’t think about those things. I think about death, and loss, and heartache. I wonder why people bother to fall in love, when they know from the start that they’ll be separated one day – whether by infidelity or distance or death.” I took a deep breath, slightly shocked I’d just admitted all that out loud. “I’ve never had the luxury of being normal, Finn.”

“Normal is boring, Bee.
It’s not something I’d wish for you.” He crossed the room to me, bringing one hand up to gently trace the line of my jaw. “Grief is a kick in the chest. It steals your breath, hits you so hard you think you’ll never stand back up again. And its not just because you’re grieving death or heartbreak or loss – you’re grieving change. You’re grieving the life that might have been, if it hadn’t all gotten fucked up along the way.”

His other hand joined the one holding my jaw, so he was cupping my face in his hands. I closed my eyes and
turned my cheek to rest in one of his palms.

“You could spend forever thinking about the things you’ll ne
ver experience with your mother – infinity contemplating the memories she won’t ever be a part of. But at some point, you have to let the life you should’ve had go, and start living the one you’ve got,” Finn whispered.

Tears spilled out from under my lashes and he caught them with his fingertips
before they could fall. Ignoring the fact that I was a paint-splattered mess, he cradled me against his chest and his lips came to rest in my hair, bringing me comfort as I trembled in his arms.

“Let go, Bee,” he whispered.

And I did.

After a
time, my tears subsided and I became very aware of the fact that I’d just had a full blown meltdown in Finn’s arms. I wanted to run. A month ago,
would’ve
run; I’d have bolted as fast and as far away as possible. But now, I just moved a step back out of the circle of his arms and wiped the residual tears from my eyes.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m not this person.
I’ve cried more in the past two months than I have in the last fourteen years combined,” I said, forcing a laugh. “I’m sorry for falling apart like that.”

“You don’t have to apologize.”

“I think the primer is dry enough for us to paint on now,” I said with a sniffle, walking over to the paint cans resting in the corner of my bedroom. Finn followed, quiet for once, and crouched down beside me as I shook up the dark blue paint. He grabbed the lighter shade of blue and, after shaking it thoroughly, he used a screwdriver to pop open the lid.

“So, I was thinking we’d paint the walls the sky blue color, and then make the ceiling the navy, dusk color,” I said, explaining what I’d envisioned when I’d picked out my color scheme. “Like the sky at nightfall.”

“Bringing the view from your rooftop inside,” Finn murmured intuitively.

“Something like that,” I said, smiling softly at him. It was weird how well he understood my messed up brain – like we were on the same wavelength all the time.

We painted the walls first. The light cerulean I’d picked was perfect, like the cloudless sky on a crisp fall afternoon. It took nearly two hours, long enough for us to listen through two more full albums. We sang together again, and I could feel the tension and residual sadness from my breakdown melting away.

Being with
Finn was as natural as breathing. He didn’t demand anything of me, didn’t want me to be anyone other than myself. The time passed quickly, and I was silently grateful for his bossy insistence to help; it would have been a much longer process if I’d had to do it all on my own.

While
Finn made a trip back to his house to pick up a ladder so we could paint the ceiling, I wandered into the kitchen, threw together some grilled cheese sandwiches, and grabbed a bag of corn chips. It was well past dinnertime; dusk had fallen outside, and we’d been working hard for hours. The least I could do was feed the boy, after everything he’d done for me today.

We took a dinner break when he returned with the ladder, but quickly resumed painting.
Lexi had vanished, assumedly to Tyler’s apartment, and I’d never been more aware of the fact that I was completely alone with Finn, in my bedroom. Granted, it was more of a disaster site at the moment, but still – standing in an enclosed, semi-dark space with Finn Chambers and my bed was nearly more than I could take.

Don’t think about him naked.

Definitely don’t think about both of us naked.

Definitely, definitely don’t think about both of us naked in
my bed.

The more time I spent with him in that room, the harder it was to focus on the task at hand. Being this near to him for hours and completely unable to touch him was torturous
for me, yet he seemed completely unaffected. Maybe I was the only one who felt the growing tension between us, filling the air with unspoken promises and unvoiced desires.

H
e painted with a single-minded determination I couldn’t match, evidently intent on finishing the project before the day ended. My arms were aching, my feet were sore from standing all day, and I’d been ready to call it quits hours ago. Between the darkness of the room, the hours of manual labor, and the exhausting battle I was having with my inner hussy – who wanted nothing more than to tackle him and show my eternal gratitude for all he’d done – I was ready to drop.

“Take a break,”
Finn suggested quietly.

“Am I that obvious?” I asked. I thought I’d been successful at hiding my growing exhaustion, but apparently he was more attuned to my body than I’d realized.

“Brooklyn, you’re swaying on your feet. The ceiling is practically done, all that’s left to do is touch up the edging. Lie down,” he ordered, yanking the drop cloth off my bed to expose my comforter. I moved toward the bed in a daze, truly exhausted. It was past ten – we’d been painting for nearly seven hours.

“Wait,” he said, dropping the edger he was holding and walking over to me. I stilled, several feet away from my bed, and watched his approach. He had a smudge of indigo paint on his forehead and another by his jawline, places he’d likely touched absentmindedly with his paint-covered
hands. His dark hair was sticking up in wayward clumps and it looked slightly sweaty; for some reason, I found that incredibly sexy. He was usually so put together, so self-assured – Finn looking like a bit of a disheveled mess was a something I’d bet not many people had witnessed.

I smiled at the thought.

“You’ll ruin your bed if you get in like that,” he whispered, coming to a stop inches from me. He reached out a hand and tugged the front zipper of my coveralls, dragging it down so slowly the breath caught in my chest. I don’t know how he made stripping me of baggy painting clothes into something sensual, but I shouldn’t have been surprised. This was Finn, after all – he could make just about anything sexy.

Except Crocs.
No one
can make Crocs sexy.

When the zipper reach
ed the end of its downward journey, Finn lifted his hands and pushed the material from my shoulders. It slid off quickly, pooling around my feet in a white and blue-splattered cloud and leaving me in only my tank top and shorts.

“Step out,” he murmured, taking one of my hands in each of his and
guiding me toward him. My heart fluttered in my chest and I felt a swarm of butterflies explode into flight in my stomach. Staring up into his dark eyes, my hands found their way up to rest on his broad shoulders.