Page 20 of Brad & Finn
Finn sighed with the collective breath of tired best friends everywhere. “I’m sorry about this morning. She can be…”
“Scarily protective?” Brad offered.
Finn pressed his pointer finger and thumb into the corners of his eyes. “Yes. She can also be a bit meddlesome, so I apologize for everything else that happened in line.”
Brad’s hand felt slick against the glossy papers he was still clutching, so he tucked them into an inside pocket of his jacket. He didn’t miss the way Finn’s eyes traced over his chest and side. Brad had worn a fitted green dress shirt for a reason.
His icebreaker card seemed to pulse in his pocket, and he amended that he hadn’t worn green forthatreason. He’d just wanted to make a good first impression, that was all.
“You don’t have to apologize for this morning, or today, or tomorrow,” Brad assured him. “I remember how Chloe could get. Defensive and sometimes a little over-eager.”
Finn huffed a laugh through his nose and ran a hand back through his hair. “Over eager is right. I think she may have gotten the wrong idea from something you said this morning.” Finn’s eyes widened, and he waved his hands in the air between them. “Not that I’m saying it’s your fault! Just that she’s insinuating something she doesn’t know anything about. I can tell her to stop if it bothers you or gets to be too much.”
Finn crossed his arms tightly over his chest again, and Brad took a step closer until his bicep was pressed into Finn’s shoulder. If they were still as close as they’d been in high school, he would have yanked at Finn’s arms until he relaxed. They were adults now, though. He could put an arm around Finn’s shoulder. He’d done that earlier, but without the addedpresence of Chloe under his other arm, it felt like it might be inappropriate.
Instead, he bent his head down so he wouldn’t be overheard. “I promise, I haven’t minded anything Chloe has said or implied. I would love to see you both after the reunion. As far as your injury, there’s a strong possibility that I would have been distracted if I knew you were hurt during a game. I was already distracted enough as it was, watching you get lifted and thrown around. You were…kind of incredible to watch.”
Finn’s breath caught, and the muscles in his shoulder quivered against Brad’s arm. “Thank you. Although…I feel like I should warn you, Chloe’s only going to get worse if she hears you say something like that.”
Brad wanted to say that he didn’t mind. He wanted to say a bit of friendly meddling might be exactly the push they needed, because it was becoming pretty obvious something was cooking between them.
If he was being totally frank with himself, it felt like there had always been somethingbetween them. Whatever it was, it led to them playing the spin the bottle game at Cory’s grad party. When the bottle landed, either one of them could have chosen to pass, since they never played by any hard and fast rules. Neither of them had, though. He could still feel the way Finn’s hand had cupped his cheek and their bodies had pressed together. They’d both known they couldn’t start anything—or, at least, Brad had known that, given he was leaving for football camp only a week later. He’d been the one to stop the kiss and give Finn a friendly hug, whispering, “Thank you for being in my life.” Finn had clung to him, but when they finally released each other, one of Brad’s football buddies had pulled him into a foosball tournament, and Brad lost sight of Finn for the remainder of the party.
Unable to put all that into words, Brad instead said, “I really don’t mind, but I also don’t want to accidentally ruin your cover story.”
Finn barked out a short laugh and shook his head, staring down at his shoes on the scuffed wooden flooring. Back in the day, the basketball coach would have had a field day if his students wore black soled shoes in his gym. It seemed like it was a bit of a lost cause now.
“I appreciate you being so supportive of our cover story,” Finn said. “I just…I feel like sometimes, back in school, you’d prioritize everyone else over yourself. You really don’t need to do that for us. I’ve got it handled—and as you can see, Chloe doesn’t actually need the moral support. I think she just wanted an excuse to bring me to the reunion.”
Brad leaned against Finn, and his entire chest warmed from the inside out when Finn leaned back. Just like Chloe that morning, Finn was scarily accurate with his observation. Brad had spent most of his life worrying about his mom, his college scholarship, and his career. Then, as his mom got older and wasn’t able to work the same grueling hours at the shop, he worried about his momagain. The only time he’d fought for somethinghewanted was this promotion.
A tiny voice in the back of his head reminded him that the promotion wasn’t really all for him, either. So…maybe he really hadn’t ever fought for something he wanted only for himself.
A few football guys approached Brad, and Finn ducked his head and said he’d catch up with Brad later. As he watched Finn hurry back to Chloe’s side, Brad thought maybe it was about time he started fighting.
4
FINN
Finn had thoughthe was ready for the reunion, but standing in line, with the glaring overhead lights buzzing above him, he felt like the entire room was staring at him.
He probably would have gone back to the hotel if Brad hadn’t shown up and Chloe hadn’t launched into her caffeine-fueled dramatics. She was the only person who’d ever been able to distract Finn’s racing thoughts. Back in high school, she’d make up silly stories on the bus ride to a competition, distracting Finn, Kendall, and the rest of the team from their pre-performance jitters. Just last week, she’d planted herself on Finn’s couch the night before a tough presentation at work. She’d rambled on about some celebrity drama or another until he’d finally been able to catch his breath. Usually, her distractions would come with hair pets and cuddles, but since this trip wasfullof surprises, it had been Brad’s group hug that unwound the final coil of anxiety in Finn’s gut.
He didn’t mind Chloe’s teasing; she’d been doing it to him for their entire life. He couldn’t gauge if it was bothering Brad, though. They’d shared one kiss two decades ago, and they’d nearly shared another last night in the hotel hallway. Aftereverything Finn had told him, he had no idea if Brad was still interested in a repeat performance of their life-changing kiss.
At least, for Finn, it had been life-changing. He’d only kissed two people in high school, Brad and Chloe, but each kiss had gotten him one step closer to discovering himself.
For most of his childhood, Finn had known there was something different about him. Kissing Chloe sophomore year had shown that the “something different” about him wasn’t that he was lesbian. Funnily enough, it had also helped Chloe come to terms with being asexual. He’d spent the rest of that summer researching the ace spectrum with her, which had helped Finn determine he wasn’t ace either.
Then he’d kissed Brad and found that even though he liked kissing boys, he still didn’t feel like Kendall or the other straight teenage girls he’d known.
After kissing Brad on the cold cement floor of Cory’s basement, Finn had left the party with plans to spend the rest of the summer investigating gender and all of its confusing forms. He hadn’t been expecting to, quite literally, run into his classmate Atlas as he left the party. Atlas had been his usual colorful self, blonde hair dyed neon blue with matching eyeshadow and a flowing skirt. Finn still remembered the way his hair and skirt flew out around him as he rounded the corner of Cory’s house and slammed into Finn’s side.
Finn had always quietly admired Atlas for his refusal to be anything other than his bright, overtly queer—and possibly genderqueer—self. Of course, they hadn’t had the words for that back then. All Finn knew was that something in his chest reacted to the way Atlas always seemed to say “fuck you” to the gender he’d been assigned at birth.
He and Atlas ended up walking to the town’s nicer playground, the one with the swings that didn’t pinch his hips. They’d talked until the sun began to rise over the general storebehind them. The kiss, the conversation, and that night weren’t the final steps in Finn realizing he was trans, but by the end of that summer, he’d known for sure. Kendall and Chloe had been his biggest cheerleaders—which seemed appropriate, all things considered—during and after college, and he’d sworn to himself that if he saw Atlas again, he would thank him.
Sadly, as they spent the first hour of the cocktail party bouncing from person to person so Chloe could find her chocolate-y match, Finn didn’t see Atlas. It didn’t help that so many of his classmates had shot up like beanstalks after high school. He’d been one of the cheer team’s best flyers for a reason. Even after puberty, and his second puberty on T, he was only 5’5” on a good day. Thankfully, Chloe’s heeled boots meant Finn could keep an eye on her in the crowd. Brad’s height also wasn’t hard to miss as he walked around, squinting down at the noticeably crumpled card in his hand.
