Page 26 of Brad & Finn
They both knew she wasn’t wrong, so she carried on. “Or if he said something transphobic—because, you know, even queer folks can sometimes say some pretty ignorant shit–”
“You’re telling me,” Finn murmured as they reached the downtown area, and Chloe marched them towards the town’s only pizza parlor.
“I swear to god, Finn, if he hurts you after making moony eyes at you from across the room for almost two hours, I’m going to strangle him with my blazer. You deserve to be loved andappreciated for who you are now, but also who you were then, and if he can’t see that?—”
“Oh my god, Chlo. I kissed him, okay?”
Chloe pursed her lips and stared into Finn’s eyes, somehow expertly avoiding a broken stone in the sidewalk that had been there since they were kids, and then dodging around a bench that looked to be at least from the last decade.
“Okay, then why did you look like you wanted to crawl into the bleachers and hide like you did during the last quarter of that horrid game against New River when the AC broke?”
After that game, it had taken Chloe’s poor mom almost three wash cycles to get the smell of sweat out of their cheer uniforms. Finn had apologized profusely for not knowing how to do it himself, but Chloe’s mom just tutted and sat him at the table for dinner while she handled their laundry.
“It happened right before everyone arrived at the wall, and he kind of…froze,” Finn explained. “We almost got caught, and he apologized afterwards, but in the moment it…” He trailed off.
They’d arrived at the pizza parlor door. The place was blessedly empty of any adults, the only patrons being a few teenagers sitting in a corner booth. Thankfully, it wasn’t Finn and Chloe’s booth, which they slid into, on the same side, of course.
“It hurt your feelings?” Chloe offered, all too used to Finn’s delayed—and sometimes entirely absent—trains of thought.
“Yeah,” he said, tilting sideways to rest his head on her shoulder.
He closed his eyes, since he knew they were going to order what Chloe wanted, and he would eat it regardless of how weird it was. Sometimes she created masterpieces with her creative pizza topping selections, and sometimes, they were abominations. He cracked an eye open, saw that they still had garlic breadsticks on the menu, and closed his eyes again.
Chloe stroked his hair as a young, bored-sounding teenager came to take their order, and she spouted off a random assortment of toppings, the breadsticks for Finn, one soda cup, and a cup for water.
“You know, between the two of us, I think we probably make enough money now where we can afford two sodas,” he said, turning his face into her neck so he could breathe in her comforting smell. His hands weren’t shaking anymore, but her familiar fruity body wash still soothed him.
She cupped the side of his cheek, just so she could shrug and not knock his head off. “Are you going to talk to him about it? Or avoid him for the rest of the weekend?”
Finn huffed, then opened his eyes and sat back up, the walls wavering as he did so. Chloe studied his face before snatching the empty water and soda cups out of the poor server’s hands. The kid stared after her, dumbfounded, as she hustled across the room to fill up their cups. Finn put his elbows on the table, something Chloe’s mom would have scolded him for, and dropped his head into his hands.
“Okay, first, drink this. Then, we’re going to game plan,” Chloe said, sliding back into the booth and pressing up against Finn’s side.
Finn groaned and folded his arms, letting his head fall onto his forearms with a muffled thud. “I don’t want to.”
“I don’t care what you want. Drink. Now,” she said, shoving a straw between his arm and his cheek. He took a sip, unsure if he was going to get Sprite or water. He nearly choked when Coke flooded his mouth.
“You need the caffeine to fuel you for the conversation you’re going to have with Brad tonight,” she insisted.
Finn wanted to groan again, but he also didn’t want to risk drowning as Chloe tried to shove the straw further into his mouth.
He sat up, only to slouch back against the vinyl seats. “I don’t know what there is to talk about, Chlo. I kissed him, it was awkward, he apologized, and now we should move on. Clearly, our first kiss wasn’t as life-changing for him as it was for me. And even if it was life-changing back then, that doesn’t mean it’s going to change anything for us now.”
Chloe glared at him and attempted to shove the straw from the water cup in his mouth.
“Chloe–”
“You’re probably dehydrated, too. You need to be hydrated for all the coming you’ll be doing tonight.”
Thank god the man who stepped up to their table was a fair bit older than the server. He looked like he was at least in his mid-twenties. With his apron and flour-stained jeans, Finn thought he might be the cook. Regardless of his age and job, he placed their pizza down abruptly and practically sprinted back into the safety of the kitchen.
Chloe smirked, and Finn was able to maintain his scowl for all of five seconds before he burst out laughing.
“You do know,” Finn said through his laughter, “he probably assumed you were the one who would be making me do ‘all the coming.’”
Chloe batted at Finn’s air quote hands and served them both a slice of pizza on the cracked, bright blue plastic plates the man had brought. “Don’t try to change the subject, sir! You need this and given the kicked puppy look Brad gave you before we left, he needs this, too. You guys have a history of trust and friendship, so all you have to do is get out of your own stupid way.”
“I don’t know. He’ll probably have forgotten all about it by the time we meet back up, and there’s no way I’m bringing it up again.”
