Page 57 of Brad & Finn
He was definitely going to be late to meet Chloe, and he somehow still hadn’t gotten either of their phone numbers. Maybe he should skip the flowers. That would give him a little more time?—
“Next!” the lady behind the counter shouted.
Brad jerked towards the desk, placing both hands flat on the counter to stop his forward momentum. She leaned slightly away from him but smiled what Brad recognized as a very well-practiced customer service smile.
He took a deep breath so he could try to keep the agitation and anxiety he was feeling out of his voice. “I need your prettiest bouquet of daffodils. Something you’d use to?—”
“Ask someone to prom?” she asked, her face softening into something more genuine. “I got you, sweetie. You want a corsage and boutonniere as well?”
Brad blinked at her as the static in his brain got louder. He had not prepared for that question, but thank god he had the wherewithal to say, “Actually, uh…two boutonnieres?”
Before he could reckon with the fact he’d just outed himself to the town florist, she inclined her head with an even warmer smile and disappeared into the back.
There wasn’t any time to waste, so he pulled out his phone and began frantically scrolling through his saved files and screenshots. He only managed to find one document before she returned with a gorgeous bouquet and a box. After swiping his credit card—twice because he’d somehow messed it up the first time—he hurried out of the store and down the street to the hotel.
He kept his head down as he walked across the lobby, trying in vain to figure out what he was going to say to Finn, where his college transcript might be saved, and wondering if maybe his mom had a copy of his social security card.
Maybe he could call Chloe on Facebook and push the promposal back twenty minutes? It wasn’t going to take long, and they could be a little late to the cocktail party before the dance. Besides, there hadn’t been a cocktail party at their actual prom.
Maybe he and Finn could take a few minutes and talk before he promposed. It didn’t have to be the full “what are we, and can it maybe be boyfriends, but also can you put up with my work schedule and how disorganized and run ragged I am?” talk, butmaybe he could at least suss out if Finn was interested in the two of them having a future.
A familiar combination of scents, apple orchards, and oak barrels, made him glance up right in time to see Chloe and Finn walk out from behind the coffee bar.
Chloe’s face lit up when she saw the flowers, and she was holding a folded-up sign, just like Brad had asked her to make from her mom’s craft supplies. He stumbled to a stop in front of them, and he couldn’t deny that Finn looked happy to see him.
His eyes were the color of Brad’s lawn each summer. His mom had always made sure to keep their lawn watered and tended to, even when it meant pushing their mower through the hot, muggy summer days as Brad played with his toy trucks on the porch. She took pride in her yard, the house, and, apparently, in her son and his work.
The lobby had a few people milling about, and they cast him, his flowers, and pompoms a cursory glance before going back to their phones and conversations.
Brad’s head was beginning to ache, and it wasn’t just his thoughts. He was hearing his mom saying she was proud of him and Chloe commending him on being romantic, but he also saw the haunted look on his mom’s face and heard Chloe say that Finn wanted—no,needed—someone who was sure about him to be the one asking him to prom.
Next to him, Chloe bounced on her toes in excitement, her love for Finn practically leaking out of her. Brad had never been that sure about his love for anyone, except his mom. In high school, he thought he loved Kendall, and that had gone nowhere, but he’d also loved Chloe and Finn, and all that had gotten them was twenty years of lapsed communication. Chloe had been there for Finn through every stage of his transition, and now they had what sounded like a beautiful life in Indianapolis, including Christian and, soon, Chloe’s mom. They were Finn’sfamily, the one he’d found and made for himself, and Brad knew how important family was. His mom was his entire world. Who was Brad to come in and take that away from Finn, when he wasn’t even sure what he’d be able to offer?
A sad, scared voice in his head tried to argue that they’d make it work if they tried hard enough. Brad had proven he could make anything work. He could be a bisexual college football player and eventually go on to be a coach who made his team feel welcome and safe, not only on the field, but off it as well. He could support himself and his mom, and he desperately wanted to believe he could support a partner as well, but…maybe not today.
Chloe had been clear: only do this if he knew for sure what he was doing. And given the emails clogging up his phone, it was clear he had no idea what he was doing—except apparently taking a step forward to hand Chloe the pompoms and take the sign out of her hands.
Her look was questioning but trusting, and he prayed he wasn’t about to break that trust. Hopefully, she would understand that this was what was best for Finn.
“Finn,” Brad said as he unfurled the poster. It read “We’ve got three questions for you,” with megaphones and pom poms scribbled all around the edges. It was a sign the cheerleaders and the Gomillion fans had often held up during games. It led into a cheer that would have the cheerleaders shouting questions to the crowd: “who are we, why are we here, and what are we going to do?” The answers were, of course, “we are Gomillion, we’re here to fight, and we’re here to win.” The cheerleaders would do a call-and-response cheer spelling out “W-I-N,” and everyone always went wild at the end, screaming and blowing air horns as the team ran out onto the field or started a new half.
Today, it was much simpler.
“Chloe and I have three questions for you,” Brad said, and Chloe held the pom poms out in front of her, making them shimmer and shake.
He locked eyes with Finn, his sweet, gorgeous, wonderful best friend, and he knew he couldn’t do it. He needed time to get his head on straight, to figure things out for work, and talk to Finn about what they were going to do. He couldn’t start things off by rushing in with a promposal. Chloe had explicitly told him not to do it if he wasn’t ready.
That same scared voice pleaded with him, said this was the worst form of people pleasing he had ever done, and that he was going to regret it.
Brad had no idea whose voice it was because he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d done something andnotthought about how it would affect everyone around him and whether or not he would regret it. How could he regret protecting Finn and giving his mom what she wanted—her little boy’s success in a career he wanted, even if right now it felt like it was killing him?
“First…who are we?” Brad said, every muscle in his body tensing up as it prepared to launch him onto the football field—or perhaps carry him away from this scene he’d gotten himself into.
“Gomillion!” Chloe said, throwing her arms in the air.
A laugh escaped Finn’s mouth, and he pressed his hand over his lips in a way that tore a chunk of Brad’s heart out.
“Why are we here?” he said, his voice quiet and strained. Hopefully, the others would read it as nerves and not Brad fighting to catch his breath.
