Page 27 of Finn Rhodes Forever

We stared at each other. My eyes narrowed and his smile lifted even higher.

Oh my god. Did heknow?

He winked at me, grinning, and my chest simmered with nerves, irritation, and bottled-up laughter.

Alarm bells rang in my head. He knew what I was doing.

“It’ll fit you, so you can borrow it. Actually, you can have it.” I stared at him. “And I wouldlovefor you to wear it to the bar.”

He shrugged, still smiling that stupid fucking smile. “Sure. Can’t wait.”

Ugh.

The frustrating thing about Finn was that he was totally shameless.

I used to like that about him, but now it was complicating my wholemake Finn dump meplan.

Which was why I had planned the worst date possible for today.

My gaze dropped to his mouth and I remembered our weird kiss the other night in the bar. All night, I’d felt his eyes on me, despite my hair looking all fucked up. By the end of the night, I was so wound up, I was itching to get out of there. It had taken me hours to fall asleep because I kept replaying the evening.

I’d never admit this, but I wanted to kiss him. A real kiss. Like we did on graduation night. A kiss like we wanted each other.

Finn used to be a very, very good kisser.

I wondered what kind of kisser he was now.

I needed to get rid of him, fast, before I got attached. Before I was disappointed again.

“Let’s go,” I said, eager to get this over with.

* * *

“The doily museum?”Finn read the sign hanging in front of the little house, hands on his hips. “The doily museum. You want to go here.”

I smoothed out the polyester masterpiece that, along with my hair, was attracting some strange looks from the street. On the way here, everyone had gawked at us. Finn had insisted on holding my hand, and whispers rose up all around us while I tried to act normal.

“I’ve always wanted to go.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Haven’t we been here before? Grade two, right? Mrs. Phung’s class. I feel like she took us here as a punishment.”

Oh, I remembered. It was the most boring field trip we ever went on. This was going to be the worst dateever. My mouth twisted as I tried not to grin. Finn would die of boredom in this dull museum. If I was lucky, he’d slip out the back door within ten minutes.

“I don’t remember that,” I told him, shrugging. “Look, Finn, this is the kind of thing I like to do in my spare time, but if you don’t want to go, I completely understand. Some people aren’t suited for—”

He wrapped an arm around my shoulder and his intoxicating smell filled my nose. God damnit, he smelled amazing. His arm brushed mine and my breath caught.

“Oh,” he laughed. “I want to go. I absolutely want to go to the doily museum with you.”

My teeth gritted.

We climbed the steps to the house and knocked. The door swung open immediately, and our gazes dropped to the tiny, ancient woman in front of us.

Her small, wrinkly face broke into a big smile. “Welcome to the number one doily museum in Queen’s Cove.”

Dot, the museum curator and owner of the home, led us inside, clearing her throat and gesturing to a scrap of garbled white yarn stitched onto white fabric.

“This collection’s first piece is from 1927, and was gifted to my mother when my family lived in Saskatoon. The Miller family lived two farms over and were moving to the West Coast because Mr. James Miller wanted to relocate them to a warmer climate, and so they gifted this piece to my mother, Mrs. Margaret Adams. As you can see by the delicate weave, this doily has been crocheted with a size eight thread, which is more rare than the typical size three or size five threads, which the North American Doily Society cites as the most common during that time. If you’re interested in this style, I’m teaching a seminar on the twelfth on how to…”

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