Page 12 of Off the Beaten Path

“Careful, Fin. You might sound jealous.”

Her hazel eyes go flat. “There’s not enough money in the world.”

“For what?” June asks, looking between all of us. Marinara sauce has already dripped from her spoon, staining the mustard yellow dress she’s wearing. It just adds to her wild child look, pink cheeks and freckled nose, bare, dirty feet and untamable curls.

“To pay me to date your Uncle Grey,” Finley tells her sweetly. “Now, back to Emily.”

I let out a long breath and run my palm down my face. My head throbs, and I would give almost anything to be sitting in my chair next to my fireplace with something stronger than a beer in hand. “Finley, I’m not going out with Emily.”

Her jaw clenches, that determined look entering her eyes. I know what she’s about to say is going to burrow right under my skin, an itch I’m not supposed to scratch. “Do I need to set you up on another dating app?”

“You set him up on a dating app?” Mom asks.

I want to strangle Finley for bringing this up. It takes all of my restraint not to fling an entire handful of croutons in her direction this time.

“Yes,” she says with a roll of her eyes. She takes a sip of her seltzer, pinning me with a look. “And he threw such a big fit about it.”

“Women wouldn’t stop messaging me for days!” I’m practically yelling across the table, but all the aggravation I’ve felt about my mom and sister constantly butting into my love life, or lack thereof, has finally come to a head. It doesn’t matter that I’ve told them I don’t want to date, or that I’ve got too much going on in my life, or that I don’t want to bring someone else into June’s life who could ultimately leave her again. They don’t listen.

“Holden,” Mom says, her voice soft and soothing, like she’s talking to a cornered wild animal. Ifeellike a cornered wild animal. “We just want you—”

“I want both of you to stay out of it.” Setting firm boundaries is the only way to get through to them, or Mom, at least.

Her face pinches in displeasure, but she finally nods, tongue pressed to the front of her teeth.

Finley clears her throat. “I guess now isn’t the best time to tell you that I also signed you up for single parent speed dating at the Baptist church next week.”

“Speed dating,” I grumble into my beer an hour later, perched atop a high stool at my favorite bar in town, Matty’s.

A laugh rumbles out of Grey’s chest, and he shakes his head. “She’s good.”

I glare at him over the rim of my glass. “I’m not going.”

“You made that abundantly clear.” This is true, but obviously, my firm tone wasn’t going to work on Finley. I had to revert to throwing more croutons at her head and threatening to post her embarrassing middle school photos on the town Facebook page if she didn’t let up on the matchmaking. She relented, but I’m not holding my breath that it will last long.

Finley ditched us the moment we left Mom’s, headed to meet her boyfriend, Gus. Grey and I have never been his biggest fans, mostly because he doesn’t treat Finley very well, but also because I’ve never had a conversation with him that doesn’t involve cryptocurrency. So Finley doesn’t invite him out with us much.

“She drives me crazy,” I say.

He slants a look in my direction. “You love her.”

I grunt low in my throat. “She still drives me crazy.”

Grey shrugs, his eyes leaving mine to flit around the bar. He’s probably looking for someone hehasn’tapproached before, but Finley wasn’t kidding when she said he would need to leave the county for that.

“I wish I had siblings,” he finally says. “You’re lucky.”

Guilt pricks in my chest. Grey’s home life has never beenbad, but I get the sense it’s never been good either. In all these years we’ve been friends, he’s hardly talked about it, but it’s like the minute he came to my house in high school, it became his as well.

His parents have never really been happy with one another, but they’ve stayed together anyway. I always mourned that Finley and I never had two parents, but I never considered what it would have been like to have two parents who were only partly there.

“I am lucky,” I say. My voice sounds rough, even to my own ears. “But you are too.”

He smirks in my direction before turning back to focus on the woman across the room that he has been making eyes at for the last few minutes. “I hope to be. I’ll be back.”

Without another glance back, he slides off the barstool and weaves his way through the tables. The woman is standing by the vintage jukebox, coins jangling in her shaking hands, and he presses his palm to the wall next to her, smiling down.

I don’t know how he does it. Even before June, I was never that smooth. I was all nerves and bumbling hands, saying the wrong thing and hoping women found it charming instead of standoffish.

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