The opportunity just never presented itself.
Aveena isn’t exactly big on drinking because of trauma she experienced as a child, and I could hardly see myself rubbing salt into her wound.
The whiskey feels like lava coursing down my throat, and my gag reflex kicks in. A drop of liquor slips free from the bottle and rolls down my mouth. Finn watches it happen, his eyes following my thumb as I wipe the excess alcohol off my bottom lip. Then he traps his own lip between his teeth.
And I stop breathing.
Nah, I’m probably crazy.
“And me?” I gather the courage to say.
He arches an eyebrow, willing me to carry on.
“Why do you hate me? Scratch that, why do you hate everything?”
His answer is immediate. “I don’t hate everything.”
I snort. “Name me one thing you don’t hate.”
He doesn’t answer right away, pushing off the windowsill and stealing the glass bottle back from me. He only speaks once he’s regained his seat on the window.
“I’ll have to get back to you on that.”
I gasp. “Shocker.”
I assume our conversation has reached its natural decline until he adds, “And I don’t, by the way.”
“Don’t what?”
“Hate you. I don’t,” he clears up.
His pranks, harsh words, and nasty looks beg to differ.
“Then why are you so awful to me?”
The silence that ensues is thicker, heavier than any silence I’ve ever suffered through. Finn flips his head to look out the open window, losing himself in the night sky before whispering a truth I thought would never come.
“Because you’re everything she would’ve wanted me to be.”
I’m confused for a moment.
But it quickly becomes clear.
He’s talking about his mom, isn’t he?
“Hell, you’re everything she was…” Finn scoffs and tips the bottle back for another sip. “Trustworthy, understanding, kind. God, you’re so fucking kind it makes me sick.”
To my own disbelief, I laugh. It’s not particularly nice, but I still find humor in the backhanded compliment.
“Thanks?” I’m not sure what to say.
Against all expectations, Finn laughs, too.
This has to be the first time we’ve ever truly laughed together. This is definitely our first genuine conversation, too. I could get used to this, but I know better than to think “decent Finn” will ever be the norm.
We don’t speak again after that.
Finn resumes his staring into the night, and I return to waiting for him to get off the window.
I don’t mind the silence.
I want to remember this moment.
I want to remember, once the sun comes up and he inevitably reverts back into his cruel self, that for that one fleeting moment, the walls he built around himself were no more. For that one fleeting moment, he was real.
And maybe…
Just maybe…
Finn Richards isn’t the monster I made him out to be.