“I was fifteen when we met. Remy was Lacey’s best friend. She’d moved away years prior but happened to be back in town for the summer. I was a self-destructive mess back then. I was acting out, mourning my mom and blaming myself. My pops was desperate to fix me with therapy, and I hated him for it. He looked at me like I was a nutcase or some shit. But Remy… Remy didn’t. She looked at me like I was normal. Because being a mess was her normal.”
“So… you bonded over your misery?” I connect the dots.
“Yeah. She had a troubled past, a taste for darkness. I felt like she got me. We both hated everyone, and we both felt alone. Long story short, we became friends.”
He doesn’t speak for a moment, hesitant to continue.
“And then we became more.”
Heart squeeze.
“We did all sorts of illegal things that summer. Breaking and entering, tagging shit, stealing cars, you name it. We actually stole the car I have now just a bit before my sixteenth birthday.”
So, the rumors about him were true.
“Did you get caught?”
“Yeah. I took the blame and got into a world of trouble for it. My dad wound up having to buy the car from the owner. Paid him five times the car’s worth in hush money.”
He took the fall for her. The same way he took the fall for me when I broke a glass.
“Did you…” My voice trembles. “Did you love her?”
I sound pathetic, but I had to ask. What Remy did to me, that’s crazy ex-girlfriend territory. Either she’s emotionally unstable, or there was more to their relationship.
“No.” His response is immediate. “I loved that she didn’t judge me for my dark side, but I didn’t love her. All we did was fuck and destroy everything we touched.”
I cringe. “So, you were friends with benefits, then?”
That’s what we told people at school when they asked if we were official. We were basically a couple without the title, but Finn thought it’d be easier to say we were “fuck buddies.”
Looks like history is repeating itself.
You’d think I said that out loud by how fast he says, “Yes, we were friends with benefits, but it wasn’t… Fuck, Dia, it wasn’t like you. It could never be like you.”
His sad puppy eyes tug at my heartstrings.
“Then what?” I change the topic before I become emotional. “Summer ended and she went back home?”
“Pretty much.”
“Until?” I press him for the rest of the story.
“Until last summer. She came back into town a few days before my dad hired you. She’d been blowing up my phone for weeks when you found me standing at the library window. I’d mostly ignored her texts up until that point, but I decided to answer her that night.”
Holy shit.
It’s true. Finn was texting someone that day. We were drinking in the library, and I remember wondering if he was texting Brie. I asked him about it, but he never told me. It was Remy all along.
“That night, when I cornered you in the library and told you all the depraved fucking things I wanted to do to you…” He pauses. “Let’s just say it scared me. A whole fucking lot.”
“Why?”
“Because I hadn’t realized just how much I wanted you until the words came out of my mouth. I was supposed to hate you. Hell, I did hate you. I hated you for making me feel things I didn’t want to feel.”
That’s when it happened, isn’t it?
That weekend?