Page 43 of Wild About You
I put an extra unnecessary wiggle into my hips as I take my putting stance, all too aware of his gaze behind me. I pull the club back, bring it softly but swiftly forward, and connect with the ball…sending it in a quick, straight line into the hole.
“Hole in one!” I whoop, then put a hand over my mouth as if I can retroactively shush myself.
“Yeah, yeah. ‘One weekend a year doesn’t make you good,’ my ass,” he grumbles as he sets up his ball. Feeling smug, I let him take his shot in silence, and another, and another, giving him a score of three as we move to the next hole.
“Yeah, so I also dated a golfer,” I reveal casually as I prepare my putt at hole two. “He worked at a golf course and would sneak me out on a cart after closing to make out under the guise of ‘giving me lessons.’ Terrible kisser, but actually a pretty good teacher. Especially with putting, because he could do the whole ‘Here, like this’ schtick and wrap his arms around me.”
Finn’s grunt—a surprisingly displeased sound—comes right as I swing, and my aim goes wild, sending my ball ping-ponging between the barriers on either side of the long, straight path to the hole. It rolls to a stop, not at all where I intended for it to go. I frown as I walk toward it and plan my next move.
“How long did that last?” Finn’s question is infused with an innocence so over-the-top, it has to be fake. Veeery interesting.
“Oh, probably no more than a month or two. The kissing didn’t improve as much as my golf swing, which was a deal-breaker.”
With my attention more focused, I make my next putt, sending the ball on a slow roll right into the hole. “Two!” I cheer with a celebratory spin, my skirt flaring out around me.
“Glad it taught you something,” Finn grumbles.
I think the subject has been dropped as we wander through the shadowy maze of shrub-lined walkways to the next couple holes side by side, stopping to play each one, continuing to mess with each other—me teasing Finn for his weird putting posture, Finn bemoaning the several lucky shots I get despite taking wilder swings than I normally would, all due to him flustering me and throwing off my game. But I’m surprised when he brings up my long-forgotten sophomore summer boyfriend again as I’m taking a crack at getting my ball through the blades of a windmill on hole six.
“So, have you, uh, dated anyone since golfer guy?”
I dart a look his way and find him staring off at the lagoon sparkling under the moonlight in the center of the course, seemingly nonchalant, but the pink tips of his ears give him away. I bite down on a smirk and refocus on the putter.
“Oh, plenty.” Swing aaand—crack. My ball hits the windmill and bounces back, rolling almost all the way to me. I reposition it and get ready to try again. “I dated a lot in high school. Wanted to see what all was out there, I guess.”
The noise Finn makes is a more thoughtful, less grunt-y grunt. After a couple more tries, my ball finally makes it through, leaving me with a score of six for the hole. Finn takes his turn and it’s his luckiest yet as, even with tensed up shoulders and overly wiggly arms, he sinks it in two.
“Was out there?” he asks as we take an arched stone bridge over a gently flowing stream toward hole seven. “So you haven’t dated in college?”
Our eyes meet when he lets me pass him walking over some paving stones meant to look like lily pads at the stream’s bank, and he briefly rests a hand on my back, a touch so fleeting I could believe it was the wind as much as a person.
At the green, I crouch to eye the meandering tunnel our balls will have to travel through on the way to a big, pastel painted castle at the other end. “Haven’t had time or inclination,” I answer as I rise. I hit my ball, hearing it bounce and reverberate in the tunnel, an echoing boiiing. “Ugh, are you kidding?”
I circle the structure for a moment, then, deciding there’s no other way, lie down on my stomach and start to push my club through the opening in an effort to nudge my ball out the other side. I quickly find this is an awful lot like trying to use my club to nudge a needle out of a haystack. Continuing to jab at it does me no good, as the ball is past a curve in the tunnel that my putter can’t angle around.
“Why’s that?” Finn’s voice is closer than I expect when it reaches me. I sigh, dropping my club and retracting my arm before rolling onto my back. He’s kneeling at my side, expression open and watchful. His shirt has gotten more rumpled with the night’s adventures, a few buttons undone. It’s all really working for me.
He’s the box of brownie mix that catches your eye when you’re up for a midnight snack—it’s been there all along, but suddenly looks more delicious than ever before, and you can’t remember why you didn’t indulge earlier.
You also might regret it in the morning.
“Why so curious all of a sudden?” I ask, trying to push brownies and other temptations far from my mind.
Finn lifts a shoulder at the same time as he turns his kneel to a sit, then lies down beside me on the squishy artificial turf. “I guess it’s like…like the dam is broken.” His voice is soft but carries to me easily. “The more I learn about you, the more I find myself wanting to know everything.”
Something in my chest tightens then releases on a rush of fizzy, shimmery feelings. I look up at the stars overhead, less visible with the floodlights nearby and the glow from hotel windows beyond them, but still there. Still the same stars we gazed at from the top of a cliff last night. “Everything, huh?”
In my periphery, Finn shifts, and there’s a sudden but subtle heat at my side. Has he moved closer?
“Mm-hmm.” He’s definitely closer. “You’re kind of hard to pin down, you know? I thought you were one thing when I met you, and not all of that was wrong—you’re fun and funny, loud and unfiltered, bold and outgoing. But you’re also so much more under the surface, and you keep a lot inside. Even more than you’ve let on to me, or maybe to anyone.”
That is certainly not where I expected him to go. The buzzing beneath my skin kicks in, my heart beats faster, urging me to move, evade, run. But there’s something different about the buzz right now too, something unexpectedly like excitement. Like I’ve been waiting for this. For someone to wonder the very things he’s wondering. For someone to see all of this in me.
I’ve gotta say something before I chicken out or reason myself into shutting up. So of course the first words to come out are a clumsy, impulsive, “My insides are really not as cute as my outsides.”
Instantly I cringe at how I’ve managed to sound so conceited-yet-fucked-up in so few words. My mouth opens and closes, but Finn speaks first.
“I don’t believe that. And if your insides are even half as beautiful as your outsides—like everything I’ve seen so far—I’m already in so much trouble.”