Chapter Twenty-Nine
Aaron
Finn was in the kitchen cooking—real breakfast, not with the Easy Bake Oven—wearing his new apron and pajama pants. No shirt. Which meant that I could see his back and part of his large tattoo that led down over his hip and onto his butt cheek. I couldn’t stop looking at him.
And unfortunately, Griffin noticed.
He kept rolling his eyes at me and huffing out sarcastic sounds and chuckles. He was being a butthead.
“You’re a butthead,” I told him. He and I had been joking around together more easily since he’d heard me apologizing to Finn. And yeah, he and Layla heard us because they were shamelessly eavesdropping. They didn’t even care that they’d been caught, either. Actually, they sorta turned themselves in.
“You keep checking out your boyfriend right in front of me. What do you expect me to do?” Griffin asked.
“Just pretend you don’t notice?” I suggested with a shrug.
He snorted and smacked my knee. “It’s your turn.”
I sighed and looked at the cards spread over the coffee table. I seriously couldn’t believe that Griffin was beating me at Rummy. I picked a card from the pile and immediately put it in the discard pile because I didn’t need it. Before I could blink, Griffin picked the card up, along with a few others in the pile, and laid down a straight.
“Oh man,” I said. “Seriously?”
“You literally just put a seven of clubs down on your last turn. How did you not see that when you put the eight of clubs down just now? You basically handed it to me.”
“Ugh.” I rubbed my eyes.
“He’s the worst Rummy player ever, despite the fact that I’ve been teaching him how to play since he was like eight,” Finn offered from the kitchen doorway.
“Wow, harsh,” I said jokingly over my shoulder to Finn.
He smiled innocently at me.
I flipped him off, making him laugh, then he walked back into the kitchen since it was my turn again. When Griffin ended up using the card I’d just laid down again, I muttered, “Finn must be the worst teacher ever.”
Griffin chuckled, but Finn said, “Oh, I see how it is. See if you get any breakfast.”
“Oh yeah?” I turned in my chair to face him. “Pretty sure I could just raid your fridge anyway.”
Finn narrowed his eyes at me and walked up behind the couch. “You don’t want to do that.”
“And what exactly are you going to do if I do it anyway?”
He shrugged, put his hands on the back of the couch behind my shoulders and nonchalantly said, “Tickle you.”
I gasped. “You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.”
I laughed at that, then leaned back and reached up to grab Finn’s neck so I could pull him down to kiss me upside down. He smiled against my lips and I couldn’t help but smile back. He kissed my lips a couple times before kissing my cheek and walking back into the kitchen, still with a smile on his face.
“You two are gross,” Griffin said loud enough for Finn to hear him too.
“You and Layla are just as gross,” my boyfriend called out.
Griffin waved his hand. “Whatever. Your turn.”
Layla walked into the living room and plopped in the armchair. “Ugh. My mom is so fucking annoying on holidays. If she wanted to see me so badly, she should just drive here.”
I didn’t know how to reply to that, but luckily Griffin spoke up. “It’d be nice if they actually came here for once.”
Layla sighed and I couldn’t help but ask, “Have they ever come out here?”
She eyed me, but said, “Nope. They’re only a matter of a few hours away, yet they’ve never driven here once. They always make us come to them. We only see them like once a year, if that.”
I nodded. “I haven’t seen my dad since I moved out.” I wasn’t really sure why I was telling them that.
“You ever talk to him?” Griffin asked.
“Nope.”
He nodded.
Finn came out of the kitchen. “Okay, let’s eat and stop with the depressing shit.”
I smiled up at him, then followed everyone to the dining table. While we ate Finn kept shoulder bumping me and making me smile. It was making me second-guess the decision we’d made for me to take that job. I had two weeks before I started. Two weeks before I was moving four hours away from him. I wished I could take him with me. A big part of me kept considering telling them I’d changed my mind, but deep down, I knew that Finn wouldn’t allow it, and that maybe he was right about the whole thing.
After we ate and exchanged gifts with Griffin and Layla, they left to spend Christmas with Griffin’s family, and Finn and I were on our own again.
We ended up cuddling on the couch and watching a million Christmas movies and eating leftovers from the Christmas Eve dinner we’d had over at Layla and Griffin’s. It was the best Christmas I could ever remember having. And it was all because of Finn.