Unwrapped

by Amelia Wilde

  Emily checks her watch. “Shit. It’s almost noon! We have to get going.” She turns in her seat and gives the waitress a little wave.

  “Going where?” I lean in like I’m telling her the world’s biggest secret. “I drove us here. Shouldn’t I be in charge of our agenda?”

  Em leans back in and glances around as if she’s checking for eavesdroppers. “No.”

  “What if I have other plans for today?”

  “Do you have other plans?” She pushes her plate away and crosses her arms over her chest, head cocked to the side.

  My entire soul has been consumed with her from the moment she walked in the door this morning. Or, if I’m honest, since I saw her again in that bar. Part of me wants to back off, bow out, stop letting her in like this.

  Part of me knows it’s already too late.

  “No.”

  She gives me a satisfied grin and takes the bill from the waitress.

  “Yeah, right,” I tell her, and snatch it out of her hands.

  Chapter Ten

  Emily

  It’s going fine. It’s going well, actually. Finn seemed to relax over breakfast, thank God, because I saw how his shoulders stiffened when he opened the door this morning. For good reason, too, because of what an idiot I was at Thanksgiving.

  It’s holiday season in Lakewood, which means we can’t park by the library, my next destination. The first spot we find that’s not in the middle of a crowd of drivers is three blocks down, next to the bank.

  Finn puts the car in park and turns if off. “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll see.”

  He cracks a smile, and that half-smile sparks a glow in my chest. “Are we really going to do this, Em? You and I both know there’s nothing in that direction but the library.”

  I give him a mysterious shrug, pull my hood up, and step out onto the sidewalk.

  The clouds have cleared, blowing away as quickly as they came, and Finn pulls off his hat halfway to the library. His dark hair shines in the sunlight.

  “What are we going to read?”

  “Read?” I scoff, teasing him. “We’re not reading anything at the library.”

  “Are you dragging me to one of those farmer’s markets? I can’t stand those.”

  I give him a sidelong look. “I didn’t peg you for a guy who’d hate farmer’s markets.”

  “Why, because I own a flannel shirt?” Walking next to Finn is easy. Moving through the world with him is easy. Easier than anything I’ve ever known, and right now, I’m torn. It was a mistake to give him up…and it might be a mistake to be here.

  “You don’t like to choose your own vegetables?”

  He glances over, blue eyes picking up the sunlight and reflecting it back to me. “The people at the market always want to chat.”

  “Is that a bad thing? Should I stop talking?”

  “Don’t,” he says with a low laugh. “If you’re going to keep showing up here at random and dragging me out into public, you’d better not give me the silent treatment.”

  “Okay. What’s the deal with the market, then?”

  Finn sighs, flicking his eyes up to the suddenly blue sky. “Too many people asking questions.”

  “About what?”

  “About you.”

  My breath catches in my throat. “No, they don’t.”

  “You’d be surprised, Em. Everybody here still remembers when we were an item.” He shakes his head. “To them, it’s like no time has passed.”

  “What’s it like to you?”

  He looks at me, slowing his pace. “A thousand years.”

  There’s a silence between us, and the gentler wind, cars driving by, tires crunching against the snow, fills it in. It lasts until the next crosswalk.

  “What about you?” Finn says, while he checks both ways for oncoming traffic. He strides out into the crosswalk and I follow. “What has it seemed like to you?”

  I consider. “Too much time and not enough. Law school…” I search for the words to describe it. “There was always something more I should be doing. The study groups alone took up hours every week, and even when I swore to myself I’d go to bed early, I never did.” The exhaustion had settled in around the back of my neck, a yoke I could never break free from. It was one I hardly felt until the day I graduated and all of it lifted.

  “Did you like it?” Finn’s voice is sincere, questioning. There’s a lot we haven’t talked about, but it feels more natural by the moment.

  “There were parts I loved.” The lectures. God, the lectures. It made me feel energized to sit in the lectures, as bizarre as that sounds. I’d sit there soaking it all in, a grand fantasy playing out in the front of my mind. “There were parts I could have done without. I thought it would be better once I had a job at a firm.”

  “It’s not better?”

  Shame rises in my throat. This isn’t what I meant to admit to Finn—not again. “It’s better. That’s not what I meant to say.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “No.” I’m not a huge fan of the way he’s pushing me now. Especially because he’s right. “Now I get paid for what I do. It’s a million times better.”

  “Okay.”

  “You don’t believe me?” My voice is rising along with my mood. I shouldn’t care so much about this. It’s one conversation, with Finn, for God’s sake. He’s not the enemy. I know that. It just doesn’t feel like it.

  He seems to sense that this is all going a little far. “I believe you, Em. Of course I do.” Finn steps closer to me on the sidewalk so that our sleeves brush together, and my irritation melts into the slush on the edges of the sidewalk. “I’m curious about you. It’s been a long time since we were together. Like this,” he adds on to the end of his sentence, but it doesn’t matter. My heart is already pounding.

  It has been a long time since we were together. That doesn’t bode well for what’s to come. God, I need more time. I need time to figure him out, to see if there’s still that spark there.

  No—not a spark. There will always be a spark between me and Finn. Thanksgiving proved that. What I’m looking for are embers. The kind that don’t burn out, no matter what you throw at them—wind, rain, snow. They keep burning steadily through day and night, and with a little tending, you can get them to last for months and months.

  “Surprise,” I say as the library comes into view. “This is my plan for the next hour.”

  “Wandering around the library?”

  I shake my shoulders to try and get a handle on my nerves. “Don’t be dense, Finn. This is an event.”

  “What kind of event?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Finn

  Emily leads the way into the library through the back entrance, and we bypass the hallway of conference rooms as we make our way to the main part of the building.

  “This place has changed.”

  “I know,” she says, almost reverently. “Wait. You haven’t been in here since they renovated?”

  “Why would I come here?”

  “To check out books? To sit by the fireplace? To…I don’t know, flirt with a hot librarian?”

  “There are no hot librarians.”

  “Why would you have come here? I didn’t know you came back for libraries.”

  “The grand opening. My mom was volunteering. It was a big deal.” Emily laughs. “You know, I thought you liked it here.”

  “I liked being here with you.”

  That’s the truth. Emily might have been a cheerleader in the upper echelons of the class back in high school, but contrary to the stereotypes, they took their schoolwork seriously. She dragged me here several times a week to study. We’d take up a whole table on the upper balcony level, covering it with notebooks and textbooks, and she’d bend her head over her work and bother me about doing my own. I never gave a shit about any of it, but I wanted to make her happy. Turns out she was the one doing me a favor. I didn’t become a lazy-ass dro
pout, like some of the kids I knew.

  Then there were the extracurriculars.

  Not sex, Jesus. We were in the library. But there was one alcove just outside the main doors, in the airlock, and—

  We’re passing by it right now.

  The nostalgia rips through my chest like a hurricane. Memories of Emily’s back pressed against the wall. Her soft lips molded to mine. The little whimper she’d make at the back of her throat when I was kissing her just how she liked.

  “Stop.” I put my hand on her elbow and tug her into the shadowy recess. There’s nobody coming from either direction, but my heart thuds in my chest. I’ve not touched her all morning. Not when she showed up on my doorstep. Not at breakfast. Maybe I’ve been telling myself I didn’t want to, but fuck it. I do. I do.

  “Finn,” she says, breathless, eyes shining. “What are you doing?”

  “Do you remember this place?”

  Her voice drops. “How could I forget? But Finn—we’re too old. If anyone catches us here—”

  “You haven’t changed at all, have you?” She had this same nervous energy when we’d do this sort of thing back in high school, and it lights all of me on fire.

  “Not really,” she says softly, and then my hand is finding the curve of her jaw, tilting her face toward mine, and claiming her mouth.

  “Oh,” she says, in the back of her throat. It comes out almost as a moan, and Em’s body melts against mine, her arm slipping around my waist, grabbing tight to my shirt underneath my jacket. She’s not holding anything back, and the kiss deepens, gets hotter, and I find myself backing her up against the wall. God, she’s gorgeous.

  Things are about to cross the line into indecent exposure, when she puts a hand on my chest and pulls back, her chest heaving against mine. “Finn! We are going to get caught.”

  Just as she says caught there’s a rattle and a gust of wind as the doors in the outer lobby swing open, and Emily startles. “Shit!” She grabs my hand and yanks me back out into the airlock, just as a crowd of four people with two kids come barreling in through the door.

  Em steers me around by the elbow and holds her purse out in front of her, like she’s forgotten something. “Help me look, Finn, I’m sure I—” Her voice is unusually high, on the verge of a laugh, and her cheeks are flushed a deep pink. She raises her fingertips to her lips as the people go by, the lightest brush, and I stare down into her purse. What are we looking for?

  Nothing. She’s creating an excuse for these people as to why we’re standing here in the airlock, as if grown adults can’t stand in the airlock any time they want to.

  It’s hard to keep my thoughts straight, with the bulge in my pants.

  The crowd goes by and into the main room of the library, and Emily bursts out laughing. “How could you? We almost got caught.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  “It is a bad thing. We could get kicked out!”

  “Kicked out of the library?” I’m trying to do deep breathing to get rid of this out-of-control erection. “There’s not much going on here.” I peer through the door, trying to catch a glimpse of the most matronly librarian possible.

  “That’s where you’re wrong.” Emily straightens up, slinging her purse back over her shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  “I can’t. I need a minute.”

  “Why?” She turns back, raising her eyebrows, and then her gaze travels down to the front of my pants. “Oh.” Em bites her lip. So help me God, if she does that again, I’m going to have to take her out of here. I’ll drive my truck to the first available parking space. Hell, I don’t care if it’s in the middle of Main Street.

  “Either go away or help me think of something unsexy.”

  “Jell-O salad,” she says instantly. “The Christmas pageant at the Reformed Church. That guy who always sits outside the gas station on the highway and stares at you while you pump your gas.”

  It’s working, but only if I keep the focus on her words and not the lips I’m dying to kiss one more time.

  “Okay. You nailed it.”

  “I think I did the opposite,” she says with a grin.

  I can’t help but laugh at that one. “You’re too funny.”

  Emily straightens her posture. “Ready now?”

  “Hard to say. What are we doing?”

  The smile that lights up her face is a genuine one. “Judging a gingerbread house contest.”

  “Oh, God,” I groan. “Could it be any more Lakewood?”

  “No,” she says, her excitement not dimmed even a little. “Come on! We don’t have all afternoon.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Emily

  Finn might not think this kind of thing is worth it, but for a guy who didn’t want to be here, he’s taking the judging awfully seriously.

  It’s not really judging per se. Ten gingerbread houses are displayed on tables in the main room of the library, a cavernous space that was once a middle school gym.

  “This one has a nice aesthetic,” he says, peering at a house that’s purposefully small. It’s set back on its tray and the entire thing is decorated in an elaborate winter sledding scene, complete with gingerbread kids and gingerbread sleds and even a discarded pair of gingerbread skis. I ate a mountain of pancakes at breakfast, but these gingerbread creations are killing me. I want to eat all of them. “I don’t know if it beats the castle, though.”

  I look down at the scene. Everyone’s gone all out on the gingerbread houses, and I honestly didn’t expect this level of commitment or creativity. Did I think it’d be cute? Oh, I knew it was going to be cute. When I saw it in the local events section of the paper, as I was searching for stuff we could do together to set my grand plan in motion, I knew it’d be at least okay. But this? This is intense.

  “I have to look one more time.”

  I follow Finn back through the stacks to one of the largest displays, which isn’t a house in any sense of the world. He’s right—it’s a castle. With turrets and everything, frosted delicately with powdered sugar. It’s like Hogwarts times a thousand, with the most elaborate piping I’ve ever seen on any gingerbread creation in my life.

  Finn walks all the way around the table, considering the structure from every angle, and a strange ache rises in my heart. He was ready to dismiss this all as some bullshit Lakewood construction for the holidays, but once he saw that I liked it, he jumped in with both feet.

  A little girl walks up next to him, her voting ticket clutched in her hand. “This one’s the best,” she says, her voice hushed.

  “It’s really nice,” Finn says easily. “I like the towers.”

  “Me, too. And the drawbridge.” Decision made, the girl puts her ticket into the box at the front of the table and flies back through the stacks.

  I’m staring.

  “What?” Finn says.

  “Nothing. Just looking at you.”

  He gives me a wicked look. “Are you saying we should go back to the alcove?”

  “Don’t tempt me.”

  “I’ll tempt you all I want.”

  “Wait…” Something has caught my eye over his shoulder. A guy in a leather jacket, who looks suspiciously familiar. Too familiar, really. Like someone I’ve seen in an ad, or… “Oh my god. Is that Wilder Felix? At the gingerbread contest?”

  Finn glances over, utterly casual. “Yep. Looks like his wife, too. Oh, and there’s his daughter.”

  Wilder laughs then, and I know. It’s him. The most famous rock star of the decade is in Lakewood for the holidays, laughing at god knows what. Who knows why he’s here? I’m desperate to ask, but I hold it together.

  “Why do you think he’s back here?” Finn says. “I thought he lived out in California.”

  “Hey, focus,” I say, more for my own benefit than his. “We have to cast our votes.” All of the judging is taking place via voting tickets. Each person who signed their name on the sign-in sheet got one, and the winner is going to be announced at the
tree-lighting ceremony downtown tonight. We’ll be there—you can bet on it. “Are you going with the castle?”

  “It is impressive,” Finn says solemnly, “but no.”

  This is baffling. We’ve spent far longer looking at this castle than any of the other houses. “Which one, then?”

  “This one.” He comes around the table, takes me by the elbow, and moves us quickly through the stacks. “This one right here.”

  “This one?”

  At first glance, it’s the simplest gingerbread house of the bunch, shaped like a cabin in the woods. But when I lean in, I see that it’s not just simple. It’s sturdy. The frosting piping was done with a steady hand, and details were added to the outside of the house in a shade only slightly darker than the gingerbread itself. It’s a woodland scene, with gingerbread trees and powdered sugar snow, and even a trail of footprints leading to the gingerbread cabin.

  “It reminds me of that place we used to park at, in the woods.”

  It comes back to me with the force of a tsunami, the place that Finn is talking about. It was a cabin in the woods rented out to summer tourists, and in the winter, it was all closed up. But we could both picture it warmed by a fire. We could both see ourselves there, alone, away from everyone who didn’t understand, while the snow fell outside.

  That fantasy never came true. We were high school seniors, and the most we could do was park his truck outside the chain gates in the driveway, hoping we looked enough like caretakers to avoid drawing the attention of anybody who might be driving by. Nobody ever did—that place was in the middle of nowhere.