“Bye, Amanda,” I muttered as the double doors closed behind her. When she was well out of earshot, I growled deep in my throat. “Fuck!”

  My opportunity to make a good impression on Lou was gone. Over. Done. I really didn’t care who else thought I was the father of Amanda’s unborn child. I’d shout the news off the nearest rooftop if Amanda needed me to. But I did care what Lou thought.

  Even though I tried to tell myself not to care.

  Because, really, who was I kidding? What chance did I ever have with a good girl like Lou? I stood and stepped over to the leather couches in the waiting area.

  I sat down. My skin was now on fire.

  Burning—burning over this.

  I had Lou’s phone number.

  She’d called the shop twice. It wasn’t hard to check caller-ID on the landline. I’d even plugged her number into my phone the last time she’d called. I could call her if I wanted.

  I worked my phone from my pocket, and I opened the contact page I’d created for her.

  Lou. No last name.

  I wondered if Lou was even her real first name. Then I thought, what the fuck?

  What the fuck did I have to lose? Nothing. So I dialed her number. I let it ring until a small voice answered. “Hi?”

  I had her. “Hi.”

  “Who’s calling?” she whispered.

  “It’s Finn.”

  “Oh. Okay.” Her voice seemed uncertain. “Hi, Finn.”

  “Hi, Lou. How are you?”

  “I’m fine. You?”

  “Fine, too. Mostly.”

  “Are you at work?”

  I took a breath; glad she’d asked anything at all when she could have just as easily hung up on me by now. I lay back on the couch, staring up at the ceiling. “Yes. I’m opening today.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you do when it’s just you?”

  “Um.” I licked my lips. This was nice. Talking to her again. Hearing her voice again. My heart ran wild, but I soaked in the feeling. “I prep for any customers with appointments, clean, look at my phone, and wait mostly. I’m here earlier than I should be today, so I’m bored. Where are you?”

  “My room. Just my room.”

  “Do you work?”

  “No. Well, sort of. I write. I’ve self-published some of my novels. I make a little bit of money in royalties each month. Hardly enough to be counted as a job.”

  “That’s really cool.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have to go,” she said suddenly. “Bye.”

  She didn’t immediately hang up on me. This time she lingered a moment. Long enough for me to say, “Bye, Lou,” in return.

  Then the line clicked dead.

  Wow. I’d had her attention that time. She’d certainly had mine. The conversation, the actual words of it, weren’t anything much. But damn had I hung on each one of them. I felt giddy over them—like ridiculously giddy. Then I wondered if I shouldn’t try for dinner with a new girl on my dating app, Yours Tonight. And by dinner, I meant sex. Yours Tonight was a hook-up app.

  I sat up.

  I stopped staring at the ceiling like an idiot.

  I mean, I was intrigued by Lou. Sure, from what I could remember, she was beautiful. She was mysterious. She had pretty eyes and a voice I liked. Really liked. And that conversation just now made my heart fucking race—it was still racing. But I was a realist too. It probably wasn’t going anywhere, nor was it good for me to believe that it might. Even if it turned into something a little more, it likely wouldn’t amount to much. I bet I was over-hyping her in my mind. I often over-hyped girls. I often was disappointed. I’d never felt truly satisfied with any relationship. I was fairly certain I was broken. If I pushed for something with Lou, I’d probably only hurt her or corrupt her. She seemed innocent—too innocent. I didn’t want to be the guy who took anything from her. Lou would find out soon enough the pregnancy news from Nick. I could only imagine what she’d think of me then.

  So, decision made, I started scrolling Yours Tonight.

  I swiped right on one of the first profiles I came upon. A decent looking girl with jet black hair, a cute smile, and big tits. I didn’t want to think too long or too hard about Lou. Instead, I messaged the woman—Tonya. Tonya looked fun. Uncomplicated. Easy. I could have her tonight and not think twice about it.

  Good plan.

  Great plan.

  The best plan.

  ~ CHAPTER 6 ~

  FINN

  My Yours Truly plan was a bust.

  I contacted Tonya from the app. I showed up for dinner, and she showed up as well. Her tits were even bigger in real life. We sat down at a booth at one of my favorite Mexican restaurants in town. The place was deserted tonight, ours to enjoy. I was ready to sit here and play the game I always played, and then suddenly I couldn’t do it.

  I’d been dieting lately. Cutting calories in my bulking/cutting cycle I maintained for my physical appearance. So perhaps, you know, I had a stomachache because I just needed to eat. But as I sat there with Tonya, my gut hurt and the only thought running through my mind was—Lou.

  I desperately wanted to be on this date with Lou. I wanted more little moments with the girl in the hoodie. Tonya was not satisfying anything inside me. “Sorry,” I blurted out before we’d even ordered drinks. “I’m not ready to date. I’m still getting over my last girlfriend. She broke my heart.”

  It was my go-to excuse to make up an ‘ex-girlfriend who broke me.’

  “I could make you feel better.”

  “Maybe. But not tonight. Sorry again.”

  I stood up. I dropped a few bills on the table. And I left the woman.

  God, I really was a jackass. I tried not to be, but in the end, I kind of always was. I was always the one to leave. The one to break promises. The one to destroy hearts.

  As I was exiting the restaurant, feeling like shit, my phone rang. It was Patrick, randomly, of all people. “Hey. What’s up?”

  “You’re coming, right?”

  “Where?”

  “The monthly dinner thing. It’s tonight. Like now.”

  “Shit. I forgot. But yeah, I’ll come.”

  “Good. Amanda told me earlier today she’s bringing Nick tonight. I thought you’d want to come and interrogate this guy. Put him in the hot seat.”

  “I did. I do. I’ll be there in ten.”

  Every month, John, my boss, got everyone from work together for dinner. It was nothing fancy or special. Just a meal he’d buy for the employees of Kill Devil Ink and their plus one if we had someone we wanted to bring. It was actually something I looked forward to doing each month. It was a ‘no obligation’ kind of thing, no pressure to talk about work, just an optional social outing. It was always at this place called Chancy’s Claw. So rather than heading home, I went there.

  I hadn’t pre-planned this with Amanda. Was I supposed to show up and admit to everyone her baby was mine? Were we still keeping Nick in the dark? Or had the guy already put two-and-two together and realized the baby was his?

  I parked at Chancy’s and hurried inside. Everyone was already here, already seated at a long table in the back of the restaurant. I walked to join the others. I pulled up a chair at the end of the table and sat with the group. Nick and Amanda were here, seated together on the same end of the table I’d picked. Nick wore his weird gray beanie with a dress shirt, and Amanda, she’d styled her pink hair in big curls. She looked absolutely beautiful tonight. The most dressed up I think I’d ever seen her. I gathered her appearance meant that Nick was becoming important to her.

  I scooted in my chair, getting comfortable. Nick was in the middle of telling a story. I’d pegged him as the shy, introverted type. But from the way he was speaking to the entire table, he seemed anything but shy.

  “That wasn’t even the worst of it. There was this one time my mom told me not to touch the stovetop when it was red, because that meant it was hot, so I made direct eye contact with her and slapped my hand down on the burner.”

  John laughed. And the guy never laughed. “Killer.”

  “I had a wild streak growing up.”

  “Seems like it.”

  I sipped at a water that had been left in front of my spot.

  And as the waitress arrived and began to take our orders, I decided I’d ask Nick a few questions of my own. What could it hurt?

  “So you’re from Maine?” It was the only thing I knew about the guy, so I started with that. “What’s Maine like?”

  He crossed his arms, resting them on the table, shrugging. “It’s fine. You have to take a ferry to get to where my parents live. Peaks Island. So it’s secluded. In some ways Peaks Island reminds me of the Outer Banks. Except with much colder winters.”

  A ferry to the island where he lived? That sounded badass.

  “What do your parents do?”

  “My dad makes custom furniture. He has a company in Portland, Maine. My mom runs the business side of it. They’re a good team.”

  “And you have a brother?” I think Amanda mentioned that.

  “Yes. He’s a professional baseball player.”

  A professional baseball player as a brother? Who was this guy?

  “Well, that’s cool.” I shrugged. “You go to college?”

  “Yes.”

  Of course he had. “Where?”

  “Boston.”

  “Boston what?”

  “Boston University.”

  “When you say professional baseball player, do you mean like Major League?”

  “Yes. That’s what I meant.”

  “Oh, okay. Wow.”

  Holy crap. I’d thought Nick was some boring, rich kid. Well, I still pegged him as a rich, privileged kid. But now, I realized, that there was a whole lot more to this guy than I initially gathered. And knowing more about him meant I was learning more about Lou. I wondered how she fit into his life.

  “What team?”

  “Boston.”

  “Oh man, Mick Jasmine—Nick Jasmine. I should have connected that.” Mick Jasmine was one of the starting pitchers for Boston. I wasn’t too into baseball, but even I knew that. “What’s with the rhyming names?”

  “Mick is my half-brother. My dad had a one-night stand. The woman never told Dad about Mickey until years later. When I was about seven years old, my family got custody and he came to live with us. Our names, Mick and Nick, were purely coincidental.”

  “No shit?”

  “Yeah, crazy.”

  Okay, so this guy and his turtle ass tattoo, might just be one of the most interesting persons ever. Go figure. For the rest of the meal, we chatted like we weren’t enemies, but instead friends. I mean, I talked to him more than Amanda did. By the time dinner was over, and I returned to my car, I didn’t know what to make of the situation.

  I drove toward home, but I never made it home.

  I turned around and headed for Kill Devil Ink instead. I tried texting Amanda a few times, but she never responded to my texts. So, feeling desperate and violating our shop’s confidentiality rules, I looked up the paperwork Nick had filled out before getting his previous tattoo. On the paper, his address was listed. I needed to make this right. I needed to speak to him again tonight. I needed to tell him I wasn’t the father. Because as much as I wanted to keep Amanda’s secret, I think he deserved to know the truth. The full truth.

  And I planned to tell him in person.

  ~ CHAPTER 7 ~

  LOU

  Finn called me. He called me, and I still wasn’t sure why. In the last few days, I’d picked apart every second of our two-minute conversation. I wanted to know why he’d called, what it meant (if it meant anything at all), and what he might have wanted to gain from calling me. I wanted to figure him out the same way I liked diving in deeper with the characters in the books I read. But I couldn’t just flip a page for more information on Finn. I had to rely on snippets of information from Nick.

  But Nick was hardly ever home.

  After the other night when Amanda stayed over and told him she was pregnant, Nick had started spending more and more time with her. Meanwhile, I kept to my room. I kept to my books. I stayed with what was familiar. When we first came to North Carolina, I thought things would be different. I thought I would be different. I thought this move would magically be the solution to all my issues.

  Instead, I realized nothing had changed. I hadn’t, the world hadn’t. I felt just as crippled by my fears as ever. The mud was still two feet thick around my skin. I felt silly for thinking my challenges would just poof into thin air, vanishing the minute I stepped into a different state.

  How naive was I?

  So tonight, while Nick wasn’t home, yet again, I tried to step outside. I tried to test myself. It’s just the grass. It’s just the grass. It’s just the outside air, same as the inside air. I’d done it twice now since we’d been living here—stepped outside. Tonight, I made it to the front door. I even put my hand on the cold, metal knob. I tried to turn it beneath my fingertips.

  My fingers wouldn’t do it. They wouldn’t turn the handle.

  Knock. Knock.

  What the hell?!

  Someone was at the door. I raced back to my room.

  Heart slamming against my ribs, I jumped in my bed and pulled the covers over my head.

  Knock! Knock!

  I squealed. “Go away, go away, go away,” I whispered into my sheets.

  “Hello!” came a muffled voice, the voice of the person at the door. He yelled from outside. “Hello! Nick! We need to talk! If you’re home, come outside because we need to talk!”

  Nick wasn’t home. He was with Amanda again.

  I was going to die.

  I’d be murdered for sure.

  “Nick! It’s Finn! We need to talk!”

  I uncovered my head. Finn? I don’t know why—because he was huge and covered in tattoos, the perfect description of a murderer—but Finn didn’t terrify me as much as I would have imagined. I got out of bed. I moved across my room. I went downstairs.

  Pushing my hands against the solid wood of the front door, I snuck a glance through the peephole. Outside stood Finn. His hands covered his face.

  “Nick isn’t here.” I said it loud enough for him to hear. The strength in my voice surprised me. “He’s still out with Amanda.”

  “Damn.”

  “Do you need his phone number?”

  “No.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.” On my toes, I peaked at him again. His nose was bigger than it should have been, warped by the curve in the glass of the peephole. He had dark hair—short on the side, longer on top. “I know it’s not your baby,” I called out to him because I figured that was why he was here. “Nick’s been stressing over who the father might be. But I know it isn’t you.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just do.” I took a breath. “People are predictable. It’s human nature to lie for the ones we love. Amanda is lying to Nick because she’s afraid. You’re lying to protect Amanda because maybe… you love her.”

  I suddenly understood why he’d called me that day. He’d called because of Amanda—because he loved her. This made perfect sense. It was the only reason a guy like Finn would ever show up on my doorstep. Because he loved Amanda.

  Through the peephole, I watched him turn his back to the door.

  “Sorry,” I called out, pressing a hand to my forehead. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m good at reading people, but not everyone likes when I do. Actually, no one does.”

  He turned back around. “You’re right, I’m lying for Amanda. The lie started out simple enough, but I met Nick earlier tonight. I had dinner with him. I thought he was a privileged asshole. But it turns out that he’s a decent guy. He should know the baby is his and not mine.”

  “He knows.”

  “He does?”

  “I think deep down he knows.”

  I took a step off my toes, staring at the floor, waiting to see what Finn would say next. A full minute passed where he said nothing at all. I moved closer to peak at him again, thinking maybe he’d left, but he stood in the same place.

  “Can I come in?” he asked. “We should talk more.”

  I almost laughed. “We can keep talking. But I won’t open this door.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just can’t.”

  “I won’t hurt you. I would never.”

  “It’s not that. It’s my…” I breathed in. “I have agoraphobia.”

  I’d never said that out loud before, so open and honest, but I said it now. Finn was being honest with me, and I wanted to return the honesty. Plus, I felt sorry for the guy. He loved a girl who was pregnant with someone else’s baby. That must hurt.

  It hurt me as well.

  It made my skin cold thinking about how Finn could never be mine. Because in the days since I’d first moved to North Carolina, I’d started to imagine Finn in such a crazy position. As mine. It was delusional thinking. I did lots of delusional thinking. It was my way. But now I decided that if I couldn’t be his in a romantic circumstance, then instead I wanted to try to be his friend.

  “I can’t let you in, but we could keep talking through the door.”

  He’d heard me because he answered, “the door works for me.”

  ~ CHAPTER 8 ~

  FINN

  Agoraphobia… What was that? Fear of spiders? No... fear of being outside. I thought I knew what it meant, but I needed to look it up to be sure. I had my phone in my hands, quickly researching the word. As I searched, a few key words jumped out at me.

  Fear of places. Situations. Leading to panic, helplessness, embarrassment.

  An anxiety disorder.

  It was what I thought it was. I had some experience with it myself. Sort of. I think.