The Shippers(33)

But just as I was thinking of checking the passenger list, Finn arrived at last. And, for better or for worse, he looked exactly like his picture on the web. Except for the golf shirt. And matching golf shorts. And … matching golf shoes.

A full golf ensemble is what I’m describing—minus the 1920s jodhpurs and argyle socks.

Like Finn was possibly taking Putt-Putt a little too seriously.

As he walked toward us, stealing my slo-mo entrance for himself, I compared this in real life version of Finn to my well-worn mental picture.

Yep. Still the confidence of the best-looking guy in the room.

And still just oozing alpha energy.

And—could he be taller now? Bigger, anyway. He’d definitely been working out. Professional success agreed with him. He had a new swagger: not a high-school-kid swagger, but the refined, seasoned swagger of a grown-up.

He was still—and always would be—Finn Turner. The legend himself.

Here’s a random truth about crushes: They can, and do, burn out.

Even after all those crushed-out years, with no encouragement and no reason for hope, I had—genuinely—moved on. He went to college, and then I went to college, and there just wasn’t enough fuel to keep that fire burning. Life shifted, and so did I. Time and distance did their work. And he became … just a former crush. A former crush with an asterisk and a lengthy footnote—but a former crush, all the same.

On the rare occasions when I’d see him around the street when we both happened to be home for holidays, it hardly rocked my world. I’d just think, Oh, there’s Finn. Who I used to have that insane crush on.

But now, seeing him in person—under the influence of this highly specific new theory that he was the only man I’d ever love … It shifted things back. As Finn joined the group, all my old full-body Pavlovian high school reactions to him revved up again, and my rib cage felt like it was clamping down on my heart. Not to mention my lungs.

I forced myself to take a breath—terrified that I might audibly gasp.

But nobody would have noticed anyway. We were all watching Finn.

He came straight over to the neighborhood kids, and he fist-bumped everybody—which took a minute, because on our street, everyone had a signature fist bump. Ashley’s was “snail,” where instead of bumping your fist, she’d put up two fingers like antennae. Sean’s was “squirrel,” where he scampered his hand up your arm. Pete’s was “stick shift,” where he moved your forearm like he was shifting gears. Cooper’s was “shark attack,” where he made his two hands into a shark’s mouth and then ate your fist. And mine was “narwhal” … where I just held up one finger.

Everybody had a particular fist bump.

Everybody—except Finn.

Guess what Finn’s was?

Nothing. Just a fist.

Because Finn was our undisputed alpha. And he didn’t have to go any harder than that.

He was a benevolent alpha, though. He patiently bumped everybody after he arrived, shining his star power on each of us in turn like sunshine—and he said everybody’s nickname as he went.

If the person he was greeting didn’t have a nickname, he just made one up.

“Coop,” he’d said to Cooper, stretching out the ooo. His brothers, Evan and Sean, got “E-van” and “Sean-o”; Pete got “-ster” added to the end of his name to make “Pete-ster,” which made Pete glow with pride; and Ashley got “Bride of the Century” and a gallant kiss on the back of her hand.

Through it all, I hung back shyly—the way you do when you come face-to-face with your future while wearing wobbly stilettos on a carpet of Astroturf—wondering what my nickname would be. I wound up the very last fist-bumper, after Finn had made eye contact with every other neighborhood kid and made each one feel like a million bucks.

And then he got to me.

At my turn, right there at the end, he looked at me blankly and then frowned around at the crowd for clues before squinting and saying, “And who’s this?”

Are you kind of hoping it was the glow-up? That maybe I just looked so different in that too-tight minidress that he couldn’t recognize me? That I was, in that moment, perhaps too beautiful for my own good?

Yeah, no.

“It’s JoJo,” Sean said.

But Finn just blinked, like that name didn’t ring a bell.

“JoJo,” Evan offered next. “From across the street.”

Still nothing.

“She’s the one,” Evan explained, “who had a crush on you for like eight years.”

Six, actually. But point taken.

“She fell out of the tree in the side yard while trying to spy on you?” Sean said.

“She used to call you all the time and hang up?” Evan offered.

“She got your school photo printed on a pillowcase?” Pete added, right behind me—before I kicked him.

Wow. I guess everybody really knew everything.

But still nothing from Finn. No recognition at all.

So brutal.

However. Like a gentleman, he didn’t leave me hanging forever. At last, he nodded like he was retrieving a nebulous memory from the mists of time, and then he faked it.

“JoJo,” he said, like Of course.

Then Finn held out his fist at last, and I did my narwhal—but I was feeling so glum by that point that I did it weakly, and its little horn was, shall we say, a bit limp.