Not A Temporary Love | Finley & Harlyn #1

Chapter 3

He points to the girl behind him who I was too busy checking out Harlyn to notice. She's pretty, too. Short, probably only five foot tall, with gorgeous dark skin and a poof of tightly curled black hair.

"You're an idiot, babes," she breathes, giving Harlyn an exasperated look. And then she grins wickedly, reminding me so much of Max I groan inwardly a little. I already know they're going to get along too well. And the next words out of her mouth confirm it. "Are you disappointed he's not a girl?"

Harlyn full on face palms, smacking a hand over his eyes and almost covering the pink on his cheeks. Almost. "Elly..." he moans. Mrs. Evans giggles from where she's leaning against the kitchen counter. "Mum don't egg her on. Please."

"We just like seeing you squirm, Harley," Elly says, patting Harlyn on the arm in what is supposed to be a comforting manner and sinking into one of the chairs around the table. Harlyn and his mom follow. "I'm Elly."

"Right. Yes. Sorry. This is Elly. This is Max. And...Finley, right?" Harlyn says, squinting at me. "I remember that at least."

"Yes. Finley Bowers," I say. "And I'll forgive you for thinking I was a girl. Finley is a unisex name. And Max can leave things out, sometimes." I give him a look that I try to channel you knew he was gorgeous and didn't warn me into.

Max ignores me and scoffs. "Excuse you. Harlyn obviously wasn't listening."

"Oh yeah, blame him," I whisper, rolling my eyes. I catch Harlyn looking between us, a little smile on his face. Right. We're not alone. We're in front of total strangers. Hello anxiety. I was wondering when you'd show up.

"Finley's also a very British name. So is Bowers, actually," Elly adds, mercifully moving the conversation to a topic I can at least somewhat navigate.

"Yeah. Way back, I've got a lot of British lineage. My parents just liked Finley," I say, twisting the sleeve of my shirt around my pointer finger to have something to do with my hands.

"It means fair-haired hero," Max snickers. I touch my brown, and decidedly not fair, hair.

"I was really blonde as a baby," I explain, as I did to Max when he first learned what my name meant during a strange English project sophomore year. "And then I grew out of it and got my mom's hair. But...they'd already chosen the name."

Mrs. Evans chimes in with, "We should've named you that, Harlyn," and Harlyn touches his own extremely blonde curls. There's an indentation along the side of his head where it's buzzed close to his scalp, probably from a work hat he's no longer wearing. I'm staring too much again if I'm noticing that.

"Or Cup-o-noodles," Elly teases, ruffling his curls affectionately.

"Or that," Mrs. Evans chuckles. "But Harlyn will have to do."

"Harlyn's a cool name," I say, apparently all sense flying off with my sanity in tow. Because now Harlyn is looking at me, smiling. So, I look at Max again. "Max is the one with all the British family. His great aunt lives in Scotland."

"Yeah," Max says, and the attention moves to him. "I'm going to visit her while I'm here."

"Well, that's exciting," Mrs. Evans says. "Anywhere else the two of you are planning on traveling while you're here?"

Max starts in on the class we have to take all about famous British places that has a mandatory field trip every week and that we're trying to decide where to go over Easter break.

"Well, Harlyn has shown past students around a little. I'm sure he'd be willing to do it again," Mrs. Evans says, pointedly looking at Harlyn.

"Only if you want," Harlyn says quickly. "I know it's nice to have a native sometimes. But only if I won't get in the way."