Eternal Longing ✓

52. May He Surely Not

FINLEY

"That kid is really on you about his sister, huh?"

I finish typing out the text, assuring Dev that I'm indeed not going to let his sister walk through the streets of New York City alone at night. "He's just a worried brother."

"Seems to me like he wants to chase you away in the most polite way possible," Kyle, the guy that I specifically hire to provide help and insight when it comes to computers, adds jokingly. "The kid does not like you."

I set my phone down on my desk, leaning back with a huff. "He likes me well enough."

"Yeah, I don't know about that. You see the way-"

"Can we please get back to the point? I have an event I need to get to in an hour."

"Of course." He clears his throat and slides the file my way. "As I told you, the link Charles gave you took me a while to fully open and dig through, but you know me, there's nothing I can't crack open. I'll admit, Gage's agent also helped with some of the code."

I turn the file open, and an image of the woman I'll supposedly be meeting in the next few minutes hastily pasted to the first page greets me.

"You like what I did there?" I look up and see Kyle grinning and pointing at the first page. "I wanted it to look like it does in the movies, see?"

My blank face must reflect just how unimpressed I am because he shuts up and gets back to the point.

"Okay, so Jane Straley. She's obviously the daughter. In her thirties, an only child, lives in the city, and is a social media influencer? I'm not sure about the technical term, but she has over three hundred thousand followers for drinking lattes and shopping at high-end stores. The rest of the info is in the file."

I flip through the pages, reading the details with barely any interest, the anger that I thought would be bubbling within me when this moment finally came surprisingly nowhere to be felt. There's only stillness and a previous emptiness that has been filled with the past two months of loving Jaya from close.

"She'll be here soon," Kyle states after I silently shuffle through the file for a while. "You good, man?"

I close the file and drop it on my desk. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just, I don't know . . ." I rub the back of my neck thoughtfully. "I thought that I would be angry? Mad? Maybe even a little frustrated by how everything has turned out? But all I feel right now is just apathy. And ready to put this whole shit behind me."

Kyle is by the door, ready to leave when he nods and tells me, "That's good, Fin. It just means you've moved on, that you're leaving the past in the past. It's a good place to be." Then he's opening the door and leaving me to stew on his words.

Have I truly simply moved on? It almost doesn't seem possible, that something that had defined me so much, been at the center of my life for as long as I can remember, can simply just not matter to me anymore.

The notion sounds very unlike me and, as someone who is used to completing what I've started, who can't do things halfway and simply drop them, I'm quite unsettled by this turn of events. Before I can think too deeply about it, I'm calling the one person to who I can talk about this to.

"Finley, honey," my mother greets me, clearly surprised by my random call, "how are you doing, my dear son?"

"Hi, mom." I twist in my chair, turning around to gaze out at the city skyline. "I'm well, thank you. How are you?"

"I'm so glad you're doing well! You certainly looked great in the photos you posted to the Instagram!"

I'm confused for a second, then I remember the photo I posted on a whim to my previously dead profile after Jaya commented on my lack of social life. "Oh, yeah. Jaya said that it's her favorite picture of me, mostly because she took it."