rogue

fifteen

Finn emerges from his bedroom, now fully dressed, and when he sees my face, he stops in his tracks.

"What have you said to her, Mom?" He says angrily and walks over to me, crouching down in front of me.

"Nothing. We're just-" Noelle starts to say, and he grunts in response.

"This doesn't look like nothing." With his thumbs, he wipes the corners of my eyes and cups my face in his hands.

"I'm okay," I whisper.

Not believing me for a second, he turns his head to shoot his mother an accusing look. Only then does he realize that she is crying as well.

The whole time, he only had eyes for me and didn't even notice that both his mom and I were overtaken by our emotions. "What is wrong with you two?" His voice is softer now. "I leave you alone for 5 minutes, and I come back to both of you crying."

Well, I'm crying because I just realized how much I really love him, and Noelle? Probably because she realized the same thing.

I shrug. "I-"

"Girl stuff." Noelle jumps to my rescue.

"You're not telling me what you two talked about?" He cocks an eyebrow at her, and when he does that, he looks so much like his mother.

"Okay," Noelle starts to say, and Finn lets go of my face, but not before planting a soft kiss on my forehead.

Noelle smiles, as if she only now realizes how different Finn is around me. "You both are old enough to know what you're doing. Well, at least I hope you are. The thing is, I won't lie to your dad. You can't expect me to keep this from him, Finn."

I know what kind of relationship the two of them have, and I know that she really means it when she says she doesn't lie to her husband.

Well, shit.

He gives her a tight-lipped nod. "Yeah, didn't think you would. Just-"

"I will give you time to tell him yourself."

Ha, funny. Tell him what?

"That's a little bit of a problem." I interject. "We don't even know-" I begin, only to get cut off by Finn.

"I will talk to him," he says, surprising me, and I stare at him.

"You what?"

He shrugs, as if this isn't a big deal. "Yeah, I will talk to him."

"Good. And you, Chloe, I can't force you to talk to your parents. You're not my child, but... I believe you know what the right thing to do is." She begins to stand up. "I will get going. I just wanted to drop by for groceries."

Unable to say anything, I nod my head.

I know what the right thing to do is?

Completely ignoring my unmoving body, Finn follows his mother into the kitchen. "Mom, you didn't have to." I block out their conversation.

One thing I do know, when Finn has no problem talking to his dad about us, how will it look to him when I refuse to talk about him with my parents?

***

"Well, that was an interesting morning." He slams the front door shut and joins me on the couch. "I love her, but damn, she has awful timing." He throws his arm around me and pulls me closer to his side.

"What are we going to do now?" I ask him.

"We're going to have breakfast at Molley's, like we said yesterday." He stares down at me with a confused expression on his face.