Chapter Four
It was, as my father liked to say, fine weather for ducks.
Plenty of time, then, to curse Flynn, and his annoying visit, and his stupid fancy SUV. And then, when the fires of my frustration had smoldered down to embers, to wonder just why my former neighbor had found his way out into what counted as the middle of nowhere.
My brain kept coming back to “ill-advised hookup,” which felt potentially unfair but also entirely possible.
I had no idea whether Flynn was in a relationship back home or, assuming the answer to that was yes, if that was monogamous or otherwise.
Or, perhaps, he was single, and horny, and simply couldn’t wait.
I could commiserate, even if I felt like his prospects out here would be fairly questionable.
It wasn’t, after all, like I’d not expanded my search radius in the hope of spotting someone slightly more appealing.
If you wanted middle-aged DL guys cheating on their wives, you weren’t quite spoiled for choice, but you at least had choices.
If you were sticking to your guns, and holding out for someone in their twenties and not clearly just fishing for free nudes, that was rarer than hen’s teeth.
Imagining Flynn making an hour-long trek out, in order to have hurried sex in a barn with some closeted farmer, left me scratching my head. Or it would’ve, had I dared take either hand off the wheel.
The map on my phone, clamped to the dashboard, told me I was basically at the junction Flynn had mentioned to his mom.
Some dolefully blinking red lights were present, but no sign of his flashy - but apparently flaky - car.
Cursing under my breath, I slowly nosed across the intersection and set down the opposite road.
A couple minutes later I was about ready to turn around. Only putting it off, because the thought of accidentally reversing too far into some muddy ditch and getting stuck was an unpleasant one. And then the glimmer of a reflector caught my eye, about forty feet further along.
The SUV was pitch black, inside and out, when I crawled alongside it. Stopping, I peered through my water-swept window, trying to see movement.
Then jerked back in surprise, at the pale face which suddenly pressed against the other window.
Heart hammering, and annoyed at myself for being so ridiculously skittish, I wound down the glass. Expecting Flynn to do the same, but instead he pushed open the door.
“O-Oli?”
It was not the time for sarcasm, I knew, however tempting. “Yeah. What happened?”
He had to shout, almost, to be heard over the rain. Thunder echoed in the distance, a flicker of lightning outlining his car and revealing Flynn’s hair plastered down to his head. “Car just died. All the electrics. Just... stopped.”
A flat tire, or a jump start, I could’ve handled. The full, arcane electrical system of a modern SUV was thoroughly beyond me.
“Bring your keys and get in,” I shouted back. “We’ll just leave it here, until it can be towed back.”
Flynn’s frown was just about visible. “Are you sure it’s safe?”
I made no hiding of my glare, hoping for a convenient bolt of lightning to make entirely certain the expression would register. “If you can’t drive it, how’s someone gonna steal it?”
He grimaced, but at least got out. Slamming the door behind him, and then running around the front of the truck. Momentarily lit up in the headlamps, until he was at the passenger door and pulling himself in.
Bedraggled didn’t even begin to cover it.
It was mostly the same outfit I’d seen him in at the store. White t-shirt and gray sweatpants, with a dark blue hoodie. Only they’d been dry, then, and now they - just like Flynn’s hair - were soaked through. Clinging to him in ways that you just knew had to be unpleasant.
“Why are you grinning?” He didn’t sound amused.
I shrugged. “You got kinda wet, from just running over.”
Flynn sighed, leaning back against the head-rest. “I thought I might be able to see something wrong, under the hood.”
It was an idea as admirable as it was stupid, I thought. “Did you?”
He glanced at me, out of the corner of his eye. Clearly I’d not done a great job of hiding my skepticism.
“It was dark and I didn’t have a fucking clue what I was looking for, so no, Oli. Turns out I’m not a fucking mechanic, okay?”
I held up my hands, placatory. “Sorry, sorry. Just wondered.”
Another sigh, though this time it shifted into a full-body shiver.
I reached for the heater, cranking up the thermostat and the blower. It was my turn to feel ill-prepared.
“Uh, I didn’t think to bring any towels,” I admitted.
Flynn’s shrug looked resigned. “It’s fine.”
Considering he was shivering more, as he said that, I wasn’t inclined to agree.
“It’s gonna take us getting on for two hours to get back, in this weather,” I pointed out. “You’ll end up with pneumonia.”
He wiped a hand across his wet face. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d be much bothered by that.”
At the right time, in the right place, that would’ve been the perfect excuse for an argument. It was neither of those things, so I bit my tongue.
“Your mom is gonna kill me if I return her darling son with a chest infection.”
He looked over. “So, your suggestion is...”
That was a good question. I hadn’t really thought that far.
“Look, you’ll just have to take off the wet clothes, okay? The heater gets pretty warm in here.”
Flynn may have been shivering and looked like a drowned rat, but he still managed a smirk. “If you wanted to get me out of my clothes, Oli, you just had to ask.”
I rolled my eyes, as I put the truck in gear. “You wanna wait in your expensive paperweight for triple-A?”
He laughed, but still leaned forward to start to pull off his hoodie. “Fine, fine. But no peeking.”
I had, quite frankly, no intention of looking.
Even if I had, the weather wasn’t exactly obliging for surreptitious glances.
The sound of the rain hitting the roof of the truck echoing in the cabin, louder than the yelling air vents.
Visibility even worse than when I’d picked Flynn up; my knuckles were white as I gripped the wheel, nervous as the wind gained speed and it felt like I could see little more than to the end of the hood.
“Fuck, I forgot what these storms were like.” Flynn sounded more awed than frustrated.
I shrugged, wishing the lights did more than set each hefty raindrop glowing.
My fear - well, one of them - was that some terrified deer would come galloping out, trying to cross in front of us.
At the speed we were going, it wasn’t like injury was a huge risk, but my pay at the thrift store didn’t exactly leave much excess to cover unexpected truck damages.
“You look like you’re about to tear the wheel off,” he joked.
I narrowed my eyes. “And yet I’m not the one who went out, with a storm warning, and didn’t even take a coat.”
Flynn gestured, an apology I saw out of the corner of my eye. He’d pushed down his sweatpants too I realized, from my quick glance. Bare legs sprawling lazily into the footwell.
“I said I was grateful for you coming out to get me,” he told me, in a tone that suggested I was overreacting somehow.
“No,” I corrected him, “you didn’t.”
Flynn sighed. “I’m sorry, then. And grateful that you came out. There was no heating in the car, and I was all wet, and it wasn’t shaping up to be a fun night. So, thank you.”
I nodded, curtly. Somehow, I’d almost preferred it when we were sniping at each other. That, I knew how to do.
A huge crack of lightning lit the scenery like daylight, afterimages of waterlogged fields seared into my vision as I blinked. The thunder that quickly followed was less a rumble, than a vast pair of hands seeming to grab each side of the pickup and shake it.
Gingerly, I pulled to a halt. Hit the button for the hazard blinkers, their rhythmic click barely audible over the torrential rain.
“Good idea,” Flynn said, his voice practically a whisper.
I turned, to nod agreement at him, and then instantly regretted it.
I’d known he was getting undressed, of course. Had seen him toss wet clothes behind him. And yet somehow the knowledge of that wasn’t quite the equal of seeing Flynn actually sitting there, in black trunks and a seatbelt, across from me in the truck.
He was attractive, that was part of the problem. A reasonably big part, frankly.
A chest that’d obviously seen plenty of gym visits; arms which looked just as good completely bare as they had in the thrift polo shirt he’d tried on that morning. A patch of dark hair between his pecs, and a matching treasure trail that led down into the waistband of his underwear.
Underwear that, even my hurried view confirmed, was not only well-filled, but clinging more obviously thanks to the thorough soaking Flynn had just experienced.
I stared ahead, to the front of the hood I could only really see when lightning illuminated it, cursing life, and hot men, and the sexual frustration that comes when your primary relationship is with your own right hand.
“We’ll just, uh, wait out the... worse of it,” I told him. Wanting to go further, to suggest that we do so in silence. Only I knew that would only seem more weird, make Flynn more suspicious of my suddenly-brittle behavior.
For a while it seemed like we’d concurred, anyway. Flynn no more eager to talk from the passenger seat, as I was behind the wheel. A hopeful assumption dashed, when I heard him take a breath.
“Look, I know what’s happening.”
I clenched my jaw, wishing for invisibility, or maybe just for a lightning bolt to strike the truck and vaporize us both. After a moment, I realized he was waiting for me to say something in response.
“Oh, really.”
About as far away from a question, a nudge to share more information, as you could get.
Not that I held out much hope that Flynn would oblige: after all, I’d acted like an absolute asshole to him so far this week.
I couldn’t exactly blame the guy for wanting to get some revenge, at the expense of my roaming eyes.
He sighed. “I’m not gonna tell my parents.”