Chapter Four #2
My frown was instinctive. Sudden flashbacks to how it’d been growing up, when we’d played together in the street. Stupid, childish pranks that’d backfired, and the specter of one set of parents or the other discovering the window smashed, or the car dented, or the new shirt torn.
“I’m not gonna tell my mom and dad that you were perving on me” was a new one, though.
“Like, I get it,” Flynn continued.
I wanted to tell him to go fuck himself, to take his self-confident arrogance and ram it up his big city ass. Treating me like I was some naive country boy, who couldn’t help but drool when he saw a naked torso and a pair of Calvin Kleins.
“It’s not like I’m exactly ready to tell them I’m into guys, either,” he finished.
I opened and closed my mouth a few times. It almost seemed appropriate: fish-like, among the oceanic quantities of rain still falling on us.
“Oh,” I said, very nearly lost for words. “That.”
Flynn shifted in the seat. I made very sure to fix my eyes on the middle-distance; not be distracted by the soft-looking hair on his muscled legs.
“I shouldn’t have joked about the porn stuff the other night. It seemed funny, at the time, but...”
His apology only made me feel worse. Guiltier, for where my attention had roamed, and the avenues my brain had hurtled down as a result.
“I should’ve checked my phone first,” I said. “Rookie mistake.”
“And I wasn’t judging,” Flynn added. “Like, you can be into whatever... whatever you’re into. I didn’t mean to make it sound like... well...”
It was possible, I decided, that I could clench my jaw so tightly that all of my teeth would shatter into dust. It’d probably mean a lifetime of soup and liquidized meals, but at least my blow jobs would become legendary.
“Can we not... uh...”
Flynn grunted. “Sorry. I wasn’t sure if you talked about this stuff. With gay friends, I mean.”
We weren’t friends, I wanted to tell him. Tell him again, in fact. Only now just didn’t seem the time.
“I don’t really have any,” I admitted instead.
Silence, for a moment.
“You’re stronger than I am,” Flynn said, quietly.
It was one of those unexpected comments, where you can’t help but need to see the person’s face.
Because otherwise it’s too confusing, too nebulous: the risk of taking serious what’s meant to be a joke, or vice-versa.
Even if you know they’re an attractive, very-nearly-naked guy, who you’re not exactly into that way, but that doesn’t stop your brain from window shopping.
Flynn looked sad. More sad than someone who’d broken down in the middle of nowhere, got soaked waiting for rescue, and then was forced to sit in their underwear while slowly drying off.
I frowned. “I don’t think I...”
“I couldn’t hack it. The fucking loneliness, I mean. Feeling like I was hiding something from everybody, all the time. Because I just couldn’t trust them.”
It wasn’t so much a shrug, as a shiver of my own. “I mean, I have friends... who know. A few, anyway. Just not gay ones.”
He nodded, slowly. “Guess you did better than I ever did, then.”
There was something otherworldly about that perspective. Something I wasn’t quite ready to consider.
“We should get going,” I suggested, nodding out of the windshield. “It’s eased up, some.”
The rain was merely lashing down, now, rather than biblically bad. With the wipers on full tilt, I could even see a few car lengths ahead.
Knowing I was avoiding more of this ill-advised heart to heart, and knowing, too, that Flynn was probably well aware of that, I put the truck in gear.
#
“So what are you into, then?”
We’d been driving for nearly twenty minutes, in silence bar the rain and the grumble of the engine, before Flynn’s question.
“Into?”
I didn’t need to turn; I could hear his eye-roll in his tone. “Porn, I mean.”
It was dim in the cabin. Sufficiently so, I hoped, that my instant blush wasn’t visible. “What happened to not judging?”
Flynn chuckled. “That doesn’t mean I can’t ask. Just that I won’t call you a pervert when you tell me.”
I scowled. “Come on.”
Another laugh. “You can’t tell me you don’t watch it. Since we both know that’d be a total lie.”
I hit the turn signal, slowing down. “You want to get out here, and walk?”
“Fine! Fine, you win.” From his tone, it was clear he wasn’t taking my threat seriously.
“Wise man,” I told him.
Another few minutes of silence spooled out.
“I mean, I’m guessing really big dicks and really small holes,” he suggested. “Just based, y’know, on what I heard.”
“Flynn!”
It was probably dangerous, taking my eyes off the road to turn to glare at him, but it seemed a worthy trade-off. Even if his deeply entertained grin was infuriating.
“It’s okay to be a size queen, Oli.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, before looking back ahead. “You’re not funny, asshole.”
I could see him cross his arms, out of the corner of my eye.
“You’re so uptight.”
“We barely know each other,” I reminded him.
Flynn snorted. “We literally grew up next door to each other. And I’m practically naked in your truck.”
“You’ve been away a long time.” I said, shrugging. It wasn’t like I could tell him how much I resented him for that, or indeed how infuriating his mom’s constant listing of her precious offspring’s successes had become. That would only make me sound petty.
“So, what better way to get to know you again?”
There was no helping it, I had to laugh. “By finding out my favorite porn type?”
Flynn leaned over, to nudge my arm with his elbow. He ignored my renewed glare. “I mean, is there any better way? Sex is important, Oli.” He made a noise, as though something had just occurred to him. “You have had sex, right?”
“Asshole,” I muttered under my breath. Making him laugh again.
“Just checking. I mean, given your options.”
The comment reminded me. “Why were you driving around out here?”
“What?” He grunted, a noise that I thought was probably meant to be dismissive. “Oh, I was just driving for the sake of it, really. Thinking.”
“All this way out?” I made no attempt to hide my skepticism. “In the middle of nowhere, practically, and in a storm?”
I saw him shrug, in my peripheral vision. Waited for an answer, a justification, only there was none.
“Was it a hookup?”
Flynn laughed. “What?”
“I thought, maybe... well, on one of the apps, y’know.”
“Come on, Oli.” He sounded genuinely amused, like the very suggestion of it was thoroughly ridiculous. “What the hell is there worth hooking up with around here?”
I wasn’t sure why I was so angry at his easy dismissal.
Not when I’d been so scathing of the options for sex - never mind a relationship - where I lived, the paucity of choice.
Married men cheating on their wives; the occasional trucker passing through, looking to get their dick sucked.
It was pathetic, and lonely, and I hated it, and yet hearing Flynn disparage it so readily made my blood boil.
“Right, right, screw all these backwater yokels,” I snapped, angrily. “Guess you must be so excited, to get back to the big city where people are actually worth fucking.”
“Oli...”
I could hear the surprise in his voice, how taken aback he was by my sudden vitriol.
“Don’t worry about it, Flynn,” I interrupted, “I get it. You’ve slummed it back here, graced us with your sparkling presence for the holidays, and now it’s time to rejoin the real world.”
“Look, I didn’t mean...”
“I told you, don’t worry about it.” He’d have excuses, and apologies, and weasel-words to get around what he’d said, but I knew the truth. The things Flynn actually believed; that he spoke without needing to think about first. And I wasn’t much inclined to hear that.
“Oli.” There was a finality to his tone, as if he couldn’t quite believe that I wasn’t willing to listen.
Only I wasn’t. I’d heard enough.
“It’s fine, Flynn,” I told him, coldly. “Just shut up and let the yokel drive.”