Chapter Five
Forty minutes went by in silence. Anger sustaining me, at first, and then frustration.
At Flynn, for his rude opinions and the fact that I couldn’t exactly say I didn’t share many of them.
At myself, for allowing him to get under my skin so effectively.
For starting to think that there was any sliver of our old closeness left.
Frustration gave way to a gnawing misery, shadowed with a headache from concentrating on the barely-visible road ahead. The rain easing still, but the moonless night swamping the truck’s headlamps. Two blunted cones, meager in the face of nature’s indifference.
We were pulling down our parents’ street before he spoke again.
“Look, I’m sorry.”
I shook my head. I didn’t want to hear his apologies, or his justifications. The results of all the reflection he’d done, as he sat in his underwear alongside me. “It’s fine. You’d still be out there, if you waited for triple-A.”
“I didn’t mean...”
“I said, it’s fine.” Silence had been easier, somehow. Awkward, sure, but at least I didn’t have to fear his next words.
The sound of the rain shifted as I pulled under his parents’ carport. It was strange: the thrumming had been there for so long, it felt like my brain echoed with its sudden absence.
“You don’t...” Flynn started, then the words trailed off. He sighed. “Thanks. For the ride, I mean. I can pay you for the gas?”
I didn’t want to look at him, didn’t really want to look anywhere bar out through the windshield. Like my eyes had atrophied on the drive back home, were only good for one direction now.
“Don’t worry about it,” I told him, flatly.
For a minute, I thought he was going to press it. Refuse to get out without a discussion, or an argument. Steeling myself inside, stomach clenched, ready to fight a corner I barely believed in.
And then he reached for the door handle. “I’ll just get my stuff, from the back.”
I waited, as he retrieved his wet clothes from where he’d tossed them. Expecting one last comment, only to hear the door shut instead.
As I put the truck into reverse, I caught a glimpse of him still standing in the carport.
Clothes a bundle clutched to his chest; watching me under the dim amber porch light.
Somehow seeming both vulnerable and yet confident, barely dressed as the shadows cast by my headlamps swept across him. Looming, like regrets.
#
I’d say I went out of my way to avoid Flynn after that, only it wasn’t like it required much effort.
Maybe it was the aftermath of the holidays, or perhaps people were simply in a charitable mood, but the stacks of bags outside the thrift store each morning only seemed to get taller, and deeper.
With part-timers calling in sick, my work days started earlier and ended later.
The storm seemed to have rained the skies out, for a while at least. Leaving behind a brittle chill, cloudless and pale blue overhead.
Murderous on the lungs if you foolishly ventured out without a high coat collar and preferably a scarf, too.
Ice riming the windows of the truck each morning, as I sat in the cab with my hands cupped above the slowly-warming vents, waiting for enough of a porthole in each quarter to see the world around me.
And I tried, as best I could, not to think about what he’d said.
Comments that I knew for Flynn had been flippant, throwaway.
The chatter of someone who thought he was joking with a friend, barely salacious despite the topics orbiting porn, and sex, and hookups.
Tried, too, not to think of the look of surprise on his face, as the extent of my displeasure had become clear, and the way it’d shifted into a sort of uneasy dismay by the time I dropped him off.
His mom had, by way of mine, passed on her thanks for rescuing her boy. The big SUV reappeared a couple of days later, presumably rebooted and restored to happy, electronic life. I wondered if Flynn saw it as a liability, now; if he’d lost faith in it, somehow.
I was tired, when Catherine texted me and said I had no excuses worth mustering to avoid a drink with her and Kyle.
She was correct, though: I’d seen enough protests slide off her before, to know it was easier to acquiesce.
And, quite frankly, a few days of people trying to negotiate discounts over five dollar shirts and two buck kitchen utensils had left me feeling particularly sour about my fellow man.
They were already waiting - already drinking - when I arrived, at a table across from the bar.
Kyle raising his arm, to get my attention, even as Catherine rolled her eyes at him.
It was our usual spot, and even if it’d been occupied, it wasn’t like the place was big enough to make finding the two of them difficult.
I made a drinking gesture, eyebrow raised. They both shook their heads, so I turned to the bar.
“The usual?” Alyson already had the glass out.
I chuckled. “Sure, why not.”
She shook her head, as she poured the IPA.
Home-brewed, it was the go-to for 99% of the people who drank here regularly.
The one day she presumed without asking, mind, I’d already decided I’d claim I had a different order planned.
Maybe one of the murky, vaguely ominous-looking liqueurs in the dusty bottles lining the shelves behind her.
“You smell of charity,” Catherine said, as I sat down.
I took a sip of my drink. “Is that a good thing?”
She made a face. “Charity apparently smells like barely-washed clothes that’ve sat in a garbage bag for a week.”
I went to sniff my sleeve, then decided ignorance was better. “I think everyone in town has decided to clear out their closets.”
“Anything good?”
For Kyle, ‘good’ invariably meant old music gear that he didn’t need, including increasingly-rare vinyl.
I’d made up my mind that, if I hadn’t already left the thrift by the time he died, that would be my cue to retire.
The idea of having to sift through his hoarder’s paradise filled me with a sickly sort of professional dread.
“More junk than usual,” I told him. “Anyway, you know I save you the good stuff.”
He wasn’t an employee so, I’d decided, the rules about items having to go on public sale first didn’t quite apply. Especially because Kyle invariably wanted what I’d saved for him, and didn’t question the price tag.
“You’re an enabler,” Catherine pointed out.
Hers was a familiar accusation. “It gives me a sense of purpose, in this disconcerting life,” I suggested, before taking another gulp.
“Oh, well,” she said, grinning, “in that case...”
It was the lazy conversation of people who’ve known each other for very nearly as many years as they’ve been alive.
Not that the roster at the local high school had been especially full when we were all in our teens, but the attrition of people leaving town in the years since graduation meant the pool grew smaller and smaller.
In a way, that’d made coming out to Catherine and Kyle feel all the more dangerous: if they’d rejected me, I wasn’t exactly sure who I would’ve had left.
They hadn’t, though, even if they’d both claimed surprise at the news.
These days they mostly just berated me for not going hunting for a boyfriend, an accusation I invariably countered with the reminder that they were both single, too.
I’d pointed out, once, that life would be so much easier, and tidier, if they fell for each other.
Then spent the rest of the evening begging them to stop throwing peanuts at me in lingering outrage.
“So how many pounds of green bean casserole did you get through, then?” Kyle grinned as he asked it; my mom’s kitchen staples were the stuff of legend.
I wanted to smile along, but there was no way not to make the mental leap from casserole, to interrupted dinners, to Flynn and our argument.
When I’d pulled into our driveway after dropping him off, my grip white-knuckled on the steering wheel, it’d taken a couple of minutes before I felt ready to emerge and face my parents.
My mom kept my plate warm in the oven. Even covered, though, it had got unpleasantly dry around the edges. I’d pretty much choked it down, refusing to allow Flynn or his frustrating mother the liberty of spoiling my evening any further.
I looked up from my glass, to find Catherine and Kyle staring at me with confusion.
“You look like you’re about to kill someone,” Catherine said.
I shrugged. “It’s just been a long week, y’know?”
They nodded agreement, and for a while it was the companionable silence of good friends.
And then, as if my thinking about him had manifested it, the universe decided to spite me once more.
I saw Catherine glance up, at the sound of the door swinging behind me. The double-take, eyes widening for a moment, before narrowing thoughtfully.
“Don’t tell me that’s...”
Glancing back, over my shoulder, I felt my stomach sink.
The blue and red striped jacket was probably doing a lot of the heavy lifting - undoubtedly stuffed with the finest goose feathers, I thought, sourly - but still, Flynn looked the epitome of a winter catalog model.
Hair suitably wind-swept, but in a stylish way rather than like an unhappy haystack; dark blue jeans, and boots that were definitely designed with style in mind, not actual working.
I almost did a double-take of my own, when he pulled off his coat to reveal the black polo shirt he’d bought from the thrift store.
“Wait, that’s not...”
“Yes,” I said, interrupting Kyle as I turned back to my drink. I wasn’t sure if I was suddenly in the mood to push it away and leave, or down it, chased by five more in rapid succession.
“Is he back for the holidays?”
I flashed Catherine an unimpressed look. “You think he’d grace us with his presence for any other reason?”
She chuckled. “Oh, right. I’d forgotten about the almighty feud between you guys.”
Kyle laughed, too. “Does it count as a feud, if only one of the people involved actually knows it’s happening?”