Chapter Seventeen
Flynn’s address was still in the mapping app, and there was a part of me that was grateful for the city’s confusing system of one-way roads and odd intersections as I inched my way between red lights and stop signs.
Focusing on what lane I was meant to be in, and not inadvertently colliding with death-wish pedestrians, meant there wasn’t much brain capacity left to think through what I was actually doing.
Or, more accurately, what the hell I thought I could achieve when I actually made it to Flynn’s place.
Rationally, I should’ve just kept heading home.
He’d made it abundantly clear, after all, that anything between us - any friendship, anything more - could only be within the framework of what he and William had.
Just because I’d heard an argument, eavesdropped on a few broken glasses or whatever, didn’t mean I needed to leap in like some wannabe knight in shining armor.
I was still telling myself that I’d turn back around, retrace my steps, as I fed coins into the parking meter.
Was still weighing the merits of both routes out of the city - one longer, true, but often the traffic was freer-flowing - as I stood outside Flynn’s apartment building.
Still halfway across the state, the city gone from my rearview mirror, as I reached out to thumb his doorbell.
It was a sharp buzz, a grating one. Rough edges scratching. Though not as awful a sound as the faintly-crackling silence that came after it, as I waited to see whether he’d even answer.
“Oli?”
I blinked, wrong-footed, then feeling ridiculous. The beady, spherical eye of the camera stared at me from above the array of little name tags and their companion buttons.
“Hey,” I said, then mentally kicked myself.
“Wh-what are you doing here?”
There was a possibility, some cringing part of my brain pointed out, that he’d demand a full explanation here, now. With me standing on the street, my face in distorted black and white from some fisheye lens, and Flynn’s voice compressed into robotic harshness.
I took a deep breath. Let it out, slowly.
“Let me come up,” I told him, in as firm a voice as I could muster.
A beat, and then the door buzzed.
#
William could be there, of course. I’d heard some tiny sliver of their fight; my untimely arrival might’ve interrupted their make-up sex.
Even as I rode the elevator up, Flynn’s boyfriend might be on his hands and knees, with dustpan and brush, sheepishly retrieving the shards of cheap wineglasses from around the skirting boards.
It was tempting to hit the Emergency Stop button, but then I’d only be stuck inside the elevator cab. Trapped, with the voice in my head sing-songing “you fucked up, you fucked up, you fucked up,” until the fire department arrived to cart me off.
Even as the doors slid open, I considered stabbing the button for the lobby again. Leaving, before I had to explain exactly why I’d arrived so abruptly. Before politeness forced me to put my paranoias into the words that would reveal them as ridiculous.
Jaw clenched, regret simmering, I raised a hand to knock on Flynn’s door. Then stopped, finding it was already slightly ajar.
Noise, down the hallway.
I’d not made it to their kitchen before; had gone straight to the bedroom, then a detour to the bathroom, and then left.
Even so, I was pretty sure it wasn’t meant to have tumbled chairs and surfaces swept clear of every object onto the floor.
The dining table was probably not meant to be a drift of bubbled safety glass, shattered around the feet of its metal frame.
Eventually, my eyes skittered across the haphazard destruction and landed on Flynn. To discover he was already staring back at me.
“Uh... you called me,” I said, feeling no less ridiculous than I had on the whole drive over.
He looked down, my own gaze following. I’d not really noticed his cellphone before, or at least, it’d been so thoroughly tumbled into the remnants of the table - its screen crazed - that I’d not made the connection with what I was seeing. That, at least, explained the line suddenly going dead.
Flynn’s face was pale when I glanced back across. Ominously so.
“I think you should sit down,” I suggested, gently.
He flashed me a wan smile, barely more than the outline of one, as he gingerly eased himself onto a stool.
“You had an argument.”
Flynn grimaced. “What gave it away?”
I fought the urge to look around the room again. “Call it intuition.”
The noise he made was probably meant to be a laugh. “I forget how astute you are.”
It was asinine, as conversations went - particularly when I could feel the grit of broken table under my feet - but it was probably better than Flynn passing out. Gingerly, I opened cupboards until I found a glass. Filled it with water, then held it out to him.
A sip, first. Tentative. And then a couple of deep gulps.
“So, how much did you hear?”
I shrugged, uncomfortable again. “I wasn’t sure you even meant to call me.”
His smile was tight, rueful. “You were going to be my star witness. I didn’t actually think the call had gone through.”
My brain was already starting to piece together the maybes and what-ifs.
Flynn challenging his boyfriend over the infidelity they’d not negotiated; William outraged, whipped up into a furious rage.
And then my name - or perhaps not, maybe just the threat of someone, anyone, who knew the truth - and things escalating from there.
Destruction, when denial no longer worked.
“He left?”
Flynn nodded. “Apparently I’m toxic, emotionally stunted, and manipulative. Oh, and no fun.” He shrugged. “Turns out I could’ve saved all that money I spent on therapy, and just got a diagnosis at home.”
I winced. “I’m sorry.”
He frowned at me. “Why are you here, Oli? Surely not because of some random snippet of an argument, between two people you barely know?”
“I know you.” The protest sounded ridiculous, even to my own ears. Sullen, like I’d just been told I was out of my depth.
Flynn sighed. “Anyway, I guess you can say ‘I told you so,’ now.”
“Do you really think that’s what I came all the way back to do?”
He lifted the glass, as if to drink, and then changed his mind. Cradled it between his thighs, staring off through the window.
“I think,” Flynn said, his voice very soft, “that I’m a truly terrible judge of character. Absolutely godawful at it. So you might need to take pity on me, just this once, and fill in the gaps yourself.”
“I came back because I was worried.”
He nodded, slowly. As if he’d lost the ability to think at his usual speed; each word requiring its own, individual processing, before he could piece together the meaning as a whole. “I thought you didn’t like me,” he said, finally.
It wasn’t clear if it was a statement or a question.
“For a long time, I didn’t.” The truth could be caustic, but it could also be easier. At least you didn’t need to think about keeping your story straight. “I resented you, so fucking much.”
Flynn snorted, then gestured around the upended room. “So much to envy, here, Oli. I’m living the fucking dream.”
I shrugged. This was meant to be about him, about his argument with William and the fallout from that, but it seemed like nobody in the vicinity was going to escape the paring knife. Maybe that was only right, given I’d been the one who’d made the first cut.
“You got away,” I explained. “It wasn’t about you being gay as well. I didn’t even know that part until the holidays. It just felt like one of those movies, where the timeline splits and two people go in two different directions. And you got to escape.”
“You already know my life isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.”
I chuckled, thinking about all the times Flynn’s parents had humble-bragged about their successful son and his fantastic prospects. “Your mom made a damn good cheerleader. She never shared the downsides to it all.”
He grunted. “She doesn’t know the downsides, that’s why.”
“What, exactly, does she know?”
Sighing, he set the glass down. “That I have a job, and a nice apartment, and very little time to come and see them any more.” A shrug. “It’s easier to keep the good news coming when you’re doing it over the phone.”
“But not about William.”
“Definitely not about William,” he said, laughing coldly. “I’m afraid I’m a coward, when it comes to being open with them about that stuff.”
“You and me both.”
I pulled out a stool and sat down next to him. Somehow, both of us being cowards made life easier. Even if I couldn’t say exactly why.
“I think I’ve spent a long time hating someone who isn’t actually you.
” It was the sort of confession that comes easier when you’re not looking at the person.
When you can stare out of the window of their messed-up apartment, and pretend there’s nobody in the room watching.
“Like, I had this idea of you. This successful guy, happy, smug... making his parents so damn proud. I built you up to be this person I could never compete with.”
“Who said you needed to compete?” Flynn sounded genuinely curious.
“Oh, only myself,” I said, with a chuckle. “It was an entirely self-imposed benchmark.”
He laughed, too. “Aren’t they the best kind.”
We sat, the silence laced with shared amusement, for a moment.
“Do you actually have sex?” I blurted out. Then blushed, as if the words were as much a surprise to my ears as to Flynn’s.
“What do you mean?”
It was an awkward shrug. “Like, do you only ever like to watch? Or do you... y’know.”
For a moment, it seemed like he wasn’t going to answer.
“I don’t just watch,” Flynn said, finally. “That was more like... a test.”
“Of restraint,” I supplied, thinking back to the conversations we’d had before.
“Something like that,” he agreed. “Self-control. Being able to prove to myself that I could resist temptation.”
“Like the temptation of having sex with William.”
Flynn laughed. “Like the temptation of you, Oli.”
“Oh,” I said, softly, “that. I guess you won, anyway.”
“How?”