Page 31 of All That History
Chapter Nine
Ithought about stayinganother night, postponing the drive home until the next morning.Telling myself that it was the journey I was avoiding, dull hours behind the wheel, even though I knew that wasn’t the truth.Or, at least, not all of it.
Not like I’d been lying, when I’d told Flynn he painted a shitty picture of the charms of moving away.Not enough money, and not enough time; no, I wasn’t sympathetic about his spiraling debt, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t understand it.Just like I could understand that urge to pretend to be something you weren’t.
After all, it was the anonymity I was clinging to, now.
Enough strangers to make me just another face in the crowd.Not surrounded by people who’d known my parents, and their parents before them, and seen me grow up from diapers and short pants.Who’d heard every gossip-friendly story about me, been kept up to date on disappointing grade cards and classroom scoldings.People who’d seen me graduate, and get the job at the thrift store, and who now - even if they’d not quite progressed to asking me to my face - were on track to wonder about marriage, and kids, and settling down.
The city might be cold, and aloof, and resolutely uninterested in me, but I couldn’t say that indifference didn’t have some appeal to it.At least it never asked me why I wasn’t dating, or when I’d finally give my parents some grandkids.
And I was angry, too, about how things with Flynn had gone.How it felt like I’d lost control of the situation, or at least my part in it.Stumbled back into old, resentful ways; trains of thought that no longer seemed so clean-cut and certain, after what I’d learned of his life, now.
The version of Flynn his mom talked about was arrogant, and cocky, and painfully successful.Clawing his way to the top, a cold sort of success that felt like a snub to everyone he’d left behind.Easy to resent, then, and by god, I’d resented him.
Seeing the reality, hearing him talk about it, felt like I’d stumbled onto the stage in daytime.Discovered just how fragile and artificial the set actually was.
Woven through, of course, with the fact that - for all he’d punctured my assumptions of his triumph - there were still things in Flynn’s life that I envied.His relationship with William might not be what I necessarily wanted for myself, not in its details, but at least Flynn had someone in his life, romantically.Sure, escape had cost him plenty, but he had more than just periodic hook-ups.More than the sort of encounters where even knowing a first name felt like an unexpected intimacy.
I knew, though, that parachuting into this other world wouldn’t give me what I wanted.I could add another night at the hotel, tell my folks I’d come back Monday; call in a favor to make sure the shop got opened up as normal that morning, even in my absence.But all I’d do - all I’d be able to do - would be another one of those nameless trysts.Where you call it a date, but everyone knows that really it’s about sex.
I was stuffing clothes back into my bag when my phone rang.
“I was an asshole.Can I buy you dinner?”
No hi, no hello.No “it’s Flynn,” though that would’ve been redundant.Not like I didn’t recognize his voice.
“I’m meant to be going back today,” I told him.
“Do you need to be back?”Silence; the faint crackle of static on the line.“Like, does it matter if you’re there tomorrow, instead of today?”
I’d just got done running through all the excuses; I could’ve easily listed them off to him now.
Flynn seemed to take my hesitation as reluctance.“Look, if it’s just that you don’t want to, you needn’t make up a story to let me down gently.”
“I wouldn’t.”
He laughed.“Exactly.So?”
“Would it be...”The thought of sitting across the table from him and William; of picturing myself buried inside Flynn’s boyfriend, while we ordered appetizers and chatted about their vacation plans, filled me with a sort of nauseous unease.
“Just you and me.”He paused.“William’s got other plans tonight.”
Either he could read my mind, or the invite list had been on his, too.
I chewed the inside of my cheek, brain whirring.
