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I snorted. He wasn’t far off base.
“Archie has…I don’t even know if I should be telling you this.” Flynn glanced toward the hallway that led to the guest rooms like he was worried about getting caught.
“Did you want to go outside?” I asked.
He furrowed his brow and let out a soft sigh. “I’m not trying to spill Archie’s secrets. He’s my best friend, I just…”
“I get it.” I jerked my head toward the door. “It looks nice out. We can talk outside, no secrets required.”
Flynn followed me out to the pool deck, where I shoved some discarded clothes from one of the loungers so I could sit down. There were pants and towels and empty bottles of alcohol, and Rob’s back yard looked more like a college rager than a group of thirty and forty-something year-old men getting together on a Saturday night. A stab of longing pierced through my chest, and it felt like jealousy at first. I wasn’t sure if I was jealous that Archie had so many friends or that they hadhim.
After we’d both settled onto chairs with coffee in hand, I stared out toward the bushes at the far end of the yard. I didn’t know what Flynn had wanted to say to me, but I figured it would be easier if he didn’t have to face me while he did it. I could tell the decision to speak freely weighed on him, and I respected how closely he held Archie’s confidence.
“None of us are saints,” Flynn finally said, and I nodded. “We’ve all had our hearts broken a few times. It comes with the territory, you know.”
He gestured to the pool, to the house, to the extravagance of the life they lived. I thought about my one bedroom apartment and my Goodwill couch. I thought about my ramen dinners and my car that was two hundred miles past needing an oil change because I didn’t have money for it.
“All of us except Archie,” he corrected.
I turned my head toward him, finding his attention focused on the tree line as well. After my conversation with Archie at the museum the day before, where he’d started to talk about the last serious relationship he’d been in and stopped, I’d been dreading the story. I wanted to be glad that Archie had found a love so massive that it was painful to relive the loss of, but that spear of jealousy burned and thickened and turned inside of my chest.
“Okay,” I said, because there wasn’t anything else to say.
“He’s only been in love once.”
It was impossible to breathe, impossible to swallow.
I nodded, and looked down at my coffee, finding my reflection in the dark and still surface as I steeled myself for the rest of the story Flynn was sharing.
“It nearly fucking killed him, you know?”
I closed my eyes, jealousy bursting like a volcano behind my ribs.
“Archie is Archie, though. He knew, but he didn’t know. He’s a little aloof sometimes. But by the time he realized what he’d lost, it was too late for him to get it back because he’s stubborn. And he’s so righteous. Acting like he would bear the burden to save the person he loved from having to shoulder it.”
“You don’t need to tell me this,” I said, desperate for Flynn to stop.
Tears prickled the corners of my eyes and I wanted to scream and throw the furniture into the pool for how envious I was that Archie had loved someone the way I loved him. I thought about the lonely nights as a teenager when he’d been with my sister, and the better nights when she’d been gone and we’d been together. Just as friends, of course, but he was so close to me and he always smelled so good. He smiled so nice, and there wasn’t a single person in the world back then who’d made me feel as good as he did.
I loved Archie before I’d known what it meant to love another person, and I loved him still. Even with his expensive home with his fancy clothes and his luxury car, he was still the too tall and too skinny boy that I’d secretly fallen in love with as a teenager. He was the one thing I’d wanted back then, and even though time had healed that wound, it hadn’t taken away the way I wanted him.
If this trip had done nothing else, it had proved that time and time again.
“You’re missing the point,” Flynn said.
The sliding door opened, and we both looked toward the house. Archie filled the frame, half dressed with his hair askew and his eyes half closed. I didn’t realize he’d looked frantic until he saw me and thendidn’t. His shoulders relaxed and his lips curved up into a softer line instead of the terse frown he’d worn. My breath caught in my throat, and I blinked as quickly as I could, hoping to hold back the tears that had threatened to spill at the beginning of Flynn’s confession.
“I’m going to buy Rob curtains,” Archie said, scrubbing a hand down his face. He was trying to play it casual, but as he came toward us, his movements were jerky, like whatever fear he’d carried hadn’t quite left him yet.
I spread my legs open and Archie plopped down between my thighs, leaning back against my chest with a content little sigh. The pose was awkward, but he was still warm from sleep, and I set my coffee down next to a half-drunk whiskey bottle so I could hold him against me.
“What were you two talking about?” he asked, angling his head up to face me as much as he could manage. I kissed the side of his head. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“I was just telling Owen how insufferable you used to be. Back when we first met.”
He scoffed. “Hardly.”
“He said you were stubborn, actually. Righteous.”
