“You’re still okay with coming with me right?” I asked.
Flynn pushed his hair off his forehead. “You want to go and I want to come with you,” he said and I wasn’t sure if that really answered my question or not.
He sat down beside me once he was finished straightening the knick-knacks. He carefully put his arm around my shoulders and we sat together awkwardly.
I wondered if we would we ever be the type of couple who could fall into each other effortlessly and without hesitation at being touched?
Flynn leaned over and kissed the top of my head. “You smell good,” he said, his lips brushing my hair, making me shiver in a way that had nothing to do with the cold.
Flynn’s fingers dug into my arm as he held me against his side, seeming to fight with himself not to pull away.
And he held me, rigid and inflexible. But the warmth of his arm wrapped around me and I willed myself to be content with that.
It was here in his quiet company that I had finally come home.
Chapter Eighteen
-Ellie-
“Look what I got!” Stu said, holding up a multi-colored box.
“Woohoo, you got fireworks,” I muttered sarcastically.
Stu glared at me and knocked back the rest of his beer. “Do you have any better ideas, Miss Bitch?”
Dania giggled at Stu’s less than sweet term of endearment. She was wasted. I was wasted. Stu was wasted.
The three of us with booze was probably a very bad combination. Nothing good ever came of us drinking together. We had been sloshed on moonshine when we had decided to try acid for the first time, and I had spent the night throwing up and thinking I was shrinking.
We had been drinking the night we had egged the principal’s house and gotten busted because Stu had wanted to piss in his pool.
I had asked Flynn if I could come over earlier today. I don’t know why. But I missed him. A lot.
He had said he hated me and to leave him alone.
It had hurt more than I wanted to admit.
Now I was trying to numb the hurt with booze and bad decisions.
“Maybe you want to go hang out with your friend the freak,” Stu sneered and Dania kept cackling. It hurt my head.
“What the fuck are you talking about, Stu?” I slurred.
“What’s his name? Flynn? I see you talking to him. I know you hang out with him,” Stu said, his voice deadly quiet. The look in his eyes worried me.
Dania sat up a little higher. “There’s no way, Stu. Ells hates that guy.”
Stu grabbed another beer and popped the top, taking a drink. “I don’t think she does. I think our Ellie is a pathetic freak lover. Maybe she’s a freak too. What do you think, D?”
Dania was looking at me like I had killed her cat. “What the fuck, Ellie?” she hissed.
“You’re on something,” I blustered. But they were looking at me like they knew.
“I don’t think I want to hang out with a fucking freak lover,” Stu said blandly, his eyes cold.
“Me either!” Dania exclaimed, the fucking traitor.
“I’m not a freak lover!” I shouted defensively. Stu kept drinking his beer and Dania glared at me like she hated me.
