Chapter Ten
“Well…you know what his mother was like. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
SEASIDE COMMUNITIESwere not, traditionally, fond of seagulls. They were unmannerly, covetous avian mobs, always ready to crap on a car or steal a handful of chips. So Flynn supposed there was something particularly contrary about feeding one, even if it was a sad specimen.
He sat on the narrow metal balcony that wrapped around the top of the lighthouse, and his legs dangled carelessly over the drop as he tossed digestive biscuits out over the sea. The lame seagull that he’d been seeing around the cliffs for the last few weeks snatched them out of the air.
In between tosses it flapped back to perch precariously on the balcony, its white feathers fluffed, and it shrieked at him and showed the bright pink inside of its beak until Flynn tossed it another biscuit.
“End of the packet, bird,” he said as he shook the last biscuit out into his hand. A flick of his wrist sent it frisbeeing into the air. The gull toppled off the balcony after the treat. It dropped like a fluffy stone for a second, and then the wind lifted its wings and it caught the biscuit just as it started to fall.
It made its usual tail-over-beak landing on the metal and screeched at him. One of its feet was clubbed awkwardly. Scar tissue stuck the webbing together. Could have been a lucky sea lion. Could have been a fishing line.
“You don’t give up do you,” Flynn said to it. The corner of his mouth twitched. “I should call you Nate.”
The gull tilted its head sharply to the side and trained one beady yellow eye on him. Flynn pulled himself up as something under his kneecap grated, and he shooed it away. It didn’t come back.
Maybe it was smarter than Flynn. It kept its life simple.
He went back into his bedroom. The duvet was creased where he’d crashed on it the night before, and his skin still smelled of sex and stylish posh boy. He resisted the brief temptation to grab a pillow and see if the scent had stuck to it.
It wasn’t that he regretted it. Beautiful men didn’t crawl onto Flynn’s dick often enough for him to think it was a bad idea. It was the aftermath that nagged at him. He had dismissed the possibility that a quick fuck could ever happen. But it had, and his brain worried at his other assumptions, like whether or not it could be something more. Did he even want it to be? Nate was handsome and cat confident in his physicality, but Flynn couldn’t imagine him in his life. What would it be like? Converse sneakers in his kitchen and ashtrays in the bedroom, footballers on speed dial and Max over for lunch?
No, he corrected himself, the Granshire lot would probably have brunch instead.
The two of them stuck on the island—drinking in the same bars, eating in the same restaurant, seeing the same people—until they got old.
He stretched and felt something under his shoulder catch and then pop. Older.
The coffee was on in the kitchen, and the extrastrong brew fermented on the element. Flynn poured himself a cup and added milk. The first gulp scalded his tongue and made him grimace. He leaned back against the counter and took another drink.
He needed to stop second-guessing Nate. It didn’t matter what his actions suggested. His words had made it perfectly clear that he wasn’t interested in a relationship. The only boyfriend he wanted was a bad one.
Maybe Flynn wasn’t as bad as people on Ceremony wanted to believe, but all his relationships ended badly. So he couldn’t be that good at them. And if Nate wanted to crawl on his dick again…. Well, thinking that Flynn was an asshole had never stopped any of his lovers from fucking him.
Or eventually fucking him over.
USUALLY FLYNNjust propped up the bar at the Hairy Dog, but since it was a date, he grabbed a table. It gave the gawkers a good three hundred sixty degree view. Flynn’s plan to embrace his inner shit-relationship material—he’d even scrawled out a list of some of the things his exes had complained about, from “unavailable” to “always thinks job makes him better than me”—was under threat because Nate was turning out to be a worse date than he was.
For the last ten minutes, he’d been on his phone. He set it down twice and then picked it back up again the minute it beeped.
“Is it really that hard for you to stay single?” Flynn asked.
Nate didn’t bother to move his attention from the screen as he grunted absently. After a second his brain caught up with his ears, and he looked around. His expression teetered between apologetic and peevish. Apology won. He flicked the phone to silent and turned it over.
“Sorry.” He leaned back in his chair and picked up his pint. The long sprawl of his body briefly distracted Flynn. The way he sucked the head off the beer, fingers wet with froth, didn’t help Flynn keep his mind out of the gutter. Nate wiped his thumb over his mouth and added, “Although to be fair, I never actually said that.”
“No?”
“I could get dumped in a nunnery,” Nate said blithely. He set his glass down and held up his hand to tick points off with his fingers. “I work too hard, it freaks blokes out that I spend so much time thinking about weddings, I’m aggressively unhealthy, and I’m emotionally unfaithful with my phone. In the end everyone’s happier if I’m single. This”—he toggled his finger back and forth between himself and Flynn—“is just making that point to my friends and family so they stop trying to set me up with whatever random gay man they know.”
The prickly irritation in Nate’s voice was charming in an odd, possibly “just when Nate was doing it” way. Flynn took a drink of his pint and raised his eyebrows.
“You talk a good game, but I heard you were quite the shagger.”
“Max is quite the shagger,” Nate corrected him. He tapped his finger against his chest twice. “I’m a serial monogamist.”
“The difference?”
