There was a pause, and Nate glanced down into his pint. His face twisted into a rueful expression, one side of his mouth hitched up in a self-mocking smile. It didn’t quite hide the regret. “Max never tries to turn a one-night stand into a relationship.”
Flynn winced. He’d planned to play the asshole, not to actually be an asshole. Maybe it wasn’t an open wound or even a scar, but he’d obviously ground his thumb into what was at least a bruise on Nate’s emotions. It definitely didn’t help his resolution to not get tangled up when a flash of vulnerability made him want to comfort Nate.
Luckily he’d always been shit at that.
“Well, you know what they say,” he said. “It’s better to have loved and lost, than—”
Nate interrupted him. “It really isn’t.”
No. He was probably right. Flynn took a drink and tasted the sour tang of jealousy along with discomfort and hops when he swallowed. He ignored it. No more overthinking—about Nate or himself.
“I need to go to the loo.” Nate broke the silence. He slid off his seat and stood up. “Get me another beer if Gennie brings the food over?”
Flynn let himself admire the long stretch of Nate’s body as he stood and as he walked away. Even for a drink in the pub, Nate was wearing a silk T-shirt and jeans you could tell had a designer label stitched to them somewhere. With what they did for Nate’s ass, Flynn thought he might actually have to rethink whether paying that much for denim was a waste of money.
He took a swig of his beer. One of the barflies holding up the bar, a ginger in a shiny tracksuit, staggered over to the jukebox and punched his money in. The freshest hits of the 90s blasted out and Britney Spears told someone to hit her one more time.
“Jesus,” Flynn muttered.
While ginger scuffled with his friends at the bar—apparently they didn’t have anything else to do on a Tuesday night—Gennie came out with two plates of food. She stalked over and shoved them onto the table.
“Here.” She pulled two napkin-wrapped sets of cutlery out of her pocket and smacked them down. Her mouth stretched in an empty, glossy red smile. She had lipstick on her teeth. Her voice dropped so it was disguised under the tinny chorus from the jukebox. “I hope you choke.”
That made Flynn blink in surprise. Gennie had never had a problem with him before. He paid for his drinks and kept to himself. What else he did with himself she didn’t care about. Until then, apparently. “What?”
Gennie sniffed. “Ally Moffatt got my boy through school, got him an apprenticeship, still asks about him when I see her down the street. She’s a good lady, she is, and I don’t like seeing you taking advantage of her son.”
“He’s a grown man,” Flynn said.
“And he’s got enough on his plate right now with his mum being sick,” Gennie said. “He doesn’t need you cozening up to him to get some contract with the Saint Johns. It’s not on, Flynn.”
She sniffed at him, turned on her heel, and stalked off. A few of the regulars at the bar nodded their heads in approval at her. And there was Park on the end of the bar, his face florid with whiskey and smug with whatever gossip he was spreading.
“Can I get a couple of beers with that?” he called after Gennie. “Thanks.”
Apparently, however she felt about him, it didn’t extend to his money. She pulled two pints and put them onto the bar—just in time for Nate to come out of the toilet, wiping his hands fastidiously on a paper towel. Flynn raised a hand to catch his attention and then pointed to the waiting beers.
Nate handed a tenner to Gennie, traded a minute of small talk, and then brought the beers over.
“Apparently I can do better,” Nate said, looking bemused. He handed a beer to Flynn, sat down, and frowned at his plate and the pile of lettuce topped with a crumble of cheese and chopped almonds. “What the hell?”
“You said whatever sounded good,” Flynn said. He unrolled the napkin to free his knife and fork. He’d gotten the chili and chips—Gennie’s specialty. A bubbling crust of cheese was slowly dissolving into the spicy stew. It coated over the macaroni shapes mixed in it and soaked into the chips. “Saladsoundedlike a good idea. Besides, it was cheap.”
“You’re meant to be the bad boyfriend, remember?” Nate said absently as he ground a generous coating of salt onto the plate. The lettuce wilted like a slug under the onslaught of sodium. He gave Flynn’s chips a longing look. “You should be encouraging me to eat onion rings and fried chicken.”
Flynn pointedly turned the plate around so Nate would have to stretch across the food to steal any chips. He speared one and used it to gesture with.
“Fuck that,” he said. “Apparently I’m using you for your connections, so I need to keep you alive and well for as long as possible.”
“I’m slightly offended that the assumption isn’t that you’re using me for my ass.” Nate prissily rolled a tomato out of his salad and positioned it on the edge of the plate. Apparently its fate was to watch the rest of the salad be consumed. The tines of the fork clicked against stoneware as Nate messed with the greens and glanced up at Flynn from under the flop of his bangs. “About what happened on Friday. It was—”
“It was fun,” Flynn said, because better to burst that bubble himself. “And it was adrenaline. That pretty much covers it, doesn’t it?”
He ate the chip. It was still half-frozen in the middle. He grimaced and glanced sourly toward Gennie, who was behind the bar, industriously occupied with cleaning pint glasses. When he glanced back at Nate, he caught the tail end of a fleeting expression as it slid off his mobile face. It might have been disagreement, or even regret, but Flynn wasn’t overthinking things any more.
“Yes, I guess it does,” Nate said. “Although it wasn’t just adrenaline.”
“No?”
