Flynn laughed.“What?”
“I thought, maybe...well, on one of the apps, y’know.”
“Come on, Oli.”He sounded genuinely amused, like the very suggestion of it was thoroughly ridiculous.“What the hell is there worth hooking up with around here?”
I wasn’t sure why I was so angry at his easy dismissal.Not when I’d been so scathing of the options for sex - never mind a relationship - where I lived, the paucity of choice.Married men cheating on their wives; the occasional trucker passing through, looking to get their dick sucked.It was pathetic, and lonely, and I hated it, and yet hearing Flynn disparage it so readily made my blood boil.
“Right, right, screw all these backwater yokels,” I snapped, angrily.“Guess you must be so excited, to get back to the big city where people are actually worth fucking.”
“Oli...”
I could hear the surprise in his voice, how taken aback he was by my sudden vitriol.
“Don’t worry about it, Flynn,” I interrupted, “I get it.You’ve slummed it back here, graced us with your sparkling presence for the holidays, and now it’s time to rejoin the real world.”
“Look, I didn’t mean...”
“I told you, don’t worry about it.”He’d have excuses, and apologies, and weasel-words to get around what he’d said, but I knew the truth.The things Flynn actually believed; that he spoke without needing to think about first.And I wasn’t much inclined to hear that.
“Oli.”There was a finality to his tone, as if he couldn’t quite believe that I wasn’t willing to listen.
Only I wasn’t.I’d heard enough.
“It’s fine, Flynn,” I told him, coldly.“Just shut up and let the yokel drive.”
Chapter Five
Forty minutes wentby in silence.Anger sustaining me, at first, and then frustration.At Flynn, for his rude opinions and the fact that I couldn’t exactly say I didn’t share many of them.At myself, for allowing him to get under my skin so effectively.For starting to think that there was any sliver of our old closeness left.
Frustration gave way to a gnawing misery, shadowed with a headache from concentrating on the barely-visible road ahead.The rain easing still, but the moonless night swamping the truck’s headlamps.Two blunted cones, meager in the face of nature’s indifference.
We were pulling down our parents’ street before he spoke again.
“Look, I’m sorry.”
I shook my head.I didn’t want to hear his apologies, or his justifications.The results of all the reflection he’d done, as he sat in his underwear alongside me.“It’s fine.You’d still be out there, if you waited for triple-A.”
