Текст книги "Reclaiming the Sand"

Автор книги: A. Meredith Walters

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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

“Give him his keys, Stu,” I demanded. Dania narrowed her eyes as she looked at me, her hand rubbing her belly absently.

“He can get ‘em if he wants ‘em,” Stu responded shortly.

I walked over and bent down to pick up the keys. When I stood up I held them out, letting them dangle from my fingers. Flynn slowly reached out and took them, careful not to touch me.

He didn’t say anything. And of course he never looked at me.

I had expected nothing less.

“Come on,” I barked. Shane looked confused, Dania looked irritated, and Stu looked downright murderous.

I hadn’t mocked or teased. I hadn’t belittled or bullied.

And I hadn’t been sucked in by his quiet, vulnerable demeanor that resurrected twinges of emotion I hadn’t felt in years.

I turned my back.

I walked away.

I guess there was a first time for everything.

-Ellie-

This felt wrong. I didn’t belong here in my cheap flip-flops held together by Scotch tape and carrying the same backpack that I had in high school.

I stood in the parking lot arguing with myself. One minute I was convinced that this was stupid and I should go home. The next minute I was channeling my inner cheerleader, chanting you can do it over and over again inside my head.

I looked at my watch. I only had five minutes to find my class. It would be so easy to let those five minutes tick by and forget all about my crazy, delusional fantasies of becoming Super Ellie, College Student.

“You look lost.”

I startled and gripped the strap of my book bag tightly against my shoulder.

“Excuse me?” I said shortly.

A girl with fly away brown hair and the worst sunburn I had ever seen pointed toward campus.

“You goin’ that way?” she asked, pulling out a cellphone and tapping at the keys.

“Yeah, I guess I am,” I admitted.

“First day?” she asked.

Was it that obvious that I had no clue what I was doing? I drew myself upright; straightening my spine as I always did when going into a situation I was unsure of. Be it a raging house party where a police bust seemed imminent. Or walking into the break yard my first day at Spadardo’s Juvenile Center, just knowing I’d get my ass jumped before the day was out.

So walking onto the too-pretty-to-be-in-Wellsburg college campus should be a piece of cake. Only I wasn’t feeling so sure of that. And I knew it was better to put out a confidence that I didn’t feel. It established a precedent. It showed people you couldn’t be messed with. That you were strong.

Even if you were being deafened by the voice in your head screaming in terror.

But I had a lot of practice at ignoring that voice. And I struggled to do that now as I faced an experience that left me quaking in my tattered flip-flops.

“I can find my way,” I responded, not wanting or needing her help. I had to face this alone, or not at all.

Sunburn cocked her head and leveled her own steely gaze in my direction.

“I’m sure you can,” she mused before tucking her phone back into her pocket.

“But just so you know, classes aren’t usually held in the parking lot. You’ll need to go to an actual building,” she mused.

I should smack the shit out of her. If I weren’t feeling so off balance, I would have. Who the hell did she think she was?

So I ignored her and walked toward the campus quad. I pulled out the slip of paper with the name and location of the class I was supposed to be taking.

It was a basic 101 English Lit class. I had always loved to read. When I was in juvie, it had been my only escape. I practically lived in their tiny, cramped library.

I had never been a very good student when I was in school, but that hadn’t been an indication of my intelligence. It was because I had never bothered to try. School had been a place to pass the time. Somewhere I could count on at least one warm meal and didn’t have to worry about avoiding my foster dad’s overly feely hands.

School had been safety. Security. It had offered me a way out.

And I had hated it. Every single moment of my time there, I had fought against it. I had focused on the wrong things. The wrong people. And I had paid the price for it.

Maybe this time could be different.

Maybe this time I could be different.

I walked with my teeth clenched and my hands curled into fists at my side. Like a soldier heading to the battlefield, I was ready for anything. I headed straight for the Dunlop building where my class was held. I didn’t pay any attention to the groups of students congregated outside. I wasn’t there to chitchat and make friends.

Though the truth was, I wasn’t sure what I was there for.

Inside the classroom, I found a desk towards the back, and I headed straight for it. I hoped to blend in with the wallpaper and avoid attention. The class was mostly comprised of kids just out of high school. They were noisy and annoying and I felt my jaw tick already.

Had I mentioned I wasn’t a people person with some major anger issues?

The professor breezed in a few minutes later and dropped a pile of papers on his desk. He was nondescript as far as people go. Bland facial features beneath boring brown hair. Perfectly groomed beard and blah wire rimmed glasses.

He was appropriately named Professor Smith. An uninteresting name for an uninteresting man.

We were given the syllabus and I looked it over, not recognizing any of the books on the list. I wanted to kick myself for not paying more attention in high school. But the books I tended to read were of the non-fiction variety. I loved reading biographies and true account stories. I enjoyed immersing myself in other people’s lives. Because they were usually a hell of a lot better than mine.

“Hello everyone! I’m Professor Smith. I’ve been teaching here at Black River Community College for ten years. I graduated with a Masters degree in English Literature from the University of Virginia…”

I tuned him out around that point. I could care less about his life history or what brought him to little ole Wellsburg. And looking around the room, I wasn’t alone in my complete and utter disinterest.

I stared out the window, already zoning out. Classrooms and teachers had an almost Pavlovian affect on me. Sitting in a desk had me mentally checking out in less than thirty seconds. So much for trying to change.

I only snapped out of when someone patted my arm. I wrenched backwards, startling the person who was trying to get my attention.

“Sorry, but we’re supposed to be getting into small groups to talk about what we’ve already read on the syllabus. Then we have to choose one and discuss the plot and themes,” a young girl with pretty red hair and an overly large mouth said nervously.

Okay, time to play contentious college student.

“Sure,” I muttered, picking up my book bag and moving my desk over to join the three other students who had already started talking amongst themselves.

“Hi, I’m Casey,” redheaded, big mouth said. Everyone nodded as though we cared what her name was.

“I’m Davis.” A skinny kid with big ears spoke up after Casey was finished introducing herself. What was it with this group and big body parts? Because the next guy, who said his name was Andrew had a nose as long as my arm. Well, not really, but you get the picture.

Now that the three of them had shared their names, they looked at me expectantly. I supposed this was my cue to play nice.

“Um, yeah. I’m Ellie,” I said, plastering my fakest smile on my face. I think my efforts were perhaps a bit over the top and my smile more closely resembled a psychotic grin, as I watched the slight recoil from my fellow students.

“Hi, Ellie!” Casey chirped, clearing her throat. Obviously she had deigned herself our unofficial group leader.

“Let’s have a look at the syllabus and then we can decide which one to focus on.” Casey cleared her throat again, which was really annoying.

I looked down at the list again, knowing I had nothing to contribute.

“Well, I’ve read the Margaret Atwood short story and the Milton stuff,” Davis piped up.

“Cool! I’ve read those as well in my high school AP class!” Casey enthused.

“I’ve read the Milton and the Keats poem,” Andrew offered.

And then they were looking at me.

“Uh…” I started, making a show of looking at the syllabus.

I must have taken too long because Casey started pointing to the different reading selections.

“Have you read the Atwood story?”

“No.”

“What about Milton? Have you ever read Paradise Lost?”

“No.”

You get the picture. Casey kept asking and I continued giving her my monosyllabic response. My face began to flush red the more it became apparent that I hadn’t read a thing on the list.

When Casey had gone through the entire syllabus, she gave me a puzzled look. “Haven’t you read anything?”

I understand that she most likely didn’t mean for this to sound as condescending as it did. She seemed like a nice, corn fed country girl with her pretty red hair and mouth the size of a football. But she had just royally peeved me off.

I crumpled the syllabus in my hand and leaned toward her. “No, Casey. I haven’t read anything,” I grit out.

Casey blinked a few times, clearly not understanding my aggression.

“Well, you have to have read something in high school. What about the Robert Frost poem? Everyone reads Robert Frost. It’s like sophomore stuff,” Casey said, again putting just enough arrogance in her voice to trigger my anger reflex. Andrew and Davis were keeping quiet. Too bad Miss Too Big Smile didn’t have their common sense.

I brought my fist down on my desk with a loud bang. The classroom went instantly silent. I was used to being the center of unwanted attention, so I didn’t even bat an eye about causing a scene.

“No, I haven’t read any of these stupid fucking stories on this stupid fucking list! While you were sitting in your nice little AP classes, my ass was in juvie, trying not to get raped by a gang of dykes with a thing for blonde girls!” I yelled. I grabbed my book bag and wrenched upwards out of my seat.

“Miss. Wait a minute! Miss!” Professor Smith called out as I slammed out his classroom.

I was breathing heavily by the time I walked back out onto the quad.

I knew there was more than anger bubbling up like acid in the pit of my stomach. I was embarrassed. Ashamed that in a room full of eighteen and nineteen year olds, I was the most ignorant person in the room. Sure I had my fair share of street smarts, but I could never compete in this setting.

This wasn’t a place where knowing how to hotwire a car and evade the police would get you far.

My skillset was limited and most times illegal.

But I wouldn’t feel sorry for myself.

I would just leave. Head home. Get something to eat before going to work and carrying on with the life that had been there this morning. And the day before. And the week before that.

This was a lesson learned. It had been an unrealistic hope. And the sooner it was dashed in the dirt the better.

I raised a hand I hadn’t realized was shaking and swept my hair off my face. My skin was flushed and hot to the touch. My mortification still blazing bright.

I took a deep breath and hoisted my book bag up on my shoulder.

And there he was.

Flynn walked down the sidewalk, his head down. Always down.

And then I was following him. I walked into the manicured grass, stepping over landscaped flowers as I pursued him.

I don’t know why I bothered. What did I hope to gain by stalking him across campus? But I kept going.

Perhaps I was looking for someone to focus my frustrations on and Flynn was a comfortable target.

Or maybe it was something else entirely.

My anger simmered. Just like it always did. It was my constant companion. I was a bitch with one hell of a chip on her shoulder. It’s what flavored my experiences and shadowed my thoughts. It’s what made me follow the man shuffling his feet ahead of me.

But the anger wasn’t the only thing I was feeling. There was something else. Something I had forgotten how to identify. It was a bubbling in my stomach. A fluttering of my heart behind my ribcage. A strange sort of anticipation.

And I had felt it before.

With Flynn.

He slipped into the side door of a building on the far side of campus. I entered the door behind him, staying far enough back that he wouldn’t notice me. Though I shouldn’t have worried. Flynn rarely noticed anything. He lived his life oblivious to everyone and everything around him. He had always been a person of single-minded focus.

Flynn entered the door at the end of the hallway and I hurried after him. A long window looked into a crowded art studio.

I could see a pottery kiln and several wheels. Easels lined the wall and tables were covered in a variety of art tools. I hung back and watched Flynn make his way to one of the tables containing a slab of dark grey clay.

He dropped down onto a stool and immediately picked up a long wooden stick with a metal tip. He bent down over the clay and started pulling it apart and remolding it. His hair fell down on either side of his face, his shoulders hunched as he worked.

I couldn’t see exactly what he was doing, but watching him like this was very familiar.

I could easily picture the way his hands stretched and shaped the clay in careful, precise movements even if I couldn’t clearly see it with my eyes. My mind took me back to a time when I had liked nothing better than to spend time with him while he worked. I was hit with déjà vu so powerful it shook me to my core.

Your face is pretty.

I want to draw it.

I like looking at you.

I shook my head. The space behind my eyes started to pound. I should leave. Go home. Forget about this horrible mistake of a day.

But I couldn’t move.

Flynn’s concentration was absolute. His hands swift and sure. The lump of clay forming into something else under his adept fingers.

Then he looked up. As if sensing I was there.

His eyes met mine.

Dark green. Deep and endless. Sucking me under.

I expected him to look away. He always looked away.

This time he didn’t.

The flutter in my chest progressed to violent spasms the longer we looked at each other. I had never stared into Flynn’s eyes for so long before.

I waited for him to start rubbing his hands. It was his tell. How I knew he was upset or angry or ready to detonate.

But he didn’t. And his eyes continued to hold mine.

I was finding it hard to breathe.

And then he lifted his hand in a tiny, little wave, acknowledging me.

I turned on my heel and hurried down the hallway, slamming through the door I had entered through and into the oppressive afternoon heat.

My feet never slowed as I headed back to my car. My fingernails digging into my palms as I fled.

My heart exploded in my chest in a million tiny fragments. All because of a glimpse of dark green eyes that I hadn’t realized I missed.

Not until now in the span of a moment I remembered the people we had once been.

In that flash of seconds I missed those people.

I missed him.

I missed me.

What was I going to do?

-Flynn-

Many years ago…

She’s so pretty.

I really like to look at her.

Her name is Ellie McCallum. That’s what the teacher calls her when he says the names every morning.

Her hair is blue today. Not purple like the first time I saw her.

I don’t like the blue. But I still like looking at her face. Even with the hoop in her lip and the piece of metal in her nose.

But she doesn’t like it when I look at her. She frowns at me a lot and calls me names. Her friends say nasty things to me when I leave class.

Last week a guy with a big nose took my lunch. I was really hungry. My mom made me my favorite chicken salad sandwich. It was my lunch, not theirs. I hate it when they’re mean to me.

It makes me really angry.

I yelled and told him to give it back. He laughed, though I didn’t think it was funny.

But he didn’t give it back.

And I was really hungry.

I ate a whole bag of potato chips when I got home.

“Stop looking at me, freak!”

Ellie is talking to me again. I was looking at the new ring in her nose. Why did she put it there? Her nose is pretty without it.

I point at the ring. “That’s ugly. You should take it out.”

Ellie touches her nose. I want to touch her nose. But I can’t.

I don’t like touching people.

But I want to touch her.

Ellie didn’t call me any more names. She turns around so I can’t look at her face anymore.

Her hair is all over my desk again. It upsets me.

I push it off with my pencil and then start to draw. I had been reading a book about the history of the Eiffel Tower last night. I can draw things after seeing them.

I would count the lines. I would measure the spaces. And then I would draw it.

I could draw anything.

I am drawing now. I will draw something for Ellie.

Maybe then she will be my friend.

When she is nice, I’ll give it to her.

I wait for her to look at me again so I can give it to her.

I keep the drawing.

“Freaky, Freaky Flynn!”

That’s what everyone calls me now. I know it is bad name. They say it before they do something that makes me angry.

The boy with the big nose is the worst. And the girl with the black hair that Ellie talks to a lot.

They took my notebook after school yesterday. They took my pictures of the Eiffel Tower and tore them up.

I yelled. I threw rocks at them. They laughed.

My mom had screamed at them when she came to take me home.

I had cried and Mom had tried to hug me.

I hit her.

Then she cried and I knew I had hurt her. She told me I shouldn’t do that. That I should talk about what makes me mad.

I didn’t say anything.

But I still liked looking at Ellie.

She had a pretty smile when she laughed. She liked to laugh when I yelled.

She laughed a lot.

The teacher tells me to work with Ellie for a paper in class.

Her hair is purple again. I like it more than the blue. But I still hate it.

“Why is your hair purple now?” I ask her.

“Why are you so weird?” she asks me.

“I’m not weird,” I said back.

“You’re a freak,” she said.

I don’t like that word. Freak. It makes me so mad I want to break my pencil.

I throw my book on the floor and start rubbing my hands. Fingers smoothing down over the back of my hand.

Up and down.

Over and over again.

Ellie looks at me and I can see her eyes are brown. Like my bedroom in Massachusetts.

I look down at my hands. I keep rubbing them. I don’t like to be looked at.

“Why do you do that?” she asks.

Up and down.

Over and over again.

“Why do you rub your hands?” she asks.

I don’t answer her. I rub harder.

Ellie picks up my notebook.

“Give that back!” I tell her. She ignores me.

“Did you draw these?” she asks, pointing to the picture of the Parthenon I had done a few minutes ago.

I stop rubbing my hands and take my notebook back. I don’t touch her.

I want to touch her.

I couldn’t.

“Yes,” I said, closing it.

“They’re really good,” she said. Her mouth stretching and doing something strange. It looks like a smile but not the one she usually wears. Not the one I see when I was yelling.

“What’s wrong with your face?” I ask her.

Ellie’s mouth stops stretching.

“You are such an asshole,” she said.

The teacher comes around then and Ellie asks to be move to another group.

I’ll give her a picture another day.

-Ellie-

Living in a small town really sucked sometimes. Well, most of the time, but some days were worse than others.

Particularly when you were trying to avoid someone.

Flynn was everywhere and nowhere.

I’d see him in places I hadn’t expected him to be but he’d never show himself when I was actually looking.

I could admit I was becoming slightly obsessed with knowing where he was and what he was doing.

I couldn’t sort out in my fucked up head why I was so fixated on him. My emotions were a jumbled mess. I resented Flynn Hendrick reappearing in the small, dreary world I inhabited as though he had a right to be there.

But his appearance did one thing. It snapped me out of my self-pitying funk.

So I returned to my English class. Professor Smith seemed surprised when I returned for the Thursday morning class but he didn’t bring up my abrupt and angry exit earlier in the week. Casey, Davis, and Andrew gave me shaky smiles but made sure to sit several desks away from me.

I tried to ignore the sideways glances I was given by the other students and I gloried in a small sense of accomplishment when I was able to swallow my angry retorts and not tell them to take a picture because it lasted longer.

I buried my nose in the textbook and lost myself in the dark, depressing world of Edgar Allen Poe. And I actually became excited when we were given our first essay topic on the use of fear in Poe’s short stories.

I found myself sitting in the library after class, reading through my assignment, writing notes in the margins. For the first time I felt like perhaps, just maybe, I could do this.

“How’s the class going?” the short, stocky woman with the flower print shirt and socks up to her knees asked as she sat across from me a week later.

I was sitting in Wellsburg’s only excuse for a coffee shop. And that was giving it a lot of credit. In reality, Darla’s Drink and Dine was a collection of four tables pushed into the corner of a thrift shop.

Darla, the owner, had a low-end commercial coffee machine and made fresh donuts every morning. It was her one saving grace. If it weren’t for those freaking donuts, she’d have no business at all.

I shrugged, dusting powdered sugar off my fingers. “It’s going,” I said. I was the queen of evasive. But the woman with shrewd eyes behind wire rimmed glasses was entirely too astute for my defensive tactics.

“You’re loving it,” Julie Waterman stated with a small smile after wiping a bead of coffee from her upper lip.

Julie Waterman was in her early forties but dressed like somebody’s grandma. She was pushy and in your face and exactly the type of person that drove me bat shit crazy. But I liked her. As much as I was capable of liking anyone.

She was the foster care worker who had been assigned my case when I was only six years old. She had been fresh out of college and was one of those idealistic, change the world types.

I remembered so little about my early childhood. Flashes of memories here and there. Most of what I remembered was ugly. Being taken out of my home after being found alone. I had been abandoned by my mother five days previously. I had been eating things out of the cabinet that I could reach and by the time police broke down the door, I was starving and dehydrated. Apparently, the school had alerted the authorities, saying they hadn’t seen me in a while and my mother hadn’t called me in sick.

I remembered the first horrible foster home I had lived in. There had been three older children who resented the sudden appearance of a young girl, who refused to talk. A shadow child who had been rendered mute by her experiences.

The eldest girl would pinch me when her mother wasn’t looking, leaving bruises on my pale skin. The boy, who was only a few years older than me, would lock me in closets. Sometimes for hours, until their mother would come looking for me.

My foster mother never asked why I was sat huddled in a closet with the door locked from the outside. She turned the other cheek when her three children spat in my food so I couldn’t eat my dinner. She ignored the names they called me under their breath. The nasty truths they’d throw at me when they thought she was out of hearing.

Your mom didn’t want you.

We don’t want you.

No one will ever love you.

Those were harsh words for a child to hear. Especially one who had already been to hell.

And I never said anything to anyone about the way they treated me. I kept it buried deep inside me. I never cried. I never screamed. I never spoke.

Mostly because I went almost an entire year without saying anything.

My words had failed me. I had nothing to say. So I kept silent, lost in the world inside my head.

But smashed in between those memories were those of a young social worker with kind eyes and a soft voice who refused to give up on me. Julie had been my one and only constant in a chaotic, out of control life. She tried really hard to make up for the shitty hand I had been dealt, but she could only do so much.

I had seen how much it hurt her when my foster families couldn’t handle me anymore and invariably sent me back. I knew it broke her heart each and every time she had to pick me up, sometimes in the middle of the night, and take me to yet another home that didn’t want me.

I remembered the way she bit down on her lip to stop the tears from falling as I curled into a ball on her backseat, my stuffed dog, Clyde, tucked beneath my shirt. She hadn’t wanted me to see the grief on her face. But I had. Even if my own grief had bled out of me a long time ago.

She had tried to turn my life around. She got me counseling. She tried to coax me into sitting through support groups. She insisted that I get evaluation after evaluation to determine what exactly was wrong with me. To get answers to why I was unable to connect with anyone or anything. To find out if what was broken inside me could ever be fixed.

When I was seven, some therapist diagnosed me with Reactive Attachment Disorder brought on by a lack of nurturing and my traumatic past. My label did nothing to make me any more loveable or easier to deal with.

Even armed with the understanding of what made me the way I was, my foster families were never equipped to handle the angry, violent girl who had invaded their homes.

So I would have to leave. I never settled. I never allowed myself to get comfortable. Because I knew it would be over soon enough. Even the nice ones never lasted long.

My life had been a series of temporary situations.

But Julie continued to try. I’d give her that.

And I could still see the disappointment on her face when I was carted off to juvie six years ago. Her tears were the only ones that fell.

So now, even though I had outgrown her services years ago, she still insisted on “touching base” with me every few months. And living in a small town, we ran into each other a lot more than that.

It wasn’t a coincidence that she stopped by on my shifts at JAC’s, even though she lived and worked across town.

And she, more than most people, knew when I was bullshitting and evading. She sipped on her coffee, a brown lock of hair flopping in her face.

“You do. I can tell. I’m so glad!” she enthused and I knew a grilling session was imminent.

I rolled my eyes but didn’t deny her statement. What was the point? She was right.

“Are you going to take any more classes?” Julie asked, dumping more sugar into her coffee.

“Let’s just take one day at a time, okay?” I said watching her over the rim of my tea mug.

Julie was saying something. Her mouth was moving but I didn’t hear the sounds coming out. Because at that moment the bell tinkled above the door and I nonchalantly lifted my eyes toward the momentary distraction.

And froze.

I swear to fucking god, was nowhere safe from Flynn Hendrick’s all too visible ghost?

He came inside, wiping sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. He walked slowly toward the cashier and then stopped, staring up at the menu boards. He stood there for at least five minutes, not noticing the fact that a line was forming behind him. He took his time. Deliberating carefully as though he were developing a plan for world peace as he stood there.

Finally he gave his order and then took out a wad of money from his pocket and meticulously laid it out on the counter, making sure to count out the exact amount so change wasn’t necessary.

I knew he was mumbling to himself, counting out loud, his fingers hovering above the coins. He would take as long as he needed to in order to get it right.

I knew this because I had seen him do it a hundred times before. I recognized his pattern and his routine as though I were watching a movie I had once memorized but had forgotten I knew so well.

“Ellie!” Julie snapped her fingers in front of my face, making me blink and forcing my eyes back to her.

“Did you hear anything I just said?” she asked me, smiling in bemusement. Only Julie Waterman could find my complete lack of manners endearing.

“Sorry, I’ve got to go.” I grabbed my bag and dropped some money on the table. I chanced a look at Flynn and saw that he was still counting out his money and the people behind him were getting angrier by the minute.

“Where are you going?” Julie asked, getting a concerned look on her face was reserved solely for me. She followed my not so subtle gaze to Flynn who had finally handed over his money and was tapping his fingers against the counter in a perfect, controlled rhythm.

That was new.

I had at one time been intimately familiar with his ticks. But this was one I hadn’t seen before.

But a lot can change in six years.

Julie frowned, the line between her eyebrows deepening and I watched her try to place the very good-looking, but extremely awkward man that had entirely too much of my attention.

“Is that?” Julie began but I cut her off.

I needed to get out of there before Flynn saw me. I didn’t want an exchange. I didn’t want any interaction. I desperately wanted to continue living my life the way it was before he had danced back into it.

We hadn’t shared a single word in the three weeks since he first came into JAC’s but already my world felt tight and restrictive. He took up too much space and I resented him for that.

“I’ve really got to go,” I said hurriedly, picking up my to go cup and giving Julie a frazzled smile and hurried toward the door.

Just as Flynn was heading in the same direction.

Smash. Crash.

Shit.

I had my mocha dripped down my front, plastering my shirt to my boobs. And I wasn’t wearing a bra. Great, now the entire coffee shop was getting a good, long look at my nipples.

“Sorry,” Flynn mumbled, holding his hands out as coffee dripped from his fingers. He hadn’t realized it was me yet and I wondered what the likelihood was that I could still make it out the door without him seeing me.

Slim to none.

“Ellie,” he said flatly, raising his head and meeting my eyes briefly before lowering them again.

“Flynn,” I said just as evenly. I pulled at the soaked material that was stuck to my skin. “Can you get me some napkins?” I asked, irritated that this moment I had been trying to avoid at all costs had happened in the most public and embarrassing way possible.