“I’ll ask but I know she’ll say ‘don’t bring a thing but yourself’.”
I laugh over Flynn’s impersonation of his mom’s Irish accent. “In that case, don’t bother asking and I’ll just bring something. Maybe a pie.”
“You can cook?” Flynn asks with astonishment.
“Of course I can cook,” I tell him with indignation.
“Then how come all we ever have is pizza or bologna sandwiches when it’s your turn to cook?”
“Just because I can cook, doesn’t mean I want to. This is the twenty-first century pal... get with the times. Women have shed the chains of slavery and we no longer serve you menfolk.”
Flynn throws his head back and starts howling with laughter, then he pitches forward, holding the hand with Capone’s leash to his stomach while he laughs, with the other holding onto his hot cocoa. It’s infectious and I start laughing along with him.
He looks at me and our eyes meet.
Then it happens... there is almost a crackle in the air, like electricity is flowing between us. Flynn’s laughter immediately dies away and the smile slides from my face. The same happens to me and nothing is left in our expressions except a focused intensity on each other. It’s almost as if I can feel heat swirling all around us, and the backdrop of the world fades to black.
Until nothing is left but just Flynn and me.
I call it “The Happening” and it represents those few times when the resolve to just be friends seems to melt away into oblivion. It occurs at the weirdest of times and I have no control over it. When I’m in that moment with Flynn, I want nothing more than for him to grab me and kiss me like I was the oxygen his lungs crave. I want to strip him bare and use just my fingertips to trace every inch of skin on his body. I want to get lost... deeply lost, in Flynn.
“The Happening” hits Flynn just as hard as it hits me. I see the desire light him up from within. I feel the sexual tension pouring off him with visceral awareness, and I swear I can feel his heart moaning for me.
When “The Happening” occurs, I am powerless to fight it. In fact, if Flynn ever made a move to touch me during the event, I would completely submit to him body and soul. But thankfully, Flynn is a stronger person than I am, and he is clearly the more responsible of the two of us. He’ll usually snap out of it first, and bring me crashing back to reality.
Like he does right at this moment.
Reaching out with his hand, he tweaks my nose. “You’re adorable when you start spouting your feminist viewpoints.”
I blink my eyes hard, still a little under his spell, and offer him a smile. He gives me one back that is sad and understanding all at once. To lighten the mood, he takes my hand, tucks it into the crook of his arm, and starts walking again. My feet have no choice but to move and keep up with him. He starts chattering about his Fantasy Football League... something innocuous that will make my mind... my heart... my body, forget about “The Happening”.
He is always looking out for me.
My heart swells up, huge and pulsing, with Technicolor love for him.
Yes... I love Flynn. He is my dearest friend in all the world.
And I will have to be satisfied with that.
“Whatcha doing?” Flynn asks as he plops down on the couch beside me. I have his laptop open and he leans in to look at the screen. It never even occurs to me to hide what I’m doing so I turn it a little so he can see it better.
“I’m doing a torture session.”
He just looks at me with one eyebrow raised.
Turning the laptop back toward me so I can type, I enter in new search terms, and when the results are displayed, I turn the screen toward him. I watch as he skims his eyes down the screen, and I notice how long and thick his lashes are from this angle. Why I never noticed it before is beyond me.
“Who’s John Cleeden?”
I click on the article about the charity donation and when the picture appears, I point at it. “Meet my mom and dad.”
Flynn’s head snaps toward me and his eyes are soft as he holds my gaze. I give him a quick smile and point back toward the screen.
He reads the entire article and then looks back to me. “John and Susan Cleeden? Where does Page come from?”
“Rowan Page isn’t my real name. It’s Anne Marie Cleeden.”
“You’re kidding?”
“Nope.”
He surveys me closely and even runs his eyes down my body. I can’t help the tingle of awareness that his gaze brings upon me, even though his look isn’t sexual at all. “You don’t look like an Anne Marie,” he muses.
“And I’m not. My name is Rowan Page now.”
“When did you change it?”
“The minute I stepped on the bus that brought me to New York.”
“But when did you change it legally?”
“I haven’t... never needed to.”
“Seriously?”
“Yup.”
“How do you get anything done? You don’t have a social security number. How do you pay taxes? Or rent an apartment? Have a bank account? How do you even get a driver’s license for that matter?”
I’m so enjoying this. The look on Flynn’s face is a mixture of comedic horror and respect. “Well... I’ve never paid taxes as I’m always paid in cash, including by your dear cousin, Nix. I’ve never had to sign an apartment lease because the lease has never been in my name and I’ve never needed a bank account because I’ve always paid my roommates just my share of expenses. Oh, and I don’t have a driver’s license.”
“You don’t have a driver’s license?” he asks in disbelief.
“I don’t have a driver’s license... at least not in Rowan Page’s name,” I confirm.
“But... you drive my car.” He cracks me up because he actually sounds a little affronted.
“Lighten up, serious sally. I haven’t been caught, have I? Besides... I technically have a valid Texas license. I just think I may have been required to get a New York license after I moved here.”
I shrug my shoulders. Oh, well.
“Criminal!” he accuses me with a pointing finger. “I’m living with a criminal.”
I start laughing and assure him with concession, “I know... I really do need to get it done legally at some point. I even got my birth certificate last year just for that reason. I just never got around to doing it.”
Flynn is shaking his head in disbelief and wonder. “You are unbelievable, do you know that?”
I close the laptop and lay it on the coffee table. Curling my feet up underneath of me, I turn to face him. “Is that a good unbelievable or a bad unbelievable?”
“It’s a good unbelievable. A crazy, wonderful unbelievable. You’re not exactly the most law-abiding citizen, but you are amazingly inconceivable and I love that about you.”
The blood in my veins sings out with happiness over Flynn’s compliment. My heart does a mad dance that he used the “L” word. Peace settles in my heart that I don’t have to fight for his attention. That he finds true interest in me, and he likes what he sees.
I know I’m not perfect, and I know I’ve done things that aren’t admirable in the past, but I try to do good. I try to live my life without intentionally hurting others. It would be natural to expect some people to look at me with some measure of disgust because I haven’t paid taxes, or because I drive without a license.
But not Flynn. He doesn’t admire that behavior but he does admire and like the way I have survived. I’m finally getting validation from someone that I am more than what my father ever believed I would amount to.
Flynn is staring at me with genuine affection twinkling in his eyes. I want to reach my hand out and ruffle his hair with my fingers, trail them down his temple and feel the scruff of his beard along my nerve endings.