For some reason, his words made me flush in embarrassment. His memory sounded about right. I had had very little patience for Flynn’s idiosyncrasies in the beginning of our acquaintance. He had irritated me and thrown me off balance and I had reacted in the only way I had ever been able to…with nastiness.

“How the hell to do you remember stuff like that?” I bit out, flustered. Flynn shrugged but didn’t bother to answer. The door opened behind his back and a woman shoved passed us as we blocked the entrance. She harrumphed under her breath with an irritated expelling of breath.

“Is there a problem?” I asked coldly and the woman’s eyes widened for a moment before scurrying off toward the counter. I had that affect on people.

I turned back to Flynn who had finally lifted his eyes and watched me steadily. He stared at me as though he were studying me. His intense gaze had always made me uncomfortable. I had never been sure how to handle his intense scrutiny and I didn’t know how to handle it now.

I turned my face away, breaking our eye contact. Flynn Hendrick was the only person to ever make me back away. I never hid or ran from conflict. I faced things head on and bulldozed my way through them with an aggressive and self-destructive force.

But Flynn made me retreat.

“I’ve seen you at the community college. Do you go there?” Flynn asked, his voice hovering and halting as he spoke. His inflections were typically off.

“Yeah. I do,” I told him, not offering details.

Flynn frowned. Fine lines at the corner of his eyes crinkled his skin and I found myself watching his face in fascination. I had always found his reactions to be different and oddly interesting. And while he had clearly schooled himself on appropriate emotions over the years, he still came across as stilted and awkward.

“I saw you outside my studio. You were watching me.” I flushed again and this time with mortification. I didn’t know how to respond to his forthright observation but I also felt relief that he wasn’t aware of how often I had looked for him in the past few weeks.

“So?” I mumbled, eyeing the door behind his back, ready to make my quick getaway.

“You used to do that a lot. Watch me draw. I liked it,” Flynn said, his lips turning up into a small smile. He didn’t know how to be anything but honest and not for the first time, I found that refreshing.

“Yeah I did,” I admitted, trying to control the twitch in my lips that threatened to curve up into a full-blown smile.

“You can come by and watch me. It would be nice. That way you can look without standing in the hallway,” Flynn suggested and I grimaced.

“It was just the one time. I saw you and was curious about what you were doing there. That’s it,” I lied, shuffling my weight from one leg to the other. I was aware that we were standing in the middle of the coffee shop and were obviously the most interesting thing these people had seen for quite a while. And no amount of glares would make them look away.

“I use the art studio three times a week. I couldn’t bring a lot of my supplies with me so I’m using their kiln,” he said as though that explained anything.

“Okay,” I replied. I wanted to ask him why he had moved back. I had thought that out of all the places in the world he could live, Wellsburg, West Virginia would be the last place he’d end up.

I wanted to know about his art and what he was working on. I was curious about what he had done with his life in the six years since I had seen him last. I wanted to know if he hated me and blamed me as I suspected he did.

But I didn’t ask any of those things. I could never give voice to the fascination that I always had for Freaky Flynn Hendrick. I couldn’t acknowledge in any way that he intrigued me. Or that standing in front of him after all this time reminded me of things I was only too happy to leave in the past.

“I could get you another coffee,” Flynn said suddenly, startling me out of my thoughts. His habit of changing topics was just as disconcerting as it always was. I needed to take notes if I was hoping to keep up with him.

I looked down at my brown stained shirt and shook my head. “That’s all right. I think I’ve had my fill of coffee for one day,” I told him dryly.

Anyone else would have looked ashamed for dumping coffee on an innocent person. Anyone else would have picked up on my irritation and overall discomfort and not pressed for further conversation. But Flynn wasn’t like anyone else. He was clueless and socially maladjusted and right now he was being a huge pain in my ass.

“You like your coffee. I’ll get you another one. Or here, take mine,” he insisted holding out his to go cup and I crunched my teeth together hard enough to break enamel.

“I don’t want a fucking coffee, Flynn! So back off!” My voice rose. The whispering in the coffee shop went up a notch.

Flynn cocked his head to one side, his hair obscuring his eyes. “You’re mad,” he deduced.

“I’m not mad. I just don’t want any damn coffee. Look, this has been swell, but I’ve got to get to work.” I moved around him, careful not to brush against him.

“I’d like it if you could come by the studio and sit with me sometime,” he said before I could leave.

I should have left it. I should have ignored him and kept on moving. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I had to end this before I allowed anything resembling friendship to infiltrate our non-relationship. I was not going to repeat past mistakes.

I pivoted on my foot and turned to face him again. His eyes met mine and then skittered away nervously.

“Why would I do that, Flynn?” I demanded. He didn’t say anything. But I pressed on, making sure I communicated exactly what I needed him to hear.

“Why would I want to spend time with you? It’s been six years since I’ve seen you and truthfully I could have gone another six quite easily.” My heart slammed into my ribcage and I felt a strange twisting in my gut as I threw my words at him like knives.

He didn’t look at me. He stared resolutely at the floor and I wasn’t entirely sure he heard me at all. He closed in on himself and that annoying twinge manifested as guilt.

I let out a frustrated breath and turned around, my back to Flynn and pushed through the coffee shop door and out into the humid, August heat.

I stood there a moment, looking up and down the quiet and desolate street, my chest painfully tight.

I wanted to look over my shoulder, back into the coffee shop. The urge to turn around was overwhelming. But I wouldn’t let myself. I denied myself the right to look again on the man I had just torn down as easily as I had done six years ago.

But it was for the best.

If there was one thing I knew it was that Flynn and I only brought each other pain.

And I had learned that the past was best left behind us.

-Ellie-

I was drunk.

I had just lost the contents of my stomach along the side of Shane’s Chevy Challenger, which stopped all efforts on his part to put his hands down my pants.

“Fucking hell, Ellie!” he screamed, pulling the over on the side of the backcountry road to have a look at the damage.

“You pinstriped his car, Ells!” Dania cackled from the back seat. The sweet smell of the joint between her lips wafted my way and I waved the smoke out of my face. My throat started to constrict and mouth began to water.

I was going to puke again.

I shoved the passenger side door open and collapsed on my knees as I heaved again. My head was pounding and my stomach clenched in a vice. Why had I agreed to a shoot out with Stu? Why had I thought it a good idea to slam back six shots of Evan Williams?

I collapsed into the gravel, my face an inch from the pile of vomit I had just expelled.