“Please, daddy, my boypussy is too tight.”
I blinked at him.“What the fuck?”
The smile quirked, like he was resisting the urge to laugh.“Pro-tip, Oli.”He leaned in, close enough that a whisper was enough.“When you start watching porn, make sure your phone isn’t still connected to the Bluetooth speaker.”
It felt a whole lot like the bottom of my stomach fell out, while all the blood simultaneously drained from my body.Or, at least, something along those mortifying lines.I made to push past him, barely thinking of what my plan was, only that I had to grab the speaker and try - physics be damned - to shove the sound waves right back into it.As if it was one of those joke cans of peanuts, full of springy snakes.
Flynn caught me by the bicep, stopping me.“It’s okay, dude.I turned it off.”
Part of me wanted to yank my arm from his grip, but there were more pressing issues.
“H-how much...”
“Basically that one line,” he said, not needing me to finish my question.“Which was a pretty unexpected segue from Nat King Cole, I gotta say.But I hit the mute button fast.”
I blinked at him.Some part of my brain - the shellshocked part maybe, though that encompassed a whole lot of it - was trying to remember where Flynn had been sitting in relation to the speaker.Trying to picture his reaction, as the audio I’d thought was muted but which must’ve instead been simply rerouted to the living room, suddenly began blaring out.
“Did...did they...”
Oh god, it was too awful to even put into words, much less think about.
Again, though, Flynn didn’t seem to need the full sentence.“Thankfully, I guess your parents know as little about current music as mine do.I told them it was some of that ‘new fangled rap,’ and they seemed to buy it.”
I sagged, suddenly thankful for his hold on me.Otherwise it would’ve been a graceless slump against the doorframe.
Flynn eased me back, shutting the door behind him with a nudge from his foot.Deposited me, mostly gently, onto the edge of the bed.
I braced myself for his mockery.
My friends knew I was gay, because I wasn’t entirely delusional: not so uptight, nor paranoid, that I felt like I could survive the mental anguish of being completely closeted.That didn’t mean my parents needed to hear the truth, however, and that put an end to anybody else in town knowing.Because I was sure as shit that almost nobody here could keep a secret worth a damn.
“Did you run track?”
I looked up, in surprise.Flynn seemed engrossed by the array of dusty ribbons and silly little tin medals that still dangled from my bookshelf.They’d been there so long, I’d stopped even really seeing them.
“Uh, yeah.For a couple of years, anyway.”
He nodded without turning.“You must’ve been pretty good?”
I shrugged, even though he couldn’t see me.“I was okay.”
He took a side-step along, like he was at a museum.“Do you only read science-fiction?”
“I switched to ebooks,” I explained.
Another slow nod, like he was engrossed.“Yeah, so much easier.”
“Right.”
It was a special kind of torture, this casual digging through the boring minutiae of my old life.High school awards, and battered paperbacks, and tchotchkes that you kept because you thought you’d always cherish the memory they represented.
The human mind was callous, I’d realized, though.It jettisoned the memories themselves and just left the nostalgia behind.A row of plastic junk on your shelf, that some part of your lizard brain insisted had sentimental value.
I shook my head, refusing to get distracted.
“Aren’t you gonna ask me about...”I started.
“I don’t care, Oli,” Flynn interrupted.Voice still casual, unperturbed.As though he really was more curious about the little dinosaur figurine he plucked up and turned in his fingers, not the sexuality I’d just clumsily revealed.He glanced over his shoulder.“Unless you desperately want to discuss your tastes in porn?”