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Seven
The rain fell on a cool fifty-degree day that the weatherman said felt more like thirty-seven degrees. No matter. Sabrina had convinced Flynn to start his hiatus Monday—today—and she was determined to both pry her best friend out of his shell and enjoy herself.
They started with breakfast, tucking into a small table for two near the window where they could watch the foot traffic pass by. She ordered a cappuccino and orange juice and a glass of water.
“Like you, I usually drink my breakfast,” Flynn said after ordering coffee for himself. He could give her all the hell she wanted so long as he was here with her.
When their drinks arrived, she resumed her sermon from the ride over about how he needed time off. “It’ll take you a while to get used to relaxing.”
“I’m relaxed.” His mouth pulled to the side in frustration and he lifted his steaming coffee mug to his lips.
“Yes. With your shoulders clinging to your earlobes and that Grouchy Smurf expression on your face, you’re very convincing.”
He forcefully dropped his shoulders and eased his eyebrows from their home at the center of his forehead.
“It’s okay to admit you have emotions to deal with. It’s okay to talk about your father. Or Veronica and Julian—or either of them apart from the other.”
“How can I talk about them apart from the other if they’re never apart?”
Sabrina stirred her cappuccino before taking a warm, frothy sip. As carefully as if she were disarming a bomb, she asked a question that pained her to the core.
“Do you miss her?”
He took a breath and leaned on the table, his arms folded. Huddled close over the small table for two, he pegged her with honest blue eyes. “No. I don’t.”
That pause had made her nervous for a second. Her chest expanded as she took a deep breath of her own. Then she pulled her own shoulders out from under her ears. Sabrina was there for Flynn’s engagement and the wedding and the aftermath. She knew what Flynn was like dating Veronica, being betrothed to Veronica and then married to her. Sabrina had watched the evolution—the devolution—of him throughout the process. It broke her heart to watch him be used up and discarded.
“I don’t miss her either.”
He returned her smirk with a soft smile of his own.
“She never liked me.”
“She did so.” His low baritone skittered along her nerve endings, that inconvenient awareness kicking up like dust in a windstorm.
“You don’t have to lie to me now. It’s not like she’s sitting here. She tolerated me because you and I were friends and we share a birthday and because I’m too loyal to leave you.”
“I wouldn’t sweat it. She’s clearly not stable since she’s with Julian.” He let out a small breath of a laugh and she clung to it. She’d love to hear Flynn laugh like he used to, big and bold. Watch how it crinkled his eyes. She loved so many aspects about him, but his laugh was at the top of her list.
“It’s fitting to be out with you on Valentine’s Day,” she told him. “You might be the only guy in my life aside from Luke who I’ve cared about consistently.”
“Never ruin a friendship with dating, right?”
“Right.” She smiled but then it faded. “We were never tempted to date, were we?”
Mug lifted, he sent her a Reid-worthy wink. “Not until today.”
“It recently occurred to me that we were always dating someone other than each other. Do you think that was why we never dated, or were we just too smart to get involved?”
“We weren’t always dating other people. I had long stints of being single.”
“Yes, but they never coincided with my stints of being single.” She was right about this. She knew it. “Go through your list.”
“My list?”
“The list of girls you dated from your college freshman year through now.”
“How am I supposed to remember that?” He swiped his jaw, and his stubble made a scratchy sound on his palm, reminding her of when she touched his face last week. She shifted in her seat and shut out the strange observation.
