Page 20 of Kissing Flynn

I pull on a cute little green romper that doesn’t need a bra and twist my damp hair up into a bun at my nape. Maybe I should ask for a rain check and take a nap, instead. I need to be refreshed and ready for my meeting with Barnard later, and stressing over my errant thoughts about Flynn won’t help.

Before I can decide, though, there’s a knock on the door that connects my room to Flynn’s. Taking a deep breath, I swing it open, my mouth opening to tell him I’ve decided to stay in for the rest of the morning.

My mouth snaps shut, though, when I see him looking like a snack, one shoulder wedged against the doorjamb and his arms crossed over his faded, vintage t-shirt. His hair is damp, and one dimple makes an appearance as he smiles and asks if I’m ready.

“I’m ready,” pops out of my mouth before I can stop it, and his smile widens, revealing a second dimple on the other cheek.

Oh, shit. This is not good. Not good at all.

Fourteen

Flynn

Do not imagine what’s underneath that romper. Do not imagine what’s underneath that romper.

Or what isn’t, for that matter. A single, unavoidable glance down her body tells me she’s not wearing a bra, and while it shouldn’t affect me in the least, it does, in fact, affect me.

“Oh, slushies.”

Her delighted exclamation snaps me out of my thoughts, and I can’t help but grin when she skips forward, stops in front of the slushy machine set up in the foyer, and turns back to me with a wide, unfettered smile.

And just like that, I’m transported into the past. Max’s tongue red from a cherry slushy while Milo and I chose blue raspberry. Taking our drinks down to the beach and watching the surfers ride waves while we talked about our day-to-day lives. And afterward, Milo and I grabbing pizzas and taking them back to our room, where Max met us with cheap wine and Twinkies for dessert.

Laughing our asses off at raunchy comedy movies.

Silent study sessions where I watched Max’s brow wrinkle in the cutest possible way whenever something stumped her.

Max hilariously narrating the video game battles Milo and I would engage in, squeezed between us on the couch with our thighs pressed firmly together.

“Blue, right?” Max asks, saving me from falling down a bottomless well of memories.

“Always,” I say with a smile, and she returns it before pouring me a drink. “And red for you.”

“Good memory,” she says like she expected me to somehow forget anything about her.

Impossible.

Drinks in hand, we head for the library. Once inside, we both marvel over the sheer number of shelves and books, but in the end, we decide an empty library isn’t what we’re looking for right now. Leaving the room, we go in search of the theater.

“This proves a bit more promising,” I whisper when we walk inside.

Peter Edgewater––the other biographer in attendance––is seated near the front with James Griffin, who’s authored a few popular war novels. They’ve just started a comedy, and Max gives me an eager nod before slipping into the back row of reclining theater chairs. Handing her my drink, I head over to the popcorn machine in the back and fill up a bucket for us to share.

When I slide into the chair beside Max, and she takes the popcorn while handing my slushy back to me, I feel myself tense up a bit. It’s dark in here. We’re cozied up together, sharing popcorn.

It feels like a romantic date.

Shit. I can’t think like that. It’s definitely not a date. We’re just two quasi-friends enjoying a movie together. Nothing more.

I try to relax and reach over to grab some popcorn, and of course, Max reaches into the bucket at the same time and our fingers touch. Somehow, I refrain from jerking away, and so does she. We both just carry on like it didn’t happen at all, and when Max laughs at something happening in the movie like she hasn’t a care in the world, I wonder if she didn’t even realize we touched.

Or if she did, it didn’t affect her in the least.

I don’t know which would make me feel worse.

This is getting ridiculous. It’s like the last five years never happened, and I’m that twenty-two year old guy who’s smitten with one of his best friends. And she was.

Even though Milo was technically my best friend, Max was right there with him. And it was because of my close relationship to both of them that I never would have acted on my growing feelings for her if she hadn’t initiated it, herself.

---