Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. They are the property of Pixelberry; I am merely borrowing them to play with for a bit.
Dedicated to Debra. I hope this lives up to your need for Flynn angst
Good Enough
Unlocking the door to his tiny above garage apartment, Flynn didn’t bother flipping on the light. There was no point. The apartment was nothing more than a kitchenette, a bathroom, and a living area that also doubled as a bedroom. He didn’t need the lights on to remind him of how shabby the place was. He’d fixed it up the best he could by painting the walls and keeping it clean, but paint and Pinesol wouldn’t turn it into the show place Grant Emerson called home. It shouldn’t bother him that Lucy was currently at Emerson’s mini mansion having dinner; he’d been invited to attend the little impromptu get together to celebrate Kate being cleared of Tanner’s murder but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to go. He didn’t fit into that world and, if he were being honest, Lucy didn’t fit into his. He’d been foolish to think there could be anything between them other than helping his sister and seeing her laughing so easily with Grant, touching his arm, had been a cold, hard reminder that she was out of his league. Girls like Lucy might slum around with guys like Flynn in the heat of the moment but they settled down with guys like Grant.
Flynn carefully hung his keys on the little plaque with hooks that hung above the light switch before walking across the room to the bathroom. With only the light from the little nightlight he kept plugged in by the sink, he pulled back the plain blue plastic curtain and turned on the shower. While the water warmed, he shrugged out of the button down shirt he had worn to court and tossed it into the laundry bag that hung on the bathroom door. Bending his head slightly, he unbuttoned his slacks and stared to pull down the zipper only to pause when he heard a tentative knock on the door. His brow furrowed as whomever was on his stoop knocked again, a little harder this time. “I know you’re home,” Lucy called through the thin wooden door. “Your bike is parked under the stairs and I can hear you moving around.” There was a pause, while she presumably waited for him to respond. When he didn’t, she continued. “I’m not going anywhere. So, unless you want your neighbors talking about the girl sleeping on your stoop, you should probably open the door.”
He bit back a smile as he unlocked the door. Lucy would do it. Nevermind the storm that was brewing outside, Lucy was just stubborn enough to plop down on his stoop and curl up against the door until he relented. “Shouldn’t you be at Grant’s,” he said in place of a greeting, his bright blue eyes hungrily taking her in. Her light blonde hair was pulled up in some sort of fancy ponytail and the olive green dress she wore, while conservative enough, showed off her creamy skin to perfection. God, she was so beautiful it hurt to look at her. “Sure, come on in,” Flynn joked as she ignored the comment about being at Grant’s and brushed past him.
“Shouldn’t you have been at Grant’s,” she tossed back, crossing her arms over her chest, the action drawing her breasts together and deepening her cleavage.
Taking a deep breath, Flynn reached from the light switch and flipped it on. He quickly glanced around, looking for anything that might be out of place. No dishes in the tiny sink or on the butcher block counters. No stray DVDs or books lying around. Bed meticulously made. Everything was in place. He let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. It might no be much, but should Lucy choose to pay attention, it was spotless and in order. “I went,” he answered defensively, when she kept staring at him, expecting an answer.
“For five minutes,” Lucy snapped. “Why did you leave?”
“Not really my scene,” he answered simply. How many times did he have to tell her that he didn’t have any place in that world, that he didn’t want a place in that world? The Emerson family, Grant in particular, might be slightly nicer than the Sterling clan but they were still Birchport elite while Flynn was the son of a drunken Irish dockworker and had a record that prevented him from ever being more than a mere dockworker himself.
“It wasn’t about you,” Lucy pointed out, the apples of her cheeks flushing a bit. “It was about Kate and how Grant cleared her name. You remember Kate, right?” She dropped her arms to her sides, the fingers of her left hand tapping against her bare thigh while her foot bounced. “You should have stuck around. You should have seen how hurt Kate was when you left.” It was unfortunate that Kate had taken him early departure so personally, but he would set things right with her later when they met for drinks. “It wasn’t really a celebration without you.”
There was something in her voice that caught him off guard; an emotion he was familiar with but had never had directed at him. It constricted his heart, made him question if putting distance between himself and Lucy was the right thing. It is, he told himself. She deserves better. And that was why he said it. “Kate and I will celebrate on our own.”
Lucy’s lips parted slightly, her brow knitting together as she stared at him intently. “On your own,” she repeated. “Just the two of you?” It was a question, one that accompanied by a glimmer of hope and pleading in her eyes.
“Just the two of us,” he forced himself to confirm. The hope shattered right in front of her, replaced by hurt and confusion. It was like a sucker punch to Flynn’s gut. He wanted to take the words back, to tell her that she had heard him wrong, that when he’d said ‘the two of us’ he had meant Flynn and Lucy. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t trap her in his dead end life. Lucy deserved so much more than a guy who barely made rent on a run down apartment over a garage and struggled to find a job willing to look past his record.
“I just thought…” Lucy stared at him, baffled. He had to look away. He couldn’t stand seeing her hurt, but it was better she hurt now than grow to resent him for dragging her down with his stagnant life. “I…I thought we…” She tipped her head to the side, her eyes pleading with him. “I thought we had something,” she finally managed to say.
There had been something. There was something. In another life, one that a teenage mistake and the Sterlings didn’t exist, they could have been more than just Kate’s brother and college roommate. His life was what it was though. He couldn’t change it. No matter how much he loved Lucy or she loved him, eventually his inability to ‘do something’ with his life would tear them apart. “We had fun,” he managed to say. “Kate’s safe now. Don’t make it into something more than it was.” The lie rolled off his tongue so easily. Each word was like a knife to his heart though. When she shattered a little bit more he had to tell himself he was doing this for her own good.
“Why are you doing this?” Her lower lip had started to tremble and there was no mistaking the glassy sheen that had filled her eyes.
“I told you-”
“No,” Lucy shook her head. “You’re lying.”
The fact that she seen through his lie about broke him. Why couldn’t she just take him at his word and leave like any other woman would have done? This was hard enough the way it was and he didn’t know if he had the strength to drive the point home, to show her that he meant business. “Don’t be that girl, Lucy,” he sighed.
“That girl?”
“Yeah. That girl. The one who thinks that just because she let a guy in her panties he-”
The slap was unexpected. Lucy had never seemed the violent type. Yet there was murder in her usually sweet gaze. At her sides, her fists flexed, as though she were contemplating slugging him next. “I don’t know why you’re doing this…why you’re pushing me away…but congratulations. You win.” She turned on the ball of her foot, her fingers visibly shaking as she reached for the door knob. She yanked open the door, the sound of rain filling the apartment. “Piece of advice,” she seethed, “the next time you accuse a girl of confusing sex with love you might want actually have sex with her.”
Watching her walk out that door, the rain instantly soaking her, was the hardest thing he had ever done. Harder than losing 6 years of his life because he’d been stupid enough to think he could put Bryce Sterling in his place. What other choice did he have? Lucy was an idealist. She dreamed up perfect scenarios and expected them to happen. Didn’t she realize there was no dreaming up a perfection scenario with a guy who had felony grand theft auto on their record? He wasn’t like her, or Kate for that matter, with her fancy college degree.
“What the hell Flynn?”
Kate’s voice snapped him out of his stupor. He blinked and found his younger sister standing in his doorway, her long red hair plastered to her cheeks. The anger in her eyes matched the storm that was raging outside. “Do you want to explain to me why I just seen my best friend in the whole world run past me crying?”
Ignoring her question, Flynn yanked her inside. He hesitated in the doorway, searching for a sign of Lucy’s rental car. It wasn’t there. She was gone. Squeezing his eyes shut, he balled up his fist and slammed it against the door jam. The pain that shot up his arm was nothing compared to the pain shredding his heart. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he warned when Kate stepped next to him. She quietly pushed the door shut and then steered him towards one of the two chair’s that occupied the space in front of the stand that housed his small television. He thought she was going to take the second one. Instead, she walked into the bathroom. A moment later the sound of his shower was silenced. He’d forgotten it was on.
“You don’t want to talk, that’s fine,” Kate told him when she finally sat in the chair adjacent to him. “I’ll talk and you can listen.” She kicked off her wet shoes, wrinkling her nose at the slight odor, and then tucked her legs up under her before shifting so she faced him. “I don’t know what you said or what you did…but you better fix it because you’re not going to do any better than Lucy.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Flynn snapped. “It wasn’t about me doing better. She…” He clamped his mouth shut. Kate wouldn’t understand. Yes, she had been to hell and back thanks to the Sterling family but none of that was going to hinder her future. She had the world before her, while he…he had a little garage apartment and odd jobs on the dock.
Understanding filled Kate’s eyes. Her head tipped slightly as she offered him a sad smile. “Oh Flynn, when are you going to stop thinking you know what’s best for the people who love you?” A single tear trickled down her cheek. “Don’t you realize that you…just you…is more than enough? That you are good enough?”
Clenching his jaw even tighter, Flynn stared at the scuffed wooden floor beneath the dress shoes he’d had since high school. Of the two of them, Kate had always been the romantic optimistic, looking at the world through rose colored glasses instead of facing reality. The world was full of endless possibilities if love was involved, that was how Kate looked at things. And where had that outlook gotten her? Heart broken. Cheated on. Drugged. Kid-knapped. Accused of a murder she didn’t commit. “Sort of like you were enough for Tanner and his family?”
“We’re not talking about me or what happened with Tanner and his family,” Kate reminded him gently. Another person would have taken the question was an offense, turned on him for what could be construed as a petty jab. Not his sister. She seen through his desperate attempt to change the course of their conversation. “The situation isn’t the same. At all.”
“I shouldn’t have-”
Kate shook her head, cutting him off. “It’s okay Flynn. I know you weren’t trying to hurt me.” She chewed her lower lip, her face full of unreadable emotions. “Do you remember when we were little? How we used to hide in the back shed when mom and dad were fighting?”
“Yeah.” Flynn felt his throat tightening at the memory. Their home had been a war zone in a constant state of yelling and fists flying. The run down shed behind the worn clapboard house they’d called home had been their sanctuary.
“We used to distract ourselves by imagining what it would be like if we had the perfect family.” Reaching up, she started toying with the ends of her flame colored hair. “We’d live in a little yellow house with a picket fence and lots of flowers. Mom would have finished her nursing degree and dad would have finally been able to get that fishing permit.” Her eyes met his. O’Malley blue, just like his own. “Lucy had that life,” she whispered. “She grew up in a little yellow house with a picket fence and rose bushes. Her mom’s a nurse and her dad’s the safety guy at some automotive plant. Average people, Flynn. What we could have been if our parents had gotten their shit together.”
“That doesn’t change my past, Katie.” One mistake and his whole life had been ruined. Getting back at Bryce by moving his car to another location had seemed like a grand idea to his eighteen year old self. Perfect retaliation for Bryce scratching up and denting the used Chevy Malibu he’d shared with his mom and Kate. Yeah, perfect. Perfect opportunity for the Sterling family to show the lower citizens of Birchport what happened when someone tried to get even with one of their precious princes. His entire life had been ruined while Bryce, who was bloated from too much alcohol and wasted money he didn’t earn, had every opportunity laid at his feet.
“Will you let go of your fucking past,” Kate cried. “I’m sick to death of hearing about how you can’t do this and you can’t do that because of your past, your past, your past!” She jumped to her feet, her cheeks flushing the same color as her hair. “The only people who care about that are you and this small minded town. If you were to move anywhere else you would be able to find a job.”
Anger shot through Flynn’s veins as each word spewed from his sister’s mouth hit him like a ton of bricks. “Right, its just so easy to pick up and move,” he snarled. Did she think that he hadn’t thought about going somewhere else? He had! Some nights it was all he thought about it. Picking up and leaving wasn’t as simple as packing a bag and driving until he ran out of gas. There were things to consider. “Where would I go, huh? Where would I stay? And if I did go…who would watch out for you?”
“Flynn,” she said quietly, “there’s nothing here. Not for either for us.” She took a deep breathe, letting it out slowly. “You should know, that when Lucy leaves…I’m going with her.”
“You’re leaving?” Shock radiated through Flynn as he stared at Kate, searching her face for some sign that she was kidding with him. She wasn’t. There was a stony determination etched across her pretty features that said more than her words. Kate was leaving, most likely never coming back.
“There’s nothing left for either one of us here,” Kate answered, her eyes silently pleading with him to understand. “Mom’s dead. Dad’s who knows where…certainly not in Birchport.” Her shoulders dramatically heave as she lets out a sigh and then forces him to meet her gaze. “Lucy loves you Flynn. Don’t throw that away over some misplaced sense of pride over your past. I know you, you were upfront about your past from the start. You probably didn’t even kiss her until after she knew the full details of what happened.” It was true. He hadn’t wanted to lead Lucy on, he had wanted her to know what she was getting into. “If it had mattered to her…even a little…she never would have started anything with you.”
“It’s too late,” Flynn said thickly as regret washed over him. Everything Kate was saying was true. How many times had Lucy told him that his past didn’t matter, that one mistake didn’t define him? She’d even offered to contact someone she used to work with in college who had gone on to be a lawyer; she’d been that certain that he had been the one wronged. She’d had no doubt about their ability to forge a future together. The doubt had been his. And now…now, despite what Kate said, it was too late.