Flynn

I’d probably doubled in size since I was ten—maybe, I dunno the math on that—but pulling myself up by the hanging bars and swinging my body felt surprisingly familiar. There’d been this brief flash of time in my life where this’d been my obsession, the thing I’d decided I was going to do with my life. Be a gymnast and, like, go win a medal at the Olympics or something. Was gymnastics even an Olympic sport? That wasn’t the kind of thing you worried about when you were ten.

But none of that had lasted all that long, and I’d learnt… well, I’d learnt a lot of things, all at once, but the thing I’d learnt about my gymnastics dream was that doing that whole when I grow up thing was stupid. Life would never be what you planned for it to be, so if you wanted to get any good out of it, you had to make the most of whatever was right in front of you.

Which was exactly what I was doing today, because I knew damn well that my chances of having a future in this house were non-existent. That didn’t mean I couldn’t pretend I thought I might get to live here and check out a hot guy, enjoy some ice water, and play on these hanging bars.

And would you look at that: two hot guys. Cameron, who’d been showing me around, was clean-shaven with a swoop of dark brown hair that seemed to rest in the perfect position on top of his head in a way mine just wasn’t capable of. His dark blue eyes held a smile in them even when there wasn’t one on his face—the kind that was deep and calm.

He was almost as tall as I was, and this new guy, Justin, was a match for his height. Dark stubble covered his jaw, but it wasn’t like how mine got when I was too lazy to shave. His was shaped around the edges and drew attention to the line of his jaw. He was the opposite of Cameron, in a way—there was a smile on his lips, but his dark eyes probed into me. I dropped down from the hanging rings and brushed my hands off on my shorts like a kid expecting a scolding.

“Flynn, Justin. Justin, Flynn,” Cameron said, waving a hand between us. “Flynn wanted to see the garden. He works at a nursery.”

I lifted my hand in an awkward wave, then aborted it into a handshake when Justin reached out. I kept my hand loose and let him do the squeezing. I didn’t know much about handshakes, but I figured that was about the equivalent of one dog showing another its belly.

“How do you like the place?” Justin asked.

“Oh, yeah, it’s really nice,” I said, suddenly absolutely sure that it was obvious I could never afford the rent here and I was just dicking them around because I was bored. “I like the, uh. The clock.”

Justin’s eyebrows lifted. He sent Cameron a quizzical glance.

“The grandfather clock,” Cameron explained. “He was admiring it earlier.”

“You like that sort of thing?” Justin asked.

It felt like a challenge. I was all for lying where lying worked, but sometimes the best thing for it was complete honesty. “I don’t really know much about that sort of thing, but I like other people liking things, y’know? I was never that great at school, but, like, my friend Ethan, he works at the nursery with me, and he’s really into plants. It’s easier to learn all that stuff when he tells me because he’s so into it.”

And because, let’s be real, I still kind of had a crush on him. But I had a crush on Rue too, and I thought about them together about as much as I thought about either of them with me, so I figured that made it okay. Or maybe it just made it even weirder. Who knows, right? As long as it stayed inside my own head, it wasn’t a problem.

“I see what you mean. I—” Cameron started to say, but he was cut off by the musical chime of a ringtone. He pulled out his phone and grimaced at the screen. “It’s about the auction. I’ve really got to…”

Justin waved him off. “I’ll finish the tour.”

Cameron flashed him a smile of thanks and answered his phone as he walked back towards the house.

Justin watched him go until he was out of earshot, then turned back to me. His eyes slid over my body, assessing. “You look pretty strong.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty strong,” I said, and flexed. 

I’d been hoping he’d laugh and ease some of the tension, but he just considered me and nodded. “Can you help me carry something? Cam’s hurt his back and he’s not supposed to lift more than five kilos, so…”

“Oh, yeah, definitely!” I said, grabbing my backpack up off the ground, a bounce in my step as I followed him towards the shed. Lifting shit was the one thing I was just fucking good at. 

Inside, the shed had a tidy sort of clutter to it. There was lots of stuff, but all the tins of paint or whatever were on one shelf and tools were hung up on the wall. A table sat in the middle of the space, half its finish cleaned off, and Justin took a moment to hang the sander sitting on it back up in its place.

He pointed to a bookshelf tucked into one corner, its dark wood polished to a shine. “This one here. Let’s see if we can lift it.”

Getting it out of the corner took a bit of shuffling, but once we got it on its side so that we could each lift one end, it was easy enough. I loved the feeling of the strain in my muscles, the prickle of sweat and the kick of my heart. Justin went backwards out the door, which was good, because the one thing I was worried about was knocking this thing against something and scraping it up or dinging the wall.

We carried it around to the side gate, then put it down while we took a breather.

Justin lifted the collar of his shirt to mop the sweat off his face, revealing a flash of stomach. My eyes couldn’t resist following the trail of hair that led down beneath the band of his pants. Being twenty-one was a funny age, because the guys I could be into without it being weird ranged from Ethan and Rue, who were still teenagers, to this very adult man in front of me.

A man who, I realised when I looked back up and found his eyes on me, had definitely just caught me looking. Whoops. He didn’t seem mad, but he also didn’t give me one of those looks like the guys at clubs had mastered where you knew without a single word exchanged that you could follow them into the bathroom for a free blowjob.

Which was probably a good thing, I guess, because I’d never actually taken anyone up on those offers and it’d be a lot more awkward to shrug someone off when it was one on one like this. 

“You go to the gym much?” Justin asked.

“Yeah, uh, not really.” I’d never stepped foot in a gym in my life. “Push ups are free, y’know?”

The slight smile that got out of him felt like a victory. “Fair point. Ready to keep going?”

We carried the shelf out through a side gate, down a path of worn dirt through the grass, and out to a waiting van. We hoisted it inside, shuffled it to the back, then I stood back and watched as Justin strapped it in place.

“So… how are you getting that thing out at the other end?” I asked.

“Haven’t quite figured that bit out yet,” Justin admitted as he pulled the final strap tight.

“I could come with, if you want?” I offered. “I think we’re pretty much done here.”

Justin waved away the offer. “I don’t want to take advantage. Cam’s been inviting over everyone who sends him a message, but it’s just one room. A lot of people are going to be disappointed.”

“Oh, nah, I’m not sucking up,” I said. “Just something to do, y’know? I’m sure I can grab a bus back from wherever you’re headed just as easy.”

Justin directed a pointed look at the backpack I’d been carting around. “Are you staying somewhere right now?”

“Oh, yeah, yeah, don’t worry,” I said, shifting my bag on my back. “Just couch surfing, you know? Don’t want them to get sick of me, so I try to stay out of the way during the day.”

I wasn’t sure he fully believed me, which was fair because it wasn’t fully the truth. There wasn’t anything wrong with lying if the thing you were lying about wasn’t any of the other person’s business.

“Well, if you want to come…” Justin said with a shrug.

Not the warmest welcome I could’ve asked for, but it’d take far more than indifference to stop me from trying to be helpful. Ethan understood this. He had a long bamboo garden stake he swatted me with when I got too annoying and Rue wasn’t nearby to chase me off.

We were just shutting up the van when Cameron found us, phone still in hand. I’d actually forgotten he existed. Ethan said I had a baby brain like that; no object permanence. He taught me all kinds of interesting things.

A silent, mostly eyebrow-based conversation passed between Justin and Cameron. Finally, Justin said, “Flynn volunteered to come with us to the shop and help carry the shelf in.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Cameron said. “I can manage.”

“You absolutely can not,” Justin said, sending him a pointed glare. “He insisted, and the walk to a bus stop from the shop is shorter anyway. Or I can drive you home after, Flynn.”

“Nah, it’s fine,” I said. “I’m actually kinda way out. I get some great value from the fifty cent bus fares.”

I could tell from the looks they kept exchanging that they didn’t really know what to do about me, but that was nothing new. It kinda felt like everything I did was a little bit the wrong thing, even when I actually was being helpful. But that was fine. I was weird and inappropriate and I didn’t understand boundaries, but ultimately, the problem of how they were going to move their shelf would still be solved through my help. It didn’t even really matter if they were grateful for it.

“Let’s get going, then,” Justin said.

Up front of the van, there were three seats, and I snagged the middle one for myself. It was pretty roomy, so we weren’t exactly crammed all close, but I’d take any opportunities I could get to be sandwiched between two hot guys. 

Well, I say that, but it was more complicated than that. I was touch-starved and desperate for attention, but more than a little bit skittish in the face of anyone actually offering me any of what I wanted. One of the biggest perks of having twin crushes on my two taken best friends was that nothing would ever happen. Maybe ‘nothing’ wasn’t the absolute best outcome of having a crush, but it sure wasn’t the worst, right?

Heck, that was kind of the goal with most of my crushes. Like that guy who looked nice in a button up who took the same bus as me for a few stops on weekday mornings. I’d never even spoken to him. Or Mia, who used to work at the nursery with me. Sure, I had asked her out, but she already knew I was gay at that point so it’d been a pretty slim shot.

I’d texted her a few times after she’d left, but her replies had been slow to come and always brief, so I’d accepted that we’d only ever been work friends and moved on. Problem was, I was about ninety percent sure that every other friend I had was as well. And I wasn’t even very good at my job. My wages were still being subsidised as part of a government work placement program that would be ending soon. Connor had said he’d keep me on after and pay my full wage himself, but I was pretty sure that was just because I got on with his son better than most people did. Which was saying something, because Ethan didn’t even like me that much.

But there were worse things in life, right? At the end of the day, I had a job that was secure enough and people who looked out for me without asking for a whole hell of a lot in return. If it all fell through, I was sure Connor would write me a good reference even if I really didn’t deserve it.