Flynn

It was one of those days at work where Ethan took me for his own uses. Those days always felt kind of like when you’d have a substitute teacher and they’d just put on a movie or play games with the class, only not like that at all because he always kept me busy and working. But, like, it was fun.

Right now we were working on clearing out the last of the sunflowers, then preparing the soil for the next crop. Ethan already had a bunch of seedlings started for a bunch of different pumpkins and squash. He told me that once they were grown, I could take a pumpkin home and get some actual fibre in my diet. Now that I had a bathroom with an actual door, that sounded pretty okay.

He also brought me lunch, which was good because I still didn’t have a plan for that. He’d cooked me beans and rice the way they were supposed to be made. They were a hell of a lot better than my go at it, but there were onions and tomato in his, which was clearly cheating.

He even sent me home with an extra serve for dinner. Apparently Rue wouldn’t touch the stuff after spending so long eating his beans and rice diet. Didn’t matter that Ethan’s version was a lot better. The texture of beans just made him sad.

Which meant more for me, so that was fine. Not all of us had sweet, doting boyfriends, and I’d take any scraps of his he wasn’t using.

The plan was to stay awake on the bus home. That was what I’d been doing since I moved so that I could point out my new stop to each driver. Now that I was in a safe and peaceful house with my own proper bed, I wouldn’t need my bus naps as much.

That’d been the theory, anyway. The reality was that I’d spent one night freaking out and making myself a den in the living room, one night having some kind of existential crisis or whatever, and one night (last night) when I’d finally been so tired my brain hadn’t pulled any bullshit and I’d actually slept good. But I wasn’t exactly all caught up, and I’d built up a strong association between bus rides and sleep, so we all know where this is going.

I woke up when the driver said my name, murmured a thanks on my way to the door, then paused with one foot hovering in the air when I realised I was at my old stop. I backtracked so fast the driver stood, craning his neck like he expected to see a snake on the ground.

I chuckled to smooth over my weirdness and went back to my seat. “Sorry. I forgot I was gonna go into the city today.”

The driver grunted and the doors slid shut. Meanwhile, my heart was fucking hammering. The idea of being back here was just—no. Exact same feeling as when I thought I woke up in Dean’s bed. When I was living through these things, it’d just been my life, but the idea of going back freaked me the fuck out. And yeah, maybe there were some sensible reasons in this case, because there were probably some people around here who weren’t my biggest fans after I’d talked to the police, but that wasn’t it. Not really. It wasn’t thoughts. Just feelings.

But I hadn’t had a night out in the city in a while, so that’d be fun. Well, okay, I wasn’t really feeling it, but it’d probably be good to give Cam and Justin an evening to themselves. Seemed like I’d just be living my life, and suddenly I’d be doing some needy shit again. Which wasn’t anything new, probably. The only difference now was that there were people trying to help.

I got off the bus in the heart of the city and set myself a quest: acquire utensil. I still had those beans and rice for my dinner with me, but unless I just wanted to shove my face in there like a dog, I’d need a spoon or a fork or something.

This was not a difficult quest. I found a food court, flirted with a McDonald’s worker, and bing bam boom: fork. Eating the beans and rice while huffing burger fumes did make it less appetising, but I got through it.

Quest number two: flirt my way into a free drink.

I set out in search of a club.