Page 5 of Fabulous Filthy Friend

“You know exactly what it means. Rachel, you can’t have a best friend who’s a guy and expect the guys you’re dating not to have an issue with it.”

Ugh.

I do not want to have this argument with her again. For the one-millionth time. I guess it’s not really an argument, per se, more like a disagreement over the realities of my situation. Alicia means well, and I always appreciate her blunt form of honesty in my life, but I’m sick of justifying it to her—amongst other people. “Flynn and I are just friends.”

“That may just be what you tell yourself, or it may be true. Either way, Flynn is hot. Like, really fucking hot. And that’s intimidating to any guy you’re dating to know you spend that much time with the guy who lives right next door.”

“She’s right, Rach. Flynn is really fucking hot!” Cade’s humor reaches me through the line.

I laugh despite my annoyance. It’s hard to ever be mad at him. “Do you have to talk about stuff like this on the phone with him in the room?”

Alicia laughs. “No, we could come over and do it there instead in person.”

“Ha. Ha. Very funny.” Though, it’s a threat they might actually fulfill if it weren’t after ten and Connor and Brandy weren’t asleep.

Sometimes becoming best friends with your neighbors has drawbacks. Like their ability to literally cross the street to harass you about imagined romances that don’t exist. Or like having them state the obvious.

I don’t need Alicia to tell me how gorgeous Flynn is. I would have to have been blind not to notice it the second he walked out of his front door and across the grass toward me the day I moved in. But I had just lost Mom and wasn’t in any place to see anyone as anything other than a friend, and it was quickly apparent that Flynn is way too much of a Catholic school mama’s boy to handle me.

If I told him I watch porn and masturbate almost daily, like to be spanked, and all that other stuff I fantasize about in the bedroom, he’d probably turn beet red and bolt for the confessional booth with a prayer for my soul coming from his lips.

Not that I don’t appreciate his concern for the eternal well-being of my soul, but that kind of religious commitment isn’t something I ever understood. Not with the way we grew up.

Dad was always on the road during the season, and he was mean and cold when he was home. Mom wasn’t the type to find solace in organized religion the way Flynn does. His weekly Sunday morning trips to church with his mom only confirm what I’ve always known about Flynn—he’s too much of a gentleman for it to ever work out in the end.

He may be beautiful, but all I’ll ever do is admire him as a platonic friend and cry on his shoulder when yet another failed relationship breaks my heart. Because one thing Flynn is incredibly good at is taking my mind off the bad stuff in life.

Things are simple and easy with him.

That’s the way I want it to stay.

Alicia may not know about my secret predilections, but I’ve made myself clear that Flynn is a close friend, nothing more. Though it seems she needs another reminder tonight.

“Nothing is happening between Flynn and me, Alicia. You know that.”

“Whatever you say, girl. If you’re not gonna go for that, can I set him up with someone?”

I bite back my first inclination to tell her to shut up.

He’s not mine to claim.

I know that, logically.

Yet, the idea of him with other women still makes me…

Jealous maybe?

It’s a feeling I hate and don’t want to even consider. Flynn deserves to be happy, and if I thought Alicia could find that for him, I would agree to a set-up in a heartbeat—at least, that’s what I tell myself. But for some reason, when I think of Alicia’s friends who I’ve met since she and Cade moved in with the kids, no one measures up to what my bestie deserves.

Because he deserves the world.

Someone who will appreciate what a caring, giving, kind, and gentle soul he has. And I’ll protect him from any woman getting her claws in him if she’s not right for him. Kind of like he does for me with the men I date.

He warned me Sam wasn’t good for me, but I didn’t listen. I fell for the charm and quick smile and ignored the warning signs. Things were good between us but never great. I never had that need…that draw to him I’ve always expected to have for the one I’m meant to spend the rest of my life with.

Maybe I was stupid to think that giving it longer, giving it a chance, would change that. That I would develop those feelings. It never happened, and Flynn saw from day one that it never would. Yet even though Flynn was right, he never brought out the “I told you so.” Instead, he came over with a bag full of sugary theater snacks and hung out to watch a movie.

I cried a little more than I should have given the lack of connection I actually had with Sam. But then Flynn wrapped his arm around my shoulder, and any bad feelings I had lingering simply disappeared.

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