After that I ran to the Donnellys’ before it was even light out, let myself in with the spare key Connie kept hidden underneath a clay frog in the garden. “Wake up,” I said to Patrick, crawling across his bed in the blue still-darkness. He smelled like sleep, and like home. I felt like I’d dodged the most deadly of bullets, like one of those people that gets hit by a train but somehow manages to walk away unscathed. I felt guilty and lucky, a full helping of both. “Wake up, it’s me.”
“What?” Patrick blinked awake, startled, reaching for my arm. “Mols, what’s wrong? What are you doing here?”
“I don’t want to be broken up anymore,” I blurted. “I’m not going anywhere, I’m never going anywhere; I was being an idiot.” I shook my head. “I can run here, I want to stay here. I decided, and I wanted to tell you as soon as—” I broke off. “Please. Let’s just forget about it and be normal again, okay?”
“Hey, hey.” Patrick sat up then, looking at me curiously. His curly hair was crazy with sleep. “You all right?”
“I’m fine,” I promised. “I’m perfect. I was being an asshole, I was just—”
“You weren’t being an asshole,” Patrick told me, “I was. I don’t want to hold you back. I love you; that’s the last thing I want. I’d fucking hate myself, if that’s what I was.”
“It’s not,” I insisted, looking at him urgently. “It’s not. I want to stay here, I want to be with you.”
“I want that, too.” Patrick nodded. “Come here, hey. Of course I want that, too.”
I climbed underneath the covers then, the cotton sheets warm with their time against his body. I’d made a huge mistake, doing what I’d done with Gabe, the weight of it like a grizzly settling down right on my chest. I’d never kept a secret from Patrick before. Still, in the moment it almost felt like a small price to pay to figure out what I really wanted: I was going to fix us. I was going to make it all right.
And nobody but me, my mom, and Gabe would ever, ever have to know.
*
“What’re you doing?” Fabian demands, banging through the door of the office with a plastic Captain America in one hand and the Falcon in the other, yanking me out of the memory. I click SAVE on the computer, glance at the clock on the screen—Gabe’s due to pick me up from work in twenty minutes.
Fabian’s still waiting on an answer, impatient; I take the action figure he proffers, shake my head. “I’ll tell you, buddy: That’s a really good question.”
Day 72
Imogen and Handsome Jay seal the deal at the beginning of August at his tiny student apartment; two days later he surprises her with tickets to a sculpture park in Woodstock, a place she told him she wanted to visit on their very first date.
“Good on you, lady,” I tell her, sitting cross-legged on the carpeted floor of her bedroom as she organizes the pieces for her art show at French Roast, which is coming up two weeks from now—I offered to help her, but she’s got a complicated vision, she says. “You should be with somebody who knows you that well, you know?”
Imogen raises her eyebrows, glancing over her shoulder at me—she’s holding up two small canvases with birds on them, scrutinizing how they look side by side. “You mean like you and Patrick?” she asks distractedly.
My internal temperature drops roughly fifteen degrees. “I—what?”
“Oh my God,” Imogen says, whirling around to face me completely, dropping one of the canvases onto the carpet and clapping a hand over her mouth. She huffs out an awkward giggle, eyes wide. “I totally just meant to say you and Gabe. I legit wasn’t even trying to heckle you just then, I’m so sorry. You and Gabe, you and Gabe.”
“Jerk.” I’m blushing and laughing, relief and embarrassment washing through my body in equal measure, hot and cold. “Me and Gabe, yes. Like me and Gabe.”
“God, sorry. Let’s just be thankful Tess wasn’t here, too.” Imogen picks the second canvas back up off the floor, holding them out for my inspection. “What do you think, which way?”
“Um,” I manage, swallowing audibly, relieved at her willingness to drop it. I haven’t told a soul about what happened—what’s happening?—with Patrick. The smart thing to do is to let him alone. “Side by side.”
“I think I like them stacked,” Imogen says, and I don’t answer. My head thuds softly back against the wall.
Day 73
I’m almost asleep, that foggy in-between that’s not quite dreaming, when my phone buzzes loudly on the nightstand: You home? Patrick wants to know.
I push my hair out of my face, sit up on the mattress. Yeah, I key in, trying to ignore the dark thrill in my stomach that tells me this can’t possibly lead to anything good. Where are you?
In your driveway.
I creep downstairs and let him in the back door wordlessly, lead him up to my third-floor tower with his warm hand tucked in mine. As soon as the door’s shut, he presses me up against it. My T-shirt hits the carpet with a barely audible whoosh. I never turned a light on and it’s dark in here, nothing but a silver puddle of moonlight on the carpet and the feel of his warm mouth wandering over my collarbone and ribs.
We stumble back toward my mattress, a tangle of arms and ankles. Still neither one of us has said a single word. His weight presses me down into the sheets for half a second, mouth glancing clumsily off mine before he’s gone again, fingers hooked in the elastic of the boxers I went to bed in, pulling my bottoms down my legs.
“What are you doing?” I ask, popping up on my elbows to look at him. “Patrick.”
“I wanna try something.” His rough cheek scrapes against my inner thigh, gentle. “Will you let me try something?”
“Uh-huh,” I say, more of a gasp than anything. I reach down and scratch my short nails through his hair. It feels insane; it feels like my bones have come apart and only my skin is keeping them from flying away entirely. I make a damp fist in the sheets.
“Come up here,” I say finally, pulling at his shoulders until he listens. I’m shaking everywhere, needing something to hang on to. I think my nails are digging into his skin. “Come here.”