by Linda Seed
All of that had been shot to hell the moment she’d said please.
He’d have given her anything she wanted from him. When the thing she wanted was him, he didn’t have a prayer of resisting.
As he drove toward his place with her hand resting lightly on his thigh, he wondered if he was making a mistake. He wondered if he would regret his inability to hold his ground. Maybe. But regrets would be for tomorrow. Today, he needed to be with her and forget everything that had gone wrong between them.
He parked, and they were out of the car when it had barely come to a stop. They rushed up the porch steps, and he pressed her against the front door and kissed her, his body pushed against her, his fingers entwined in hers.
No words passed between them—nothing since please—just electric heat. He pulled away from her long enough to unlock the door, then they were inside and on each other in a tangle of limbs and grasping hands and discarded clothes.
He had never wanted anyone the way he wanted Sofia. He hadn’t known he could. Now that he did know, he feared that he’d lost all power to say no to her, even if it was right, even if it was what might save him.
He pushed her onto the bed in the dark room and let himself have everything he’d been denying himself, everything he’d been wanting. He touched her soft, smooth skin and tasted her, longing to possess every part of her.
His Sofia.
But she wasn’t his, was she? She never would be until she decided to let him in. And what if she never did? What if she always kept him on the other side of some impenetrable wall?
Later. He would think of that later. Now, he only wanted this.
While they were making love, Sofia let herself believe that this meant everything was okay again. Being with him felt as right as it ever had. Wasn’t it possible that everything else about the two of them had been put right, too?
But afterward, when they were both lying amid a tangle of sheets, sated and breathless, he was too still and quiet, and she knew that nothing had been resolved.
She put her hand on his chest, but he didn’t look at her. He stared at the ceiling, one arm folded behind his head.
“Patrick? Are you all right?”
“Of course.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
At that moment, if she could have said the things he needed her to say, she would have. But how could she explain things she didn’t understand herself? How could she lay bare the emotions she hadn’t yet excavated?
“Maybe I should go,” she said.
“No.” Now he did look at her, finally, in the dim moonlight filtering through the window. “No, I want you to stay.” He lifted a hand and caressed her shoulder.
She curled her body up next to his and let him hold her, feeling uneasy, as though some unnamed damage had been done that was too late to repair.
In the morning, Patrick went to work while Sofia was still sleeping. He showered and dressed, then slipped out as quietly as he could so he wouldn’t disturb her.
He thought about her as he drove to the university, as he stood in front of his classroom, as he worked in his office.
He wanted to tell himself that it was complicated, but it wasn’t. Something simple had happened between himself and Sofia the night before. And that simple thing was that he’d surrendered.
He’d given up trying to distance himself from her. He’d given up trying to protect himself. He’d lost the battle to be all right without her, and he’d finally waved the white flag.
“You look like hell,” Ramon told him when they passed each other in the halls after Patrick’s afternoon class. “Did something happen with you and Sofia?”
“We’re fine,” he said. “We’re good.”
Because what else could he say? Was he supposed to tell Ramon that he’d decided he didn’t need a complete, emotionally intimate relationship after all? That he was so weak, so helpless when it came to her, that he’d settled for whatever scraps of herself she was willing to give him?
“You sure, man?” Ramon peered at him with concern. “Because if this is what you look like when you’re good, I’d hate to see what happens when your dog dies.”
“I don’t have a dog.”
“Small favors.”
“Look, I’ve got to go,” Patrick said. “I’ve got a meeting in ten.”
He didn’t have a meeting, but it seemed expedient to say so.
“Do you know how rare it is to find a man who actually wants to know about your feelings?” Debra shook her head and laughed. “Honey, he’s not one in a million. He’s probably one in ten million. What are you pushing him away for?”
Sofia and Debra had come to an all-night diner after the support group meeting ended, and they were seated in a booth with steaming mugs of coffee (Debra) and hot cocoa (Sofia). It was still early, so the place was busy with everything from couples to groups of teenagers getting endless refills of their soft drinks. Rain was pelting the windows, and the world outside shone with reflections of headlights on black pavement.
“I’m not pushing him away. Anymore, at least. I mean, yes, I was, but I’m past that now.”
“Well, does he know that?”
Sofia’s eyebrows rose. “Of course he does. What do you mean?”
“I mean, if you never really talked about what made you run away from him at Christmas, how can he be sure you’re not going to do it again?”
Sofia’s shoulders fell. “That’s a valid point.”
“If you feel like he’s partially checked out, it’s probably because he thinks you might sprint for the door again at a moment’s notice, and he doesn’t want to be squashed like a bug when you do.” Debra stirred her coffee carefully with her spoon.
“At this point, it’s almost harder to be with him than not to be, because I can tell he’s unhappy.” Sofia fixed her gaze on the Formica tabletop.
Debra took a noisy slurp of her coffee and put the mug back down. “Well, he’s a grownup, so you’re not responsible for his happiness. But you are responsible for yours.”
For Sofia, it was starting to feel like pretty much the same thing.
“The interesting question,” Debra went on, “is why you’re more comfortable talking to me about these things than you are talking to him—or to your sisters, for that matter.”
That one wasn’t hard for Sofia to figure out. She could talk to Debra because the stakes were so low. She didn’t live with this woman, didn’t have any friends in common, and wasn’t planning to someday—maybe—build a life with her. If Debra judged Sofia, there would be no consequences for either of them. But Sofia cared intensely about what her sisters and Patrick thought of her, and the idea that they might conclude that she was somehow damaged—or, worse, a bad person—was intolerable.
Which raised an important question: why didn’t she trust them to love her?
It was the first time she’d thought of it in just that way, and the revelation made her blink like a baby bird first emerging from its protective shell.
“Uh oh,” Debra said. “There’s something going on in that head of yours.”
“It’s … something good, I think,” Sofia told her. “Important, even.”
Debra nodded crisply, a whisper of a smile on her lips. “Well, there you go, then. Glad I could be of help.”
The next time Sofia saw Patrick, she was ready. She’d worked up two important things to tell him, and she blurted them out the moment she got into his car.
“Okay. One: I’m pretty sure my father died thinking I hated him. And two: I can’t imagine getting married when my parents are no longer living. It’s just … I try to picture it, and I can’t. So, that’s why I ran when I thought you were giving me a ring.”
“Oh.” Patrick gaped at her in surprise. Then his features softened, and he leaned forward to kiss her. “Thank you for telling me that. About your father—”
“I don’t want you to tell me it’s not true, because how could you know? You don’t ha
ve to make me feel better about it, because I’m not going to. I just wanted to tell you.”
They didn’t talk about it any further, but she could feel a significant thaw between them. He was a little more relaxed, a little warmer. A little less tense and distant.
It was progress.
35
Patrick had continued working on his poetry, and he’d been even more productive with it since his problems with Sofia began. Now, the whole suite of poems was starting to take shape. He wasn’t a poet—not really—but there was something here, in the words he’d written. He felt that he’d managed to communicate some essential truth about his feelings, apart from whatever artistry might or might not exist in his work.
Sitting in his cottage with his laptop, a mug of tea beside him and a fire burning in the fireplace, he thought about what to do with the poems.
They weren’t good enough to be published, unless he went the self-publishing route, which he didn’t think he would do. But they deserved better than to sit unread on his computer. Writing was an act of communication, after all, and communication required someone on both ends. His work could never truly be if no one read it—or heard it.
Besides, how could he expect Sofia to express herself if he wasn’t willing to do the same? When he plunged into the ocean on the day he met her, he’d been brave enough to risk his life. Surely he could be brave enough to send his poetry out into the world.
He went online looking for an open mic poetry night, and it wasn’t long before he found one coming up at a café in San Luis Obispo. There were a lot of them, actually—not surprising in an artsy university town.
Now all he had to do was screw up his courage enough to follow through.
Patrick decided his best bet was to stack the audience with people who might be sympathetic to him. So he invited not just Sofia, but also her sisters and Ramon and Lucy. With that many people he knew in the café, he figured he could count on a decent amount of polite applause even if he failed spectacularly.
And there was a very real chance that he might fail spectacularly.
He thought about practicing at home in front of a mirror, but he decided that would make him more nervous. Better to just show up and read his own words from the heart. Nobody would expect him to be a polished performer. This was a local open mic, not nationally televised prime-time programming.
Still, no number of internal pep talks could make him relax completely. He had the sense that a lot was at stake. Not just his own validation as a writer—though that did matter to him—but the expression of his true feelings to Sofia. How would she react when she heard everything that he really felt about her, himself, and their relationship? Because the poems didn’t hold back. It was all in there: the love, the longing, the pain, the fear.
Speaking of fear, as the day of his reading drew closer, he began to grow more and more nervous until simple things like sleeping and eating became difficult.
Ramon stopped him in the college library the day before the big event as Patrick was on his way out.
“You ready for tomorrow? Any stage fright?” Ramon asked.
“Stage fright? No. More like outright terror.”
Ramon scoffed. “What for? You talk in front of rooms full of people every day.”
“Right. But I’m usually talking about other people’s writing, not my own. And”—he cleared his throat—“I don’t know how Sofia’s going to react since the poetry’s all about … well … basically, her.”
“She doesn’t know?” Ramon’s eyebrows shot up.
“Well, no. I thought … I wanted to surprise her.” That was one way to put it. He’d kept it a surprise because he’d feared that if she knew what he was going to say, she wouldn’t want to come.
“Oh, boy,” Ramon said.
“Yeah.”
When he considered it, he didn’t know what he was afraid of. He’d risked his life going kayaking just to meet her. He wasn’t likely to die reciting his poetry—barring some unforeseen event like sudden cardiac arrest or the roof of the venue falling on top of him.
Still, risking his life was one thing. But the risk of losing Sofia’s love? That was something else entirely.
Sofia was dressed and ready for the poetry reading with plenty of time to spare. She couldn’t say the same about her sisters.
Part of the problem was that there were four of them and only two bathrooms. And the other part was that both Bianca and Benny had just gotten home and were scurrying around trying to get themselves together so none of them would be late.
“Are you guys ready yet?” Sofia called down the hall toward Benny and Bianca’s rooms. “God, hurry up. It’s not prom night, it’s a poetry reading. Nobody dresses up for a poetry reading!”
Sofia was wearing jeans, a sweater, and a black leather motorcycle jacket, with a pair of boots Patrick especially liked. She’d put on a little makeup and had brushed out her thick, wavy hair, but she hadn’t gone to any special trouble.
Bianca and Benny, however, had been at it awhile. Benny was never particularly fussy in terms of her appearance, but she’d had to shower and change. Bianca had been bled on, puked on, and peed on by her various tiny patients, so obviously a certain amount of personal maintenance was in order before she could go out.
“Keep your pants on,” Benny called to her. “This kind of magnificence takes time!”
“My pants are on!” Sofia yelled back. “They’ve been on for a good half hour now, which is more than I can say for you and yours.”
She hadn’t thought she was nervous, but she was beginning to realize that she was. She wanted Patrick’s reading to go well. She knew he was worried about it, and that worry had spilled over onto her, making her feel it, too.
They’d agreed to go to the café separately so that Sofia could bring her sisters. Since it was an open mic format, it didn’t matter if they were exactly on time; Patrick could just delay going on until they got there. Still, she didn’t want him to have to do that. She didn’t want him to sit there obsessing over where she was. He had enough on his mind already.
Martina, bless her, had been ready for twenty minutes. She was wearing a long, floaty dress, Birkenstock sandals, and some kind of head wrap she’d made herself out of hand-painted silk. So, that was one sister accounted for.
Benny came out of her room, finally, and Sofia herded her into the living room before she could reconsider her hair or her choice of T-shirt.
“Bianca!” she yelled. “We’re all waiting for you!”
“Sorry. Sorry.” Bianca came out of the bathroom fully dressed, with fresh makeup and newly blow-dried hair. She ducked into her room to grab her purse, then hurried out to join the rest of them. “I’m ready. Are we late?”
“Not yet.” Sofia checked the time on her phone. “But we’d better get out of here, or we will be. I don’t want him to get there before us and worry about where we are.”
“Aww,” Martina said. “You’re nervous for your man! That’s really cute.”
“Shut up,” Sofia said.
“It is kind of cute,” Benny put in. “She’s not wrong.”
As much as she usually enjoyed being patronized, Sofia hustled everybody out to Bianca’s car before they could dissect her behavior any further.
“Come on, come on,” she told them. “Buckle up. I don’t have all day.”
“Cute,” Bianca said, agreeing with the others.
The café was mainly a coffee place, but the last thing Patrick needed at the moment was caffeine. The place also had a few types of craft beer, though, and Patrick let Ramon talk him into having a pint, even though he rarely drank.
Anything that might relax him had to be a good thing.
“They’re not here yet.” Patrick looked at the door. He, Ramon, and Lucy were seated at a big table off to the side of the room, near the stage. They’d saved four seats for the Russos, and he was anxiously watching for their arrival.
“They’ll be here,” Ramon said.
“Believe me.” Lucy interrupted him. “A woman doesn’t want to miss her boo reciting poetry. Especially when he wrote it himself.”
Normally, he might have launched into a conversation about whether the word boo was appropriate to use in terms unrelated to cartoon ghosts, but this wasn’t the time for that. He was holding himself together by pure grit and determination.
“There you go,” Ramon said as Sofia, Benny, Bianca, and Martina walked in the door in a burst of color and that special female magic they all seemed to have. Patrick looked over and his entire body and soul seemed to sigh in relief.
“Oh, boy,” Lucy said.
“I … what?” Patrick tore his gaze away from Sofia to address Lucy.
“The way you were looking at her. Just … oh, boy.”
Sofia saw it, too—the way he was looking at her when she came into the room. He had the look of someone who was utterly and hopelessly drowning in love.
The thought that he felt that way for her, despite the way she’d held him at a distance, humbled her. She didn’t deserve to be the one who’d put that look in his eyes. She hoped that one day, she would.
Ramon was the one who got up from the table and ushered them to the seats that had been saved for them. Patrick would have done it, under normal circumstances, but today it was all he could do just to handle his nerves.
Sofia went to him and gave him a quick kiss. “How are you doing?”
“Ah … okay, I guess. No major coronary malfunction yet, so that’s good.”
Sofia’s sisters called out their greetings to him before choosing their seats. They ordered drinks and settled in. The café had a pretty good crowd, and the mood was festive. If Patrick hadn’t looked like he might faint, Sofia would have thought it had all the makings of a fun night out. Maybe it did anyway. Surely he’d settle down after his reading, when the pressure was gone.