He laughed and hung his head down. “Not really, no.”
Marianne stood up and went to bend over him. She touched his shoulder. “Come inside.”
Patrick didn’t look at her; he just watched his hands as he rolled the bottle between them. “I’ll be in soon.”
Marianne crouched down lower and tried to look at his face. “Can I stay with you?”
“It’s cold.”
“I have a jacket.”
Patrick continued to spin the bottle in his hand. “It’s fine, Marianne. You don’t have to stay out here. I’ll be in in a minute.”
She was starting to get annoyed. “I said that I was fine, and I want to stay.”
“Suit yourself.” He slid the cardboard six-pack closer to her with his foot. “Do you want a beer?”
“Can I hit you over the head with it?”
“Please,” he mumbled.
Marianne laughed quietly and bent over to pick up a bottle. “You throw an awesome pity-party, my friend. I didn’t know you had it in you.”
“I do everything well,” he said and took another drink of his beer. Even the way he moped was charming.
Marianne sat down on the step a foot away from him. “Seriously... this whole gala you’ve got going almost rivals one of my own. And I’m good, let me tell you.” Marianne bent around him, looking under his legs for the bottle opener.
Patrick took the beer from her without looking up. He popped the cap off using another unopened bottle from the ground, then handed it back.
“Neat trick,” said Marianne.
“How else am I supposed to impress the chicks?”
He could just breathe in and out; that would do it. She was going to say that but decided to try a different tack. It was manipulative but worth a try. She tried to sound sad. “Oh, I guess I thought you might... I don’t know...”
Patrick finally looked up at her.
Marianne shook her head. “Never mind,” she said quietly.
He creased his eyebrows. “What is it?”
“Well,” she moped. “That’s not your only party trick, is it? Because that’d be kind of pathetic.”
“Excuse me?” he spat out. Patrick looked more pissed than she’d ever seen him.
Marianne instantly drew back. Holy crap. She opened her mouth, but couldn’t speak, she was so shocked. Apparently, she’d never made a joke with worse timing.
“Do you think so little of me, Marianne?”
“What?” That one word took all the breath out of her chest.
Patrick snatched Marianne’s beer out of her hand and walked away down the driveway. Marianne stood up to go after him but froze when he spun around to face her. His face was totally expressionless again. She tensed but didn’t move.
Patrick cleared his throat and lifted up the bottle he’d snatched from her hands. “Behold,” he said in a formal voice. “The Exploding Beer Trick.”
What? The Exploding... She started laughing so hard that it took her a second to even start making noise.
“Silence, please,” he scolded. “I’ll need a volunteer from the audience.”
Marianne raised her hand. “I’ll do it.”
“Thank you, sugarplum.” He jogged over to her and gave her his own beer to hold for him. Then he moved back about ten feet and angled away slightly. He gripped the neck of the bottle and slapped down on the rim with his open palm. The bottle blasted apart, spraying beer and glass everywhere.
“Yes!” Marianne jumped up and shot her hands into the air, spilling beer down the back of her jacket. “That was awesome!” she said, hopping up and down. “Do it again.”
Patrick stepped over to the case and opened another. He took a drink and held it up to the light to check the level of the liquid. “Okay, beer-waster. Step back.”
She ran up onto the porch. “Okay, go.”
Patrick gripped the bottle and hit it, but this time it didn’t explode. The bottom of the bottle popped off in one round piece and rolled away, spilling beer on the ground like a waterfall.
“Whoa!” Marianne jumped off the porch and chased the piece of glass across the driveway. “Look, it’s perfect,” she said, holding it up.
Patrick stood in the middle of the wet, splintered mess and smiled at her. Marianne smiled back, but she was scared that the good moment would slip away. “Show me how to do it,” she said.
Patrick looked a little hesitant. “I don’t know if you have the required awesomeness.”
“Oh, no?”
Patrick pretended to be scared by the look on her face. “We can try,” he said.
Marianne walked over to the porch and picked up a fresh bottle. “This seems like it would be an unpopular trick, what with the wasted alcohol, and all.”
“Yeah, well... You’re actually supposed to put water in the empty ones,” he said. “I just used yours to get it away from you. You’re not supposed to be drinking, and I had guilt.”
Marianne carried two bottles over to Patrick and tried to learn the opening trick first. She made a few feeble attempts but had to quit. “It hurts my hand.”
“Good,” said Patrick. He opened her bottle for her and handed it back. “Like I said, I need that one to impress you.”
Marianne shook her head and put herself into position to explode the bottle. “Like this?”
“Move your hand up a little,” he said. “Okay, now cup your other hand and slam down hard. It’s gonna hurt.”
“What?” Marianne stood up straight. “You should have added that part before.”
Patrick laughed and stepped up behind her. “That’s what I meant when I said it took awesomeness.” He put his arms around her and positioned her hands correctly.
Marianne gripped the bottle hard. “Am I ready?”
“Yes.”
...
“Any time now,” he said.
“But I’m scared.”
“You should be,” he laughed. “This isn’t exactly a safe thing to do.”
Marianne turned toward him in outrage. “Then why are you letting me do it? Am I going to impale my hand?”
Patrick kissed her cheek. “Don’t worry, nothing’s going to happen. Nothing at all, in fact.”
Marianne sucked in a shocked breath. “You have no faith in me!”
Patrick bit his lip.
“All right, buddy. Watch this...” She smacked down on the mouth of the bottle as hard as she could. The whole thing rocketed out of her hand and hit the pavement, clinking and rolling around in a very lame fashion. Unbroken. “Fricker!” screeched Marianne, shaking out her bruised palm.
“Oh, baby,” laughed Patrick. He pulled her hurt hand out of her grip and kissed it as he laughed at her.
“That was not—”
Ronny Grant’s floodlights suddenly flicked on across the street and they heard his door start to squeak.
“Crap!” Marianne grabbed Patrick’s jacket, and they ran, stumbling, toward the house. She got to the door first and quickly shoved her bag out of the way. Patrick came in and shut the door behind them.
Marianne leaned against the wall with her hands on her knees, laughing, and tried to catch her breath. The curtains were closed, making it almost impossible to see anything inside the house. “He’d better not call the cops,” she whispered. There was no reason for silence, but the darkness and danger seemed to require it, anyway. “Do you think he’ll walk over and—”
And suddenly, Marianne was pushed upright against the wall and Patrick was all over her. He was kissing her everywhere, even catching her lips with his teeth. He put his hand under her shirt and gripped her waist. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he wanted her to rip off her clothes again. The man was a mystery. She clutched his hair in her fists and stood on tiptoes, giving him more access to any part of her he wanted. He ran his hand roughly down the legs of her jeans and even grabbed her backside. He kissed the side of her face. “Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?”
“No,” she said
breathlessly.
He grabbed her hips and pulled her off the wall toward him. “You make me insane.”
Marianne really, really wanted to take off her jacket so that there would be less padding between them, but she didn’t. Patrick’s guilt was still too fresh in her mind. She tipped her head back and tried to make out his face in the darkness. “Is that bad?”
Patrick kissed her lips again, more softly than before. “I just don’t want to hurt you.”
“You didn’t hurt me,” she said. “Well, technically, your teeth did kind of hurt... but I don’t mind.”
Patrick laughed a little and sighed heavily. “I know you don’t. That’s part of what freaks me out.”
“What?” she said.
“Sorry,” groaned Patrick, letting her go. He walked over to the windows and opened the curtains to look out. “I know I’m not making any sense.”
She could see him now, and he looked tortured again, just staring at the driveway. “You can tell me,” she said. “And I’m sorry I yelled at you when you tried to leave. I shouldn’t have done that.”
Patrick turned around and sat down on the floor with his back against the window wall. “Don’t apologize. I was being a jackass.”
Marianne went and sat next to him, bumping the side of his knee with her own. “You’re never a jackass,” she said. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
Patrick shook his head and stared across the room. “I am a jackass. I try not to be, but I still am. And that sucks.”
“I think everyone feels that way sometimes,” said Marianne.
“I know,” said Patrick, breathing out. “Did you ever love something so much that you were afraid to get your fingerprints on it? You were afraid to change it, afraid that you might wound it by leaving traces of yourself on it?”
“You’d better not be talking about me.”
Patrick shook his head again. “I just can’t seem to stop making the same old mistakes. I don’t want to hurt you.”
Impossible. There was no safer place in the universe than with Patrick. “How could you ever hurt me?”
Patrick turned and studied her face. His brown eyes looked black in the darkness. “I could get you pregnant.”
Stupid. He worried too much. “Don’t worry.” Marianne smiled slightly. “That’s not going to happen.”
Patrick continued to stare into her eyes and shook his head almost imperceptibly. Then she remembered what he’d said: old mistakes.
Patrick had a child already.
Marianne’s brain melted. She could almost feel it running down her back. Wait, no. She sat up a little. Everyone would know he had a baby. He was no deadbeat. Patrick would love his baby. He’d be proud of his baby. There was no way that Patrick had a baby. What then?
Ohh... Patrick didn’t have a baby. Not anymore.
Marianne sucked in some air, and Patrick turned his face away. She breathed in again. “Did she...” Marianne paused to change her words so that they weren’t a question. “She had an abortion.”
“Miscarriage.” Patrick’s profile was eerily perfect, glowing in the dim light. “I probably should have mentioned it before,” he said.
No wonder he was freaking out. Oh, man. What was the right comment, here? “So she... your girlfriend—”
“Brook.”
“Brook,” she repeated. She still didn’t know what to say and ended up sounding like a first-grade reading book. “Brook got hurt. And sad.”
Patrick nodded.
He was right before; he should have mentioned it. Hinted, at the very least. It was almost as if he’d lied to her. Marianne watched Patrick breathe in and out and told herself that she was not jealous. She was not hurt. She sat up and ran her hand through Patrick’s hair. He didn’t deserve suspicion. There would be no trace of pouting from her and no ex-girlfriend-bashing. At the very real risk of spontaneously combusting, she decided all of that. And then it was done. She could do this. She ran her finger down Patrick’s jaw. “How old were you?”
“Um... about twenty, I think,” he said. “She was nineteen, a little older than you.”
She waited for more details, but he seemed to be waiting for questions. She tried to think of some, though she wasn’t sure if she actually wanted to know details. “Was it scary?”
Patrick shook his head. “She didn’t tell me about any of it. Not for a while.”
“Wow.” Marianne nodded. “And then, did you handle it badly?” It was a guess based on how guilty he seemed to feel.
Patrick gave her a dirty look. “Aren’t you forgetting, Marianne?” He gestured toward himself. “I’m fricking perfect.”
She smiled.
Patrick suddenly covered his eyes with his hand. “I was so mean,” he breathed.
“Well…” Yeah, not the best reaction. “But I’m sure you were just upset,” she said, moving closer. “She should have included you.”
Patrick laughed. “Oh, I didn’t care about that part.” He sighed and dropped his hand. “Not back then. I hadn’t even known about it. And I didn’t want a baby, anyway; so what the hell did I care? I only got mean when she decided to leave.”
“Why’d she leave?”
He waited a second. “Loneliness, I think. Sadness. Guilt.”
“Guilt?”
“Guilt,” he said again.
Now that she thought more about it, it didn’t sound so strange. It wasn’t logical, of course, but from all Marianne had heard about such things, it wasn’t abnormal.
Patrick ran his hand through his hair, messing it up. “When she left, it pissed me off so bad. I thought she was so selfish, and I told her that. Just ripped her apart. Told her she was self-centered—I think that was the word I used. And that I was glad she was going. I told her she should take her nonsensical remorse to someone who gave a crap; but that she wasn’t going to find anybody.” Patrick pointed to an imaginary person in front of him. “I told her that she was an unstable, attention-whore, and that I didn’t want her anymore. Goodbye.” He looked at Marianne and smiled. “Neat, huh?”
Marianne smiled back. “Yeah,” she said softly. “You were pretty disgusting.”
“Were?” he said. “That part of me’s not past tense, Marianne.”
“Of course, it is. You’d never do that again.”
“I almost did! You could have gotten pregnant tonight.” He looked down at the floor. “What is wrong with me?”
“Nothing is wrong with you.” Marianne sat up straighter. “And that’s a different thing… I just meant that you’d never treat someone that way again.”
“We’ll see.”
“It was a tough situation,” said Marianne. “And the things you said, you were shocked and hurt. She should have confided in you at the beginning. And she should have let you help her afterwards.”
“Don’t...” he said. “What was she supposed to do? Put her whole life into the hands of her dumbass boyfriend? Keep telling me about feelings I refused to understand? She was scared and sad, and she couldn’t trust me.”
Marianne didn’t feel it was exactly her place to argue, but she couldn’t help it. “She didn’t even try to trust you in the beginning. She didn’t give you a chance.”
Patrick shook his head.
“It was totally your business, and she kept it from you,” said Marianne. “No matter what kind of dumbass you were back then, that was still wrong.”
“My jackass behavior got her into that situation in the first place. Hiding it was never the problem, Marianne, it was just the reaction. Her reaction to me.”
Marianne kept her mouth clamped shut. He was dead wrong. Brook should have let him in earlier. She should have been open.
Patrick was still staring across the room. “She used to keep her stuff really neat all the time. Vacuumed every day, sorted her make-up in all these stupid compartments. She was always harping about how filthy my car was. But she was sweet and open and bubbly, never annoying about it. Fun.” He drummed his fingers on hi
s knee for a few seconds. “But then everything got super intense. I thought she was just—I don’t know what I thought. I don’t know if you’ve ever known someone like her—everything was out in the open, for anyone who cared to look. Which I didn’t. But, uh... Then I woke up one night and found her in the kitchen. She was folding the trash.”
Marianne just lifted her eyebrows.
He looked at the floor as if it was confusing him. “The wrappers, the cereal boxes, the bag from the frozen green beans. She was just taking them out of the trash can, folding them up like laundry, and putting them back in.”
“Patrick—”
“She was suffering, and I couldn’t do anything about it.” He looked at her. “And, Marianne, now that I think about it... I’d rather not do that to you.”
Marianne didn’t know what to say.
He just stared at her.
“Don’t be afraid,” she whispered.
Patrick nodded, but it wasn’t in agreement. “Marianne, you’re so delicate. I was going to keep you safe—”
“No,” she said, but then looked down immediately. She hadn’t meant to interrupt; she just hated that worried tone in his voice. “That’s not your job. I know that you’ve been feeling insecure because I don’t always share my... I’m sure you’ve felt insecure. I didn’t mean to make you think I didn’t trust you.”
“No, Marianne,” said Patrick. “That’s not the point of all this.”
“I guess not.” Marianne looked at him again. “But it brings it up. You shouldn’t ever feel—It’s just that I was being selfish before. I was scared. When you were gone, I realized what I really want. I just want to make you happy.” She smiled and lifted one shoulder.
Patrick looked like he was in pain again. “You already make me happy.”
“No, I make you afraid. I didn’t do the things I should have to show you that I trust you.” She nodded. “When I called you earlier... If it came from someone else, I know it wouldn’t mean that much,” she looked down and lowered her voice, “but it was a lot for me.”
“I know,” he said. “And it didn’t go unnoticed. Before my little freakout, let’s call it, tonight was the happiest I’ve ever been.”
Marianne looked up at him. “What?”
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