“I’m so mad at her I don’t even...I can’t talk to her.”
“Then listen, dude. Just listen. When she’s done and leaves, we’ll talk.”
A soft knock sounded at the door and Billy drained his beer, put it on the table, and walked to the front door. “Hey, El.” He pulled her into a hug and whispered something in her ear Patrick couldn’t hear. “See you guys later.”
Patrick didn’t get up or give any indication that he was there. He was trying to get his scattered emotions under control before he even looked at her, because he knew once he looked at her he’d be lost. He inhaled deeply and looked at her, taking in every detail of her. Her face was flushed from the cold, she had on an emerald scarf that made her eyes bright and clear. Her grey sweater was tight and showed off her breasts, which were bigger than the last time he’d seen her. He couldn’t get the image of her walking away from him while he was begging her to love him out of his head.
“Patrick,” El said from the entry of the den. She didn’t even want to be in the same room as him. “I’m sorry.”
This pushed him to move quickly and he was in front of her in an instant. “You’re SORRY?!”
She stepped back, her eyes wide. She moved her chin down, nodding once. “I tried to call you so many times, but you’d never take my call.”
Patrick swallowed all of his questions, except one. “Is it mine?” His voice was clipped and full of pain.
She shook her head, looking down. His insides crumbled. It wasn’t his and he wanted it to be.
“Is. It. Mine?” he asked again, hoping the answer would be different this time. He framed her face with his hands and raised her head up to face him. “Say it! Say it and look me in the fucking face when you do.”
“No,” she blurted. Shaking her head, she started crying. “No.”
“I don’t believe you,” he spit coldly.
Her eyes went from full of sorrow to hard in a second. “Fuck you.”
“No, fuck you.” He pointed at her, his finger mere inches from her face.
She brushed past him and slumped on the couch. “I was four weeks pregnant at the beach. I’m four months along. I tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t take my fucking calls, asshole.”
Patrick stayed standing where he was, examining the front entryway. Billy had redecorated the front room, where Jamie’s blood had splattered over the walls and floor when he was shot. He shut out the thoughts as quickly as they entered his mind.
“Patrick. Please talk to me.”
“Honestly, I don’t know if I can.” Patrick gazed out the window to where he’d lain in the dirt, waiting to kill his friend. Former friend.
He felt arms wrap around him from behind and he exhaled the breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. Her head pressed against his back. He fought his instinct to lean into her.
“I’m sorry. I wanted so badly to tell you.” Her voice was full of tears and emotion he couldn’t handle.
He couldn’t wrap his brain around his emotions in the last 20 hours. He turned around and embraced her, feeling the beginnings of a hard bump at her stomach. His stomach turned. “I think I hate you,” he muttered into her hair.
“I know.” She leaned back and looked at him in the eye. “But I love you enough for the both of us.”
His heart exploded in his chest. He felt it. She pulled him back in, her breasts were bigger now and felt good against him. Fuck.
“I’m so sorry, Patrick. I’m sorry for everything. I’d take it back if I could.”
He examined her. “Take what part back, El?”
Her eyes glistened with tears and she opened her mouth to tell him.
Patrick put his hand over her mouth. “Never mind. I don’t think I want to know.”
Patrick followed El into the Del Ray coffee house and they stood in line, silent. El kept turning around and looking at him with the saddest eyes he’d seen since he’d told her that Jamie was dead. Then she took his hand in hers and leaned into him. She smelled like home, like coconut. Her hair was longer and he fought to keep his hands from tangling in it. It’d been almost three months since he’d seen her and his heart seized just being near her. There was so much between them—lies, betrayal, guilt, fun, laughs and love. He fucking couldn’t stop loving her and it pissed him off. He needed to stop loving her.
“I’ve missed you so much,” she murmured, her voice low.
His resolve was melting away as she held his hand. He shook his head at her. “You don’t get to miss me.”
“Don’t I?” she asked with a smile. El released his hand all too soon and ordered a hot chocolate.
Patrick smirked at her.
She shrugged. “Some bullshit about caffeine not being good for the baby.”
Baby.
Her baby with George.
Patrick tore his eyes from hers and looked at the chalkboard behind the glass case of pastries, pretending he didn’t know what he wanted. He ordered black coffee and they grabbed their mugs and walked to a couch in the corner.
“Look, Patrick...” El started.
Instinct took over and Patrick reached over to smooth out an errant raven strand that had fallen forward. Her eyes clouded over and then filled with tears. El looked into her mug, avoiding his gaze.
“El?”
“This baby makes me cryeee.” She laughed a bad fake laugh.
“Cryeee?”
“I cry over everything,” she said, wiping away tears that hadn’t fallen from her eyes.
“Well, you look like you’re doing well.” Patrick thought maybe they should stick to small talk and it was true, she was sort of glowing. He was heading back to Atlanta tomorrow, so maybe he’d just be okay with knowing the baby wasn’t his. She’d never been his and now this solidified the fact she never would be.
“I’m okay.” She took a sip of her hot chocolate and looked at him over the rim. “I don’t even know what to say to you, Patrick. I know this has got to have made your brain hurt—”
“I don’t know if I can talk to you about this yet,” Patrick interrupted. “I was sure two hours ago that we were going to have a baby.”
Her face disintegrated in front of him and she stood up and walked over to where all the sugar and spoons were and grabbed a pile of napkins. She wiped her tears away as she came back to the couch. “I honestly thought it’d be better to do this in public so I wouldn’t blubber. Epic fail.”
Patrick leaned back and away from her as she sat back down. He wasn’t going to cut her any slack.
“Patrick, you...you mean so much to me.”
“But not as much as George?”
“You mean as much to me as George.” El nodded, but wouldn’t meet his eyes. “You…
“You’re a liar.”
A noise escaped her throat and a tear fell from her eye.
“Stop crying. You’re not the one who has a fucking broken heart.” His voice was cold, but it worked—she looked at him with resolve.
“I haven’t lied to you. I’ve never lied.”
“You said you were going back to George.” His voice broke. They looked at each other and Patrick imagined what it’d be like if she’d stayed with him. He’d rub her back and her feet, if she wanted him to. Maybe they would’ve already bought a house together. He would’ve loved her with every cell in his body. “You didn’t go back to George that day, though. Why?”
She sighed audibly. “Patrick, maybe this wasn’t a good idea.”
“Why?” His voice rose.
“Because I loved you, okay...” She looked around the café, making sure they wouldn’t be overheard. Then she leaned closer to him. “After everything, the beach and Jamie…I loved you and felt like I was being ripped in two,” she whispered.
He coughed, trying not to cry. This was stupid; she was pregnant and probably going to marry George. Her smell engulfed him and he ran his hand through his hair, then rubbed his face, trying to shake the desire to touch her.
“My feelings
for you are still there,” she said, and batted her long eyelashes at him. She looked back down into her mug. “I’m so fucking sorry…for everything, Patrick. If there was something I could do to make it...better, I’d do it.” El lifted her eyes back to him. “Tell me what to do. I’ll do it. Anything.”
He didn’t tell her what he really wanted, for her to come back to Atlanta with him. That they could be together, like they should be, and he’d raise the baby. If she’d loved him the way he loved her, life would be easy.
“El, I honestly don’t know that there’s anything you can do. I loved you and wanted us to work, but you didn’t. That’s it. I can’t be friends with you because all I think about is being inside you. That’s all I want. I want to hear you scream my name, to run your fingernails down my back and make that moaning sound that just thinking about makes me hard. Knowing you’re fucking George makes me...” Patrick stopped talking because it wouldn’t help. Her knowing he’d take her into the bathroom right now and bend her over wasn’t going to change anything. He couldn’t be around her, he felt a sucking sensation making him want her again. He couldn’t do this. He wouldn’t. He needed to leave.
El turned a ring on her finger absentmindedly and Patrick stilled because she was wearing her engagement ring again. “So, are you marrying him?”
Her eyes glazed over with tears and she looked down at her ring. “I…” she whispered.
Patrick leaned down, his face inches from hers, so that he could hear her.
“We’re already married.”
She’d married George. Of course she did. Fuck her. Had he been so miserable for the past three months he didn’t realize she’d already gotten married? Did Jesse and Billy go? Son of a bitch!
Patrick got up and started the long walk back to Billy’s.
When Patrick entered the house, his nose and hands were frozen from the cold weather.
He hadn’t dressed for winter; he wasn’t really thinking when he packed his backpack before his flight. He definitely wasn’t thinking he would walk over two miles in the thirty degree weather.
Billy had a beer waiting for him in front of Patrick’s old chair, and he sat up and paused his video game when Patrick opened the door. “So?”
“So, it’s not mine.” Patrick reached out and grabbed the beer and chugged it in four seconds. Then he stalked over to the fridge and got another. He noticed that Billy had been to the store to buy more beer. He smiled and looked at his best friend. “I’m fucked.”
“But, it’s for the best, right?” Billy called from the den.
“I wanted it to be mine,” Patrick admitted softly, walking back into the den. “Oh and thanks for giving me the heads up that she’s fucking married.”
Billy shook his head. “Fuck, dude. Do you not watch TV? It was all over the place, I just figured you’d talk about it when you wanted to.”
“This is…” Sitting, Patrick propped his feet on the table. “I can’t be around her again. I can’t. I still want her, even with her pregnant and married to George. It’s sick.”
Billy was silent.
He turned up his beer. “I’m not coming back for a while.”
“Well, what else did you guys talk about?”
“She said she loved me. I asked her why she didn’t go to George when she told me she was picking him and she told me because she loved me. Fuck,” he shook his head, “if I’d have taken her call the next day maybe we’d still be together.”
“Do you really think that? She’s pregnant with some other dude’s baby.”
“I don’t care. I would’ve loved it like it was mine.”
Billy’s eyes bugged out of his head. “Yeah, it’s probably good that you’ve already moved.”
Patrick nodded in agreement. “She was never mine, she just let me think so.”
“Patrick, Jamie had just been shot and his face basically exploded on her. You guys were best friends. She ran. You found her. She fell into you for awhile and then you got crushed and she did it. I’m pretty sure you both weren’t making the best decisions.”
“Don’t make it like that.”
“That’s how it was.”
“No.” Patrick took a gulp of his beer. That wasn’t how it happened. At least not how he’d thought it’d happened. “Okay, this is going to make me sound like a bitch, so if you ever repeat any of this fucking conversation I’ll beat the shit out of you...”
Billy grinned.
“I can’t get over it. I’m trying, I just can’t. I love her. It should be me and her. We’re meant to be together, and as stupid as that sounds, you can’t make me think any differently. She is fucking made for me. She’s gorgeous, surly as shit, smart, and an asshole. I think I need her, Billy. I think I fucking need her.”
“You don’t need her.” Billy paused his game again and sat forward, putting his elbows on his knees. “I know you love her, I do, but you don’t need her. She decided on George. You’ve got to fuck some more girls and get her out of your system. El is a clusterfuck, dude, do you really want to have to deal with that your entire life? Cleaning up her shit?”
“Billy,” Patrick warned.
Billy raised his arms in surrender. “You know I love her too, but I’d cut off my own balls before I’d get in a relationship with that big pile of damage.”
“I get her, though, and she gets me.”
“She doesn’t fucking get you, man. She never worries about anyone but herself.”
“Billy, her entire life for the past five years has been a disaster.”
“Patrick, get over it. Drink more beer. Go back to Atlanta and find a girl who will make you happy. Get laid on the regular and I promise you’ll feel better.”
“Drink and get laid,” Patrick contemplated. That’s what he’d done at the Pro Bowl and it’d been the first time he’d really let loose in a while. “That I can do.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
REALIZATION CAN SUCK IT
Patrick sat back in his very expensive seat back to Atlanta. The more he thought of the entire situation the more he realized he was losing his shit. El was making him insane. He closed his eyes; he needed to get over this thing that he felt for her. The tragedy of them was that they loved each other and could’ve worked, but their circumstances conspired against them and George swooped in and picked up the only parts remaining of El’s heart. He’d been holding her heart in his hands for years, hoping that it would mend, that she would get through her heartbreak and he would be the one to piece her back together. What a fucked up word for what someone feels when someone they love decimates them—heartbreak.
His phone dinged with a text from Billy.
Fuck some southern chicks, report back
He smiled; Billy could always make him smile. Patrick remembered one night when they were walking home from Finnegan’s the first year El lived with them. El was hammered, as usual. The road was quiet, it was snowing and sort of majestic.
El tripped over a cobblestone on the sidewalk and hiccupped. “Fuck,” she said, frustrated.
Patrick grabbed her hand out of instinct and held her close. She lagged behind him, trying to keep up with his pace in her stupor.
“You know,” Billy said, pulling his wool cap down farther on his head, “sometimes people have to fall to learn to watch out for themselves.”
“What the fuck are you talking about, Billy?” Patrick thought Billy was drunk talking about El needing to watch where she was going.
“Patrick, you’re in too deep here. She can handle herself,” Billy opined as they turned right onto their block.
“She almost just fell. I’m helping her,” Patrick countered.
“You’re holding her hand because you want to; she’s holding yours because she needs to.”
Patrick scowled at Billy and, at the same time, El pulled him over to the side and threw up all over the grass, melting the snow.
“Yep, that’s about right,” Billy commented and walked up the stairs to their house.
Patrick pulled El’s hair back from her face and softly told her she’d be okay. She slapped his hand away.
Everything came together at the same time and he felt like he was being smothered as the avalanche of knowledge covered him. Patrick shook his head. Fucking Billy.
He realized as he soared over the east coast that Billy was right. He usually was, but Patrick would never admit it. From the time he met El, he’d wanted to help her, love her, and soothe her. El, on the other hand, only reached out when she needed Patrick, never because she just wanted to touch him. This crushing realization settled on him like a blanket that was too warm. He wanted to shake it off, kick it off, but he couldn’t. This was his reality and Billy had known it from the beginning, when Patrick was still denying that he had any feelings for El. How did I miss it? He certainly hadn’t meant to love her. He’d comforted her whenever she needed it because he felt guilty. It was this guilt that drove his behavior that first year, until it wasn’t…until he started dreaming of what it would be like to touch her when she crawled in his bed, naked and drunk. Until he started dreaming of her smell, coconut seared into his senses like it was part of him. El was part of him and now it was like a limb that had been amputated, but he could still feel it. It was phantom pain. She was pain. El was still there, she was everywhere and nowhere.
How do you get over someone who’s everywhere?
Patrick was typing furiously, trying to get out of the office. He was running to look at a few apartments after work and he hated being late. Surprisingly enough, he loved living with Jesse and they’d became fast friends. They had easy conversations about politics and sports, they worked out together and genuinely liked each other’s company. Patrick was glad he’d made this friend, but he didn’t want to overstay his welcome, plus he’d really like to have his own space. His back was to the door, but he heard the clicking of his favorite colleague’s heels passing his office.
“Hey, Patrick, we’re running to grab drinks over at Twist, you want to go?”
Heart in Wire Page 20