He looked confused, but in a good way, like a prisoner who'd been released in a foreign country with his freedom. “You really care about all that?”
“Yeah. I do. I worry about you.” I put my hand on his arm and let my glow graze his skin.
He flinched and withdrew his arm at the unfamiliar sensation, shaking his head. “Even if I decided to stop going over there, who else am I going to hang out with? You and Patrick?” He laughed and grabbed another fry.
I opened my mouth but then closed it. I didn’t have an answer for that.
“Where was Patrick yesterday anyway?” he asked casually without making eye contact. “It seemed like you were upset in class.”
I hesitated but then realized it wouldn't hurt to tell him part of the truth. “He had to go to a funeral.”
“Oh. Anybody you knew?”
“No, why?”
He brushed something off the table. “I just thought that might have been the reason you were upset.” He peered up at me intently with his blue eyes, as though he were fishing for a specific response. His gaze was inviting. Comfortable. Friendly.
“We're just...having some issues.” I glanced at the table and then flashed my eyes up at him hesitantly. I imagined that must have been the response he was hoping for, but he didn't react. He just held his steady gaze as if he were drawn to my eyes magnetically and couldn't help but stare.
“You know I dream about us every once in a while.” He paused and the silence was heavy with tension.
“Oh?” I swallowed but didn't look away.
“It always plays out the same way,” he began with a shy, endearing twitch of his mouth. “We would be talking like we do every once in a while. Or like we are now.” His mouth twitched again. “But then you'd look at me, and see something in me that you saw before.” He gazed at me with sad, distant eyes as he leaned forward hesitantly. “And somehow, for whatever reason...we would kiss. And I would hold you in my arms. And you'd be mine.”
He smiled but only for a moment before it faded and an expression of pained acceptance that was difficult to behold took its place. “But you're not mine. It's just a wishful dream.”
He cleared his throat and began to pick up our trash. I was speechless.
He stood up and pushed his chair back under the table. The chair’s metal feet scraped against the tiled floor. “Come on. I’ll walk you to your car.”
* * * *
I couldn’t think straight the whole ride home. It wasn’t so much that I was toying with the idea of getting back together with Josh. There was no way I’d ever leave Patrick. I knew that. But still. I couldn’t ignore the fact that he was his old self around me. Plus, I enjoyed being around him.
Besides all that, he’d confessed his true feelings for me. Our meeting had turned from a quick lunch between friends into something much more complicated. The more I thought about what had happened, the guiltier I felt.
I put forth extra effort to avoid everyone for the rest of the afternoon and hid out in my room with a book. Kyra called, but I ignored it. Then she texted me to see if I was all right. I replied I was fine but didn’t elaborate.
Lexi even texted me to see what I was up to. Thankfully, I had a semi-good excuse this time to stay home. At least one she would somewhat understand. I told her I’d just gotten into a great new book and would probably be reading the rest of the day. Which I did for the most part. But I kept glancing at my phone. No texts or calls from Patrick.
His lack of communication seemed like a punishment for my going behind his back. Even though he knew nothing about my lunch date.
I moped in my guilt for hours, contemplating how horrible I was for even considering being with Josh. If I did leave Patrick for Josh, I would lose Patrick forever. And that was something I was never willing to let happen. Never.
Never.
I repeated the word in my mind and suddenly, everything became clear. I could never leave Patrick for Josh or for any other reason. I never wanted to be without him. I could never do that to him or me. And his past didn’t change that.
Upon coming to that realization, I wanted to see Patrick more than ever. I needed to be close to him. I needed to prove my devotion to him.
I texted Patrick to see when he would be home, but I didn’t get a text back. By late evening, I was kind of losing hope that I’d see him that night.
It had started to rain and was already past ten. I changed into my pajama pants and a tank top, grabbed some hot cocoa, and curled up on my bed with my book once more. I would just have to be patient and wait to hear from him tomorrow.
I read in peace with the steady pitter-patter of rain outside lulling me into the realm of fiction and fantasy. That’s when a light rapping on my window shattered my trance. I jumped. Was it Patrick? Josh? My chest burned. Surely not. I turned off my light and slowly approached the dark silhouette in the window, made visible from the glow of the surrounding street light.
I hesitantly pulled on the cord to lift my blinds and found Patrick standing outside in the rain. My heart thumped heavily in my chest. Without a second thought, I unlocked the window and shoved it open enough for him to crawl in.
He stood on my carpet with wet shoes as water dripped from his hair and jacket, but I didn’t care. The wild and distraught look on his face didn’t even bother me as much as it should have. We hadn’t seen each other or talked for two days, and I fiercely craved his presence. Something I hadn’t fully realized until he was standing right in front of me.
His eyes burned into mine, almost as if they had hands of their own and were grabbing and holding on to me. I drifted towards him, stopping only inches from his body. I gently took off his black jacket, set the wet garment on a chair, and then faced him. He was silent. He reached out and grasped the sides of my arms. His eyes never left me, as though he were afraid I might disappear if he blinked or didn’t hold tightly enough.
Being with him felt right. He needed me right now, and I needed him. We were meant for each other. Physically, my body told me the same thing.
He must have been feeling it too. The heightened awareness of how close our bodies were. The feel of each other’s skin. The sound of each other’s breath inhaling and exhaling deeply. All these sensations drew us together even more.
He tugged on my arms until I was pressed against him. Holding the back of my head in his hand, he softly kissed my cheek and then neck and then the top of my shoulder. As he made his way back up my neck to my check, it was all I could do to wait for him to reach my lips. Once he did, I wrapped both my hands around his neck with more passion and determination than I’d anticipated and fervently kissed back.
Our kissing was so rash and unexpected with not a single word to preface it. And once it started, stopping didn’t seem like an option. I wanted him so badly. I felt the desire in every part of me. Our kissing became desperate. Our hands became frantic. I lost track of my surroundings and was only living in that moment with him.
But before we could go any further, Patrick pulled away abruptly. His He held my shoulders, but kept me at arm’s length, only leaning in so his forehead rested on mine. He breathed heavily, clearly worked up but trying to maintain composure. His nose grazed mine, and his lips were so close his breath caressed my mouth and cheek.
“I want to kiss you,” he breathed. “Really kiss you. I want to feel your lips crush mine. Your fingers tug on my hair. Your body press hard against me. I can’t help it. My body wants it. My mind wants it. Every fiber of my being wants this.”
He pulled back slightly and searched my eyes. “But there’s something else that means more to me than all that.” He took a slow, deliberate breath and kissed me on the cheek, brushing over the spot his lips had grazed with his thumb. “You.”
He dropped his hands. My body felt cold and raw without his touch, as if I’d been pulled from the turbulent steaminess of an outdoor hot tub and left alone in the frigid night air.
After kissing me once more, he backed even further away. “I
don’t want to corrupt you. Not you. Anyone but you.” He turned to go as tears brimmed in his eyes. Grabbing his jacket and slipping it on without a word, he lifted the window and stepped out into the rain.
Chapter 15
I couldn’t bring myself to tell Patrick about my lunch with Josh. We spent all Sunday afternoon together, but the timing never felt right. I swore to myself I would tell him eventually. Patrick was at least able to talk about the funeral. Opening up seemed hard for him, but I think it was healing in a way. Healing for him and us.
But since, as Patrick put it, I then ditched him to hang out with Lexi that evening, he decided we needed some more time together. He took matters into his own hands and showed up bright and early Monday morning to take me to school. Not a completely abnormal practice, but it was obvious he was making an effort to mend any weirdness between us again. Who was I to get in his way?
I hopped in his car and leaned over for a quick but intimate kiss before shutting the door so he could pull out of my driveway. Our kiss, however brief, was enough to bring back the memory of him in my bedroom Saturday night, soaking wet and stormy with passion.
I glanced at him. He appeared completely unfazed.
“How is it that my boyfriend is able to control himself better than I can? Your absurd will-power is kind of aggravating.” I hated to admit it, but Patrick had been right to stop us. Who knows how far I’d have gone if he’d given me the green light.
Patrick smiled weakly at me and then returned his eyes to the road. “Well, when you’ve seen first-hand the worst of something, you tend to be better at avoiding it than people who’ve never been there in the first place.”
A few days ago, a reference to his past exploits would’ve reawakened the uneasiness in my stomach. This time, though, it wasn’t as awkward as before. Talking about the issue somehow made me feel stronger, like we were putting the pieces out on the table to work on together. Instead of ignoring or avoiding them.
I squeezed his knee and smiled. A strange handshake of sympathy and understanding.
We pulled into the parking lot with fifteen minutes to spare, so we took our time walking to my class. Gregory met us in the hallway. He appeared to be supervising students until we came into view. Once he spotted us, his demeanor changed as if finding us was the real reason he was out there and he was done pretending to be a hall monitor. “Hey guys.”
There was a hesitant nervousness about him that was unusual. He smiled but didn’t say anything, so I figured that was my cue to part ways. “See ya.”
I was going to leave it at that, but Patrick didn’t release my hand as he bent down to peck me on the lips.
“Come on you two,” Gregory drawled in fake condemnation. “I can’t be condoning PDA blatantly in front of me in the hallway.” He winked at me and cocked his head and thumb towards his open door. “Go on, get to class.” He glanced at Patrick but was silent, almost as if he were waiting for me to leave so he could talk to him.
Patrick finally let go of my hand, so I went in to take my seat. But when I saw Gregory’s note on the board about the parent teacher conference tomorrow, I paused. My mom had wanted me to ask what time the conference was. For some reason, she’d gotten it into her head that she wanted to be a better, more involved mother. Better to ask now before I forgot.
I walked towards the door again but stopped in my tracks when the word “Lila” drifted through the doorway. It was Gregory’s hushed voice. My whole body tensed and my hands balled into fists. I approached the edge of the door warily, keeping out of eyesight. The harder part was trying not to look like a creeper to the few students who’d shown up earlier than me.
“No, I want to do it.” The words were Patrick’s.
“You’re sure you’re okay with this?” Gregory asked.
“If it will help, I want to. Trust me, I’ll be fine.”
“Well, if you’re sure. I guess we can talk more later, but you know you’re going to have to tell Iris…”
My ears perked up at the sound of my name. But Patrick’s voice was drifting father away, so I couldn’t hear his response. He must’ve been going to class…which meant Gregory would be coming back inside any minute.
I moved quickly to my seat before Gregory had a chance to stroll in and see me still standing there. They shouldn’t have been talking about anything secretive, and I was apparently supposed to be informed at some point. Still, I got a strange feeling I shouldn’t have been listening.
I wasn’t comfortable asking Gregory about it, and Kyra wasn’t even there yet. I decided to wait and approach Patrick during third hour.
Lila was in her usual flirtatious mood with shadowy boys around her, but I ignored them. I didn’t want to hear their repulsive whispers, so I mentally locked the door to any potentially open sound tunnels and then sat down beside Patrick.
“Hey there.” His eyes lit up when he saw me. No teachers were around, so he pulled me close for a kiss.
I allowed the show of affection but pulled away quickly. I didn’t want to lose my resolve. “So...” I wasn’t sure how to begin since he didn’t even know I’d heard them talking. “I didn’t mean to, but I overheard you talking to Gregory a little earlier.”
His eyes widened slightly, but if what I’d said had bothered him, he didn’t let on. “Yeah, we’re still trying to figure out if there’s more to Lila being here.” He threw a brief glance her way. “I mean, surely she didn’t think she could just waltz into our school and convince either of us to become dark servants. And just being here to annoy us doesn’t seem worth her time. There’s got to be something more there. We just don’t know what yet.”
He hadn’t really appeased my curiosity about his conversation with Gregory, so I prodded some more. “What did you mean when you said you’d be willing to do it? I heard Gregory say you’d have to tell me something.”
He sighed and shifted in his seat like an unwilling patient in a shrink’s office. He settled again but didn’t meet my eyes. “He just wants me to try to dig up some information on her. Maybe use some of my personal experience with her. I told him I’d see what I could do.”
I nodded but furrowed my eyebrows. Maybe it was just me, but that didn’t seem like something major enough to warrant Gregory’s concern. I mean, obviously, he’d have to talk to her, and that would be unpleasant to say the least, but...was I missing something?
Patrick patted my knee and left his hand there, but he seemed tense and uncomfortable. He stared straight ahead and squinted as though he were reading the day’s assignment on the board. He never read the assignment on the board.
He was rigid the whole hour and sporadically threw Lila a few more uncomfortable glances. He stayed that way until we left the room to go to lunch, so I chalked it up to Lila’s torturous presence. He was probably dreading having to talk to her. By the time we sat down at our lunch table, Patrick appeared to be back to normal again.
“So, Lexi, did you two have fun last night?” Patrick set his tray down beside her, across from me, and nudged her playfully with his elbow. “Talk about anything interesting?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” she remarked smugly. She still had a slight cloud over her but seemed to be in good spirits. It must have felt nice for her to be the holder of information somebody wanted instead of being the one left out. “What’s said in girl talk stays in girl talk.” She winked at me.
Her shadowy cloud faded from dark gray to silvery ash and then dissolved altogether. I winked back and then grinned to myself as I took a bite of my sandwich. The day was looking promising.
Until I looked up again.
My boyfriend, for some reason, suddenly appeared to want to punch someone in the face. He was glaring behind me to my left. A look in the same direction was all it took to discover what was causing such a belligerent expression. The giant psychedelic mass, bubbling upward in a slow, hypnotic flow of oozing shadow, gave him away. To anyone else, the subtle exchange between the senior burdened under its w
eight and the freshman boy beside him could’ve seemed innocent. With my knowledge of what that shadow meant, I knew better.
I didn’t even have to listen to the shadow’s voice. When the boy slipped the senior a couple twenties for the mysterious package he’d so discreetly slipped in his jacket, my suspicions were confirmed. I’d just witnessed a drug deal.
I cringed. That was why Patrick’s revulsion had been so intense. This guy had reminded Patrick of his former self, and so soon after David’s funeral. I swiveled back in my seat, hesitantly. Were Kyra and I going to need to play defense to keep Patrick from getting suspended?
Kyra had noticed, but Lexi, of course, had no clue why the table had just become so soberly quiet. “What’s going on?”
“I think that guy sold some drugs to the younger one,” I whispered to her as I kept my eyes on Patrick.
“I’ve heard about this guy.” Patrick grumbled. His gaze was still locked on the scene of the crime. “I just didn’t know who he was. Until now.”
“Patrick, don’t do anything stupid,” Kyra said casually, attempting to hide the urgency in her voice. But immediately after the words left her mouth, she searched the cafeteria for back-up, for Gregory. But she was looking in the wrong direction.
“Hey kids.” He’d snuck up out of nowhere and slid in behind Patrick. Kyra and I both jumped. “Everything okay here?”
“Um...” I exchanged a glance with Kyra. Patrick closed his eyes and exhaled loudly through his nose. “Yeah, I think so.”
“Okay,” he replied as if he believed us. “Patrick, can you come here a second?” Gregory paced back a few steps and waited for Patrick to join him.
“Is he okay?” Lexi stared at Patrick’s back as he trudged towards our teacher.
“Yeah,” I reassured her as they disappeared through a door. “He just hates it when people do stupid stuff like that. Gre...uh...Mr. Delaney will take care of it.” I smiled as genuinely as I could, hoping I was right.
Lexi nodded her head without hesitation. She’d developed quite a faith in Gregory over the last few months of having him as a teacher.
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