I exhaled slowly. “I’m so sorry. How come you didn’t tell me? How come Chloe didn’t tell me?”Patrick looked at me with confusion. “Why would she know? And I wanted to call you but my mother has been inconsolable so I’ve been taking care of everything. I had to fly out to California for a few days. There just wasn’t any time and ... I didn’t really want to explain over the phone.” He looked around my cold and shabby hallway. The paint on the walls was peeling and a light flickered obnoxiously above us. “I didn’t really want to tell you here, either.”“I’m sorry,” was all I could say.“I still should have called or texted,” Patrick added, smiling a little again, albeit sadly. “That was inexcusable. I can’t imagine what was going on in that little over-analytical head of yours.”“Patrick, your father died. It’s okay. I’m sure I was the last thing on your mind.”He stepped closer so my back was against the wall and his body hovered over me. “You were usually the only thing on my mind.”“
He sighed and leaned back, shaking his head a little. “When I first met Chloe I thought she was cute. I liked her. She was a bit high maintenance for me, but I knew I was pretty high maintenance, too.” He smiled at me but I couldn’t smile back. “We’d been dating for six months. I was always on the edge of breaking things off. It didn’t feel right to me. Then she suckered me into coming over to dinner at your parents’ house. Everything told me not to go, that I was making things more serious between us by ‘meeting the parents’, that I was still leading her on. But Chloe has that face—you know it well, I’m sure—that sometimes you can’t say no to. I mastered how to eventually but this was early on.” He looked over at my little table of frames. “We all sat down to dinner and she was bitching about how you were running late but she couldn’t wait for me to meet you. I half-listened as she told me a little about you. Then you rushed in the house and gave us all a smile. You were out of breat
Patrick laughed, but he didn’t sound happy or all that amused. “I couldn’t figure it out. Why the fuck should it matter if you hated me, if I disappointed you? I just thought you were pretty, I kept telling myself. I was just attracted to you. It wasn’t that bad because we can’t help noticing attractive people, right? That’s what I always said to myself. Then that night I was in bed and it finally came to me that I loved you. That I always had, particularly when I got to know you. You might have been recalcitrant in my company but you still spoke. I still found out things about you.”I sat next to him and put my head in my hands. It felt like it was going to explode any minute. “You can’t possibly love me, Patrick. We were never close enough for that.”He ignored me. “Two or three months later I told Chloe I didn’t love her anymore and things weren’t working out. Then she filed for divorce.” He moved cautiously closer to me. “I wasn’t going to seek you out, Nina. I thought I’d get ove
“Chloe loves you. It’s going to work out. All of it.” Looking at my expression, he said, “If you prefer, we’ll keep it discreet for a little while. But I’m not letting you go now that I’ve got you, now that I know what you taste like, what you scream like, what you moan like ... what you feel like. I can’t let you go.” His steady eyes bore into my own. We both knew what a risk he was making, unveiling all his intimate thoughts and emotions to me when I could easily turn around and break his heart. It was then I accepted how serious he was.I wanted to tell him something, but I didn’t know what. Then he slid into me, touching me deep inside while his eyes probed my own, and I couldn’t say anything at all.A few hours later he put his suit back on. Now it was entirely rumpled; he had removed it in a frenzy.I slipped on pajamas and watched him prepare to leave. A pang went through my body and I realized I was already missing him. I didn’t want to see him go. Impulsively I kissed the arc
She talked about ways she could figure it out, how she knew she was trespassing on his private life but she couldn’t understand how he could move on so quickly, how it wasn’t fair he had met someone and she kept going on dates with losers, but I was lost in the stormy ocean of my own hazy, messed up world.Then she said something and I was brought back to the conversation. “What?”“I asked what’s up with you. You’re a million miles away.”“I’m sorry.”She looked me over and then a small smile flickered on her lips. “You’re fucking someone, aren’t you?”“Chloe!”She looked at me closely and her smile grew wider. “Oh my God, you’re serious about him, aren’t you?! Why haven’t you said anything? Is that why you’ve been acting weird? Tell me everything! My own love life may suck but that doesn’t mean you can’t tell me about yours!”I can’t tell you about mine, Chloe, because you’re likely going to ram a machete into my head, I thought.“I’m not seeing anyone.”This time she heard the lie.
She must have wanted a surprise girls’ night.She said nothing. I said nothing. Patrick slipped out of me. I felt his cum slipping from my pussy and down my thighs, the ultimate evidence of what we’d just done. Of what she’d seen. Of what she’d heard.She took a step backwards. Then she took another. It was like we were wild animals and she couldn’t turn her back on us because we were dangerous.Well, weren’t we?Her face was white, her eyes wide, her mouth open on a silent scream. It felt like an eternity as we stood there, us watching her, her staring at our naked and fucked bodies.Then she ran and disappeared, leaving behind the scene of betrayal as quickly as she came upon it. I was too frozen to go after her. I stared unseeingly at the empty doorway, wondering if it was all one big nightmare.Patrick pulled his boxers on and retrieved a broom and a mop. He shut the door and started sweeping and mopping up the floor. I watched the glass dance and listened to the sound it made as
Since...Then everything clicked into place. I didn’t just want Patrick.“Do you know when I first started loving you?” I asked him, not realizing my prolonged silence had sent him into his own quiet whirlwind of thoughts. His head snapped up and the heat in his eyes nearly made me stop speaking. The words, however, and the emotions, had been stifled for too long. “You were married to Chloe for four months and the two of you made me go to the movies with you. It was a stupid movie but I can’t think of the name now ... Chloe went to the bathroom. We were standing by the concession stand.”Patrick said nothing but his alert eyes and rigid posture told me he was listening and that he recalled it all perfectly. He never forgot anything.“My ex-boyfriend was there. Mike. We had just broken up and he was there with some gorgeous girl, practically fucking her against the wall. You got so angry. I didn’t understand it then. I was too depressed to make sense of anything, really...” I drifted o
Walking back into the bedroom, I couldn’t help but smile at the sight of Patrick sprawled out and fast asleep like a little kid, Rufus curled up on his chest. It was strange getting used to his vulnerable side, but I liked it. I was struck once more by how quickly everything had transformed. It was overwhelming, to be honest.I didn’t know what would happen with Patrick. He was moody, arrogant and a self-proclaimed narcissist. He had changed slightly, but he hadn’t changed that much. He could very likely break my own heart one day.Climbing into bed with him, smelling him and feeling his warm arm automatically wrap around me, I figured it was a risk I was more than willing to take.Thankfully the next day was a Saturday. Feeling and looking as I did, I would have had to call out from work. My eyes were glassy and puffy, and I’d had nightmares all night. I was exhausted, scared and devastated.Patrick woke up and smiled at me, and then his smile faded. I looked awful. “I’ll go get you