Chapter 41

chapter 41

Patrick walks inas I’m giving June a thumbs-up. Heat prickles my scalp. When we lock eyes, he smiles. I take a sip of my drink to know where to look and what to do with my hands and face.

My heart hiccups against my diaphragm.

“Hi,” I say once Patrick’s too close to ignore. The effort in my smile makes my left ear pop. All of this is intolerable. My chest is a too-small shoe for the blood-filled foot of my heart. I feel like I’m going to pass out.

“Hey,” he says, smile faltering slightly.

I take a step toward him and offer my cheek as I squeeze his shoulder. “Guess I can’t get rid of you, huh?”

He slides his beanie off, and his hair is messier than usual. Plus, he’s got a good bit of scruff going on. His cheek is cold from outside, and he’s as rumpled as I’ve ever seen him.

He leans in, flashing his teeth with uncertainty. “Actually, wait, I didn’t hear you. What did you say?”

I’m close enough to feel the heat of his neck on my lips. “It doesn’t matter,” I mumble, pulling back. “I said, um, whatever.” I flap my hands near my face unbecomingly. “Sorry.”

“Is it June’s birthday?” he asks.

“What?”

“June…? She made it sound like it was her birthday.”

I shrug. “It’s just a regular get-together.”

“You want to sit down?” he asks.

The things I do for my sister.

My thoughts go scribbly with pent-up bitterness as I pick a small round table and pull out a seat.

I’ve had three cups of coffee today and little else. I couldn’t possibly hate myself faster.

He unzips his leather jacket as he sits and sets it on the back of his chair. The image of the two of us in matching sweatpants feels both so long ago and so far in the future that I’m racked with a sense of vertigo.

He runs his hands through his hair again. He looks tired.

The past few weeks come hurtling into memory, a deranged carousel of indignities that frankly have so little to do with him. The cockroaches at home. June’s rage at Dairy Queen. My inaccessible, unknowable parents. Rae’s thin thigh. Calling Jeremy after everything that happened. The actor’s mouth on mine. The hot scrape of old-man tongue.

I’m lit bright with shame when the kaleidoscope of images refracts all the way back to me groping Patrick in that disgusting bathroom, so slobbering, needy, and frightened.

Of course he has a girlfriend. And she doesn’t even have social media. I checked. It’s just one more way she’s better than me.

I pull my phone out as if to peruse important emails. My arms may as well belong to somebody else.

Patrick clears his throat. “So, I brought her a present.” He shows me a tastefully matte shopping bag.

That he went out of his way to buy something for my sister fills me with small, hard, mean thoughts.

“How touching. She’ll love it,” I hear myself saying woodenly. “You should go say hi.” I point to the back corner, where June’s meaningfully grabbing the shoulder of a baby-faced brown-haired guy that she’s towering over. She’s making huge hand gestures. They must have changed the Spotify playlist because indeterminate U2 blusters all around us.

“Yeah, okay,” he says, pushing his chair out and glancing back to the bar. “I’ll get us drinks first?”

“Sure. A Bombay martini. Up. With two olives. Um…” I try to remember the rest of the order. “Yeah, that’s what I want.”

“So, no vodka soda.”

I shake my head, disgusted with the part of me that shimmies giddily that he remembered my drink from last time.

I watch him walk away. His shoulders rise as he leans against the bar. He hitches his foot on the bar railing, and the way his sweatshirt rides up a little in the back, the way the break of his jeans falls on his pristinely clean sneakers, just the way everything seems so effortlessly boy and attractive and unperturbed finally ignites some sense of unfairness. He’s so fucking okay. Just so fucking aboveboard and respectable with his stupid thoughtful gifts and his insouciantly mussed hair.

When he returns, I’m braced by the overwhelming urge to hit him. Hard. Right on the arm. Just to see if my discomfort lessens. I’m incensed that his leather jacket doesn’t make him appear as though he’s wearing a costume, which is how I feel when most men wear leather jackets. I’m insulted that when he sets my drink down in front of me, he smiles easily and that the silence is somehow comfortable when he does.

Remember when you said that New York was waiting?I want to ask him. That you wouldn’t forget about me? Was that literally, figuratively, or bullshittingly? I want to sustain this anger and indignation in a stalwart display of feminist outrage, anything that even remotely hints to a sense of pride, but it’s flagging already.

When he leaves to greet June, she lights up and pulls him in for a hug. I can see by the slack of her torso that she’s wasted. She introduces him in what may as well be a silent film, her gestures are so comically exaggerated. She hugs him again when he hands her the bag, holding the embrace a beat longer than necessary and whispering something in his ear. The sudden, piercing thought arrives that she’s invited him as an option. My sister is absolutely conniving for sex with Patrick. I can’t tell if I’m repulsed or impressed by how undeterred she is by his girlfriend.

My mouth is rank from the olive particles carpeting my tongue.

I stare at the black square of cocktail napkin under the foot of my glass. There isn’t even a ring. Fucker didn’t even spill a drop on his way over. That’s what we’re dealing with. As I lift it, it dribbles onto my lap.

I’m heated when he comes back around. Worked up into a full lather.

“Well, it’s definitely not her birthday.” He pulls his chair out and sits down.

“I told you it wasn’t.”

He looks over his shoulder “Man, I don’t know what the fuck that energy was.”

I follow his gaze and laugh. I can’t help it. It is a deeply weird vibe. June’s standing with her back to us, one hand placed on the shoulder of two different dudes. It’s as if they’re posing for a family portrait in which she’s the dad. I’m astounded by the adult she’s become. It both makes total sense and none at all.

“What’d you get her?”

“Macarons,” he says. “Nice ones.”

Jesus, what a suck-up. “That’s such a gift you’d give an aunt,” I tell him. “Were they sold out of boxes of fruit or what?”

“I have no idea,” he says stiffly. “It’s been a long week.”

I check the time. It’s just after ten. A perfectly respectable hour to leave, but of course now I don’t want to.

“So did your friend Aliyah make it back okay?” I take a phantom sip of a martini from the glass that is now clearly empty. “She seems nice.” I don’t know why I’m opening this portion of the conversation with the unveiled contempt of a sociopath from a reality dating show.

“Yeah,” he says, observing me with the appropriate level of caution.

“She’s so pretty,” I insist. Honestly, I can’t stop myself.

“She had some things to deal with in town.”

“Nothing bad, I hope.” I say this to seem classy even if bad things happening to Patrick’s girlfriend isn’t entirely without appeal.

“It went okay,” he says. He removes a pack of mints from his pocket and eats one.

“May I?” He shoots me a quick look as you would someone who says “may I.”

He holds the tiny metal tin toward me. My hand extracts one with the precision of a metal claw game at the amusement park. I accidentally take four and quickly shove them into my mouth as if he won’t notice.

He snaps the box shut, and I’m struck by how much I want to reach out and grab his hand. Hold it to my face like a freak.

“I mean, like, so pretty.” I have no idea who’s piloting the control center of my brain at this point.

He takes a deep breath. “I wanted to tell you about her.”

I smile brightly. “Well, now you don’t have to,” I demur. “We’re fine, Patrick. Honestly, you don’t owe me an explanation. We don’t owe each other anything.” I am the very picture of detachment. A person with options. I may not have the job he has or the apartment or the significant other or the art, but one day I might.

“I’m getting another drink,” he says.

I watch him leave and realize that the bar’s suddenly heaving with activity. I check the time. It’s leapt to midnight somehow.

Patrick returns with his beer and takes a long swallow. I notice that I’ve torn the cocktail napkin into little strips. Trying to get from end to end without ripping the strand.

“I called a car.” June stumbles over to us. “This is Kazmi,” she says, placing her entire open hand on the chest of the guy whose arm is around her waist. “First name, Salim.”

“Hey.” He up-nods and stumbles back a half step, laughing as he recovers.

“Analyst,” she adds. Her eyes are closed as she says this, but then they snap open to follow brightly with “Aries,” as if to justify her choice.

Salim’s Adam’s apple juts out at a true ninety-degree angle, and he’s tall and scrawny—a collision of corners—but the rest of his face is all circles. He has huge dark eyes—Disney eyes—a bulbous nose, and bee-stung lips.

“What’s up?” he says. They’re both spectacularly wasted.

“I think I should go back with them,” I tell Patrick, gathering my things. “So she doesn’t get murdered.” I can’t deduce if she knows Salim or she’s picked him from the bar.

“I guess I’ll head out too,” he says, slipping on his jacket.

We trudge upstairs, and I’m overcome by the urge to shake him. We’ve held hands before. He’s cooked for me. I slept in his bed. Pops! I want to scream at him.

Patrick waits with us until the car comes. I catch snippets of June’s conversation.

Patrick. Church. Can you believe it?

A black car pulls up. Gleaming and morose. June gets in the far door. Salim in front.

“Hey,” Patrick says into my ear as I open my side. I stall, wondering what sage parting words he’ll leave me with. Instead he asks, “Where are you gonna be while, they’re, you know…?” He nods to the lovely couple we’ve poured into a car. “Like, is this a one-bedroom?”

“Fuck,” I whisper more to myself than to him.

“You getting in, buddy?” my sister’s sperm donor calls out from the front seat. “It’s a party,” he continues.

“Party, party,” June mutters with her eyes closed. She’s leaned up against the window. Little exhales fogging up the glass by her mouth.

“Scoot over,” he says. I roll my eyes, nod, and scoot over. He gets in and shuts the door.