Hank sat sipping his cocktail, eyebrows creased upward, smiling with bitchiness. The restaurant was full of people. I liked going out with friends enough, but I really wanted Hayden to be there with us. I wanted my Hank to get to know my new partner.

The only problem with that was that Hayden wasn’t speaking to me. Coming out had wrecked him, and apparently, I hadn’t responded in the right way. I didn’t tell him that I loved him.

“I know what you’re thinking,” I said.

Hank sat back and “If this was twenty years ago, I’d tell you that you’re crazy,” he said.

“He’s good to me, Hank. I think I’m good to him too,” I said.

“He’s young,” Hank said.

“So what?” Would everyone give us shit about our age difference? Plenty of different people loved each other, so why was this so weird to Hank? “You’re starting to sound like his homophobic mom.”

“He’s innocent, Leo. He’s inexperienced and definitely not queer enough for you. What makes you think he knows what he wants?” he asked.

“Queer enough for me? That’s a new one,” I said. “He’s an omega. He doesn’t need to be anything but himself. ”

“Biologically, sure, but he likes to fuck women too. Or did you forget that already? What if he gets tired of playing out this gay fantasy?” Hank set his perspiring glass down on the bar table. I had the sudden urge to push it off the edge and onto his lap.

“Now is not the time to make me nervous, Hank,” I muttered.

“I just don’t want to see a repeat of the Patrick thing. That’s all,” Hank said.

“You won’t,” I muttered.

“I barely see you anymore. I know we’re getting older, but you can’t deny that your last relationship changed you,” he said.

No, I couldn’t deny that. But I didn’t leave my house to have judgment thrown my way.

The restaurant suddenly felt jarring and uncomfortable. A table full of alphas stood up, cheering, as a football player tackled an opposing quarterback. I wanted to leave.

“I don’t want to talk about Patrick anymore,” I said.

Earlier… I had that dream again. The same one I always fucking had. I was in that rodeo bar. I was searching for something missing. I was frantic. Patrick was at the other end of the bar, staring at me, but there was a strange darkness around him. He was pulled under, laughing while the straight and narrow cowboys beat the ever-living shit out of me, over and over again.

When I woke up, I was in a total sweat. I turned over to hold Hayden, but he wasn’t there. He was at home. I quickly felt like I was entirely alone.

“I keep seeing him. In my dreams, Hank,” I whispered.

“Patrick?” Hank stopped stuffing his face.

“Yeah, but it’s more than him. It’s like I’m searching for something missing. Meanwhile, the whole bar turns on me,” I said.

“The miscarriage,” he whispered, barely audible, but there was no doubt he said those words.

“You can’t do that to yourself. You can’t keep beating yourself up,” Hank said.

A surge of anger rushed through my body. I struggled not to break the table in half. “I can’t help what goes on in my subconscious. That memory is etched into my mind forever. There’s no going back from here,” I said.

“Have you told Hayden?” he asked.

I nodded. I felt consumed by my fear of the possibility that it might happen to me again. I tried to block it from my mind, but it wasn’t that easy. “Yeah. We talked about it once,” I said. “Briefly.”

“Briefly?” Hank laughed, but my cutting stare caused him to cut it early.

“There’s not much to say. My child didn’t make it because I’m a toxic person, and now, Patrick won’t stop rubbing it into my face,” I said.

“Oh, fuck off. Where did you learn to be so self-deprecating? Patrick really did a number on you,” Hank said.

“I don’t know. I think I’ve always felt a little like a failure,” I said. “Everyone has nice jobs. They have partners that they devote themselves to. What do I have? I mean, really. What have I ever had?”

“Shut up,” Hank said. I opened my mouth, but before I could say anything further, he held his hand in front of his line of view. “I mean it, Leo. I’m about two seconds away from uppercutting your chin. Shut the hell up.”

“What’s your problem?” I hadn’t seen Hank get this angry since 1993 when a group of straight men protested the opening of Leather and Lace.

“I’m beginning to think you’ve always been my problem,” Hank muttered to himself. “How can you possibly move forward with Hayden if you still blame yourself for the failure of your last relationship? We all know why it happened. It happened because Patrick is an evil little bitch.”

The words stung, but I probably deserved to hear them. I tried to respond, but I didn’t know what else to say. I simply responded with, “I don’t know.”

“Get ahold of yourself, Leo. You need to figure this out. Talk to Patrick. Clear the air. I know he’s been trying to talk to you, but you keep blocking him out,” he said.

“God,” I groaned. “I can’t talk to him. He’s beyond talking to. Besides, you just called him an evil bitch.”

“He’s definitely evil, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to stop fucking with you. You never had closure. Solve it,” Hank said.

Sweat was building over my forehead. I took a sip of my cocktail, but I quickly felt sick to my stomach. I stood up, palms shaking. “Just fuck off, Hank,” I said. “I came here to hang out with you, not get berated with invasive questions.”

Hank stood up. He grabbed my arm. “Don’t go,” he said. “Sit down.”

“I’ll never talk to Patrick again,” I said, turning around.

I walked out of the restaurant, the first time I’ve ever done something so brash against a friend. I sat against a curb, near a dumpster to the side of the building. I quickly took out my phone and hovered over the name Hayden.

“Hey. Come on, Leo,” Hank said. He had run after me. “Are you done running away?”

I thought of Patrick and how he looked the night he banged against my front door, stumbling, wasted. His eyes were barely open. His skin looked sunken in around the cheeks. Had he still been drinking everyday? Probably.

“It’s not my responsibility to fix Patrick anymore,” I said.

“Fix Patrick? You think I expect you to fix Patrick? Get your head out of your ass, Leo. I want you to talk to him because you need closure after the tragic ending,” Hank said. “It’s time.”

“I don’t know if I can let go,” I said. “I hate Patrick. I hate what we did to each other.”

“You don’t know until you try,” he said. “See what happens. Who knows? Maybe some good will come out of it.”

I had been turning my back from the idea of closure for a long time now. Maybe, Hank was right. I had to face Patrick before moving on.

“Alright,” I said. “I’ll think about it.”

Hank lifted me up onto my feet and smiled. Our faces had changed so much. We may have been getting older, and we had seen some tough shit, but we looked like fucking warriors. “Godspeed,” he said.

I nodded goodbye and walked away with my phone carefully clutched inside of my hand. I unblocked Patrick’s name in my phone. I called him and waited for his scratchy voice to answer.

“Leo?” he asked.

He hadn’t left his house this week, I thought. I shouldn’t have blocked him, but sometimes the anger was too fucking much to deal with. “Patrick,” I said. “We need to talk.”

I heard his heavy breathing. A slight laugh fell from his lips, spilling into my ear like a handful of broken glass. What did he have to gloat about? I wondered.

“I’d rather not. I’ve been getting on fine without you,” Patrick said.

“Quit lying to yourself, Patrick. You keep coming up in my life, one way or another,” I said.

“And I always will,” he said with a layer of spite that sent a cold shock through my veins.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“You’ll see. Talk to your boy-toy,” he said before hanging up the phone.

Silence. There was only silence.