CHAPTER 11 |

Arseholes & Announcements

 

 

Patrick’s place was a two-bedroom apartment above Mrs. Montgomery the Church Lady’s garage. It was where he lived alone since the separation, and where his daughter came to stay two weekends a month. The place was dark and uninviting, and he kept a hand on my back while we climbed the stairs, as though afraid I would run away if he dared let go.

I wasn’t going anywhere.

I had agreed to his one night.

He fumbled with the lock, and cursed at it. “I should really install a better light out here,” he explained.

“I see that,” and I bit at my lower lip.

Standing so close to him, shrouded in darkness, my mind had enveloped itself in fantasy. With little more than the glow from a streetlamp below us, we could be anyone with nothing to work through, no baggage to carry. He could be any other man with a hard body and an intoxicating scent of cologne and pheromones. It would have been a perfect opportunity for him to shove my back against the bricks, slide his hand to that neglected juncture between my legs, and with nobody to see us, I would have granted him access to go further.

But, without seizing the opportunity to read my thoughts, he pushed the door open, and turned on a light. The small living room was packed with a leather sectional that was far too big for the space, and a TV that could have rivalled a movie theater screen. There was little room for anything else, but the guy had managed to wedge a coffee table in the mix.

I was in a Hobbit’s hole furnished by giants, and I bit my tongue to keep from laughing, pressing a fist to my mouth.

Patrick narrowed his eyes, flashing me a warning glare. “Hey, watch it. This crap looked a lot better in the house, but there was no way in hell Christine was keepin’ my couch and TV.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

He closed the door and hung his keys on a little hook. “Yeah, I guess you never did see the house.” I shook my head, casting my eyes downward. Patrick rubbed his hand through the hair at the back of his head. “Right.”

The word oozed with guilt and regret, perfectly matching the feelings that had threaded through my blood for over a decade. The room that was already too small seemed to shrink, crushing me with cushions and leather upholstery.

I sat down, because there wasn’t much else to do, nowhere else to go, and I clasped my hands in my lap. My eyes looked toward the coffee table, and I saw the magazines there, but the words wouldn’t register. I stared beyond everything, unnerved by being there, so secluded and vulnerable in his tiny place with the door closed. And because he knew this, because he knew everything, he left me alone, stepping from the room into the next, humming all the way.

Driving, backyards, hot dogs, and dancing were all innocent enough, but this? Sitting alone in his apartment? This was something else entirely. There was an endless bout of possibilities laid out before us, all of which seemed to involve us naked on any one of the various surfaces.

I wondered how long it would take for it to happen. I wondered if I could go through with it.

Because on the stairs, in the dark and against the bricks, I could imagine he was anybody. But there, in the light, he was Patrick Kinney, taker of my heart and my virginity, and my stomach pulled at the apprehension of wondering if it would be the same, all those years later.

I was scared to find out. I was scared I’d disappoint him, and make him regret those two years of chasing after me. I was scared that we had changed too much, and I was scared that we hadn’t changed at all.

Scared that I wouldn’t be able to stop, scared that I’d never give him up again.

Why did I give him up at all?

“So, do you want somethin’ to drink?” he asked, pulling me from thoughts better left alone.

My eyes focused again on the coffee table, fading the mental guessing game of what he might look like under that t-shirt.

“Um, sure. What do you have?”

“I bought two six-packs of Bud, and a case of that girly shite you like.”

“What girly shite?”

I looked up and over his body, standing in the doorway of what I realized to be his kitchen. The refrigerator door was open, illuminating around his body as though he were some sort of god.

Patrick Kinney might not have been a god, but I had worshipped him and his memory for most of my life.

I would worship him forever.

“You know. That shite ya drink.” As though that explained it, and I nodded, because it did.

He had been prepared, that Patrick Kinney.

I rolled my eyes behind his back, as he went back to the refrigerator, grabbing a bottle of beer for himself and a can of Smirnoff for me. In three strides, he made his way to the couch and dropped himself down next to me. So casual, as though we had spent every Friday night just like that. He pulled the tab on my drink and handed it to me, as if I couldn’t handle it myself.

“Thanks,” I mumbled, and resisted the urge to roll my eyes again.

I took a slow sip while he cracked the cap off of his beer, knocking the bottle back until half had poured down his throat.

I sat awkwardly with my can between my legs, both hands gripping the cold aluminum. I wanted to ask what I was doing there, but asking meant speaking and speaking meant conversation. I rolled my lips together, released, then rolled them together again. Trying to decide what to do, what to say, what to …

“So, we’ve had a good night, right, Kins?”

I released a breath of quivering air, and nodded. “Yeah, sure. It was nice.”

“Good, I’m glad, because now, we have to get the not-so-nice shite out of the way.”

“What?”

He rubbed a hand over his bristled chin. The way his Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat, I could tell he was fighting himself from saying what he needed to say, to continue with his plan.

“I want you to fight with me,” he finally said, then bit down on his lip with immediate regret.

I blinked. “You want me to fight with you?”

“Yes.” Worry wrapped its hand around his throat, choking the confidence away.

“This isn’t what I agreed—”

“I don’t want to do this anymore than you do, Kins, but we need to do it.”

I picked at the metal lip of my can—ping, ping, ping—and shook my head. “I have nothing to fight about, Patrick.”

“You have nothing to fight about? Really?” My words had challenged him, lit a fire in his eyes, and wiped away the reluctance.

I shook my head again, taking a sip of my drink. “Nope.”

“Okay, so you ran away for nothing, right? You just disappeared for ten years, and that had absolutely nothing to do with gettin’ away from me?”

He flicked at my nerves with every word spoken, but I refused to succumb. Ping, ping, ping. “Nope,” I lied.

“And you made your family go to you every holiday, and that had absolutely nothing to do with me?”

I shot him a look of surprise. How much did he know? Ping, ping. “Nope.”

Patrick shook his head with a sarcastic chuckle, looking ahead at our reflection in the TV. He tipped the bottle back, gulping the rest. Liquid courage.

“You’re such a feckin’ liar, Kinsey, y’know that?” He shook his head with a bitter sniff of a laugh.

I glared at him, crumpling my forehead with irritation. He kept flicking at those nerves. “No, I’m not.”

“Aww, look at ya, gettin’ defensive.”

He flicked one more time, one last time, and hit that final nerve. “You want me to fight, Patrick?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Fine!” I slammed my can down on his coffee table, splashing the drink over my hand and onto the table’s surface, and I stood up. I looked down at him, seeing that he had changed position. Sitting on the couch with his elbows on his knees, his hands wrapped around the back of his head.

The Difficult Topic stance.

“I hate that you fucked her,” I sneered through my clenched jaw.

He wouldn’t look at me, but he nodded. “What else?”

“I hate that you did the predictable thing and stuck your dick in the first thing that would take you.” My jaw ached, ticking between paused words. “I hate that, of all people, it just had to be her.”

“Good. What else?”

My fists clenched. “I hate that you ruined us, and everything we could have been!”

His head lifted to spear me with his heated eyes. “Wait a minute … You blame me for everything?” I kept my lips pinned shut as he stood up, towering over me at an almost intimidating height. “Kinsey, you broke up with me! You don’t get to blame me for that! You can blame me for one hour of stupidity, but you don’t get to blame me for what started it all.”

He bore down on me, and I glared right back up at him, my mouth twisting with ten years’ worth of anger and bitter spite. How heavy it had been, how light I was beginning to feel.

“You don’t think I know that?” I shouted up at him. “You don’t think I haven’t blamed myself every goddamn day for what happened?”

“Kinsey, I—”

I shook my head, and my fists tightened. “I hated myself for so long for doing what I did, and I know I fucked up when I broke up with you, but you fucked her. That’s what fucked everything up, Patrick. You moved on.”

“You’re unbelievable,” he muttered, pinching the space between his eyebrows before dropping his hand, and shouting, “I didn’t move on! Are you kiddin’ me? I’ve never moved on! Why do you think I’m here right now? Christ, Kinsey, I can’t move on!”

I moved across the room, separating myself from him. “Oh, give me a fucking break, Patrick! You got married. You can’t tell me you didn’t—”

The bastard threw his head back, and laughed at the ceiling. “Oh my God, I got married, because you left. What the hell was I supposed do?”

“Oh, will you just stop it already? You couldn’t even look at me when I came back! And now, you’re telling me that if I had stayed, you never would have married her? You’re telling me you would have gone on with your life, being the good little Irish Catholic boy with a child out of wedlock? What would your Mam and Da have thought of that?” I snickered at him with a shake of my head. “Lying isn’t gonna do you any good now, Patrick. It’s too late for that.”

“It was the right thing to do, under the circumstances, but if you had given me time to take you back—”

“Time?” I scoffed. “What? Six months of silence wasn’t long enough for you? How much more time did you need?”

“Feckin’ hell, Kinsey! I was wrappin’ my head around becomin’ a father! I couldn’t think about how to fix whatever the hell had happened to us! But if you had given me a chance to sort shite out, I never would’ve tried to make a miserable excuse for a marriage work for ten years. I only ever wanted you. I chose you, Kinsey. I chose you when we were just ki—”

“Oh, yeah? Were you still choosing me when you chose to fuck her?”

Goddamn my stupid mouth, and goddamn Patrick Kinney for making me say it.

He rushed toward me in two strides, backing me into a wall. His hands were planted on either side of my shoulders, caging me in, and one of his large hands slammed against the wall behind my head, rattling the keys on their little hook, and my body jolted. He lowered his eyes to mine. His chest heaved, his nostrils flared, and I sucked in my breath.

“Goddammit, Kinsey! I fucked her, because she got me drunk! I fucked her, because she was there! I fucked her, because what you did feckin’ hurt, and I didn’t want to feel anything for just a few feckin’ minutes!”

“And then, you married her, and stayed that way for ten feckin’ years.”

Patrick rolled his eyes and flexed his hand against the wall, accompanied by a snicker and a little shake of his head. “Yes, yes, yes, I know, Kinsey. I know. You keep remindin’ me of what an arsehole I was for tryin’ to be a good father, and a relatively loyal husband. But you wanna know somethin’ else?”

“What?” I sneered, spitting the word into his face.

“I’m also the arsehole that asked for a divorce as soon as you were back, as soon as I knew I might have even the tiniest feckin’ chance of gettin’ you back. Because that’s all I ever wanted. One feckin’ chance.”

My eyes widened, and he smirked with another little shake of his head. One dimple.

“Ah, ya think you know everything, Kins, but I bet ya didn’t know that, did ya?”