CHAPTER 14 |

Roast Beef & Leveled Fields

 

 

I had gotten myself comfortable on the couch. My shoes had been kicked off, my legs stretched out along the cushions. Patrick emerged from the kitchen with two plates loaded with roast beef, mashed potatoes, green beans, and biscuits. When he caught sight of me, he raised a cocked brow.

“Assuming the position?” he asked with a one-dimpled smile.

Eye roll. “Fuck off. I’m just getting comfy.”

The other side lifted. Two dimples.

He handed one of the plates over to me, and pulled a can of Smirnoff and a bottle of Bud from his pockets. Then, he lifted my ankles with one hand. Sitting down, he put my feet in his lap.

“Thanks,” I said, enjoying the casual intimacy of the moment, and glanced at the plate with a sentimental smile. “So, you just whipped all this up?”

“I’m good, but I’m not that good,” he said, and then explained, “Leftovers from the other night, and don’t worry. No roofies in the potatoes.”

“You cook? Color me impressed.” The Patrick Kinney I once knew could barely master a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese, let alone a fine looking roast beef.

“I do, actually, but I didn’t make this. I took some food home from my parents’ place. I’m over there for dinner a lot of the time.” He shoveled some potatoes into his mouth, and his lips curled as he said, “If I’d known homecooked food would make ya smile like that, I would’ve blown your mind with a brisket and roasted potatoes. Oh well. Next time.”

“If there is a next time,” I grumbled, and by the tip of his head, I knew he was unconvinced.

My teeth sank into a biscuit, and I groaned. “God, I’ve missed your mom’s cooking.”

He laughed with a little shake of his head. “I don’t think anybody is supposed to compliment an Irish woman’s cookin’.”

The accent floated heavily into his speech, hugging the word “Irish.” In all the years I had known him, I had never thought to ask if he knew when he was doing it. I always just suspected that he more often did it on purpose, after knowing it had become an aphrodisiac. A surefire way to get me out of my clothes and into the bed of his truck.

Was that his angle now? I was curious, but I decided not to ask.

Some things were better left alone. Things like hot Irish accents.

“So, what did you do after you left?”

“I went back to school,” I laughed.

He rolled his eyes to glare at me sidelong. “Oh, so you were in school for ten years? What did ya major in? The meanin’ of life?” he deadpanned, laying the accent on thick.

I snorted. “Since I never came home after—well, you know, I got my Bachelor’s really fast and graduated when I was twenty-one. My college roommate and I got a couple jobs right out of school, got an apartment together, and that’s where I stayed until I was twenty-five, until she and her boyfriend got a place together.”

He nodded once, encouraging me to continue, as he took a bite of roast beef.

“Why do you want to know?” I laughed, feeling suddenly on display.

“Because there’s this whole part of your life I don’t know about. After seventeen years of bein’ in love with each other, it’s hard to come to terms with the thought of there bein’ a whole missin’ decade.”

I laughed. “We weren’t in love for seventeen years.”

“Oh, well, shite. That only makes one of us then. Awkward.”

“You were not in love with me for seventeen years.” I reached over to playfully smack him in the arm, and he smirked.

“Hmm … Yeah, you’re right.” He looked away, eyeballing the ceiling for two long beats of my heart. “It’s been longer than that. Twenty-nine years?”

“You did not fall in love with me when you were three. God, you’re being such an idiot.”

“Kinsey, I fell for you the second I saw you and your stupid pigtails. I was clingin’ to Da’s legs, beggin’ him to not force me over to you, because I knew in my little heart, that I was done for.” He laughed, shaking his head against the back of the couch. “Hell, even at three, I knew to stay the feck away from women. But then, Da shoved me over to you, and …” He shook his head, turning back to face me. “Done.”

I laughed, as the heat crept up from my chest to my cheeks, blazing a trail where his words kissed my skin. “You’re such an idiot.”

“Maybe.” He nodded thoughtfully. “Or … maybe I’ve just been in love with you for twenty-nine years. But, anyway, when you were twenty-five, what did you do?”

And so, I talked, while Patrick listened and hummed quietly. He was always a good listener. He was still a good listener. I found myself wishing that more had changed about him; not because I found anything wrong with his comfortable consistency, but because I wanted to find reasons to leave. I wanted there to be a glaring problem in his personality, a gaping hole that would make us so wrong all these years later, but the more I talked, the more he stared and hummed, and the more I found my heart singing along.

“Did you have any boyfriends while you were away?” He asked the question, and I laughed. “Why is that funny?”

“Why would you even want to know?”

“Just levelin’ the playing field, Kins. You already know I was married.”

“That’s worlds apart from a few dates that went nowhere.”

“Hmmm …” He pursed his lips. “Is a nowhere marriage really that different than a few nowhere dates?”

“Yes! It’s very different!” I laughed again, shaking my head at his absurdity.

“Eh, I don’t think so.”

My head fell sideways, glaring at him. “Why do you have to do that?”

“Do what?” He turned to look at me.

When was the last time we had sat together in such comfort like this? When was the last time I stared at him without the desire to look away?

“You keep trying to ‘level the playing field,’ and you can’t. You’re trying to make us even, but we’re not. We can’t be.”

The side of his mouth twitched upward into a half-smile. One dimple. “I don’t know what kind of marriage you think I had, Kins. We cohabitated. We raised a kid. That was about it. You already know I married out of moral obligation, not out of love, and I never once pretended to have any feelings for her. I never once said it. Any intimacy between us? It was forced. I mean, hell, after that first year of tryin’, if ya can even call it that, we didn’t even share a bed. We hardly ever talked about anything other than Meghan.”

My lips buttoned up. What was I supposed to say to that? I never pictured love between them, but I had pictured passionate, anger-fueled sex. Violent, even. I pictured a showboat of love and affection for cameras and families. I envisioned a life of companionship, at the very least, while I had wallowed in self-inflicted solitude with the random date and make-out sprinkled in.

His life had been lonelier than mine. He did it for his kid. To give her some semblance of a normal life.

He had sacrificed his life, his happiness, for his kid. And then, for me.

Why couldn’t he give me a reason to hate him?

“So, back to my question: Any boyfriends?”

I shook my head. “Not really, no.”

“But you dated?”

I wiped away a few hairs from my face. “A little bit. There were a couple guys I had seen a few times, but never anything serious.”

Nobody had known that about me, and my cheeks burned with exposure. I had found something wrong with everybody. Shallow things. Too tall, too short, too wide, too thin; Goldilocks, that’s who I was. Nobody was just right, because nobody was him.

Patrickinney.

“Good.” He smiled. “Playin’ field: leveled.”