CHAPTER 17 |

Miracles of Time & Sweet Things

 

 

Patrick stood up in the small crevice between bed and wall, singing that damn song. His eyes watched me with contentment, like he didn’t care what I did, just as long as I was there on his bed.

I have to say; the feeling was mutual.  

His arms crossed over his front, his fingers grabbed the edge of his shirt, and in one fluid motion, it was up and over his head.

“And what do you think you’re doing?” I asked, as he tossed the shirt over the bed into a laundry basket in the corner.

“Kins, it’s nearly midnight, and I’m gettin’ ready for bed,” he said, his eyes never leaving my face as he unzipped his fly. “However, what we do in bed, is entirely up to you.”

A pang of panicked arousal hit me at the sight of him, and my eyes dropped over his naked torso; the flexing biceps, the curved muscular definition of his chest and the new-to-me Celtic family tree tattooed to the left side. The tight bands of his stomach, the downward concave of the wide V-line of lean muscle. The strip of reddish-brown hair beginning at the bottom of his navel, disappearing under the waistband of his jeans; a trail leading to a place I could so vividly remember, but, God, he looked so different. Twelve years had truly done amazing things to his body. They had turned the boy into the man, and while I found myself missing that boy I knew, I thanked Christ for the miracles of time.

“Excuse me,” I managed to say, my voice taking on a higher pitch than normal, “but you said you’d sleep on the couch.”

He pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes at me. “I did say that, didn’t I? What the feck was I thinkin’, sayin’ something like that? But,” he sighed, shrugging, “okay then. If that’s really what you want.”

Humming, he grabbed a pillow from the bed, and I watched the flexing of his arms and chest, and then, the rippled movement of his abs as he walked around the bed to the door. He turned, displaying the incomprehensible architecture of his back. The symmetrical design of muscle with his spine as the dividing line. The dimples just above his undone jeans, barely sitting over the rounded arch of his butt …

There was no way I was allowing him to walk out of that bedroom, not when he looked like that. And he hesitated at the door, as though he knew I was about to say something to keep him from taking another step, and he waited with his hand on the door frame.

“Irish bastard,” I whispered, biting my lip and shaking my head.

“What was that?”

I squeezed my eyes shut, and pushed the words out with a breathy sigh. “Please, don’t leave.”

He turned his head, looking at me over his shoulder with the pillow tucked under his arm, and a smile slowly spread across his lips. “Well, since you asked nicely.”

His dimples glared at me, uncovering the little boy inside, and there he was: my best friend. He turned around, tossed the pillow back to the head of the bed, and let the jeans fall to the floor, revealing his plaid boxers. He dropped down to his hands and knees at the foot of the bed, and slowly made his ascent back to the top. One arm stepped over my body, and he worked his way up, up, up until his hands were grounded on either side of my shoulders. His eyes looked down at me, into mine, chest heaving.

“Hey,” he said on a whisper.

“Hi.”

“So, can I ask you a question?” His eyes fluttered down to my parted lips.

“Yes.”

“What did you think when you first saw me?”

“Seriously? I was three.”

The corner of his mouth lifted. One dimple. “God, you’re cute. You know what I mean; the second first time.”

My cheeks puffed around a sigh, remembering the jolt of longing at that first glimpse of him at the grocery store, aged and muscled in his police uniform. The heat working its way through my body, settling in my groin.

“I thought you were okay,” I teased.

Full-on grin. Two dimples. “Bullshite! You thought, ‘Wow, that Patrick Kinney turned out to be one hot stud.’ Right? Tell me I’m right.”

I rolled my eyes with a laughing smile. “Sure, if you say so.”

“You wanna know what I thought when I saw you?”

“You’re just gonna tell me, whether I want to hear it or not.”

He leaned closer, his breath hot against my lips. “I thought, ‘She smells like ham and turkey, and God, I have never been so hungry in my life.’”

The laugh barreled through me, bursting from my lips. My hand smacked against his bare chest, and stayed there, fingers flexing through the dark blonde curls.

“Oh my God, that’s so gross.”

“No, it’s you. I love everything about you.” His lips were so close, soft and yearning to touch mine, and then he asked, “Do you remember the first time I sang that song to you?” He hummed again, looking at my lips, and said, “You remember?”

Of course I remembered. I could never forget.

 

❧

 

He first sang to me when we were eighteen.

After he had driven his old pickup to the edge of town and parked in the moonlit darkness among the trees, crickets, and gentle waves. After the blanket was laid in the bed. After our mouths sought each other for comfort and completion, and after we had given each other the sanctity of another first.

We laid under the summer stars, listening to the gentle ebb and flow of the water against the shore, his arm around my shoulders, and my hand nestled in the fine hair on his chest. We knew our parents would wonder where we were, knew they’d begin to worry with another passing hour, but when I mentioned leaving, Patrick shook his head.

“Nah, not yet,” he said, tightening his arm around me.

The heated flush covered my throat and cheeks, assuming that he was in search of another roll in the bed of his truck. I bit my lip with anticipation, eager to indulge again, to practice our newfound activity.

“Oh, yeah?” I tilted my chin toward his face and pressed my lips to his jaw.

“Yeah, just a few more minutes.” The words bottled up the fire in my loins, set aside for another day, and he added, “I want to remember this.”

“What? Laying in your truck on a dirty old blanket?” I laughed, lifting myself up on an elbow to look down at him.

He shook his head. “You’re tellin’ me you don’t feel it?”

“What am I supposed to be feeling?”

“Everything is perfect right now,” he said, lifting a hand to tuck my hair behind my ear.

I snorted a laugh, rolling my eyes up to the starlit sky. “Everything’s always perfect with us, idiot.”

“Nothin’ will be perfect until you’re back.”

I sighed at his backpedal toward the dramatics, and tapped my fingers against his chest. “I’ll be back for holidays and weekends when I don’t have to study, and you’ll come down to see me when you can. It’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, and after that, we’ll be apart again. Nothin’ will be perfect until you’re back for good.”

“You’re being ridiculous,” I said, leaning down to kiss him. “It’ll be fine.” I said it again, and I wasn’t sure if it was for him or me.

I remember his smile was so sad, and he sang a line from that song in a hushed voice.

“You remember that one? Mam used to play it a lot when we were little.”

I couldn’t understand the hollow ache that began to fill my heart at the sound of his voice, all at once quiet and overpowering against the crickets and night noises. I excused it initially as the emotional after-effects of the night’s events; new steps in our relationship, new pleasures, and new anxieties over leaving him and my home. Because that seemed most logical, and it almost worked.

But soon that feeling left me worried, because I understood what it was: the interruption of distance. A separation that we had never known before in the memorable parts of our lives. It felt like a forever goodbye and it invaded my bones like a rampant cancer, swallowing me whole. I kept screaming with my inner voice, that it was a temporary thing, as I had said to him earlier outside of the college. But the bigger, all-knowing part of myself already knew, and that hollow ache turned into a heart-shattering fear of never knowing what it would sound like—what it would feel like—to hear Patrick Kinney sing that stupid old song in the bed of his stupid old truck.

As I drowned in that empty hurt, I was suddenly desperate for those few more minutes, when everything was perfect. So, I lied to him. “I don’t really remember. Will you sing it to me?”

Patrick wasn’t a little bitch, and I suspect he considered Singing Love Songs to be on that list of Little Bitch Things. But, after shooting me a hard look of discontent, he puffed his cheeks around a sigh and cleared his throat. He began to sing awkwardly to the stars with the water and crickets as his only music, and I closed my eyes, taking in the lyrics until he found confidence in his voice.

Those last verses, he sang directly to me. He lifted my chin, looked in my eyes, and sang about sweet things and sugar babies and never growing old again.

It was the first time of many before I left for school, and when I was away, he’d sing through the phone, filling the distance between us with a hushed voice. Then, when we were together, we’d make love and he’d sing for me under the stars. It was our few minutes of perfection, our few minutes of Patrick and Kinsey without empty aches and goodbyes.

Our sweet thing.