He leaned against the wall while I fished my keys from my clutch, his eyes sweeping back and forth across the landing.
“Andy,” he whispered. “Where are we?”
I pushed him through the doorway, propping him against a wall while I stepped out of my heels. “My place.”
“No shit?” he murmured. “Final frontier. There’s probably something else I don’t know about you though, but I don’t know what I don’t know. You don’t give me much, Andy. I don’t even know your long name, like yourrealname, not Andy.”
“Andriel Ava Mazanderani Asani. You can see how I’d need to shorten that.” I glanced at him while he listed precariously to the left. “And you only have to ask, Patrick.”
“‘If you have to ask, you’ll never know.’”
“Not sure that quote applies to this situation.” With the hot pink necklace returned to its peg in my closet, I padded into the kitchen. Patrick followed and pawed through my refrigerator.
“I can’t find any roast beef…or anything from the deli.”
“I keep a vegan kitchen here.”
Patrick slammed the refrigerator shut and stared at me, shocked. “There’re so many things wrong with that statement. You’re not a vegan.”
I shrugged. “Sometimes I am a vegan, and…you’re not going to remember this conversation tomorrow, so let’s not argue about it.”
His hand waved toward the wall of boxes. “Packing up already?”
We didn’t reach a clear agreement on my move-in date because I couldn’t get out of my lease within Patrick’s timeframe of right-that-second.
“Never unpacked,” I murmured, my fingers flying over the buttons of his shirt.
“Lauren used to live a few blocks away. Chipmunk Street. Wait—no, Chestnut. Fuck, Andy, she makes him so fucking happy. He used to be so, I don’t know, cold. Like he didn’t care about anything. He didn’t want to care. But now? Happy. Not like double rainbows every day happy, or some bullshit, but he’s…I don’t know. Loved. He’s loved, and he loves her, and for a coupl’a kids who wouldn’t know how to love a leprechaun if it fucked us in the ass, he’s working at it, and doing it, and it’s working.”
“A leprechaun, huh?”
I stared at Patrick, a glass of water with a cucumber slice for extra hydration in my hand, and waited—I didn’t want to interrupt his diatribe. It was illuminating and hilarious, and keeping my laughter in check was testing my abdominal muscles.
“Bed. Now,” I ordered, and Patrick complied. “Drink this.”
Knowing his track record with cell phones and whiskey, I retrieved his phone, keys and wallet from his pants and set them on the other side of the room. When I turned around, the glass was empty and Patrick was sprawled across my bed with his eyes closed. I retreated to the bathroom to remove my makeup and change, and found him flopped on his stomach when I returned.
Apparently, he was a wiggly drunk.
Smoothing the covers around us, I pressed my hand to his back. He was right: a few hours apart felt like a short eternity, and his skin against mine was all I needed to recharge.
He rolled over, scooping me into his arms. “Do you love me?” Patrick asked, his voice thick and quiet.
I brushed his hair back, my fingers moving through his soft strands. “Yes.”
“Mmm,” he sighed, his eyes drifting shut. “‘If you know, you need only ask.’”
Chapter Nineteen
PATRICK
Iprobably didn’tappreciate college while I was there. I didn’t value self-replenishing dining halls, schedules that conveniently avoided Fridays and anything before noon, or the seemingly endless excuses college kids invented to throw parties. I knew I didn’t appreciate it, and the three hundred and thirty-mile drive to Cornell was a definite reminder. Once I was deep in the rolling hills of western Massachusetts, the gilded memories of a responsibility-free youth crept into sight.
Nonetheless, college was a messy time for us, and it was the first and only time in my life that I was separated from my siblings for more than a few days. All told, I spent two solid years alone at Cornell before Matt showed up.
Shannon should have been a year behind me like always, but Angus went to war with her during my first semester away. Before I made it home for Thanksgiving break, he emptied her college fund. He justified his behavior with his breed of fatherly wisdom, insisting Shannon was attending college with the intent of finding a husband, and he didn’t deserve the tab for that.
It didn’t deter her. She picked up her real estate license and cleaned up during the condo and loft boom, went nights to Suffolk University in the city, and proved Angus very wrong.
