“You are going to crap your pants at autumn in Chicago.” Spencer was going to make sure of it. An idea came to his mind. “We’re going to Wisconsin.”
“For apple picking and donuts?”
Spencer nodded his head.
“When?”
“Whenever the first really fall-like day is.”
“According to my calendar, fall begins on Tuesday.”
Spencer found it adorable how rigidly Patrick stuck to his made-up rules. “It’s still summer. Don’t blame me. Blame the earth for not moving around the sun fast enough.”
Patrick’s lips curled up into a curious half-smile that sent a bolt of some kind of feeling zapping through Spencer.
He wasn’t sure what he was doing. Making plans was for couples. They were not. Spencer enjoyed his time together with Patrick, and that would atrophy into bickering and squabbling and boring-ass double dates if they went down the couple route. Why ruin the fun they were having? Patrick had been looking forward to fall for years, and Spencer wasn’t going to jeopardize that.
Patrick was still waiting for an answer, eyebrows raised with curiosity. Another bolt of something shot through Spencer.
“You’ll see,” he said.
A smile glowed on Patrick’s face like the string of pumpkin lights he had put around the window in his apartment. He tapped his foot against Spencer’s cast.
“Ready?” Patrick held up his PSL for a toast. “To fall.”
I can’t wait to spend fall with you, Spencer thought.
Spencer took a sip of his PSL. He choked on the extreme sweetness.
Patrick moaned as soon as the cup hit his lips. “Oh, that’s good.” He took another sip and let out another moan. “Oh my God.”
Spencer pitched a tent in his shorts and struggled to adjust himself since there were families with young children out on the sidewalk.
“Let’s finish these at your apartment.”.
* * *
Fall started with a false alarm.The Tuesday after Labor Day - officially the first day of fall in Patrick’s book - was cloudy with a breeze in the high sixties that hinted at cooler temperatures to come. Spencer watched Patrick on the commute into the Loop, his eyes affixed to the gloomy sky outside for the entire ride. Spencer was sad to see summer go so abruptly, but it turned out to be an anomaly in the weather.
It was still technically summer. The next three weeks of September, the final weeks of summer, remained in the eighties with full sun. Spencer’s air conditioning unit in his apartment got a workout, and even he was starting to tire of sweating on his commute.
The blue skies and warm sun seemed to be giving Patrick reverse seasonal affective disorder. The way Chicagoans dreaded another hopeless day of gray and cold in February was how Patrick greeted Chicago in September.
“I know, I know,” Patrick said on the train. “This is normal. It’s still summer. But none of the leaves are changing color. I’ve just been so excited for so long, and I want fall to happen now. Mother Nature is taking her time.”
“We will have fall, babe.”
There it was again. The word that slipped so easily out of his mouth. Patrick blushed slightly, faint red on his cheeks matching his lips that Spencer wanted to kiss so badly it twisted his stomach.
By the end of the week, as if Mother Nature had heard their prayers, the weather had turned. That was how fast it worked. The temperature dropped twenty degrees, which was pretty normal for Chicago, and the clouds came back.
“We’re going to Wisconsin,” Spencer declared on Friday morning when he met Patrick outside his apartment. Instead of his usual button-down shirt, Spencer had on a forest green crew neck sweater under a light jacket and khaki corduroy pants. “I checked the weather forecast, and it is going to be a quintessential fall day.”
Patrick quirked an eyebrow and looked up the weather on his phone. He saw the same thing Spencer did when he woke up: the rain from last night had cooled the temperature, and last night’s clouds would continue to linger in the sky, with intermittent bursts of sunshine.
“It’s a fall day,” Patrick said, eyes wide and looking so damn huggable. “Maybe we can go to Grant Park after work.”
“Nuh uh. Are you going to let a day like this slip through your fingers? Let’s play hooky. We’ll take my car.”
