She was half-talking to Patrick, half to herself. Libby used to be a law student but hated it and dropped out after a year. Her parents, furious, told her she was cut off. In desperate need of a job, she got an entry-level sales job at a tech company and took to it like a fish to water. She was admittedly a workaholic, but a happy one because she loved her work so much. Even though it could be annoying hearing her talk about work constantly and always be on her phone, he loved seeing her in her element.
“I think there’s a candle-maker a few booths down,” she said. “Do you want to check them out?”
“That’s okay. It’s the same guy who makes candles in beer bottles, but the candles aren’t scented. Am I a bad person because I’d rather buy them at Home Goods? I’m destroying small businesses, aren’t I?”
“We all are.” Libby held up her PSL from Starbucks. “But we like to get drunk in bars, and those are all independent businesses, so it evens out.”
Patrick nodded. He would take her logic and not question it.
“One day when we’re rich, bougie housewives who don’t have to work, we can shop at these stores.”
“Libby, are you really not going to work?”
She smiled and bowed her head at Patrick. Touche.
They did patronize a local bakery and bought a pumpkin brownie to split. They popped a squat on the curb of the sidewalk next to a booth for a local Insurance Agency. Patrick didn’t know what was so pumpkin-y about them.
“Patrick, are you sure you love fall?” Libby asked, ripping off a chunk of the brownie and tossing it in her mouth.
“Of course. Why do you say that?”
“Because you seem miserable here. And there aren’t even that many kids running around being loud.”
Patrick stumbled for an answer that wasn’t the truth. “I’m not. I’m just tired.”
“Oh, please. Tired is one of those words that mean nothing. What happened to your pumpkin-spiced lover?” Libby’s bluntness helped her smash her sales quota, but was a pain in her personal life.
“My who?”
“Your neighbor who got his legs amputated.”
Patrick laughed so hard he choked on his brownie. He had to chug his PSL to make it go down. It was a laugh he needed this month.
“You mean Spencer with the broken foot?”
“Same difference,” Libby said through giggling. “You guys were spending so much time together. Probably fucking like Easter Bunnies, too, which you weren’t telling me about.”
“We may have...it doesn’t matter. He got his cast off and went back to being his dumb jock self with his dumb jock friends.” Patrick lost the urge to laugh and the urge to finish this delicious brownie. The thought of Spencer just across the hall but a galaxy away twisted his stomach in knots. “I helped him out for a few months as a friendly neighbor.”
“I help my neighbor carry her groceries up the stairs. I don’t have sex with her.”
“He just wants to be friends. He said so.” Patrick found himself right back on that roof with Spencer looking spectacularly sexy in the moonlight, and then Spencer saying the F word, dropkicking his heart into the lake. “It’s my fault for getting my hopes up.”
“Fuck. I’m sorry.”
“I thought because of everything we did together and all the time we spent together, that we had something. I think I was just blinded by the sex and everything else.” Images flashed in his mind of the everything else: Spencer smiling at him on the train like he was the only person on this earth who mattered, Spencer sneaking a smell of the candles when he thought Patrick wasn’t looking. “It was great. It was all so great.”
To her credit, Libby hadn’t looked at her phone this whole time. It remained face down on the sidewalk next to her. She put friends over work every time.
“I knew after GFA to be more careful because I always fall for the wrong people.”
Patrick thought back on the great fall memories he’d had so far in Chicago. They all were with Spencer, who amplified his love of the season. Maybe fall wasn’t about leaves, candles, and lattes. It was about the people with whom you spent it. He remembered what he’d told Spencer: fall was built around nostalgia, and he was already nostalgic for the time they spent together.
Patrick stared at the street littered with festival detritus, his body feeling patched together with Scotch Tape, ready to fall apart all over again.
“I just wish it didn’t hurt so much.” Patrick held back an ocean of tears. This hurt a million times more than his past relationship, and it wasn’t even a relationship. Spencer had gotten under his skin and seeped into his bloodstream.
“Technically, once Halloween is over, the Christmas season begins. It’ll be a new season you can celebrate. Put fall behind you and find a new guy to kiss under the mistletoe.”
