We use dish gloves, paper towels, trash bags, and patience, and we clean up the mess, trying to make it like nothing ever happened.
“Can you not break anything again?” I ask. “This is a nightmare to clean up.”
“Everything is a nightmare right now,” he replies as he hauls a trash bag toward the garage. “Can you just go check on Patrick? He’s so fucked up.”
“Like more fucked up than the both of us are because ofhimbeing fucked up?” I ask.
He half laughs. “Of course.”
“I heard him on the deck stairs, so he’s probably on the beach.”
I traipse to the shoreline. Patrick is all chilling with a blanket in one of the chairs I set out, and I join him in the luxurious lounger.
“This view is crazy beautiful,” he says, and I agree.
We take in the sky, the ocean, the beach, the sounds. It’s so corny, but listening to waves crash and gulls cry is a timeless soother.
“Thank you for this trip. I needed to be in a different place for a bit.”
I roll into him and lift his arm around me. “Anytime. I love you, my friend. Always and forever.”
“And I love you too.”
Patrick suddenly sets his hand on the back of my neck and turns my mouth to his. He pulls me in and kisses me, and I have no idea what to do, how to react, because it’s so insane. It’s a kiss that is beyond unexpected, and it’s one that makes me immediately feel a thousand things. And nothing positive. Devastated. Betrayed. Physically sick.
We’ve hugged and held each other so sweetly and innocently thousands of times. But this is someone who has always beenjusta friend. A brother. From the moment I met him. Not someone with whom I’ve shared even a second of sexual tension. Not once.
And now he’s doing this? Is he ruining everything? But do I even get to feel shaken, given his current state?
Firmly, I push against him. And I’m shaking. “No, Patrick. No, what is—”
He scrambles from the lounge chair and backs away slowly, almost tripping over his own feet, until he looks at me with a devastated mix of alarm, sadness, and pain. He’s had enough goddamn pain to last a lifetime.
My body is shaking, every part of me unnerved.
Those few seconds just changed everything. And we both know it.
“Fuck, Diana. I’m so sorry. Oh God, what have I done?” He immediately runs through the sand to put as much distance as he can between us.
My head is spinning. This kind of intimacy was never an issue. Nor one that we’d even been secretly harboring, which makes this moment even worse, and more confusing, and also leaves us both at a loss for how to react.
Patrick is navigating trauma territory that I can only imagine, so even in my stunned state, I know I will forgive this horrible mistake. It will take some time—and I’ll have to stop shaking first—but I’ll get over it pretty quickly. At least, that’s my hope.
Patrick, however, may not. And I can’t let that happen.
It takes me a minute to focus, but then I tear after him through the wet, sandy beach until I reach him.
“It’s okay. We’ll be okay,” I say. “It’s nothing.”
My words may be true, but they can’t erase that moment. How, without meaning to, he irrevocably changed everything.
Dammit.
Patrick loops his arms around my back and looks me in the eye. Then he just shakes his head. He’s so clearly furious and disgusted with himself, and I’m too stupefied to move. To stop our mutual panic. Then he hugs me tightly before he turns away.
His silhouette is all that is left as he runs.
It feels like ages before I compose myself to finally fly after him and cry out, trying to give him mercy, “It was a mistake! Just a stupid mistake.”
