Work Text:
When Patrick went back to the table, he didn’t really look at anyone, but he could hear the silence that fell as soon as he approached and feel Rachel standing somewhere, off to one side. Patrick’s eyes were on the plates, the sliders. “He’s hungry,” Patrick said, because he could feel them all looking at him. He had to get the sliders on the plate, and David had asked for potato salad, sides, a smattering of everything, there were chips; there was pasta salad; did David like pasta salad; David liked everything; why was Patrick thinking about pasta salad; what if David couldn’t forgive him; he must feel so hurt, alone. You asked him to trust you; you know how people have treated him—except that Patrick didn’t, not really; they never talked about it; they never talked about anything; Patrick had let that happen; too many people had hurt David, and now Patrick was one of them; this was too much pasta salad even if he liked pasta salad.
“Surely you’re not feeding an army.” Mrs. Rose.
“Okay, but there was no way I could know.” Alexis.
“Patrick?” Rachel.
“Hold on,” Patrick said, thinking about getting the wine, realizing he shouldn’t get the wine; here, drink to forget, and the worst of it was, David might do it; sometimes David made bad decisions; he made bad decisions and let himself get hurt; he let people hurt him; Patrick walked back to the room.
The door felt like a wall; he could never get to the other side of it; for one thing, he was holding the paper plate with two hands; he’d gotten so much pasta salad that if he held it on just one side, the paper would bend if he let go; he had to slide one hand under it and support it from the bottom; then his other hand was coming up to knock. David answered the door. “Thank you,” David whispered, taking the plate. Support it from the bottom, Patrick thought wildly, and David’s eyes were red, but they weren’t even wet, and Patrick wanted to hold him. He wanted to hold him and tell him, I won’t let anyone hurt you, but of course, the person who had hurt him had been him, and the door was closing. It made that clattering sound old thin doors with windows did.
I forgot to get you a fork, Patrick wanted to say, but he was standing in front of a closed door. Turning, he went back to the barbecue, voices dying down again as soon as he came up.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry. Rachel can we . . . ?” He didn’t even really look at her.
“Yes.” Rachel moved to his side, where she had never once belonged, but he had thought she had, and he didn’t know where to go except away, so he turned around and started moving. “I have a room,” she said, changing direction, so he followed her, and they got to a room; he didn’t pay attention to whether it was a room in which he’d had sex with David when it wasn’t booked, watched a movie with David when it wasn’t booked, spent way too long listening to David ramble about salt scrubs and body wraps when it wasn’t booked. Rachel was fumbling with her key, trying to get it in the door; David said none of the locks worked, but David was paranoid. “I didn’t know who she was,” Rachel said, finally getting the key in, having spoken the wrong pronoun.
“She?”
“Alexis.” Rachel, finally getting inside, tried to pull her key out.
“I’m not dating Alexis.” Patrick crossed the threshold.
“No.” Rachel got the key out. “Her brother.” She shut the door.
They told you, but that sounded like he had wanted to keep it a secret, and he hadn’t; that had never been what he was doing with David; David was used to being kept like a dirty secret; he was used to being cheated on and lied to. Cheated on and lied to. Cheated on and lied to. And Patrick had promised something different, because David deserved love. He deserved someone who loved him, someone who gave him nice things that he deserved and made him happy, made him feel happy and loved, happy and loved for who he was and what he was and how he was; Patrick loved him. He was in love with him. It wasn’t the first time he’d realized it, but it was the first time he wanted to say it to someone else, someone not David; I’m in love with him. I’m in love with him. I love him.
“You don’t have to explain to me,” Rachel said, just like David had said.
“I have to,” Patrick said, but then he didn’t have anything else to say.
“So,” Rachel said, slowly. “Guys? You’re . . . was it always . . . ?”
“No,” Patrick choked out. “Him. It was him. I didn’t know. I mean, I thought—sometimes, but it wasn’t . . .” Patrick tugged hard on the back of his neck, as though he could force himself to spit the words out, but they didn’t come, and he paced over the bed, and sank down upon it, and heard himself make a sound, and he was glad he hadn’t eaten. He felt sick to his stomach. He could feel the beer. He should not have had beer.
Rachel came and sat beside him, and to turn toward her was almost an instinct—almost, but not quite, because that had never been instinct for him, to hold her, to touch her, to want her. That was a learned behavior; he could feel that now, test it easily in a way he couldn’t before, because his desire to hold her was nothing to his desire to hold the man in the next room.
“Were you embarrassed?” Rachel asked.
“No,” Patrick said, springing to his feet again, putting space between them. “No, I wasn’t embarrassed. I’m not embarrassed. I want—I want him; he’s all I want; I want—remember what I said, when I said I wanted—and you said it didn’t exist? I have that, with him; I had that.”
“And I messed it up?” Rachel asked. “By being here.”
Patrick stopped—pacing, moving, thinking, rioting inside. He stopped and looked at her and realized she was there; Rachel was there, and she was a person with her own feelings too, someone he had cared about and never wanted to hurt, Rachel sitting on the bed looking confused and hurt but not angry or disgusted or even full of blame. She looked like she was trying to understand, and he wanted her to understand. “It’s not your fault,” Patrick said. “I didn’t tell him about—about you.”
“Oh,” said Rachel.
Patrick couldn’t think of what else to say.
“When you said—it was him, is it only him, or is it . . . guys? In general?”
“I don’t,” Patrick began, but couldn’t think of what to say, how to possibly explain. “I thought I might be, but I never met—I never . . . it just didn’t.”
Rachel’s eyes were large, her face very still. “So while you were with me.”
“I don’t know.” Patrick opened his mouth to say something else. “I don’t know.”
“Pea,” Rachel said.
For the first time, Patrick felt tears begin to prick behind his eyes, and he turned around so she wouldn’t see. “I want him.”
“I’m sorry.”
Patrick held his eyes open until the wetness in them dried, holding his breath as well until the sob that threatened was swallowed. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t think of what to say. He couldn’t get up underneath his feelings enough to find reasonable thoughts, explanations, a coherent understanding of what was happening. “It’s not your fault,” he heard himself say.
“I’m still sorry,” said Rachel. “I must have seemed so . . .”
“I didn’t tell you.”
“Did you tell . . .” Rachel trailed off.
“No. I didn’t . . .” Patrick turned around. “I wanted it to work, first. I wanted to—it’s for real; it’s real, but I needed it to last before I . . .”
“Do you mean, if it doesn’t last, do you think you’d still—”
“It’s gonna last,” Patrick interrupted. “He’s—he needs—I can fix it. I can fix it.”
“I didn’t mean it that way,” Rachel said quietly. “I just meant, about . . .”
Patrick waited.
“About being with guys.”
“I don’t know.” Patrick thought about it. He didn’t really think about it. He couldn’t think about it. He didn’t need to think about it. The answer was already there. “Probably.”
Rachel nodded, then finally turned away. “I shouldn’t have come here.”
She shouldn’t have, was all Patrick could think.
“You were clear,” Rachel said. “I just thought . . . all those other times, we got back together—”
“This is different.”
“Yeah. It feels that way.”
Patrick was holding himself tensely, so tensely, realizing he was prepared for attack somehow, but he made himself stop again, stop all over again, and realize that she was there; she was there and she had feelings and she was Rachel, years of his life Rachel, who deserved something. “I’m sorry,” Patrick said.
“You don’t have to be sorry.”
“I don’t want you to think,” Patrick said, but he couldn’t think of what he didn’t want her to think; he only felt what he felt, what he wanted her to feel. “I don’t want you to think that I didn’t care about you.”
Rachel could look so small, so vulnerable, and gradually, Patrick became aware of time. He could hear himself breathing. Distant road sounds. He had, in fact, been in this room with David. He’d made out in this room with David, and Rachel was standing here, and she was out of place—from another world, another time, a life in which he was unhappy, and he didn’t want it back. He wanted none of it back; he wanted to stay here, be here, with David, the store, Ray, rose wall paper, all of it; he wanted all of it; it was like a miracle, what he had found, a miracle with cramped living quarters and low profit margins and poor internet service and terrible food, a miracle because of David. David.
David.
In Patrick’s mind, David was a large shape, dark and blinding white, filled in with a cross-hatching of tension and of laughter, bizarre moments, long fingers, anxious smiles, warm hugs, fiery touches, comfort and home. Home. He felt like home to Patrick.
“I’m not going to think that,” Rachel said, and Patrick struggled to remember what she was talking about. “You said it wasn’t working. It wasn’t working. We just always—we used to try anyway.”
I’m not ever going to try that again, Patrick thought, but he didn’t say it. Something about it was hurtful; it would be hurtful.
“And now you’re . . . trying something else,” said Rachel. “And if that . . . works, for you, then you should—you should keep trying.”
“I am,” said Patrick, because not trying had literally never occurred to him.
Rachel looked away. “I should go.”
You should, Patrick thought, but that sounded hurtful too. Had he said what he needed to say? Had he adequately explained? Had he been fair, had he been just, had he been kind? Patrick wanted to be kind; he should have been kinder; he should have been a better person. A better person would have given David the truth; David deserved true things, kind things. Rachel deserved them too. “Will you be okay?”
“Yeah.”
Patrick wondered whether he should believe her.
“Patrick,” she said, after a long moment. “You know how it is with us.”
He did.
He did. They came back to each other when they were unhappy, not because they loved each other. They had talked about that, but they’d tried to be happy anyway. They were always trying to be happy. It was all they wanted, all they had wanted for each other, too. Happy didn’t have to mean together. It had never meant together, for them.
“Have a good trip,” Patrick said, without knowing that he was going to. This wasn’t the end of this conversation, was it? Did she understand everything—what he had with David, the fact that he was gay, the reason he had left her in the first place, the fact that it was over between them? Well and truly over, for good, forever?
But this was not the end. The end had already happened. It had happened half a dozen times. It had happened when he’d left her the last time; he’d told her it was over. Everything was over; all of this was over; they didn’t have to do it any more. They didn’t have to do this any more. Neither of them had to do this any more. He headed toward the door.
“I’m glad you found it,” Rachel said.
Patrick stopped. He should look at her. He should touch her. Hug her, maybe. A kiss on the cheek, so it would feel like the end. Instead he said, “I hope you find it too,” then went out the door.
Outside he felt like twilight should be falling, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t; outside was no different, and as he walked along the motel walkway he could hear Roses through the thin walls, but he didn’t stop to see if one of the voices was David’s. Patrick felt like he could feel him when he passed that door anyway.
In the yard beyond, Stevie was cleaning up the barbecue.
Patrick didn’t know what impulse in him made him have to help, but he could not control it; he went to the drinks table and put the bottles on one side, then gathered up the tablecloth, then moved the drinks to the other side to gather the rest of the paper table cloth with a few of the napkins. He set aside the empty bottles and put the full ones in the cooler. The bottles of wine were gone. He went to clean the grill.
“I don’t know where that came from,” Stevie said.
“What?” Patrick had been ineffectually trying to scrape black from the grill with the metal spatula.
“The grill,” said Stevie. “It’s not the motel’s.”
“Mr. Rose said he got it from Roland,” Patrick said.
“Figures,” said Stevie.
Patrick scraped at the grill, waiting for her to say something—recriminations, encouragement, reassurance, blame, censure, anything, but she didn’t say anything, and when he looked up, he realized it was because she had gone. He looked behind him, and she wasn’t there either. The tablecloths and other trash had been cleared away. The empty bottles were still where he had left them on the table.
Patrick scraped the grill some more. He didn’t know why; it wasn’t getting cleaner; grills didn’t actually need to be that clean; you just needed to make sure there was no raw meat on them; was Stevie going to come back? Was anybody going to come back? Patrick scraped until the sound of the metal on metal scraped inside his brain, prying a space between his eyes that sent the sound all the way down to his stomach, where he wanted to throw it back up.
Finding the cover for the grill, he closed it. Someone should clean off this spatula. Did the motel have an outdoor spigot? He went looking for one; he found one; he rinsed it. You shouldn’t leave metal wet. He dried it on his jeans, went back to the grill, opened it, put the spatula on the grill. Went to go recycle those bottles. Picked up his guitar.
Had Rachel gone yet? It felt strange to leave David and Rachel in the same place. Twilight still hadn’t come. Patrick put the guitar in his car. He’d sort of thought Stevie would come back out, say something to him. A shovel talk, or something. Too late for that. Was the last thing she said to him really going to be about a grill? Was this really how the night was going to end?
Someone needed to come back out, tell him something, some kind of closure, something, anything, anything.
No one came.
Patrick got in his car. He drove to Ray’s.
In life when something ended, a curtain never fell. You never knew whether it was over; the people left in the auditorium remained uncertain. Sometimes someone applauded awkwardly; sometimes people commented on the show. Eventually they dispersed; they went home; they brushed their teeth; they went to bed, but the curtain was still up. Was it over? The actors went backstage; they got their guitars; they got in their cars; they went home; they brushed their teeth too, but they didn’t know—they could still be in a show. They could be in it forever; no one had said it was the end. No one was sure when it would end; it never ended; Ray asked about the barbecue and what they served and whether it was the first time he’d had dinner with his boyfriend’s family, and it went on. It went on.
It went on, except you weren’t an actor any more. You’d taken your costume off, even when you didn’t want to, and people saw you raw and pale and sweaty underneath, and this was real, you realized. This was real.
It was real, and it was still better than before, because you were yourself now. The role you were playing was yourself. You’ve never played that part before, but you are now, and you’re glad. You’re glad he saw you. You’re glad she saw you. You want the world to see you, even if you’re pale underneath, weak underneath, less underneath than what you were before.
You don’t want the curtains to go down. You want to burn the curtains and live a life where you only ever played yourself.
In the dark quiet of his bedroom, Patrick took out his phone. David hadn’t texted. Patrick texted him.
Patrick: I’ll do the store tomorrow
I’m here when you want me, he typed, then deleted it. I’m here if you want me, he typed, then looked at it, looked at “want me.” Want me want me want me. He deleted that too. I’m sorry, he wrote, then deleted that too. I love you.
Patrick: Take however long you need
Patrick had taken thirty years.