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Alexis always felt...good in Patrick’s apartment. Sure, it needed some pops of color and texture, but she was always more focused and serene here. Being in Patrick’s apartment was like Day 3 of a juice cleanse, when the toxins were all flushed out and you felt very zen. Patrick even kept the dining table clear for her computer and left a few yogurts and sugar-free Red Bulls in the fridge.
Sometimes, like today, she forgot to text Ted or check Instagram for more than ten minutes as she half-listened to Patrick making tea and David narrating some wedding drama (“...And when I said I wanted our first dance to be ‘Vision of Love’ he asked who it sang it, and I said…”). It all felt familiar somehow, like when she was five years old and coloring at the kitchen table while David and Adelina talked about what had happened that day on Guiding Light -- the same feeling that she was in the right place, and safe.
David kept saying Alexis wasn’t their wedding planner, and that her taste in flowers was questionable, and that they didn’t have the budget to copy Jessica Simpson’s iconic Great Expectations movie-themed wedding (which Patrick said was a book before it was an Ethan Hawke movie but who cares). Even today he acted like he was doing her a big favor, letting her address the wedding invitations. Alexis knew it was just David’s nerves talking. Soon, he would realize how much he needed her help right now.
Alexis looked over at David, who was still waving his hands around like a crazy person and complaining about how a wedding DJ could be so unfamiliar with Mariah Carey’s early work. David had a zit on his nose, which meant he was eating too much dairy, which meant he also must be very bloated. Bloated people are cranky. Here in the apartment Alexis could be patient.
“Patrick, what’s Rachel’s last name?” Alexis had addressed invitations to all the names on the list, but she hadn’t seen one for Rachel.
Patrick gave a little choke. “What?”
“Um, Rachel, your super adorable ex-fiancée? Red hair, petite? Flawless skin?” She squinted at David meaningfully on that last one. “I don’t see her invitation.”
“Patrick?” spat out David. He was suddenly sitting up very straight. That was good, Alexis had been meaning to talk to him about his posture.
“I have a cute idea!” squealed Alexis. “She should read a poem during the ceremony, like maybe that Ed Sheeran one about getting old and wrinkly together.”
“EXCUSE me?” croaked David.
Alexis nodded. “You’re absolutely right, David, wrinkles are gross. Maybe something by Taylor Swift. Rachel’s Insta is @RachelRose. Is that her real name?”
Patrick blushed a lot-- it seemed like every time Alexis let herself into the apartment she found him on the couch with David turning bright red. But this time he seemed to be getting paler, as if that was even possible. And David’s eyebrows were doing some crazy upward motion Alexis had never even seen before.
Now she got it. “Oh. OH. Rachel Rose. Rachel Something Rose. Oh my God, are she and David, like, long-lost cousins or something?”
“Well, technically, she’d be your cousin, too,” muttered Patrick.
“Oh my GOD!” David’s fingers were pressed to his lips and his eyes were dark and dangerous. Alexis hasn’t seen that look since the time she told him how Scooter Braun took off on his Cessna and ditched her in Macau without a passport.
Patrick finally remembered how to use his legs and walked over from the kitchen corner, leaving his hot tea behind for safety, Alexis noted approvingly. He looked a little sick.
“It’s her middle name,” he said. “Rachel Rose. After each of her grandmothers.” He sat down on the couch next to David, who wouldn’t look at him but at least accepted a hand on his knee.
There was a long, awkward silence until David hopped up and started to pace. “Okay. I don’t even know where to begin. There are so many things wrong here. Alexis, you follow Rachel on Instagram? And you think she’s our cousin? And YOU.” He turned to Patrick. “You let me name our store after a girl you almost married and you never said anything? And now you want her to read a poem at our wedding? Because last time she attended a family gathering it was so memorable for us all?”
“She doesn’t even post much, just pictures of her cat, and one time she made cookies,” protested Alexis, but David wasn’t listening to her. He was locked on Patrick, who was also talking.
“I never said I wanted to invite her!” protested Patrick. “Alexis said it. We never...we never talked about it.”
“So that’s my fault?” David’s lips were still a tight line, but his eyes weren’t angry any more. His elbows crossed protectively over his chest, hands on opposite shoulders, and he looked...scared. Alexis knew that look, too. She remembered it from when he met her at JFK after that crazy trip to Dubai when everyone was so stressed that she didn’t have a chance to call for a month or so. She was fine and totally had the situation under control, except for that thing with the Sultan of Brunei’s chauffeur. Anyway, she saw him at the airport before he saw her, and he looked just like this, like he was holding himself tight with his hands in order to keep his feelings from breaking him. Alexis didn’t like it. It wasn’t a look that belonged here, in Patrick’s sweet but tacky apartment. David never looked like that here.
Alexis expected Patrick to put his arms around David, to apologize, to make everything cozy again. Instead he snapped back, “I didn’t say it was your fault! But maybe if you didn’t get so tense every time her name comes up, I could have asked you!”
“I won’t apologize for being sensitive about the person who was the trigger for one of the most excruciating days of my life!” David stormed into the bedroom and slammed the door.
Alexis watched Patrick bury his face in hands before punching the pillow beside him. Patrick was a sweet button, but he didn’t know everything about how to handle David.
Patrick seemed to suddenly remember she was there. “Sorry about that, Alexis. David’s kind of on edge these days. My mom’s upset that we’re not getting married in a church and keeps sending these passive aggressive texts. And your mom called the florist yesterday and demanded they add 100 cymbidium orchids to our order. And for some reason Roland thinks he’s David’s best man. I keep telling him everything’s going to be fine but, well, I guess I’m not so sure either.”
Alexis perched on the couch arm next to Patrick. She pursed her hands together and shut her eyes for a moment. “Patrick, here’s what you need to know. As someone who has been engaged 4 times to three different people, I can tell something about weddings. Everyone. Acts. Insane. Parents and cousins and girls you met in Mykonos that one time but who were always secretly jealous of you all think they deserve input.” Alexis paused. “And we both know that kind of energy is really negative for David.”
Patrick looked up at her. “Right. People think he’s not listening to them, but they don’t know how he absorbs everything they say. And how much he wants to make everyone happy.” His eyes looked soft and tender for a moment.
“Exactly. When I was little, and Adelina was busy, David used to let me watch him draw. He liked to make pictures of houses, and he would tell me why he was drawing things a certain way. Like, the minimalism was typical of Japanese architecture, and the spiral staircase disrupted the clean lines of the interior or something. And then I would tell him he had to add a water slide and rainbow mural, and he would try to do it because he wanted to make me happy, but it made him so tense and angry when his drawing looked weird.”
Patrick leaned back. “And our mothers, and Roland, and me. We’re making the drawing weird.”
“Patrick! You are a sweet little puppy nose. You’ve got it.”
Patrick absently touched his nose like he was checking to see if it was cold. “But why does he change the subject whenever I bring up Rachel? Is part of him still mad at me for not telling him about her sooner? I thought I fixed it, but sometimes I’m not sure.”
Alexis wondered what David was doing in the bedroom. She didn’t hear crying, but David could cry pretty quietly, especially when he was trying not to wake her up. He was probably waiting for Patrick to barge in, and hold him, and apologize, and swear he would never leave him. But Patrick apparently needed some direction. Seriously, what would David do without her to fix his life?
Alexis sighed and slid off the arm onto the couch, next to Patrick. “Patrick, I like spending time here.”
“What?”
“I like coming over, and editing my photos, and emailing clients. I get stuff done faster, and I don’t get distracted.”
“Okay. Well, you’re always welcome here, Alexis, but maybe…”
“No, let me finish. I’m never worried about David when I’m here. He’s never lying on the floor with his sunglasses on waiting for someone who never texts him, or being quiet and agreeing with everything I say but not really listening because he’s trying not to cry or something. He’s calm and happy. It’s like he’s drawing one of his Japanese houses, before I tell him to put in a water slide.
“So, what I’m saying is, you need to fix this. You have to tell him that you’re not going to let anyone put a water slide on his house unless he says it’s okay. And you have to tell him that you want Rachel Rose Something to come to the wedding. If you want to. Because even more than David wants everyone to be happy, he wants you to be happy.”
Patrick gave her hand a quick squeeze and headed the ten steps to the bedroom door and knocked. David opened it immediately, as if he’d been standing right there all along.
“I’m sorry,” David said in a small voice. “I’m being very selfish. I want everything my way.”
“You want everything to be beautiful. And I want our wedding to be beautiful, too. But to me everything is beautiful when I’m with you.” said Patrick.
The two of them looked at each other for a moment, and Alexis saw a twitch of a smile in the corner of David’s mouth.
“I never told you about my conversation with Rachel. After the barbecue,” said Patrick. David flinched slightly but Patrick kept going. “I told her I was gay. And I was sorry I hurt her. And that I was in love with you.”
“What did she say?” asked David hoarsely.
“She said it hurt. But she was happy for me. For us.”
“Oh.”
“I’d like her to come to the wedding, David. She was the first person I really told about you, and the first person I knew who was rooting for us.”
“Oh, honey,” whispered David, “Of course she should be there.”
Alexis saw Patrick pull David in for a tight hug as she grabbed her bag and headed for the door. She knew Patrick would mess up again, or David would say something hurtful without meaning it. But she would be there. She would literally be THERE, at their dining table, listening to their boring talking and cooking and laundry folding. She would be there when Patrick cut the crust off David’s sandwich, and David straightened Patrick’s collar. They were lucky to have her.