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The thing is, before David had said anything, Patrick had no idea that blue was his favourite colour.
They’d been seated at the second furthest booth at the back of the cafe, he and David on one end, Stevie and Alexis on the other.
The conversation had already run the gamut, for the most part, from embarrassing childhood stories (Stevie had had the worst one by a mile) to worst first dates (David took that one), and then to craziest senior year adventure (Alexis, without competition). They’d had a large dish of fries between them, overdone to a crisp but still edible, next to two mostly-eaten club sandwiches and half of whatever smoothie Twyla had convinced Alexis to take a chance on. Patrick’s tea had been abandoned to the side in favour of watching David methodically scrape the burnt bottom off of his slice of apple pie, and Stevie was talking about how her aunt had gifted her her first bottle of tequila at 16 when Alexis interrupted her with a giggle.
“Oh my god, that’s so cute and rebellious of you, Stevie,” she’d said, punctuating her sentence with a tap to Stevie’s nose. David, for his part, had kept scraping at his piece of pie, like what Stevie had said wasn’t alarming at all. Before Patrick could have gotten a word in, Alexis turned to him.
“So, what’s the best present you’ve ever gotten, Patrick? Was it like a car? You seem like the kind of guy who got a car from his parents. Maybe like a cute little Honda or something!”
They were all looking at him and he huffed out a laugh, because yes, he had been gifted a car from his parents at graduation — a sensible deep red Toyota Corolla, thank you — but it hadn’t been the best present he’d ever received.
Not by far.
“Um,” he’d started, clearing his throat as he took in his friends’ unrelenting attention on him, “when I was six years old, my parents, well — they got me a puppy? Woody.”
“Oh my god,” Stevie had breathed, one of her hands flying up to her mouth, eyes softening. “You had a dog?”
“Why did I not know about this Woody ?” David asked next to him. Patrick put a hand on his thigh in an effort to placate him.
“I was so excited to have a pet for the first time. The first few years, I’d do everything for him: baths, feeding, toilet training, commands— all that. I mean I obviously couldn’t do any of it on my own but I’d raise hell if my dad did any of it without me present. He was just so small and I’d carry him around all day like a doll or something.”
Alexis reached across the table, her face arranged in some sort of weirdly adorable ridiculous over-the-top pout.
“That is just the cutest, oh my god.”
Patrick had spared a glance to David, whose eyes were still fixed on him. “He died when I was 24. I was uh, living with Rachel for the first time by then, so he was at my parents’ when it happened. Just old age that took him I guess.”
“Did you want a dog again?” David asked, but it had been drowned out almost entirely by Alexis’s dramatic whimpers across the booth. Patrick had met David’s eyes and smiled his surest, most honest grin, and it had seemed to placate his boyfriend for the moment. Patrick knows (and hopes) that they’ll be speaking about it again later.
“Yeah, yeah — funny story, actually. Apparently when I had to bring a pet to school in grade six I, uh, thought I’d look cooler in front of my pals if my dog wasn’t just boring old brown? So I got pet-safe hair dye from my buddy’s sister’s job at some fancy groomer and spent the entire afternoon dyeing his fur so I’d have something cool to show.”
“Oh my god, Patrick!” Stevie had exclaimed, elated. “Oh god, what colour?”
And that’s when David had said it, with a wide grin and eyebrows raised in amusement.
“Blue, obviously.”
“Why ‘obviously’ blue, David?” Patrick asked, making sure to keep his tone more teasing than inquisitive.
“Well,” David had said, that beautiful smile still in place, “obviously it’d be blue because that’s your favourite colour. It’s like, the colour of everything you own.”
And now, sitting at an old cafe booth with his boyfriend by his side and some of his closest friends in front of him, Patrick decides that David was right.
Not about Woody; Woody had actually been painted a deep pink, because it’s the only colour dye Patrick had found, but about blue. About Patrick and blue.
Truth be told, before David had said it, Patrick had fancied himself too simple to have something as ridiculous as a favourite colour. Aren’t all colours a marvel in their own right? Sure, most of his wardrobe was blue, but most clothes are, especially when worn by businessmen. Patrick doesn’t know why, but it had always been one of the only few colours that had been deemed “professional” when he was going through business school and being harped on about dress code. Blue, grey, white, black. That has always been the uniform. It had nothing to do with preference, and everything to do with familiarity.
But the way David had said it, with confidence and fondness and love, well, suddenly Patrick doesn’t care for any other colour at all.
Blue is the sky over the town that brought him the love of his life. Blue is the colour of the uniform his best friend wears when she pitches during baseball. Blue is the colour of the highlighter his boyfriend’s sister had used when studying for her economics final; blue is also the colour of the dress she’d worn when she’d run through the doors of his store and hugged him to let him know she’d passed.
Blue is the feeling of having dinners with his best friends every week, seated in a cafe that always has the heat up just a tad bit too high. Blue is the feeling of his hand slipping into David’s, their fingers interlacing slowly, softly, intricately. Blue is the voice of his mother, spoken over the phone with still as much tenderness as before he’d ran away. Blue is swelling of his heart when he receives a new postcard from his father. Blue is safe, and it’s honest, and it’s comfortable. Blue is right. Blue is Patrick. Maybe blue is David.
Patrick lets his hand slip up from its perch on David’s thigh to rest at the side of his bicep, effectively drawing his attention away from whatever Stevie’s saying. He looks into David’s eyes for a few seconds, and then a few more but never enough, and pulls him down until their lips meet for soft, sweet kiss.
As he closes his eyes, the world flashes blue.