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It's been five years since Kat has spoken to Patrick, four if you count the awkward conversation in the Safeway frozen foods aisle (Kat doesn't). Five years, and she still knows his number, as if he'd used tattoo ink instead of ballpoint pen when he'd scrawled it on her hand that first time. Five years, and sometimes when she dials the Tacoma area code, her hands complete Patrick's number instead of her dad's.
It's not as though she still thinks about him often. She's had a boyfriend and a girlfriend and a number of casual flings in that time. She's embroiled in her master's degree and grading papers for a couple undergrad classes. So no, he's not on her mind. Much.
One day, not long after the start of the new semester, her friends show her this new site called Facebook. Everyone's been obsessed with it. While Kat refuses to start an account on principle, her friends convince her to look over their shoulders while they start theirs.
"Isn't there anyone you want to look up?" Nicole asks her. "An ex?"
Amanda nudges her with an elbow. "Patrick?"
Kat laughs. "If you insist. The last name's Verona."
"We do insist." Nicole searches him up.
Kat isn't surprised to learn that he doesn't have an account. Even so, they find a post mentioning his name. From there, they find the profile of someone who must be his girlfriend. There's a picture of her with her arm looped through Patrick's, pulling him to one side, as though tugging him into frame for a picture. His face is blurred, but Kat would recognize those curls anywhere.
Her heart sinks. She doesn't know why; she's not still in love with him. She's not planning to get back in touch with him anytime soon, let alone to get back with him. It's no skin off her nose if he's off the market. It's fine, she tells herself firmly. It's fine.
She keeps grading other people's papers and staying up late writing her own. She goes on dates and to concerts and bemoans the fact she doesn't have time to start her own band. Sometimes she takes her guitar out and noodles on it a bit. For a while there she'd forgotten it was a gift from Patrick, but she's all too aware of it now. Sometimes when she slides her fingers up and down the frets she remembers teaching Patrick how to play, her fingers over his. His attempts to derail guitar lessons into kissing lessons. Her laughing protests before giving in. The edge of the guitar's body digging into her shoulder blades before she got up and put it away.
There's no way to casually ask one of her friends to look Patrick up again. Kat's on the verge of giving in and making an account for the express purpose of snooping when a conversation at a house party turns to exes. It's easy enough to get them to look him up for her. He still doesn't have an account, and he doesn't seem to be with that girlfriend anymore, but she can follow some of his adventures through his friends' pictures. Her heart swoops as she sees one of him playing the guitar.
It looks like he's still in Tacoma.
Bianca has been bugging her to come home for a bit. She wants to introduce her boyfriend to their dad and thinks Kat would be a good social buffer. (Kat grins to think that she could be the worst social buffer, if she wanted to. The stories she could tell...the photo of Bianca wearing that ridiculous pregnancy belly...) Kat's been pretty swamped with papers, but if she ramped up her workload for a bit, she could clear her schedule enough to spare a few days over spring break. To see Bianca, of course. To see their dad. No other reason.
She books the tickets that night before she can talk herself out of it. She's still coasting on the last dregs of her wine-drunk and buzzing with nervous energy. She dials her old home number and drums her fingers on her desk as she waits for her dad to pick up.
"Hello?"
It feels like she's had a bucket of ice water dumped over her head.
That's not her dad's voice.
Should she hang up? She's not prepared to talk, and she's still tipsy...but just hanging up feels like a shitty thing to do. Then the silence has hung between them for too long and she doesn't know what to do.
"Hello?" Patrick says again.
"Hi," Kat stumbles. "It's—"
"Kat."
She can imagine just how he must be raising his eyebrows right now. It doesn't sound like he's smiling, but neither does it sound like he's frowning. "You remember my voice."
"Of course I do." He sounds warmer, now. His accent has faded a little, but it's still there.
She clutches the phone to the side of her face. "I remember yours, too." Oh, god, that came out so sappy! She needs to hang up! But now that she has his voice in her ears again, she doesn't want to let it go.
"Are you drunk?" Now he's smiling.
"A little," Kat admits.
"I see what's happening here. I'm a little far away for a booty call, you know."
"No!" But she can't help grinning. "No. I...I was calling my dad and dialed your number instead." She knows as she says it that it sounds like the world's weakest excuse.
"Sure you did."
"I wanted to let him know I'm going back for spring break."
There's a pause, undoubtedly shorter than it feels to Kat, before Patrick says: "I see." Kat can hear what might be his feet shuffling against the carpet before he continues, "Listen, Kat, not that I'm not glad to hear from you, but...did you need something?"
She wishes she were sober and could parse exactly what his tone means. She swallows. "No. I know 'I meant to call my dad instead' sounds like a half-assed lie, but it's true." She tightens her grip on her phone. "But I'm...I'm glad I got you instead." She fears she won't be able to hear him over her elevated pulse.
There's another, longer, pause before Patrick says: "The Kat I know would never back up a lie by claiming she fucked up, so I guess I have no choice but to believe you."
She laughs. "You got that right."
"I should get back to dinner." He swallows. "But hey, I wouldn't blame you for misdialing your dad's number next time, too."
Kat's stomach swoops as she smiles. "I won't be careful, then."
The last thing she hears before he hangs up is his laugh, clear and bright.
She calls her dad later that week to make plans; she calls Bianca and holds the phone away from her ear at Bianca's excited squeals. She wonders how soon is too soon to call Patrick again. He'd said next time she called her dad, but he was just giving her permission to call him. He probably wasn't being literal about the dad thing. Is a week too long? Not long enough? Then she's busy with the start of the new semester and calling him slips her mind for a little while, and two weeks might actually be too long, but if she doesn't jump on it now, it will definitely have been too long.
Last time she was wine-tipsy and warm and she hadn't meant to call him. This time she is sober and extremely nervous. She wraps the phone cord around her finger and watches her skin turn white.
"Hello?"
"Hi, Patrick."
"Who is this?" he asks, and Kat's heart plummets for a second before she realizes that he's teasing her.
"Isn't it a little early for jokes?"
"What, in the morning? It's never too early for jokes."
In their rekindled correspondence, she meant, but maybe that's too serious a thing to say. It certainly feels too serious coming in the wake of his teasing good mood.
"I haven't had my coffee yet," Kat grouses. It's a bald-faced lie—there's a nearly empty cup of coffee right in front of her—but he wouldn't know.
"At—" he checks the time "—one in the afternoon, East Coast time?"
"How do you know I'm on the East Coast?" she asks, cocking her head.
"That's—a fair point." Patrick sounds more chastised than she'd intended. "Are you?"
"I'm in Zimbabwe," she says. She waits for his surprised inhale before saying, "No, I'm on the East Coast."
"Too early for jokes, you said."
"I'm warming up." She smiles.
"So what's on the agenda to discuss with your dad today?"
Kat's smile widens. "Dinner with Bianca and her boyfriend. Dad's going to want to cook a feast. I'm going to try to convince him not to scare the boyfriend away."
"We don't want him scared off, then?"
She shrugs even though he can't see it. "I haven't met him yet, but Bianca likes him."
"Hmm. Do we trust Bianca's judgement more than we did?"
"Hey! Only I can say that about her." But she laughs. She thinks, too, about the fact that she'd given Patrick free rein to say stuff like that about Bianca when they'd been together. In theory, he should have to earn back the right. In reality, even these few minutes of conversation have felt like they'd never been apart.
"Noted." She's relieved to hear that he doesn't sound offended.
There's a moment of silence that stretches between them. Kat's all too aware that she'd told Patrick she'd be back in Tacoma. If she had to guess, she'd say he's all too aware of it, too.
"So, just the one dinner?" Patrick asks, not-quite-casually.
Kat squeezes her eyes shut. "I'm flying in Monday night, flying out Thursday night. Tuesday and Wednesday are spoken for, but..."
"Staying with your dad?"
"Yeah. Unfortunately." Kat laughs, though she wonders if Patrick had been planning to suggest they stay together overnight. Not that she'd be opposed, necessarily, but it feels a bit forward. Then again, Patrick has always been forward.
"So no opportunity to put your dad's address into MapQuest and get the house number wrong, then."
"Oh, fuck you," she says cheerfully.
"I'm just concerned about your ability to navigate a city you haven't lived in in years," he says. "Though—do you need MapQuest to get to his place from the airport?"
"How stupid do you think I am, Patrick?"
He laughs. "Not at all." There's a moment where she can imagine his smile getting complicated before he adds, "Can't a guy find a funny way to find out if...if..."
Her heart is in her throat. "If?"
"If you want to see me?" he asks, voice small.
She swallows. "I do. If...if you want to see me."
"I do."
"So no MapQuest typos required." Her voice shakes a little as she returns to safer ground.
"Good. You may be better off not using it at all." His chuckle isn't quite solid, either.
"I am perfectly capable of using MapQuest!"
"Just like you're perfectly capable of using a phone."
"Don't make me hang up," she threatens, relief flooding through her.
"I know you'll just call back the next time you try to call your dad."
"I will hang up. Don't test me."
"Okay, okay. When's your flight on Monday? I could come get you."
He doesn't sound quite certain that she'd welcome that, so she hurries to say, "Let me look." She rummages around for her planner and flips it open. "Six forty-five on Monday the sixth. Delta."
"I'll be there."
"I'm glad." She swallows around that stubborn lump. "In that same shitty car you had in high school, or do you have a different shitty car now?"
"Hey, my car wasn't that shitty," he protests. "My new one is, though."
She smiles. "See you then. In your shitty car."
"See you then, Kat."
Kat takes a sheaf of papers on the flight with her with the idea of getting some grading done. She mostly shreds her napkin, and braids and re-braids a section of her hair, and jiggles her leg hard enough that her neighbor takes their earbuds out and asks her to stop. She doesn't like being this nervous. They'd had a good time on the phone. They'd been teasing each other like the old days. Patrick had made the first move in suggesting they see each other. He'd even offered to pick her up from the airport! No hiding behind food or a movie or whatever they'd end up doing; if there was an awkward silence in the car, it would be impossible to ignore. So Kat can be fairly certain that Patrick wants to see her, and fairly certain they'll have a good time.
Tell that to the knot in her stomach.
After what feels like a thousand years to land and thousands of years more on the tarmac and disembarking, Kat is free to powerwalk through the airport and to the exit. She doesn't have checked luggage. There's nothing to stop her from pushing through the doors into the blessedly cool air. There's nothing to stop her, and suddenly she wishes there was, even after all that time on the plane spent wishing they'd arrive already.
She adjusts the straps of her backpack and shifts her grip on her duffel before stepping through the automatic doors.
Almost immediately, she catches sight of Patrick waving out the window of, as promised, a shitty car. She weaves her way over between cars and people dealing with luggage. When she looks up again, Patrick's standing by his popped trunk. He has one arm out in an awkward way that looks like he's unsure whether to offer a hug or not. She suddenly really wants to hug him, but they're in the middle of the road. A car in the next lane over honks at a family with an entire cart of suitcases. So instead, she smiles at him and tosses her bags in the trunk.
"So, you're here," Patrick says, tossing her quick glances in between longer looks at the road. He looks just as nervous as she is, if not more.
He looks fantastic. He'd already had that unfair jawline; he's filled out a bit to match it. His hair, still long, is pulled back in a tiny ponytail. Kat tries not to make it obvious that she's taking in the scent of his cologne.
"I'm here. Thank you for picking me up." Kat fiddles with the end of her belt.
"My pleasure. How was the flight?"
Awful, she wants to say. "Fine." She hates that they're both talking like robots. Why had it been easier on the phone?
"Good."
She sits up straighter in her seat, snap decision made. "Can you pull over?"
He pulls over way faster than she was expecting; a car honks as it swerves around them. "What is it? Are you okay?"
"Get out of the car." She unbuckles her seatbelt and hops out.
"I didn't think I was that bad a driver," Patrick says, following suit. He steps around the front of the car to meet her, eyebrows drawn together. "Kat...?"
She throws her arms around him before she can talk herself out of it. It knocks the wind out of him; perhaps that's why it takes a second for his hands to land on her back and for his arms to tighten around her.
He's so strong and warm and smells incredible, and all of a sudden, Kat realizes just how much she'd missed his steady presence in her life. She feels her eyes start to water.
"Kat?" he asks again, sounding a little less concerned. He lifts one hand from her back to stroke her hair and gently tug her braid.
She isn't sure whether she actually wants him to hear or not, so she lets his shoulder muffle her words: "Missed you."
He chuckles, which would annoy her if it wasn't so clearly a chuckle of relief. "I missed you every day."
"Every day?" she asks.
"Well, maybe not every day. Might have taken some days off here and there. Did you want a list?"
She can't see his face, but she can imagine the way he'd raise his eyebrows and look so serious as he made the silly offer. "No, that's okay. As long as, say, you missed me at least 90% of the days."
"Ninety! That's a lot to ask."
"You were the one who said every day!" Kat laughs.
"I overestimated. Let's call it 85% of the days."
"I can work with eighty-five."
Patrick gives her one last squeeze before letting her go. He keeps his hands on her upper arms as he looks keenly into her face. She keeps quiet and watches him right back. She's really missed that searching gaze of his.
Finally he smiles and tugs her braid. "Let's get back in the car."
She laughs, having entirely forgotten they were standing in the road in front of Patrick's car. "Done."
They put in a CD and drive the rest of the way back to the Stratford house with the windows down. The wind tugs Patrick's hair out of its ponytail and whips it around his face. He puts his arm around the back of her seat and drums his fingers against the upholstery.
It's a 45 minute drive with traffic, but when they pull up to the house, Kat finds that she isn't ready to let Patrick go.
"Well?" Patrick says, looking at her with raised eyebrows. "Home, sweet home."
She laughs and shakes her head. "This hasn't been home in a few years."
He shrugs. "Childhood home, sweet childhood home doesn't have the same ring to it."
"No, it doesn't," she agrees. She makes no move to undo her seatbelt. "Are you hungry?"
Patrick's gaze flicks between her and the house. "Are you inviting me in for dinner?"
"No." She smiles. "I'm asking you out."
That smile she so loves spreads slowly across his face, brilliant as a sunrise.