Chapter 8 #2
He hadn’t said that to anyone. Not even to Pops, who’d understand it better than anybody but would still remind him he shouldn’t be hoping for someone else to get hurt.
Saying it to the lake and to Patrick didn’t make it better or worse.
It just put it down for a second, and his shoulders came down half an inch with it.
They walked in silence, the path curving along the breakwater, where the waves threw spray over the stones.
“You know you’re good,” Patrick said.
“I know I can be good.”
“No. You’re good.” He said it like he was correcting the record.
“The inconsistency isn’t a talent problem.
It’s confidence. You think everyone’s measuring you against your dads.
Maybe they are. But you’re doing it to yourself, harder than they ever could.
The real question is how you get out of your own head. ”
Asher looked at him. Patrick was watching the lake, not him.
The reflex was to deflect, flip it into a joke, make Patrick laugh and move them both past it.
Asher had the line half-loaded, but it didn’t come.
Patrick had said the thing he worked hardest to keep anyone from saying, and made it sound simple.
For once, Asher had nothing funny to put in front of the truth.
“You already know the answer to that,” Patrick said.
Asher’s feet had stopped. So had Patrick’s.
The wind flattened Asher’s jacket against his chest and pushed Patrick’s collar up against his jaw.
Asher’s hand was out of his pocket before he’d cleared the decision, closing around the zipper pull at Patrick’s throat.
The metal was cold. Under the fabric, Patrick’s chest rose.
He’d run out of angles a while ago. There was no joke to set this down gently, no line to make it deniable, only the want, his hand on Patrick’s jacket, and Patrick not stepping back. So Asher quit waiting for a right moment that wasn’t coming, and kissed him.
Patrick went still against his mouth, one breath, long enough that Asher’s stomach dropped. Then his hand came up to the side of Asher’s neck, cold from the wind, and he kissed Asher back like he’d stopped fighting it.
Neither of them let it run long. They were on a public path, the gray lake beside them. When Asher pulled back, Patrick didn’t go far, forehead nearly against his, eyes shut.
Patrick said something then, low, in French. Three words Asher didn’t know, said mostly to himself.
“What was that?”
“Something my mother says.” Patrick straightened. “It’s not important.”
It was the first thing he’d said all day that Asher didn’t believe. He let it go.
“Okay,” Asher said. His pulse was everywhere.
Patrick opened his eyes. The set had gone out of his jaw.
They started walking again, shoulders nearly touching, and this time, Asher let the quiet be.
Back at the apartment, neither of them brought up the lakefront. Patrick started dinner. Asher leaned against the counter and watched, and spent most of it thinking about kissing him again. Patrick caught him at it twice and didn’t say anything.
Crossing the kitchen would have taken nothing. Asher had his weight half off the counter when his phone buzzed.
It was Pops, a photo of him mid-laugh that Asher had set months ago. He glanced at Patrick. Patrick was slicing peppers again, eyes down.
He answered the FaceTime call. Pops was on the couch in Milwaukee, tan, grinning, a glass of something amber in his hand.
“Hey, kid. You back from the desert?”
“Got in yesterday. I’m in Chicago.”
“Chicago.” Pops’s eyebrows climbed. He sipped. “Visiting anyone I know?”
And there it was. Pops already knew the answer and was going to make Asher hand it over anyway because that was the toll for being his son.
“I’m at Patrick’s.”
The name landed. Pops’s grin spread slowly, the one he got when he was enjoying himself too much to bother hiding it. “Patrick. So the hockey player has a name.”
“He’s had a name the whole time. You’ve just been insufferable about it.”
“I’ve been patient. Different thing.” Pops leaned toward the screen. “Is he there? Am I meeting him right now? Is this happening?”
Patrick answered from the kitchen, not looking up from the cutting board. “Hi.”
Pops mouthed something at the screen that Asher didn’t need sound to read, then managed, almost evenly, “Hi, Patrick.”
He waited for the chopping to start up again before he came back to Asher, grinning. “You drove all that way your first day home.”
“It’s not that far.”
“Uh-huh. Too tired from traveling to drive down and see your dear old parents, but you’ll make it all the way to Chicago for him.
Which is farther than us, by the way.” Pops looked entirely too pleased with the whole thing.
“Fine. I won’t say another word. I’m going to be extremely cool about this. ”
“You’re being the least cool I’ve ever seen you.”
“This is the coolest I’ve ever been. Ask your father.” Pops held the screen a beat too long, the grin softening into the thing he did instead of saying he was glad. “Have a good night, Ash.”
“Night, Pops.”
He hung up and set the phone down, feeling what he always felt after talking to his pops, loved and a little steamrolled. The steamrolling was its own kind of love he’d miss the day it stopped.
“Sorry. He’s—”
“He seems nice.”
“He’s the best.” Asher scrubbed the back of his neck. “It’s a good thing he has my dad to ground him or he’d probably still be getting himself into trouble.”
“You’re lucky to have the two of them.” Patrick tipped the peppers into the pan. The oil hissed. “From what you’ve told me, I think you’re a good mix of them.”
Something warmed in Asher’s chest. Usually when he was compared to his dads, it was his play on the field, his future potential. But Patrick saw beyond all of that, and this might have been one of the first times he didn’t mind being compared to them.
They sat down to eat, and inside a minute, Asher’s foot had found Patrick’s under the table. Patrick didn’t move his.
“This is stupid good,” Asher said around a forkful, pointing his fork at the plate like evidence. “You eat like this every night?”
“Most nights.” Patrick didn’t look up from his plate.
“By yourself.”
Patrick lifted one shoulder. “I like cooking.”
“You like that nobody talks to you while you do it.” Asher reached over and stole a piece of chicken off the edge of Patrick’s plate. Patrick watched him do it and pushed the plate an inch closer.
“That too. You talk enough for both of us.”
“People would pay for this much personality.”
“No, they wouldn’t.” But the corner of his mouth had gone up, and he didn’t fight it down this time.
Asher caught it and grinned. Under the table he pressed his foot harder against Patrick’s, just to see. Patrick pressed back.
“Tell me about Arizona,” Patrick said.
So Asher told him. Every time he wound down, Patrick asked him something else. The food went cold. Neither of them cared, and their feet stayed where they were the whole time.
They did the dishes together, Asher washing, Patrick drying, lined up at the sink. It was the most ordinary thing in the world, two guys and a sink on a Tuesday, and Asher wanted a hundred more of them. He couldn’t stop clocking the few inches of air between their arms.
He set the last plate in the rack and turned, and Patrick was right there, close, the way he’d been on the path. There was no wind this time, no public anything, no reason left to keep his hands to himself.
So Asher kissed him, and he didn’t keep this one careful.