26. Levi #2
I don’t know if it’s the right thing to do, but I reach out and lightly squeeze his forearm. I do it because it helps me so much when Ethan touches me. It makes me feel like I’m not alone, and I can see that Patrick is very alone.
He freezes at the touch, and I think maybe I’ve done the wrong thing, but then so much tension goes out of his body that he feels like a different person after. He’s more relaxed as we resume our tasks.
It’s strange how much I misunderstood him. He’s reserved and intense, kind of closed up, but he’s not cold like I thought. He’s actually pretty great.
As the coffee starts brewing, I say, “Ethan said you helped him a lot.”
Patrick is getting mugs out of the cabinet, but he pauses at my words. “He said that?”
“He’s never said that to you?”
Patrick sets the mugs on the counter. “No. I didn’t know he felt that way. But we don’t really talk, I guess. Not like that.”
For a few minutes, we busy ourselves, but then we’re sitting at the table kitty corner to each other and Patrick asks, “So are you going to tell me why Ethan left?”
“I don’t know why he left, not… well, not exactly.”
“Nothing happened? Nothing… physical?”
I shake my head. “We were talking. About… Paul.”
I watch Patrick for his reaction, wondering what he knows. His expression grows stormy. His hands curl around his mug.
I probe, “He’s… talked to you about Paul?”
Patrick replies shortly, “No. He hasn’t talked to me about Paul. Ever.”
I rotate my mug in my hands, unsure how to go about this when I can’t possibly reveal what Ethan told me. I try, “But you know something.”
“Some things are pretty fucking obvious after ten years. God, I can’t believe he went back to that goddamn church.”
“You think Paul was a bad person.”
“I think he was a fucking—” Patrick cuts himself off. Eyes closed, he takes a deep, steadying breath. Then he says stiffly, “Yes, I think he was a bad person. And I think it’s a very good thing that he’s dead.”
“Because he hurt Ethan.”
Patrick’s eyes jump to me. “He told you that?”
“Not exactly. But I’ve been looking things up. Pictures. Articles. And I can’t stop thinking about Ethan’s face. In the early pictures.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen those too. And that’s a kid that needed help, which is not what he got from the Castles. I’m very fucking sure of that.”
“Because of what happened, you mean. With his mother.”
Patrick stills. “Did he tell you that?”
“I read it,” I say quietly and brace myself for the attack that I know I deserve. Under the sleeves of my navy hoodie, I know what’s there. Patrick knows too.
But the attack that I expect doesn’t come. Patrick mutters, “Shit. Are you okay?”
I swallow hard. “I won’t do it again. I promise.”
“That’s not what I asked you. Are you okay?”
Tears spring to my eyes as guilt swamps me, along with a huge sense of undeserving. He shouldn’t be nice to me. I know what I put Ethan through that night.
“Yeah,” I mutter, swiping my sleeve across my face. “I’m fine. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“That’s okay, Levi. We don’t have to. But you can talk about it. If you want, I mean. If not to Ethan, then to me. I know he’s going through shit right now, but so are you.”
A weight lifts off me. A breath eases from my lungs.
For a while, we sit there, silent, mugs steaming but untouched. I look at Patrick again, studying him as he stares blindly at his coffee, and I can’t make sense of something.
I begin with what’s clear. “You love him.”
Patrick is startled. His eyes jump up to mine. I can tell that he’s unsure of my feelings about that fact, but he doesn’t deny it.
He says, “I do, yes, but not like you maybe think. I’m not in love with him.”
I rotate my mug in my hands. “But he’s very attractive, and so are you. So why is it not in love?”
Patrick frowns. “It’s just not. Our personalities don’t work like that. We’re both too dominant. Neither of us can relax enough around the other.”
“He’s less dominant when he’s around you,” I point out. “He changes.”
Patrick shakes his head. “Sometimes he does but not always. It depends on what’s going on with him. But he definitely doesn’t like it. He yields to me, sometimes, but he hates it. He does much, much better with you.”
My throat tightens. “But he left.”
“He’ll be back. I’m sure he will.”
“Where do you think he went?”
Patrick blows out his cheeks. “Fuck if I know. I’ve looked everywhere I can think of. I should go look again. Since he won’t keep his goddamn phone with him.”
“Can I have your number before you go?”
“Shit. Of course. You should’ve had it a long time ago. Can I see your phone?”
I drag it from my pocket and hand it to him.
Patrick wakes it up. I cringe slightly, but he doesn’t comment on the lack of a lock screen or the generic background.
He makes himself a contact and starts a new text thread to send himself a message that says, Levi’s number.
His phone buzzes in his back pocket. It’s a tiny thing, but the fact that he did it that way, so he’d have my number too, makes me feel good. It feels like I have people now.
Patrick hands my phone back to me. I slide it into my pocket. I get up when Patrick does, both of us leaving our coffee untouched. And yet, somehow, it helped to have it. It gave me something to do with my hands.
As Patrick heads to the patio doors, I call after him, “Patrick?” When he stops and looks back, I say, “Maybe I should come with you.”
He shakes his head. “I think you should stay here in case he comes back.”
“But are you gonna be okay? Alone?”
“Oh.” Patrick winces slightly, like he’s remembering what he had me do for him when he first arrived. “Yeah. Thanks. Are you? Gonna be okay, I mean. While I’m gone.”
“I am. And you can call me. You can talk to me too.”
Patrick’s lips tug in something like a smile. “You’re a good kid. I gotta go.”
As Patrick leaves, I walk to the patio doors. I watch him get in the car and drive away, then I go back inside.
I sit at the kitchen table and pull out my phone. Compulsively, I start looking at pictures again. This time, I focus on Paul. I think about what Patrick said about him being a bad person. I think about the things that neither of us said and both of us were thinking.
I think about that word Ethan used when he said he killed Paul.
Sessions.
I think about how Ethan took me down to the cellar when we first got here. I’ve mostly avoided direct thoughts about the cellar, but it’s been in the back of my mind ever since Ethan and I emerged from it.
I let it press into the foreground now. It’s important. I don’t know how exactly, but I know that it is.
My phone warns me that the battery is low. It’s a crappy old phone, and I’ve been using it all day.
I walk out to the entryway and plug it back in, leaving it beside Ethan’s. Then I walk back the way I came, but I don’t return to the kitchen. I go into the pantry. I go to the cellar door.
I open it.
Groping around, I find the light switch. The light on the steps is weak, but farther in, lower down, harsh, ugly light blasts through the darkness.
As I descend, the air grows colder and the silence becomes more intense. The sense of otherworldliness does too. I felt it last time as well, but I only had the capacity, then, to be aware of myself. Now, I can think and feel beyond my own boundaries. I can see this place in relation to Ethan.
In the direct beam of the central light, the space is bare, and the clutter along the edges—mirrors, furniture, ropes and chains and other things—makes it feel like a stage ready to be set.
The props, though, are disturbing. The whips here, unlike in the playroom, are not for pleasure.
The benches and chains are not for freedom.
And there are so many religious things. Crosses, of course, and the narrow shawls that preachers drape around their necks.
Other stuff, too, that I recognize but don’t know the names of.
There are multiple easels, and shelves crowded with painting supplies. There’s a utility sink stained with paint.
This is Ethan’s studio.
I glance over at the pallet where I lay with him. That’s where Ethan lies, to rest or sleep, when he’s working down here. Working on what though?
He told me that he’s never brought anyone here, so what does he paint?
And where are the paintings?
The cellar is mostly a big open space, but there’s a heavier darkness at one end, and I find myself drawn toward it.
I think there’s a doorway. I grope along the wall until I’m sure that I’m moving into another room.
I reach in the other direction blindly, trying to understand the space.
My hand bumps something small and light that’s hanging.
I feel around until I find it again. It’s a string.
I pull it, and a bare bulb blazes on, illuminating a smaller room.
My breath catches in my throat and a chill sweeps over my body. I stare and stare at dozens of intricate, masterful paintings hung on the walls. They’re all of Ethan, and they’re all very, very dark. Before my brain can process the details, I’m caught up in the feel.
It takes me a moment to breathe again. It takes me a moment to walk into this space that reveals so much, hidden away.