Chapter 21 #2
"—AND ANAHEIM CAN eat my entire ass. Respectfully. No, actually, disrespectfully. And the rumor goblin can print his little list and eat that too, alphabetically. I am structural glue! I am cost-controlled chaos! I am—"
"Standing on my coffee table."
Third performance of this speech tonight, and Patrick keeps fixating on the staging, which I’m in no rush to change.
From up here I have an excellent view of my audience.
Patrick sits at one end of the couch, beer bottle resting against his thigh, eyes tracking my socks.
Wall occupies the other end, plus most of the middle, following me back and forth with only his eyes.
My copy of the extension leans against the takeout wreckage somewhere on the kitchen island.
I've checked it four times since dinner.
Still says two years.
"—a Milwaukee Viper standing on communal victory property," I continue.
"This is my property."
"—and you two! My, my—" My judgment arrives almost as fast as my next words. The almost is critical. "—my boyfriends were so weird about it all day, and Patrick texted in complete sentences and—"
The second I hear myself, I clasp my mouth with both hands, the slapping sound ringing cartoonish amid the sudden silence.
Patrick's bottle stops halfway to his mouth. Wall's eyes slide off me and onto Patrick. Mine go hunting for a fire exit.
I step down, slowly. Maybe if I move slowly enough, time will feel bad for me and give the last ten seconds back.
"I would like to enter a plea of adrenaline," I mumble.
On the couch, Patrick and Wall exchange one, long look. The look has entire paragraphs in it, and I can't read a single word.
Then a corner of Patrick's mouth twitches, Wall's follows, and neither of them corrects me.
I watch the not-correcting happen in real time, like its own separate event, with both eyes and every organ in my body.
No flinch, no well, actually. Nobody throws me through a window, either.
The word just sits there in the middle of the rug, being allowed to exist.
"We'll discuss sentencing later," Patrick says.
I look between Patrick and Wall twice, then I push my luck. "Sooo. It's not a no?"
They exchange one more look, before Patrick says, "It's not. But not today. Not as a thing you blurted because Berg made you cry."
"I did not cry! I teared up, it’s totally different."
Wall leans forward, forearms on his thighs. It's maybe his ninth sentence of the evening, so Patrick and I both shut up for it. "I need to tell my team first. They're family. I'm not making them find out from a gossip website."
For a second I forget how standing works.
First.
First means something happens after. First has sequence. First owns a little clipboard and a plan.
My eyes fill again, which at this point is just ridiculous. "You're both going to make me say it sober and on purpose, aren't you?"
"Yes," Patrick says while Wall says, "Obviously."
I sit down on the edge of the table before my legs turn it into a scene. In the span of a few hours I got kept by my team and un-corrected by my two…whatever, and my chest feels too tight to embrace both.
So I do what any emotionally responsible adult would do. I dash and go through Patrick's recycling.
It's sorted. Glass on one side, plastic on the other, labels printed, because handwriting invites lawlessness. I give myself four seconds of mocking him internally, extract an empty Perrier bottle, and carry it back into the living room, aiming the beck at them.
"Floor. Circle. Spin the bottle."
Wall’s eyeroll is almost louder than Patrick’s chuckle.
“And since when do we need that?” Patrick asks.
I stop. "Excuse me?"
"The bottle's job is permission. We can kiss each other whenever we want, last I checked. That is the entire point of us."
"Okay, first of all, devastating that you understand party games on a structural level—"
"He's right," Wall chimes in.
"—second, not kissing spin the bottle. Secret-spilling spin the bottle. It points at you, you hand over one true thing. A real one. From inside the vault."
"No," Patrick says.
"Also no," says Wall.
I raise both hands, then sit between the couch and the coffee table, cross-legged. "I win, two to one."
My non-boyfriends are still not moving. "You lost two to one," Patrick points out.
I don’t like his math. "I have deadline-day veto power."
"You used it on the coffee table."
"Then I get two. Sit down."
Patrick's gaze drops to the bottle in my hand. "I prefer the kissing version."
"You said the kissing version was pointless!"
"It's growing on me."
Under any other circumstances, I'd reward that line by climbing directly into his lap. Tonight I'm running a strict program, and the program requires discipline, and discipline is the worst thing ever invented.
"I cried in front of my coach. There was a pre-positioned tissue box. You're both playing."
"That's blackmail," Wall says.
"It's leverage. Sit."
They come down off the couch and fold themselves around the rug, grumbling, enormous, and mine.
I set the bottle in the center of our circle-slash-triangle.
Wall studies it like a ref reviewing a disputed goal. "Define 'real.'"
"If it costs you nothing, it doesn't count."
He looks at me and squints. "And who rules on that?"
"Me, duh. I invented this game and my rulings are final."
Patrick lifts his beer. "You invented spin the bottle?"
"This version. Stop being difficult."
I go first, because leadership is sacrifice. The bottle does two fast laps, wobbles, and picks Wall.
He glares down at it for a long moment. I'm already drafting a reminder about the rules when his jaw sets.
"It took me three weeks to learn Grze?kowiak. I had an app and all."
I choke on my next exhale. "An app."
Wall shrugs one massive shoulder. "It grades pronunciation. I got a 94."
"What'd you lose the six points on—"
"The funny-looking vowel."
I'm still laughing when I look at Patrick.
He isn't.
His face has gone still, in a soft way that makes him look younger, and he's looking at Wall with dangerous levels of charmed. “I always though you could say it, and just pretended to be difficult.”
A small smile appears on Wall’s face, one he thinks he’s concealing. He’s not. "You were supposed to think that."
Oh, this is disgusting. Round one, and the kissing version is already circling my game like a shark.
"Next," I announce. Somebody has to stay professional.
Wall spins, and the bottle picks me.
Finally. An artist at work.
I crack my knuckles. "Okay. The Roundabout Incident—"
"Nope," Patrick cuts me off.
I huff at him. "It's my secret."
"And I was there. Some things stay buried."
Wall leans in. "Now I need to know."
"No. You need to sleep at night."
I hold Patrick's stare and he holds mine. Somewhere behind his eyes a roundabout spins, and we both know I'm not winning this one.
"Fine. The cheesehead." I deliver it to the ceiling, because the ceiling doesn't have eyebrows to raise at me. "I sleep in it sometimes. It's oddly comforting."
Wall stays silent for a moment. Wall's ears, on the other hand, hold a full press conference, pink, climbing toward red.
Finally, he reaches for the bottle and turns it toward himself, then says, “Good. Cause I may or may not have picked up another one. It may or may not sit in my backseat, because I may or may not have felt stupid about it.”
Patrick turns his head to Wall with deliberate slowness, his eyebrows asking questions on his behalf.
Wall rolls his eyes. “I’m bad with comfort gifts, okay?”
I grab the bottle and spin, because my eyes may or may not start stinging again.
It does one lap, loses its nerve, and points back at me.
I sigh and reach for it again. "Self-spins are void—"
Wall catches my wrist. "The bottle has spoken."
"It's my game—"
"Your rulings are final. You ruled. Talk."
I may or may not have just lost at the game I invented.
"Fine. A real one. Today, in Berg's office.” I look down at my hands, my callouses suddenly fascinating.
“The relief wasn't just about staying with the Vipers.
I'd survive Anaheim. I'd hate the driving and I'd survive.
" So far so good. Practically an adult. "But losing the Vipers means I'd lose both of you, too. "
Patrick leans forward. "You wouldn't—"
"Not at first, I wouldn't." My words come out fast now, faster than he can lay one of his reasonable hands over it.
"I know you'd be wonderful about it. For some time.
You'd come over every weekend, then every other weekend.
Then something would come up, and you'd skip a few, and then we'd see each other every month, and then one day we'd all agree that it was too much, too far, and for the best." I start rapid-blinking to take back the stupid tear that has stupidly started forming. "And then that'd be it."
There. Vault open. Contents all over Patrick's rug.
"That would never happen," Patrick says, at the same time as Wall says, "You'd still be ours."
Ours.
The word creeps in between my ribs and squeezes, so I desperately grab the first technicality that presents itself, cause I’d be damned if I cry twice in one day. "Ours, huh?” I go for a brow wiggle which I’m not sure I’m nailing. “That is dangerously close to a noun."
"Well, it’s a pronoun."
"Oh, fuck you."
Wall's mouth curls at one corner, and Patrick's hand lands on my ankle.
This is exactly why I invented this game. For them to suffer.
I grab the bottle and send it flying, because that’s what this game—for them to suffer, for fuck’s sake. It nearly takes out a beer bottle, comes back around, and picks Wall again.
Ha! Justice.
"I already went," he says.
"Bullshit round doesn't count. House rules."
Wall turns to Patrick and squints. "You let him invent this."
Patrick looks at him for a moment, then at me. "He invented us."
Everything in my chest trips over everything else and I summon all of my power to redirect my focus from what’s going on inside me to where Wall’s jaw has started working through whatever he least wants to say.