Fall for You, page 9
Patrick began going to work super early in the morning to avoid Spencer. He got a reputation as a go-getter at the office for always being the first one in, which was the only positive to this situation. The El early in the morning was a ghost town. He didn’t have to fight through commuters at the station. He got a seat on the train every time. He rode through the city as the glowing embers of morning sun gave the world outside a burnt orange glow; in the afternoons, he left work a half-hour early, and on his train ride home, he stared out at bursts of fall foliage, the reds and oranges and yellows popping against the urban landscape. It was the ideal fall commute in the ideal fall month. October’s heat wave had come and gone quickly, leaving crisp breezes and temperatures that required fall jackets.
It was all perfect, and Patrick found himself not enjoying a thing. The leaves might as well have been black-and-white, and his candles might as well have smelled like office supplies. Fall was here in all its glory, and maybe it was because he enjoyed the anticipation more than the actual event, but he greeted it with a shrug.
Halfway into the month, he convinced his friend Libby to accompany him to AppleFest, a fall festival being held in the Uptown neighborhood. The fall festivals blended into one another. AppleFest, PumpkinFest, Autumn in Edgewater. They had the same layout, the same vendors hawking the same overpriced crafts, the same 80s cover bands singing the same songs.
But still, it was fall, and it was another chance for Patrick to try and forget about the boy across the hall.
Libby and Patrick ambled through AppleFest, which like the other festivals, was held on a closed-off street, with rows of vendors set up on both sides like a flea market, concert stages at each ends, and designated kid zones at the intersection. Leaves blew across the asphalt as they walked while sipping their Pumpkin Spice Lattes and wearing light, slightly-faded sweaters.
Again, a shrug from Patrick.
“This is so freaking cute,” Libby said, looking up temporarily from her iPhone. “Do you want to get some pumpkin beer? We can double-fist our fall drinks.”
“I’ll think about it.” He didn’t know how she’d be capable of double-fisting anything while holding onto her phone, but he appreciated the enthusiasm. He wished he could muster the same amount.
“Yes!” she said at something on her phone. “This company I’d been chasing for months just got back to me. They have budget. They want to talk. I think this is going to make my quarter if I can get this deal closed by end of month.”
“That’s awesome.”
She was half-talking to Patrick, half to herself. Libby used to be a law student but hated it and dropped out after a year. Her parents, furious, told her she was cut off. In desperate need of a job, she got an entry-level sales job at a tech company and took to it like a fish to water. She was admittedly a workaholic, but a happy one because she loved her work so much. Even though it could be annoying hearing her talk about work constantly and always be on her phone, he loved seeing her in her element.
“I think there’s a candle-maker a few booths down,” she said. “Do you want to check them out?”
“That’s okay. It’s the same guy who makes candles in beer bottles, but the candles aren’t scented. Am I a bad person because I’d rather buy them at Home Goods? I’m destroying small businesses, aren’t I?”
“We all are.” Libby held up her PSL from Starbucks. “But we like to get drunk in bars, and those are all independent businesses, so it evens out.”
Patrick nodded. He would take her logic and not question it.
“One day when we’re rich, bougie housewives who don’t have to work, we can shop at these stores.”
“Libby, are you really not going to work?”
She smiled and bowed her head at Patrick. Touche.
They did patronize a local bakery and bought a pumpkin brownie to split. They popped a squat on the curb of the sidewalk next to a booth for a local Insurance Agency. Patrick didn’t know what was so pumpkin-y about them.
“Patrick, are you sure you love fall?” Libby asked, ripping off a chunk of the brownie and tossing it in her mouth.
“Of course. Why do you say that?”
“Because you seem miserable here. And there aren’t even that many kids running around being loud.”
Patrick stumbled for an answer that wasn’t the truth. “I’m not. I’m just tired.”
“Oh, please. Tired is one of those words that mean nothing. What happened to your pumpkin-spiced lover?” Libby’s bluntness helped her smash her sales quota, but was a pain in her personal life.
“My who?”
“Your neighbor who got his legs amputated.”
Patrick laughed so hard he choked on his brownie. He had to chug his PSL to make it go down. It was a laugh he needed this month.
“You mean Spencer with the broken foot?”
“Same difference,” Libby said through giggling. “You guys were spending so much time together. Probably fucking like Easter Bunnies, too, which you weren’t telling me about.”
“We may have...it doesn’t matter. He got his cast off and went back to being his dumb jock self with his dumb jock friends.” Patrick lost the urge to laugh and the urge to finish this delicious brownie. The thought of Spencer just across the hall but a galaxy away twisted his stomach in knots. “I helped him out for a few months as a friendly neighbor.”
“I help my neighbor carry her groceries up the stairs. I don’t have sex with her.”
“He just wants to be friends. He said so.” Patrick found himself right back on that roof with Spencer looking spectacularly sexy in the moonlight, and then Spencer saying the F word, dropkicking his heart into the lake. “It’s my fault for getting my hopes up.”
“Fuck. I’m sorry.”
“I thought because of everything we did together and all the time we spent together, that we had something. I think I was just blinded by the sex and everything else.” Images flashed in his mind of the everything else: Spencer smiling at him on the train like he was the only person on this earth who mattered, Spencer sneaking a smell of the candles when he thought Patrick wasn’t looking. “It was great. It was all so great.”
To her credit, Libby hadn’t looked at her phone this whole time. It remained face down on the sidewalk next to her. She put friends over work every time.
“I knew after GFA to be more careful because I always fall for the wrong people.”
Patrick thought back on the great fall memories he’d had so far in Chicago. They all were with Spencer, who amplified his love of the season. Maybe fall wasn’t about leaves, candles, and lattes. It was about the people with whom you spent it. He remembered what he’d told Spencer: fall was built around nostalgia, and he was already nostalgic for the time they spent together.
Patrick stared at the street littered with festival detritus, his body feeling patched together with Scotch Tape, ready to fall apart all over again.
“I just wish it didn’t hurt so much.” Patrick held back an ocean of tears. This hurt a million times more than his past relationship, and it wasn’t even a relationship. Spencer had gotten under his skin and seeped into his bloodstream.
“Technically, once Halloween is over, the Christmas season begins. It’ll be a new season you can celebrate. Put fall behind you and find a new guy to kiss under the mistletoe.”
Maybe she was right. Patrick couldn’t believe he was thinking this, but maybe it was time to close the book on fall.
10
Spencer
Spencer was the saddest bottle of ketchup anyone had ever seen.
He drooped on Ryan’s couch sipping his beer in the middle of a boisterous Halloween party. There were plenty of single guys milling about, but he couldn’t feign interest in any of them. And to be fair, they weren’t interested in him either. Guys who otherwise might’ve flirted with him or suggested they go into the bathroom for a few minutes were keeping their distance.
“Dude, this is a party, not a funeral.” Ryan stood over him, a literal ball of flame. He had cardboard pieces of fire taped to himself. He looked ridiculous by himself, but it made sense when he stood by Justin, his new boyfriend, dressed as a firefighter. They were a cute couple - Ryan tall, broad, and pale. Justin short, lean, and dark. Spencer was glad there was no awkwardness between him and Justin.
“I’m just taking a breather.” Spencer took a sip of his beer and swirled it around his mouth until he decided to swallow.
“Don’t make me get Justin’s axe.” Ryan held out his hand, which Spencer knew would not go away. He grabbed a hold, and his friend pulled him up. He followed Ryan to the back porch, which was fortunately empty of smokers at the moment.
It was a chilly night, made especially cold after leaving a hot, crowded apartment. Spencer filled his lungs with the fresh air, then filled his mouth with another beer.
“Call him,” Ryan said.
“Who?”
“Patrick.”
Spencer’s heart fluttered at his name before sinking into a pit of mud.
“Listen, I don’t want to take you away from party-hosting responsibilities. I’m tired. I’m just going to go home.”
Spencer tried to head for the door, but Ryan stopped him with a firm hand on his chest. Spencer had a few inches and few more muscles on Ryan, but in the dead-serious look Ryan gave him, he knew who would win this fight.
“Dude, you’ve been like this all freaking month. Do you really want to go home? I doubt Patrick is home.”
Spencer’s fists tightened at the thought of what Patrick might be up to, or who with, tonight.
“What the hell happened?” Ryan asked.
“What do you care? You don’t like Patrick. You thought he was weird.”
“He is weird, but a good kind of weird. A weird that makes you really happy.” Ryan made Spencer meet his eyes. “You like him. You, the guy who doesn’t do mush, ya got mushy.”
He hated how well Ryan knew him. “So what! He doesn’t want to talk to me. He said so himself. I thought he was into me, but then he wasn’t.”
Spencer couldn’t let himself get unglued by the screwiness of love and relationships. They made no sense. In sports, there were clear rules and clear winners. He wanted clarity in his life.
Clarity, not mushiness.
“What happened? You two were spending every minute together, and then it stopped.”
Spencer hadn’t been able to bring himself to talk about the night on the roof with Ryan or with anyone else. Whenever he thought about the way Patrick looked at him, the way he definitively stated that they weren’t friends and walked past him icier than Antarctica, it made his insides go dry.
“Hey.” Ryan used a softer voice, his eyes kinder. “You can tell me.”
“He’d been acting weird, and I told him it felt like he didn’t want to be friends anymore, and then he stormed off.” Spencer shrugged, still confused by the chain of events.
Ryan slapped his palm to his own forehead. He clearly was not. Could a whole body cringe?
“What?”
“Dude.” His palm now covered his entire face, as if Spencer was a real-life YouTube fail.
“Weird, right?”
“You’re the weird one.”
“What?” Spencer shoved him. “He has been acting weird. He showed up at my party super late and only stayed a few minutes.”
“It makes perfect sense since you friend-zoned him.” Ryan placed a knowing hand on Spencer’s shoulder, ready to dish out some life lessons, even though Spencer was three weeks older. “He likes you.”
“He has a funny way of showing it.”
“He likes you, and you obviously like him, but then you tell him you just want to be friends.”
“We are friends.”
“Do you hear that?” Ryan asked. “That’s the sound of my bullshit meter beeping like crazy.”
Spencer flipped him the bird.
“Stop lying to yourself, Spencer. You like him. I saw how much time you two were spending together. I saw that dopey smile on your face when you sniffed your fall candle. You want to be more than friends with Patrick, but you got scared. You didn’t spike it.”
“Oh, we spiked it plenty,” Spencer said under his breath.
“I’m talking about actual spiking. In volleyball games, how many times have you seen a ball sailing in the air that could’ve been a spike, but instead the player decided to bump or set it?”
“Too many times.” Spencer shook his head, thinking of all the games they lost because the newer teammates were too timid at the net.
“Right? You have this perfect setup, this perfect shot to slam it over the net and easily win the point. But at the last second, the player decides to go with a softer hit, which the other team can return.”
“Choking at the net.” Spencer saw it a million times. When you had a spike in hand, you went for it. Always.
“Why did they do that?” Ryan asked.
“Because they...were scared.” Every lightbulb in every corner of his mind turned on, like the lighting fixture section at a Home Depot.
I choked at the net.
He was right there. He liked Patrick, and Patrick liked him. It was on his lips that night. I like you, Patrick. The words were there, but he choked. He took the easy way out and said friends because he was scared. More lightbulbs, like he was Thomas Freaking Edison. Spencer allowed himself to think things he had been pushing down for too long. He was scared Patrick wouldn’t like him back. He was scared Patrick would. He was a big ole fraidy cat.
He looked to Ryan with new understanding. Ryan nodded exaggeratedly at him, like he was the teacher in The Miracle Worker helping Helen Keller learn to speak.
“I’ve never felt this way about someone before. I like him.” Spencer had to catch his breath. New words. New feelings. It was terrifying, but also exhilarating, like jumping out of an airplane. He wanted to hug and kiss and hold Patrick and tell him how much he liked him day in and day out. “Fuck. I don’t want him in the friend zone. I want him in the boyfriend zone.”
“Don’t tell me this. Tell him!”
“I’m scared.”
“Good!”
Spencer shot him a look. Was he enjoying his pain?
“It’s okay to be scared. That means you care. Oh shit, I just realized you can’t spell scared without care.”
Spencer was a lit firecracker in someone’s head, sparking and ready to burst into bright colors across the sky. What he wouldn’t give to feel Patrick on his hands, to stare into those gleaming green eyes and hear him moan.
“That ball is still in the air. The play isn’t over. Are you going to bump it over the net like it’s a fucking kitten in a teacup, or are you going to spike that shit?”
“I’m going to spike that shit!”
Their hands collided in an epic hi-five that left them both with red palms.
“I have to get back to the apartment,” Spencer said with newfound determination.
“No. He’s not there.”
Spencer’s body went cold.
“He’s at a party in Pilsen.”
“How do you know that?” Spencer asked.
“I looked him up on Instagram, saw pictures of him at a party, and I recognized the couch he was sitting on.” Ryan glanced back at the door to make sure they were alone. “I had sex on it last spring.”
“You remember a couch you had sex on six months ago?”
“It was a nice couch. Overstuffed pillows, gray tweed. I asked the guy where he got it after we both came.”
“That sounds like the gayest sex ever.” Spencer paused for a moment, and then looked up the picture of Patrick on his Instagram and checked out the couch. “Damn, that does look like a comfortable couch.”
“It’s from Pottery Barn, way out of my price range. If I owned a couch that nice, I wouldn’t fuck random guys on it, but that’s just me.”
Spencer was about to put away his phone, but looked at the picture one more time to admire Patrick’s smile. Something else caught his eye.
“What is it?” Ryan asked.
“Patrick is dressed as a bottle of mustard. Holy shit! I’m ketchup. Ketchup and mustard! We’re a couples costume!” Spencer never thought in his life he’d be excited by this. Couples costumes were the bane of Halloween’s existence, worthy of the world’s biggest eye roll. But the idea of being in one with Patrick sounded like the greatest idea ever.
“It’s fate, my friend.” Ryan clapped him on the shoulder. “Now get your ass over there and don’t fuck it up.”
11
Patrick
Patrick was the saddest bottle of mustard anyone had ever seen. He slumped on the couch in an apartment far too nice for any twentysomething. He rested his chin on his boxy costume in a hang-dog expression that would even make Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh say buck up.
“Do you want something to drink, partner?” Jessie from Toy Story, otherwise known as Libby, sidled up to him and peeked inside his red Solo cup. It was full.
“I’m good.”
“You’ve barely had anything.”
“It’s strong. I’m nursing.” Patrick shrugged as best he could in his cumbersome outfit. It was the only costume left at the store that wasn’t some form of lingerie. The font and faded yellow coloring screamed 1978. He had been on the fence about attending Halloween festivities until Libby threatened to break down his apartment door and drag him out.
The strap that held the nozzle part on his head scratched against his neck, and the yellow velvety fabric of the actual bottle was a sweat lodge. He looked more like a lemon that had sat on the shelf too long.
The weight of his full Solo cup weighed in his hand. He wasn’t in the mood to get drunk tonight, wasn’t in the mood to celebrate. Fall was ending, and he was alone. This morning, he had spoken with his landlord, who agreed to let him break his lease in thirty days. Tomorrow, he began the hunt for a new apartment. He was not looking forward to November at all.
“Do you mind if we sit here?” A guy dressed as Ernie from Sesame Street pointed to the rest of the couch. Bert stood behind him. Except for the striped sweaters, they looked nothing at all like their characters.
It was all perfect, and Patrick found himself not enjoying a thing. The leaves might as well have been black-and-white, and his candles might as well have smelled like office supplies. Fall was here in all its glory, and maybe it was because he enjoyed the anticipation more than the actual event, but he greeted it with a shrug.
Halfway into the month, he convinced his friend Libby to accompany him to AppleFest, a fall festival being held in the Uptown neighborhood. The fall festivals blended into one another. AppleFest, PumpkinFest, Autumn in Edgewater. They had the same layout, the same vendors hawking the same overpriced crafts, the same 80s cover bands singing the same songs.
But still, it was fall, and it was another chance for Patrick to try and forget about the boy across the hall.
Libby and Patrick ambled through AppleFest, which like the other festivals, was held on a closed-off street, with rows of vendors set up on both sides like a flea market, concert stages at each ends, and designated kid zones at the intersection. Leaves blew across the asphalt as they walked while sipping their Pumpkin Spice Lattes and wearing light, slightly-faded sweaters.
Again, a shrug from Patrick.
“This is so freaking cute,” Libby said, looking up temporarily from her iPhone. “Do you want to get some pumpkin beer? We can double-fist our fall drinks.”
“I’ll think about it.” He didn’t know how she’d be capable of double-fisting anything while holding onto her phone, but he appreciated the enthusiasm. He wished he could muster the same amount.
“Yes!” she said at something on her phone. “This company I’d been chasing for months just got back to me. They have budget. They want to talk. I think this is going to make my quarter if I can get this deal closed by end of month.”
“That’s awesome.”
She was half-talking to Patrick, half to herself. Libby used to be a law student but hated it and dropped out after a year. Her parents, furious, told her she was cut off. In desperate need of a job, she got an entry-level sales job at a tech company and took to it like a fish to water. She was admittedly a workaholic, but a happy one because she loved her work so much. Even though it could be annoying hearing her talk about work constantly and always be on her phone, he loved seeing her in her element.
“I think there’s a candle-maker a few booths down,” she said. “Do you want to check them out?”
“That’s okay. It’s the same guy who makes candles in beer bottles, but the candles aren’t scented. Am I a bad person because I’d rather buy them at Home Goods? I’m destroying small businesses, aren’t I?”
“We all are.” Libby held up her PSL from Starbucks. “But we like to get drunk in bars, and those are all independent businesses, so it evens out.”
Patrick nodded. He would take her logic and not question it.
“One day when we’re rich, bougie housewives who don’t have to work, we can shop at these stores.”
“Libby, are you really not going to work?”
She smiled and bowed her head at Patrick. Touche.
They did patronize a local bakery and bought a pumpkin brownie to split. They popped a squat on the curb of the sidewalk next to a booth for a local Insurance Agency. Patrick didn’t know what was so pumpkin-y about them.
“Patrick, are you sure you love fall?” Libby asked, ripping off a chunk of the brownie and tossing it in her mouth.
“Of course. Why do you say that?”
“Because you seem miserable here. And there aren’t even that many kids running around being loud.”
Patrick stumbled for an answer that wasn’t the truth. “I’m not. I’m just tired.”
“Oh, please. Tired is one of those words that mean nothing. What happened to your pumpkin-spiced lover?” Libby’s bluntness helped her smash her sales quota, but was a pain in her personal life.
“My who?”
“Your neighbor who got his legs amputated.”
Patrick laughed so hard he choked on his brownie. He had to chug his PSL to make it go down. It was a laugh he needed this month.
“You mean Spencer with the broken foot?”
“Same difference,” Libby said through giggling. “You guys were spending so much time together. Probably fucking like Easter Bunnies, too, which you weren’t telling me about.”
“We may have...it doesn’t matter. He got his cast off and went back to being his dumb jock self with his dumb jock friends.” Patrick lost the urge to laugh and the urge to finish this delicious brownie. The thought of Spencer just across the hall but a galaxy away twisted his stomach in knots. “I helped him out for a few months as a friendly neighbor.”
“I help my neighbor carry her groceries up the stairs. I don’t have sex with her.”
“He just wants to be friends. He said so.” Patrick found himself right back on that roof with Spencer looking spectacularly sexy in the moonlight, and then Spencer saying the F word, dropkicking his heart into the lake. “It’s my fault for getting my hopes up.”
“Fuck. I’m sorry.”
“I thought because of everything we did together and all the time we spent together, that we had something. I think I was just blinded by the sex and everything else.” Images flashed in his mind of the everything else: Spencer smiling at him on the train like he was the only person on this earth who mattered, Spencer sneaking a smell of the candles when he thought Patrick wasn’t looking. “It was great. It was all so great.”
To her credit, Libby hadn’t looked at her phone this whole time. It remained face down on the sidewalk next to her. She put friends over work every time.
“I knew after GFA to be more careful because I always fall for the wrong people.”
Patrick thought back on the great fall memories he’d had so far in Chicago. They all were with Spencer, who amplified his love of the season. Maybe fall wasn’t about leaves, candles, and lattes. It was about the people with whom you spent it. He remembered what he’d told Spencer: fall was built around nostalgia, and he was already nostalgic for the time they spent together.
Patrick stared at the street littered with festival detritus, his body feeling patched together with Scotch Tape, ready to fall apart all over again.
“I just wish it didn’t hurt so much.” Patrick held back an ocean of tears. This hurt a million times more than his past relationship, and it wasn’t even a relationship. Spencer had gotten under his skin and seeped into his bloodstream.
“Technically, once Halloween is over, the Christmas season begins. It’ll be a new season you can celebrate. Put fall behind you and find a new guy to kiss under the mistletoe.”
Maybe she was right. Patrick couldn’t believe he was thinking this, but maybe it was time to close the book on fall.
10
Spencer
Spencer was the saddest bottle of ketchup anyone had ever seen.
He drooped on Ryan’s couch sipping his beer in the middle of a boisterous Halloween party. There were plenty of single guys milling about, but he couldn’t feign interest in any of them. And to be fair, they weren’t interested in him either. Guys who otherwise might’ve flirted with him or suggested they go into the bathroom for a few minutes were keeping their distance.
“Dude, this is a party, not a funeral.” Ryan stood over him, a literal ball of flame. He had cardboard pieces of fire taped to himself. He looked ridiculous by himself, but it made sense when he stood by Justin, his new boyfriend, dressed as a firefighter. They were a cute couple - Ryan tall, broad, and pale. Justin short, lean, and dark. Spencer was glad there was no awkwardness between him and Justin.
“I’m just taking a breather.” Spencer took a sip of his beer and swirled it around his mouth until he decided to swallow.
“Don’t make me get Justin’s axe.” Ryan held out his hand, which Spencer knew would not go away. He grabbed a hold, and his friend pulled him up. He followed Ryan to the back porch, which was fortunately empty of smokers at the moment.
It was a chilly night, made especially cold after leaving a hot, crowded apartment. Spencer filled his lungs with the fresh air, then filled his mouth with another beer.
“Call him,” Ryan said.
“Who?”
“Patrick.”
Spencer’s heart fluttered at his name before sinking into a pit of mud.
“Listen, I don’t want to take you away from party-hosting responsibilities. I’m tired. I’m just going to go home.”
Spencer tried to head for the door, but Ryan stopped him with a firm hand on his chest. Spencer had a few inches and few more muscles on Ryan, but in the dead-serious look Ryan gave him, he knew who would win this fight.
“Dude, you’ve been like this all freaking month. Do you really want to go home? I doubt Patrick is home.”
Spencer’s fists tightened at the thought of what Patrick might be up to, or who with, tonight.
“What the hell happened?” Ryan asked.
“What do you care? You don’t like Patrick. You thought he was weird.”
“He is weird, but a good kind of weird. A weird that makes you really happy.” Ryan made Spencer meet his eyes. “You like him. You, the guy who doesn’t do mush, ya got mushy.”
He hated how well Ryan knew him. “So what! He doesn’t want to talk to me. He said so himself. I thought he was into me, but then he wasn’t.”
Spencer couldn’t let himself get unglued by the screwiness of love and relationships. They made no sense. In sports, there were clear rules and clear winners. He wanted clarity in his life.
Clarity, not mushiness.
“What happened? You two were spending every minute together, and then it stopped.”
Spencer hadn’t been able to bring himself to talk about the night on the roof with Ryan or with anyone else. Whenever he thought about the way Patrick looked at him, the way he definitively stated that they weren’t friends and walked past him icier than Antarctica, it made his insides go dry.
“Hey.” Ryan used a softer voice, his eyes kinder. “You can tell me.”
“He’d been acting weird, and I told him it felt like he didn’t want to be friends anymore, and then he stormed off.” Spencer shrugged, still confused by the chain of events.
Ryan slapped his palm to his own forehead. He clearly was not. Could a whole body cringe?
“What?”
“Dude.” His palm now covered his entire face, as if Spencer was a real-life YouTube fail.
“Weird, right?”
“You’re the weird one.”
“What?” Spencer shoved him. “He has been acting weird. He showed up at my party super late and only stayed a few minutes.”
“It makes perfect sense since you friend-zoned him.” Ryan placed a knowing hand on Spencer’s shoulder, ready to dish out some life lessons, even though Spencer was three weeks older. “He likes you.”
“He has a funny way of showing it.”
“He likes you, and you obviously like him, but then you tell him you just want to be friends.”
“We are friends.”
“Do you hear that?” Ryan asked. “That’s the sound of my bullshit meter beeping like crazy.”
Spencer flipped him the bird.
“Stop lying to yourself, Spencer. You like him. I saw how much time you two were spending together. I saw that dopey smile on your face when you sniffed your fall candle. You want to be more than friends with Patrick, but you got scared. You didn’t spike it.”
“Oh, we spiked it plenty,” Spencer said under his breath.
“I’m talking about actual spiking. In volleyball games, how many times have you seen a ball sailing in the air that could’ve been a spike, but instead the player decided to bump or set it?”
“Too many times.” Spencer shook his head, thinking of all the games they lost because the newer teammates were too timid at the net.
“Right? You have this perfect setup, this perfect shot to slam it over the net and easily win the point. But at the last second, the player decides to go with a softer hit, which the other team can return.”
“Choking at the net.” Spencer saw it a million times. When you had a spike in hand, you went for it. Always.
“Why did they do that?” Ryan asked.
“Because they...were scared.” Every lightbulb in every corner of his mind turned on, like the lighting fixture section at a Home Depot.
I choked at the net.
He was right there. He liked Patrick, and Patrick liked him. It was on his lips that night. I like you, Patrick. The words were there, but he choked. He took the easy way out and said friends because he was scared. More lightbulbs, like he was Thomas Freaking Edison. Spencer allowed himself to think things he had been pushing down for too long. He was scared Patrick wouldn’t like him back. He was scared Patrick would. He was a big ole fraidy cat.
He looked to Ryan with new understanding. Ryan nodded exaggeratedly at him, like he was the teacher in The Miracle Worker helping Helen Keller learn to speak.
“I’ve never felt this way about someone before. I like him.” Spencer had to catch his breath. New words. New feelings. It was terrifying, but also exhilarating, like jumping out of an airplane. He wanted to hug and kiss and hold Patrick and tell him how much he liked him day in and day out. “Fuck. I don’t want him in the friend zone. I want him in the boyfriend zone.”
“Don’t tell me this. Tell him!”
“I’m scared.”
“Good!”
Spencer shot him a look. Was he enjoying his pain?
“It’s okay to be scared. That means you care. Oh shit, I just realized you can’t spell scared without care.”
Spencer was a lit firecracker in someone’s head, sparking and ready to burst into bright colors across the sky. What he wouldn’t give to feel Patrick on his hands, to stare into those gleaming green eyes and hear him moan.
“That ball is still in the air. The play isn’t over. Are you going to bump it over the net like it’s a fucking kitten in a teacup, or are you going to spike that shit?”
“I’m going to spike that shit!”
Their hands collided in an epic hi-five that left them both with red palms.
“I have to get back to the apartment,” Spencer said with newfound determination.
“No. He’s not there.”
Spencer’s body went cold.
“He’s at a party in Pilsen.”
“How do you know that?” Spencer asked.
“I looked him up on Instagram, saw pictures of him at a party, and I recognized the couch he was sitting on.” Ryan glanced back at the door to make sure they were alone. “I had sex on it last spring.”
“You remember a couch you had sex on six months ago?”
“It was a nice couch. Overstuffed pillows, gray tweed. I asked the guy where he got it after we both came.”
“That sounds like the gayest sex ever.” Spencer paused for a moment, and then looked up the picture of Patrick on his Instagram and checked out the couch. “Damn, that does look like a comfortable couch.”
“It’s from Pottery Barn, way out of my price range. If I owned a couch that nice, I wouldn’t fuck random guys on it, but that’s just me.”
Spencer was about to put away his phone, but looked at the picture one more time to admire Patrick’s smile. Something else caught his eye.
“What is it?” Ryan asked.
“Patrick is dressed as a bottle of mustard. Holy shit! I’m ketchup. Ketchup and mustard! We’re a couples costume!” Spencer never thought in his life he’d be excited by this. Couples costumes were the bane of Halloween’s existence, worthy of the world’s biggest eye roll. But the idea of being in one with Patrick sounded like the greatest idea ever.
“It’s fate, my friend.” Ryan clapped him on the shoulder. “Now get your ass over there and don’t fuck it up.”
11
Patrick
Patrick was the saddest bottle of mustard anyone had ever seen. He slumped on the couch in an apartment far too nice for any twentysomething. He rested his chin on his boxy costume in a hang-dog expression that would even make Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh say buck up.
“Do you want something to drink, partner?” Jessie from Toy Story, otherwise known as Libby, sidled up to him and peeked inside his red Solo cup. It was full.
“I’m good.”
“You’ve barely had anything.”
“It’s strong. I’m nursing.” Patrick shrugged as best he could in his cumbersome outfit. It was the only costume left at the store that wasn’t some form of lingerie. The font and faded yellow coloring screamed 1978. He had been on the fence about attending Halloween festivities until Libby threatened to break down his apartment door and drag him out.
The strap that held the nozzle part on his head scratched against his neck, and the yellow velvety fabric of the actual bottle was a sweat lodge. He looked more like a lemon that had sat on the shelf too long.
The weight of his full Solo cup weighed in his hand. He wasn’t in the mood to get drunk tonight, wasn’t in the mood to celebrate. Fall was ending, and he was alone. This morning, he had spoken with his landlord, who agreed to let him break his lease in thirty days. Tomorrow, he began the hunt for a new apartment. He was not looking forward to November at all.
“Do you mind if we sit here?” A guy dressed as Ernie from Sesame Street pointed to the rest of the couch. Bert stood behind him. Except for the striped sweaters, they looked nothing at all like their characters.
