“Patrick’s got a crush,” Shane said and looked at Patrick like he expected him to clarify.
“It’s not really a crush.” Patrick felt like it was important to get it right, to be accurate. “A crush is something ten-year-olds have. This is based on something.”
“So who is this not-a-crush on?” Ben asked.
Patrick swallowed and looked down. Once he said it out loud, it would be real, and that scared the crap out of him. “If I tell, you have to promise not to. Not anyone.”
“We wouldn’t.” Ben glanced at Shane, who moved to sit on the edge of the desk. “He still hasn’t, and I’m his partner.”
Partner. Ben said it so casually. He could, since it was technically true in a business sense as well as a romantic one, but Patrick felt a jolt of what had to be jealousy. “It’s Vin.” It came out sounding small and miserable, not at all how he wanted.
“Ah.” Ben’s face got the inward expression that usually meant he was adding up figures in his head. Patrick, who got lost beyond two plus two, wasn’t sure how Ben could total a column of numbers faster than Shane using a calculator. “Vin. Mmm.”
“Is that all you’ve got?” Shane demanded. “You see where this is going, don’t you? Moping, brooding. Then one of them leaves, or both of them do, and we’re shorthanded. Workplace romances are bad for business.”
Ben picked up a pen, tapping it against his palm, his voice bland as he replied, “I’ll try not to take that personally.”
Beside Patrick, Shane shifted position, rolling his shoulders restlessly, his gaze fixed on the measured swing and tap of the pen. “You know I didn’t mean us. But Vincent’s with Riley, and he seems happy enough, so I can’t see a good way out of this for the lad.”
“It’s none of our business,” Ben pointed out, his words feeling like a warning to Patrick, though they were addressed to Shane.
“True, but you’re always saying a good employer keeps on top of his staff.”
Ben’s lips twitched in a half smile, and with growing indignation, Patrick realized the two of them were flirting in their own way.
“Should I open up?” he suggested, not even trying to keep the acid from his voice.
“Good idea,” Shane said, checking his watch. “Probably got a crowd of thirsty punters hammering on the door, sick and tired of spending their money on presents for other people.”
“I wish,” Ben said. “Though Dave’s turkey and cranberry sausages are going down well with the lunchtime customers.”
“We’re here to sell beer,” Shane said. It was an old argument, and Patrick didn’t want to sit through another rehash.
“So we’re finished talking about me, then?”
“Why did you wait so long?” Ben asked abruptly. “You’ve known Vin a few years. You’re close. Why wait until he’s with someone and he’s happy to decide you want him? And what the hell was that blowjob in the bar about? Trying to make him jealous?”
That was so many questions clumped together Patrick hardly knew where to begin. “I wasn’t trying to make him jealous. I wasn’t thinking about him at all.”
“You weren’t thinking at all,” Shane clarified, and he was right.
“That too.” Patrick sighed. “And it doesn’t have anything to do with Riley. I mean, I don’t think Riley’s good enough for Vin—I know, neither am I, right? I’m not disagreeing with you. But it’s not about that either. I don’t know why I noticed now and not before. I guess I was always waiting for Vin to realize I’m not even good enough to be his friend.”
“You need bloody therapy,” Shane muttered.
“Stop,” Ben said, reaching out and touching his arm. “It’s obviously more complicated than we can get into right now, and Patrick is entitled to his privacy if he wants it. We don’t have to railroad him into talking. Is that what we’re doing?”
Patrick shook his head. “Not really. I think I needed to talk to someone.”
“Why not Vincent?” Shane asked.
“What?” Even thinking about it made Patrick feel sick to his stomach with a weird combo of excitement and dread. “No way!”
“If you don’t, your chances with him do what I didn’t think were possible, and drop below zero.”
“Shane’s got a point.”
“And Vin’s got a boyfriend,” Patrick snapped. “He loves Riley. He’s waited years for him, and they’re going to crash and burn eventually, but I’m not going to be part of what causes it by dumping all my shit onto Vin and making him choose.”
“Because you know he wouldn’t choose you.” It wasn’t a question, so Patrick didn’t give Ben an answer.
“I’m changing myself,” Patrick said when the silence had gotten sticky. “Making something of my life. Being a better person. No more hookups, no more blowing my paycheck on crap so my fridge is empty. And I’m going to pick up some extra shifts over Christmas, not ask for time off to go clubbing. In fact, I’ll do a double shift today.”
Ben looked skeptical, which wasn’t surprising. “At the risk of sounding like a self-help book, don’t do that because of Vin. Do it for yourself. That way if you, uh, realize the thing with Vin is going nowhere—”
“Dead in the water right now, if you ask me,” Shane put in.
“Shane, be quiet.” Ben fixed Patrick with a steady gaze. “As I was saying, that way you’ll still be motivated to keep up with the changes, not discouraged enough to give them up.”
“Or go too far in the other direction and get fucked on the pool table during happy hour.”
“Shane.”
Shane widened his eyes as Ben glared at him. “What? I’m speaking my mind like I’m entitled to, and you know what Patrick’s like. He won’t stick to this for more than a week or two; then a big dick attached to a pretty face will swan past, and boom, he’s out of love and on his knees.”
If the memory of Shane’s concern in the bar weren’t still fresh, Patrick would’ve tried his luck at punching him again. Asshole. Though Ben’s careful tact was pissing him off too.
“Give him a chance,” Ben said. “Patrick, let the thirsty hordes in. We can always talk more later.”
Not that Patrick would want to. He spent his shift focused on one thing—being a model employee. He didn’t think about Vin, because Vin was something he couldn’t think about and still have a single brain cell free to concentrate on work. So instead he pretended he was someone else. Alternate-universe Patrick. Someone who was great at his job, not even remotely tempted by the handsome, smiling men who flirted with him, worried only about pleasing his employers. The fictional Patrick had one definite advantage over normal slacker Patrick—working hard made his double shift fly by, and when he discovered it was almost closing time, he was shocked.
Maybe there was something to this model-employee thing.
He was so fixated on making sure the glasses were clean—by Shane’s exacting standards—before he put them away that he didn’t notice Vin come in.
“Hey. Are you not paying attention to the time? The last bus just went by.” Vin’s presence was more important than his words at first, so Patrick didn’t feel dismay until he’d finished blinking and absorbing.
“Is it that late?” A quick glance at his watch showed it was. “Shit.” Dave had left ten minutes before, so his chance of catching a ride with him was shot, and no way was he was asking Shane and Ben, even though they were still finishing up.
“Don’t worry about it.” Vin patted his shoulder. “You can crash upstairs. Payback for the other night.”
Patrick had done that before. Vin’s couch was wide and long enough to be a reasonable substitute for a bed. Spending a second night with Vin sleeping close by might be more than he could handle, though.
“What? I’ll take you home if you want, but I want to crash.” Vin’s eyes weren’t as clear as usual, and the yawn he punctuated his sentence with was a jawbreaker.
Patrick gave in. “Sure. Did you throw out my toothbrush? The pink one?”
“Are you kidding? I built a little shrine to it out of toothpicks and floss.”
“Funny.”
“I splash it with mouthwash every morning.”
“You can stop anytime, you know.”
“And if it’s been a bad day, I—” Vin’s voice faltered.
Putting the last glass away on the shelf, Patrick frowned and looked at him. “What? Please tell me you don’t clean the toilet with it.”
Vin snorted. “No. Are you done? You’re usually out of here half an hour before this.”
“Because I don’t want to miss the bus,” Patrick said, even though that wasn’t entirely true. He also didn’t feel like sticking around any longer than he had to. “Yeah, I’m good. Are you sure you don’t mind me staying?” He’d turned over a new leaf, but that didn’t mean he was going to turn down the opportunity to spend time with Vin when it was conveniently presented to him.
“Of course I don’t mind. You’ve done it a hundred times. Come on.” They went down the hallway and passed the office, where Ben was straightening some paperwork and Shane was waiting impatiently for him to finish. “Are you guys done? We’re going up.”
“We’re off in a minute,” Shane said. “Or at least that’s what this one keeps telling me, but it’s already been five, and I’m still standing here.”
“See you tomorrow,” Ben said absently, like he was barely paying any attention to Shane’s complaints. That could be how he managed Shane, by letting all that attitude roll off his back.
Once upstairs, Patrick felt better. The apartment wasn’t huge, or a showplace like Riley’s, but it made his basement look like the slum it was, and it had a casual comfort about it. It welcomed him.
“I like it here,” he said, stretched out on the couch and sipping a decaf herbal tea. Ginger and peach. So not his usual choice, but Vin had offered it along with a beer, and Patrick had opted for healthy. With Christmas coming, this was the worst time to detox, but his timing always had sucked, as Ben had pointed out.
“Yeah? Thanks.” Vin sipped his drink. “Riley wants me to move in with him,” he added.
Patrick sat up, narrowly missing spilling his tea. “What? Fuck! Really? Are you going to?”
No more nights hanging out with Vin, curled up like puppies and fighting over the last handful of popcorn or what movie to watch? Awkward double dates planned by a Vin oblivious to Riley’s seething hatred of Patrick?
And that invitation meant Riley didn’t agree that Vin’s place was nice. Or was Patrick knee-jerking his way to bitchiness and being unfair? Maybe Riley wanted them to spend more time together, and his loft had triple the square footage and didn’t smell of beer and fries, so it was, unlike Patrick’s tea, the obvious choice.
Aiming for noble and self-sacrificing, Patrick added, “I think it’s great. The two of you together. Living together. Together.” He gulped at scalding tea to shut himself up and yelped as his tongue started to cook.
“Patrick!” Vin rushed to the sink and brought him a glass of water. Patrick took a few hasty swallows, hating that Vin was taking care of him again, because he was too stupid and screwed up to take care of himself. “Okay?”
“Yeah. Thank you.” Patrick set the glass down beside his mug. He hoped Vin would change the subject. He wasn’t sure he could handle talking about Riley’s perfections anymore.
No such luck.
“Anyway, he seemed a lot more into the idea before I showed him the drawing of my next tattoo.” Vin bit his lip and rubbed the back of his neck.
“He didn’t like it?”
“He doesn’t like any of them. Or the piercings. He hasn’t gone so far as to suggest I get laser therapy to have the tattoos removed, but he thinks I should take all the piercings out.”
“What? Why does he care?” Patrick was trying hard not to rag on Riley, but it wasn’t easy.
Vin gave a quick, impatient shrug. “I don’t know. It could be I look different from how he remembered.”
“Well, it’s been five or six years. I’m sure you look different in other ways than the mods, and I’m sure he does too.”
“I guess. It’s pretty extreme, though. You don’t expect to bump into someone from high school and discover that they’ve, I don’t know, grown a twelve-inch purple Mohawk. It can be kind of a shock.”
Patrick wasn’t sure what to say to that. Vin looked great—hot, confident, happy in his own skin. How could Riley want him any other way?
“I like them. They’re you. But I’ve never known you any other way, so…” He let his awkward words drift off into an equally awkward silence. It wasn’t quiet inside his head. He was lecturing the absent Riley, and he didn’t need to channel Shane to get a sharp edge on his words.
It helped that in his head the imaginary Riley was murmuring meekly or offering up incredibly pathetic excuses, making it easy for Patrick to vanquish him and turn his attention back to Vin.
“You can’t take the ink off. It’s part of you. You chose it, and you loved having it done. You’d spoil the memories if you had them stripped away or whatever they do.”
Vin ran his hand over his arm, caressing the tattoo with Riley’s initials worked into it. It was a gesture Patrick had seen him make a hundred times. More. Watching it had always given him the feeling he was intruding on an intensely personal moment, but now there was no half smile on Vin’s lips, no longing in his dark eyes.
Vin looked worried and a little frustrated, as if he were up against a problem with no solution.
“It was like sex. Better than sex,” Vin said.
Patrick giggled, horrified and gleeful. “God, tell me you didn’t say that to Riley.”
“Huh?” Vin blinked and scratched his arm, his nails leaving it scored with red lines fading fast. “Oh. No.” His lower lip quivered, then went firm. “But it was.”
“Tell me what it’s like.”
Vin leaned back, feet tucked under him, and fiddled with the frayed bottom hem of his jeans. “The needle part is like a sewing machine, you know? In and out really fast.”
“You’re right. It is just like sex!” The comparison was enough to set Patrick off again for a few seconds, but he got himself under control because he was curious to hear what Vin had to say. “Sorry. I’ll stop.”
“It’s okay.” Vin waved at him, spirit fingers. “Anyway, knowing how it works, you’d think you’d know what it would feel like, but it isn’t like that at all. It feels like being cut with a sharp knife. Not razor sharp, because you might not even feel that at first, but sharp enough. Slow, like the person doing it is having a good time. It kind of seems, I don’t know, impolite not to appreciate that.”