Secrets 6

I woke up surrounded by darkness and thought that I was still unconscious. I felt warm, not cold like I had before. My hand was pressed up against an arm that was very warm. I was naked in a bed, underneath covers. But this wasn’t my bed, I could tell, because it didn’t smell like my bed, the pillow on my head felt much fluffier than mine, and the covers felt warmer than mine. Everything in this bed, including me, smelled like Patrick. 

It took my eyes a few minutes to adjust, but after a while I could make a some of the items in the room: a desk with a computer on it, posters displayed all over the walls. Though I couldn’t see everything super clearly, I knew that I was in Patrick’s bedroom. 

Patrick was sleeping naked next to me. I placed my hand on his muscular back; his skin felt so warm and firm against my palm. He inhaled and exhaled very softly. I ran my hand over his shoulder, his biceps, down to his waist, over his muscular thigh, over the tight curve of his ass. I reached around front and touched his dick, which was slightly hard - Patrick jolted when I touched him there. He rolled over, almost as if to attack me. “Oh,” he said, calming down. “It’s you.”

I looked over at the clock on his nightstand and it read: 2:57am. It was really late - or early. For a second I had almost forgotten, for a second I had thought it had only been a bad dream, but then I remembered Danny’s dead body on my bathroom floor. I remembered Patrick coming in. I remembered going downstairs to use the telephone to send for an ambulance - but I didn’t remember anything else after that. I started to feel a little panicked.

“What’s wrong?” Patrick asked. He placed an arm around me and drew me closer to his chest. “Nightmare or somethin’?”

“How did I get here?” I asked. I couldn’t see Patrick’s face at all in the darkness. But I could feel his eyes on me. Half of me felt really unsafe.

“What do you mean how did you get here?” Patrick asked. He placed a hand between my legs and slid it upward to he found my balls and started to caress them. His touch felt very good, but there was something not right about it. “You’ve been here all night.”

“All night?” I asked. I knew that was impossible. I broke away from Patrick’s hold, scooting myself over to the other side of the bed where it was much colder. “I was at home earlier. What happened to Danny?”

Patrick didn’t answer me for a while. I wish it had bright enough for me to have been able to see his facial expression. And then he asked, “What about Danny?”

I sat up in bed. My skin felt damp; my palms were sweaty. “Turn on the light,” I told him. 

“What for?” Patrick asked, a little irritated. “It’s three o’ clock in the morning, Sean.”

“Just turn on the light,” I repeated. I didn’t feel like I would be able to go to sleep again for the rest of the night and I wanted to be able to see Patrick’s face when he answered my questions. Patrick sighed, switching on the small lamp on his side of the bed. Dim-yellow light, slightly better than candlelight filled the room. I still couldn’t see Patrick as well as I wanted to, but it was better than before. 

“What’s wrong with you, Sean?” Patrick asked.

“What happened to him?” I questioned.

“Happened to who?” Patrick asked, genuinely confused. “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.” I looked at Patrick, as it to search for truth in his eyes. I didn’t exactly find what I was looking for, but I found something else: it was past three o’ clock and Patrick looked - and sounded - like he had been awake all night. His dark hair looked just as perfect as if he had just combed it minutes ago. 

“Patrick, you do know what I’m talking about. What happened to Danny? Is he still there?”

Patrick just looked at me, puzzled. “I still don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. You’re gonna have to explain what you mean.”

“...He was dead. You remember him being dead...I was in the bathtub, and he came in and shot himself in the head...he died. There was all that blood. I remember the blood. Of everything, I remember the blood. You was there too, Patrick. You remember.” That headache was still there, a dull pounding at the back of my head. 

“Just a dream, Sean. Nobody died,” Patrick said simply. He looked really beautiful but strange when he said that, almost as if he wasn’t really a real person, just something my mind made up.

“No...it happened...” I looked down at my naked body. “It happened right after you left. After we... we were at my house. I don’t get why I’m here. You brought me here.”

“Yeah,” Patrick said, “I asked you if you wanted to come over `cause my mom and brother wasn’t gonna be home and you said yeah. You’ve been here the whole time, Sean.” He sounded so convincing, so sure of himself. He made me start to doubt myself - just a little. A very little bit. “Just come back over here and get back in the bed. We gotta go to school tomorrow.”

“Then he isn’t dead then?” I asked. “He’s still alive.”

“Sean, just get back in the bed and go to sleep. You had a dream. It’s over. Forget about it.” Patrick sounded very cold and distant again. 

“I need to use your telephone,” I told him. “I have to call him to see if he’s okay.”

“It’s fuckin’ three o’ clock in the mornin’. That boy wouldn’t answer the phone this late even if he was...” And then Patrick stopped talking. I don’t really know how he was going to finish the last of the sentence. But it seemed like he was about to say, “That boy wouldn’t answer the phone this late if he was alive...”

“I gotta go to the bathroom,” I said to Patrick.

“Hurry up,” he replied, more than slightly irritated. Patrick turned off the lamp, leaving the room in total darkness. I left his bedroom and went into the hallway. I immediately got that deja vu feeling, like this had already happened before. Slowly I walked into Patrick’s bathroom and turned on the light. A part of me expected to see Danny’s dead body on the floor. But there wasn’t. Patrick’s bathroom was very clean. I went over to the sink and looked at my reflection in the mirror. 

I didn’t look too well. Looked to me like some of the life had been taken away from me. I was about to turn on the faucet when I gazed down at the sink. Maybe if I hadn’t seen it, maybe I would’ve believed Patrick...maybe I would’ve been able...maybe...to convince myself that Danny hadn’t really killed himself and that it was just a dream. But then I saw it: a smear of bright red blood on the side of the sink basin. My heart skipped when I saw it. 

It brought back all the memories I had. Patrick had come over to my house, wanting to know if I was in love with him. Reluctantly I had told him yes, and before I knew it, Patrick was kissing me, before I knew it, we were having sex, and before I knew it, someone I knew just shot himself in the head right in front of me - all in a short two hour time period. It hadn’t occurred to me before, but when I started to think about it, I started to get confused: why did Patrick come back? He left, I went to the bathroom to take a bath, and then Danny came in. 

Danny came in about five minutes after Patrick left - maybe even sooner. I never remembered hearing Patrick’s car pull away. His car engine is loud enough for me to be able to hear drive away at least until he got to the end of the block. But I didn’t hear anything. Patrick left my house and I waited about fifteen minutes before I left to go to the bathroom. 

I was so busy thinking about what happened between Patrick and me that I didn’t even bother to wonder why Patrick hadn’t left my driveway yet. And if he didn’t leave my driveway, that meant he was able to see Danny come inside my house - only if Danny had already been in my house before Patrick and I had already gotten there - which I really doubted. If Patrick had never left, then he would’ve heard the gunshot. He came into the bathroom fifteen minutes after Danny shot himself in the head...

“What are you doin’?” I jumped in surprise and turned to see Patrick leaning naked against the doorway, his beautiful, muscular body silhouetted in the darkness, his dick almost completely hard now. He had this expression on his handsome face, a mixture between passion and anger, like he wanted to come over and kiss me, and try to hurt me at the same time. I immediately stopped thinking about what I was thinking about when I saw Patrick standing there. “You comin’ back to bed?” Patrick asked. He took hold of his dick and started to tug at it slowly, making it harder and harder. Looking at him jacking off slowly like that made my dick grow quickly. 

“Come `ere,” Patrick said softly. He had this way of looking at me, a very compelling, enthralling gaze in his dark eyes that hypnotized me and forced me to come to him. My heart started to race as I moved toward Patrick. What I felt for him wasn’t only a fierce attraction, but also a subtle sense of danger.