Secrets 8

I stared at the back of Patrick’s perfect head, at the neatly trimmed black hair. I looked at him and I wanted to hate him. But I didn’t hate him, and I couldn’t. Yet I wasn’t sure if I was capable of loving him anymore either. I didn’t know if I was sure of anything anymore. “I thought you hated me.” I wished Kevin hadn’t been in the room to hear me say that. It should’ve just been Patrick and me alone in the room. 

Patrick turned around and looked at me earnestly. “How can I hate you, when you’re my best friend?” he said.

I looked at him, and then I looked over at Kevin, and they were both looking at me, and I felt strange. I felt like I was an alien and they were judging me because I didn’t belong. There was something wrong with me and they felt pity for me. And I didn’t want to be around either one of them. I wanted to leave and go home. “You’re not my friend,” I said to Patrick. I walked toward the bedroom door, opened it, and went into the hallway. I wasn’t expecting Patrick to come out behind me, still naked, still holding that gun. If he wasn’t planning on shooting me, then why was he still holding that gun? 

“Stay away from me,” I said. “Just leave me alone.”

He walked up to me. I felt nervous around him, unsafe. The same person who had touched me all over less than half an hour ago, the one person I cared about more than anyone I’d ever known, I didn’t want to be around him anymore. I didn’t trust him anymore. I leaned against the wall. 

“How long have you known him?” I asked. 

“About a year and a half.”

“You never told me about him.”

“I didn’t want you to know about him,” Patrick said.

“Why not?”

“`Cause I knew how you felt about me.”

“How did you know?”

“Your journals.”

“You read them?” I demanded.

“Yeah,” he looked guilty about it. 

“And you pretended you didn’t know?” I asked.

“Thought it would be easier that way.”

“Don’t you hate me? After what happened to your dad? You should hate me. I shouldn’t have done what I did. You should…”

“No. I don’t hate you, Sean.”

“How come?” I asked, shocked. 

“Because I don’t need to hate you,” Patrick answered. 

“If I were you, I would hate me. If I were you…”

“I love you,” Patrick said.
“Not real love,” I said. “I don’t know how you think you love me, but it’s not the way I want to be loved…I don’t think I know how to be loved if I wanted to…”

“Sean…”

“Do you know how many times I wanted to see you naked, Patrick? How many times I thought about kissing you? How many times I wanted you to make love to me? And I hate ‘make-love’ because it sounds so fuckin’ corny and unrealistic. But that’s what I wanted from you. I wanted you to only like me, and I wanted to only like you. And I wanted one of those cheesy relationships you see in the movies where they kiss and they fight, and they make up in the end and live happily ever after. I know nobody ever lives happily ever after, but I still wanted it to happen to me. And I wanted it to happen with you. I’ve spent a long time trying to get you to see me the way I wanted you to see me, that I really wasn’t seeing who I really was, or you who you really were, or what I really wanted from you, and what you really wanted from me. I’ve had you the way I wanted you, and now there’s nothing left to have. You’re not who I thought you were. I’m not who I thought I was. Nothing makes sense to me anymore. Everything hurts and I can’t make it stop. Things keep coming at me and I can’t make it stop…and Patrick, why do you still have that gun?”

He was still holding that gun. He wanted to kill me. I knew it. My head kept throbbing. “I have to go home.”

“Do you want me to take you home?” Patrick asked. He reached out to touch my arm, but I drew away from him scared. I didn’t want him to touch me. I didn’t want to be touched by anyone. He was naked, and another man had touched him. I didn’t want Patrick to touch me the same way he had touched him. 

“No, I can go home myself. I don’t need…when I go home there won’t be blood on the ground will there?”

Patrick looked at me for a few moments, and then he said, “No.”

“Was there ever any blood on the ground?” I asked. “When you found me in the bathtub, was there any blood on the ground?”

Patrick took a deep breath and sighed. “No.”

“Was there a body on the ground?”

“No,” Patrick said.

I laughed at myself. I let the tears fall from the corners of my eyes. I let the pain take over my head. I let go of everything, but the resentment I had for myself for not be able to see right. “I never had a friend named Danny did I?”

Patrick didn’t say anything.

I sank to the floor. “I used to talk to him about you all the time. I used to tell him how perfect you were. He was the only one that listened to me. Nobody else would listen to me except for him. He liked me. I think he was the only…nobody else really liked me the way he did, not even you, Patrick. And I mean not just in a friend way, but really like me. But I didn’t like him back. I didn’t like him because he wasn’t you. Sometimes I even tried to make myself like him, but it didn’t work. Whenever I touched him, I felt like I was touching air…like I was touching plastic…something that wasn’t real…and the other night, when you came over to my house, and you touched me the way I wanted to be touched, I knew that something had to be wrong. 

"I knew that good things didn’t just happen to me without something bad happening afterward. I knew Danny would know somehow what we did and he would be mad. He would be mad at me and he would try to hurt me somehow. And I was right. You left, and I went to the bathroom and took a bath. He came. He had a gun. I thought he was going to shoot me…I knew he was going to shoot me… I felt it. But he didn’t shoot me. He shot himself. I know nothing in my life has really ever made sense, even though I try to pretend like it does. But I knew when Danny shot himself, that nothing would ever be the same again. That I would never be the same again.” 

“It doesn’t gotta be like that,” Patrick said.

“You don’t know what it’s like Patrick. You’ll never know what it’s like. You’ll never know what it’s like to be alone, to feel unwanted, unneeded, by everyone…by yourself…I remember your dad…and I knew it was wrong…I knew I shouldn’t have did the things I did with him…because he was older, and you were my friend…but I felt like he needed me…I felt like for once I didn’t have to pretend to be something I wasn’t…that for once I could be normal…I didn’t want to remember him being dead…and I didn’t want to remember the things I had done with him, because all of it was bad…everything was bad. I wanted to remember good things, but there were no good things…so I made up good things…I believed in the things I wanted to believe, and none of it’s real. I just want things to be normal. I wanted a normal life, a normal boyfriend, a normal everything…but it won’t happen. I can’t make it happen.”

I was looking at Patrick, and the more I stared at him, the hazier he seemed to become, almost as if he were fading in and out. This had happened before. It took a few seconds for me to be able to see him clearly again. I heard myself asking, not really understanding what I was saying: “Are you who you are, or how I want you to be?”

I didn’t expect Patrick to say anything, but he did. He bent down in front of me, inches away from my face, and said very simply, but profoundly, “Neither.”

And the pain in my head was too intense, and without me even realizing what I was doing, or saying, I snatched the gun away from Patrick’s hand and raised it to my own head, and it was like somebody was talking through me, “If you won’t do it, then I’ll do it myself.” 

I pulled the trigger. The pain in my head went away instantly.

To Be Continued…