“I may be,” he admits. And then he grins like I’ve never seen. “I’m also married.”
While words feel impossible to find, I somehow summon them. “You’re…what?”
“Married.” He’s glowing like mad. “Last week. Just did a courthouse thing. Katrina and I are hitched as hell!”
Of course, I’m happy, as he seems so happy. But this also feel so weird. We’re sort of still babies, barely out of college. Not full adults. But he looks so damn confident and settled.
“Katrina is everything.” He sighs. “My person.”
He’s right, and I smile and agree, “You knew it when you first saw her.”
“I did.”
It’s impossible to doubt his decision, as they’ve been so crazily in love for years now. But he’s my first married friend and my best friend, so it’s going to take me a second. But not a long second.
After I fling myself at him for a hug, I show him to my guest room.
While I fall asleep, so joyous, it does occur to me that I’ll likely never have what he has. Never have that magic person. I didn’t grow up watching people in healthy, happy relationships. Certainly not my parents. So, I’ve never had a healthy dating relationship. Every attempt somehow left me feeling like shit about myself. It’s always been easier to just cut things short. Mostly stop them after one night. I don’t have much faith that I know how to be one half of some sort of special match.
The next night, to repay him for all his work, I do the only thing I know how to do well, which is to cook him dinner, and he raves over the chicken pasta with sage cream.
Patrick rests an elbow on the table. “Want to tell me what’s going on with you?” he asks.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t think you’re having apartment panic.”
He might be right.
“I’m just feeling strange, being on my own.Finallyon my own,” I allow. “I waited for so long, and now I don’t know how to do this. All the things. Life things. I’ve never understood happy mediums of any kind.”
“Why not?”
“Because I grew up in such a bizarre environment,” I confess. “I don’t think I know how to balance the good and bad. My bad have been extremes. Wild highs and wild lows. How to balance life? No damn idea. It’s all too embarrassing.”
As close as we are, I’ve never given him my entire backstory. It’s always just been easier to gloss over.
Patrick clears our plates, crashes them into the sink—somehow not breaking anything—and hollers, “Okay, time to fess up, kiddo! You’ve been holding on to some shit for years. Give it to me.”
He guides me to the living room and sits me down in front of the very pretty but nonworking fireplace.
I smile and laugh half-heartedly. “You ready?”
“I am.”
I don’t even know where to start, so I just start where I can.
He makes it feel okay to pour out how I truly grew up in an insane household in small-town Kansas. How my parents left me to parent myself. Well, also while parentingthem.
“My father ran a seemingly legitimate construction business, but years later, I realized he was also likely a career criminal with lots of side dealings that pulled in cash. He traveled all the time, so I’d be the one who made calls to figure out things, like fixing the faulty alarm system that wouldn’t stop beeping or the furnace that was acting up. How to get cars fixed. The lawn mowed. Trees trimmed. City taxes taken care of. And I’d pay for these things from the bundles of cash that he had stored around the house—in thefreezer, cabinets, or jars in the guest room closet. Because that was normal, right?
“And my mom? She wandered around like she was dazed and confused. Always capable of shopping and going to the country club, but not much else. Not ever being a mom in any way.”
Patrick never flinches as I unload each bit of these gross truths. “So, Dad was a creepy criminal?”
“I assume so,” I agree.
“Well, that’s all fucking beyond not normal.” He starts belly laughing.
