Page 81 of On Your Knees

I rotate my mug in my hands. “But he’s very attractive, and so are you. So why is it not in love?”

Patrick frowns. “It’s just not. Our personalities don’t work like that. We’re both too dominant. Neither of us can relax enough around the other.”

“He’s less dominant when he’s around you,” I point out. “He changes.”

Patrick shakes his head. “Sometimes he does but not always. It depends on what’s going on with him. But he definitely doesn’t like it. He yields to me, sometimes, but he hates it. He does much, much better with you.”

My throat tightens. “But he left.”

“He’ll be back. I’m sure he will.”

“Where do you think he went?”

Patrick blows out his cheeks. “Fuck if I know. I’ve looked everywhere I can think of. I should go look again. Since he won’t keep his goddamn phone with him.”

“Can I have your number before you go?”

“Shit. Of course. You should’ve had it a long time ago. Can I see your phone?”

I drag it from my pocket and hand it to him.

Patrick wakes it up. I cringe slightly, but he doesn’t comment on the lack of a lock screen or the generic background. He makes himself a contact and starts a new text thread to send himself a message that says, Levi’s number. His phone buzzes in his back pocket. It’s a tiny thing, but the fact that he did it that way, so he’d have my number too, makes me feel good. It feels like I have people now.

Patrick hands my phone back to me. I slide it into my pocket. I get up when Patrick does, both of us leaving our coffee untouched. And yet, somehow, it helped to have it. It gave me something to do with my hands.

As Patrick heads to the patio doors, I call after him, “Patrick?” When he stops and looks back, I say, “Maybe I should come with you.”

He shakes his head. “I think you should stay here in case he comes back.”

“But are you gonna be okay? Alone?”

“Oh.” Patrick winces slightly, like he’s remembering what he had me do for him when he first arrived. “Yeah. Thanks. Are you? Gonna be okay, I mean. While I’m gone.”

“I am. And you can call me. You can talk to me too.”

Patrick’s lips tug in something like a smile. “You’re a good kid. I gotta go.”

As Patrick leaves, I walk to the patio doors. I watch him get in the car and drive away, then I go back inside.

I sit at the kitchen table and pull out my phone. Compulsively, I start looking at pictures again. This time, I focus on Paul. I think about what Patrick said about him being a bad person. I think about the things that neither of us said and both of us were thinking.

I think about that word Ethan used when he said he killed Paul.

Sessions.

I think about how Ethan took me down to the cellar when we first got here. I’ve mostly avoided direct thoughts about the cellar, but it’s been in the back of my mind ever since Ethan and I emerged from it.

I let it press into the foreground now. It’s important. I don’t know how exactly, but I know that it is.

My phone warns me that the battery is low. It’s a crappy old phone, and I’ve been using it all day.

I walk out to the entryway and plug it back in, leaving it beside Ethan’s. Then I walk back the way I came, but I don’t return to the kitchen. I go into the pantry. I go to the cellar door.

I open it.

Groping around, I find the light switch. The light on the steps is weak, but farther in, lower down, harsh, ugly light blasts through the darkness.

As I descend, the air grows colder and the silence becomes more intense. The sense of otherworldliness does too. I felt it last time as well, but I only had the capacity, then, to be aware of myself. Now, I can think and feel beyond my own boundaries. I can see this place in relation to Ethan.