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"I know." His voice is soft. "Someone told you last night?"
"Dare, yeah. He was worried about you."
"Really?" Surprise streaks his face. "Darren worries?"
I nod.
"He's never said anything." He runs a hand through his hair. "Dare is like me. He's always been like me. He runs away from hard, complicated things."
"You were middle school friends?"
"Yeah, instant friends. Deidre called us Rosencrantz and Guildenstern."
I can't help but smile. "She really was an English major."
"Yeah. Even when we read Hamlet in high school, well, when I read the SparkNotes, I didn't get it."
"They're on the outskirts."
He nods. "She had to explain it to me. They're the comic relief. They're not part of the main events. They're not making things happen."
"You were watching your own life?"
He nods. "I was hanging back, watching, never taking anything seriously. I had problems, sure, but nothing that forced me to introspect. Hell, until I discovered drawing, I never even sat in silence. I was always filling the space with something. TV or music or dumb jokes with a friend."
He leans against the dresser, lost in thought, two feet away. Close and far at the same time.
I want to wrap my arms around him. But I want to stay here too, listening, giving him space, letting him come to me.
Is this love?
I don't know. But it's something.
Patrick continues, "When I got older, I started using women and alcohol to fill the space instead. I knew something was missing, deep down. And sometimes it caught up to me. I had these moments where I felt a pang of longing I couldn't place. I'd feel this sense of falseness, that everything was bullshit, but I chased it away with another drink or another fuck."
"I know what you mean."
"You avoided introspection?" he asks.
"When things were too hard," I say. "I tried to fill my time. I tried to stay too busy to really get into my head. But I picked the wrong sport. An hour and a half in the pool is a lot of time to think, even if I'm exhausted afterward."
"What were you running from?"
"The same things you were." Sort of. "The things that were too heavy and complicated for me. I thought it was cool to be a damaged artist. To cultivate misery."
"Like Sylvia Plath?"
"Yeah. It seemed romantic, how she—"
"I know she killed herself. Everyone knows that."
"You knew before your sister?" I ask.
"No," he admits. "But I found out when I started reading her stuff."
"Right. I guess most thoughtful young women go through that phase, where they admire the women with guts. It's fucked up, but it…"
"It is a gusty thing to do," he says. "It doesn't help anyone to pretend otherwise."
