Crushing On The Billionaire (Part 2) (2 page)

Patrick’s face twisted in disgust, and I felt a strange, small degree of satisfaction. I definitely didn’t want a threesome with Patrick and Shawn—that was way too weird. But my rant had put Patrick’s condescension on its heels and put me back in control—or at least in contention for control—of this wretched situation.

I wasn’t the bad guy, here, and I wasn’t about to let anyone cast me as one.

“I would never see you again if I thought it would help my chances with Shawn,” Patrick said quietly.

And even though I’d just fired a volley of dozens of bullets, they all had zinged away from Patrick harmlessly because I wasn’t trying to hurt him, I was just trying to assert myself.

His one bullet was a sniper’s shot right into my heart.

I turned on my heel and walked out the same door Shawn had stormed out of, wondering if all of this was one huge mistake, wondering if I had really lost both my best friend and the man I was in love with in a matter of minutes.

Patrick didn’t even offer to call a car or take me to wherever I was going himself like he always did.

That was fine. The bus worked just fine for me. I didn’t need anyone to take me where I needed to go—except myself.

This was the kind of upset I would’ve called my best friend over to hash out—if my best friend hadn’t just disowned me for sleeping with his father. I didn’t have anyone close enough to talk to about this. I supposed that if I was really in crisis, I could always call my foster parents, but I didn’t want to worry them.

And I couldn’t tell if this was a crisis or not.

How could I lose my best friend and the person I’d fallen in love with all in one fell swoop? Had there been anything I could’ve done to avoid things turning out like this? I could’ve swallowed my pride and told Patrick I was sorry for telling Shawn the truth, but that would’ve been a lie. The truth had been painful, sure, but that was as hard as it was going to get. It would’ve been worse to hide the truth, to live the lie that Patrick had wanted to pursue. Things would’ve been a lot uglier down the road if Shawn had found out that not only was I dating his dad, but that I’d been doing it—and hiding it—for months and months.

Of course, I wasn’t even sure that Patrick and I were dating, let alone together.

I wanted something to purge this helpless rage from me, but a phone call to my foster parents wouldn’t do that. They were great, but I knew they were busy raising another child, just as I’d been that other child they’d taken on after seeing someone else into adulthood.

Instead, I got off the bus at a stop I’d never explored before, took the camera from the bag, and started shooting.

There was something about being behind the lens that calmed everything down. It was something else I could focus on, something I could watch intently while everything else dissipated and faded away. I was always finding new things about San Francisco while I was photographing it, and I was sure I’d never get tired of it.

When I was a little girl, my foster parents always knew the perfect gift for me—disposable cameras. Ever since I could remember, I’d loved taking photos. I didn’t know where it came from, and neither did they. It just seemed like I was born with a passion for preserving moments, both tiny and monumental, the minutiae and the magnificent.

To me, there was nothing more satisfying than winding that cheap plastic wheel to advance the film after I captured something in the cardboard viewfinder on all the hundreds of disposable cameras I went through as a child. It was a pastime bordering on obsession. My foster parents would take me to get the film developed—always insisting on the one-hour option because my patience wouldn’t allow me to send the cameras full of masterpieces away to be developed. To do so would have delayed my examination of the glossy photos by several days. My foster parents would puzzle over entire envelopes full of pictures of the exact same flower, just taken at different times of day, and in different weather.

“Loren, I love your pictures, but why not different flowers?” my foster dad would ask, turning the photo around and around, like if it were upside down it would provide the answers he sought.

“She’s making a study of it, aren’t you, sweetie?” my foster mom would offer, pinching him on the forearm. “Like those paintings of Monet we saw on TV the other day, right?”

I didn’t really understand what my goal had been for that roll of film, so I just shrugged. The flower was something I’d kept seeing throughout my ramblings in our lower middle class neighborhood, but what I really took note of was the fact that it was a different flower each time I saw it. There was impossibility in that statement; I knew it was the same flower, of course, because it grew in the same pot, blossomed from the same stem that I always saw it on. But if I passed by in the morning, the petals took on a golden hue. At full noon, they were cherry red. The sunset tended to cast the flower in bronze, and it lost all color at night. If we’d gone a week without rain, the petals would droop downward, appearing crispy and thirsty. When the grower of this flower took note and watered it, the petals swelled with appreciation and dewdrops of water decorated it like jewelry. When it rained hard for several days straight, the flower looked sick, like it had a stomachache from eating too much.

That’s why I’d kept taking photos, until I wound and wound the wheel on the back of the case and it kept going, endlessly, signaling that I’d finished the roll. The flower was the same, but always different, and that wasn’t something I could put into words that would satisfy my foster parents.

I puzzled them more often than not, but they were good people—always supportive, and doting when they could. There were horror stories in the foster system, stories I couldn’t read, let alone imagine. Mine wasn’t one of those. My foster parents were kind, loving, and did the best they could with a daughter who wasn’t always easy to understand.

What I understood now, however, was that taking pictures made me feel better. It didn’t matter if I’d been teased at school for looking different from my foster parents or if my life was in its current state of shambles. I could always find some kind of solace in a seagull taking wing from a traffic sign, or a colorful bit of trash floating in a puddle, or the expressions on people’s faces when they didn’t think anyone was looking. I could watch people all day, every day, surreptitiously snapping their portraits and then moving on.

By the time I worked my way back to my apartment, my aching feet the only indication of just how wide I’d roamed, the color was fading from the sky, the sun long since set. I was looking forward to a long, hot shower to wash my sweat and the day’s calamity off when I realized there was someone standing in front of my door…

…and that someone was Patrick.

My stomach did an odd, unpleasant little flip-flop at the sight of him. It wasn’t the flip-flop that I used to enjoy, the one when I saw how gorgeous he was, or how sweetly he smiled at me. No, this flip-flop was one of dread: Patrick was upset at me for telling Shawn the truth, and now I would hear about it.

I stopped in my tracks upon recognizing Patrick, and it seemed like we were both waiting to see what the other one would do—a real standoff.

I wished I’d spent the afternoon trying to figure out what to say to him the next time I saw him, but I’d immersed myself in photography instead to calm myself. I actually hadn’t thought Patrick would seek me out again so soon. I had zero plans to talk to him for the rest of the day—perhaps even the rest of the week.

“What are you doing, Loren?”

I set my shoulders and jutted my chin out. “Deciding whether to walk away or run.”

“Really?” Patrick shook his head. “You can’t be serious.”

“I don’t really want to see you right now,” I said, then searched my heart to see if that was really true. He’d hurt me earlier at the house. I couldn’t forget that. But deep down, I yearned to hash it out with him, to figure out if that was how he really felt about me.

“I understand,” he said. “But I think we need to talk.”

“We were talking earlier,” I said. “It didn’t go so well for either of us.”

“That’s true. But I think now that we’ve had some time to cool off, we can have a more productive discussion about what to do next.”

That was the last thing I wanted to talk about—the idea of next. To me, that meant that there needed to be some action completed in order to move forward, something that hadn’t happened yet. It felt extremely likely that Patrick wanted to end things. That was what he had come over here for. He wanted to close the box of our relationship and tie a bow on it, never to be opened again. This was the last conversation I wanted to have right now.

“Loren, can we at least go inside your apartment? It’s getting dark.”

I wished I could be petulant, to refuse him and make him leave me alone, but it just wasn’t my nature. I wanted to see this thing through to the end, even if it wasn’t the end I wanted.

I approached Patrick, who stepped aside to give me space, and fumbled with my keys for a few long moments before opening the door. My apartment was messy, as usual. I threw on a few lights then set to picking up the clutter and dirty clothes that had accumulated since the last time I cleaned. Patrick walked in, closing the door behind me.

“You don’t have to pick up on account of me,” he said.

“Just give me a few moments,” I said, depositing an armful of my wardrobe into my hamper before clattering the dirty dishes into the sink. For someone who rarely cooked or ate in my apartment, I sure could dirty some plates and bowls.

“Loren, it’s fine. Seriously. My place would look the exact same if I didn’t have someone working there to keep it clean. You’re busy. You’ve been busy. This isn’t a priority, which I think is admirable. I’m sure your photography has been keeping you busy.”

I let a pizza-encrusted fork drop down noisily into the sink. “That’s what I’ve been doing all day…since I left your house,” I said. “Taking pictures.”

“Anything good?” Patrick asked, still standing awkwardly on the rug in front of the door, unsure where to go or what to do. I realized that he was just as rudderless as I was about this situation with Shawn, and it made me soften a little.

“There’s always something good,” I said. “I just have to be looking at the right moment. Do you want something to drink?”

“That would be amazing, yes.”

I dug out a pair of beers for us from the fridge and tossed a can to him. I cracked mine open and took a small sip, then a larger series of gulps. The bubble and coldness was a balm to the awkwardness, to the uncertainty of this moment. Everything was going to get figured out because it had to be. It might hurt, at first, to try to unravel the tangles we’d gotten into, but it was essential if we were ever going to find our way forward again.

“I didn’t mean—”

“I wanted to say—”

Patrick and I both stopped and laughed. We’d started talking at the exact same time, both of us biting the bullet and deciding to plunge onward.

“You can go first,” Patrick said, holding his hand out, still standing.

“Maybe we should sit down,” I said. “Someone told me, once, when we were about to have a discussion much like the one we’re about to have, that there was no reason not to be comfortable.”

That someone had been Patrick when I’d shown up, unannounced, to his house after we’d kissed beneath the Golden Gate Bridge. We’d draped ourselves over the floor pillows in the den and argued about being together before having mind-blowing sex for the first time. I hoped that this discussion could end just as happily, but I wasn’t going to hold my breath.

He chuckled in recognition and took a seat on the couch I’d just liberated from dirty clothes. I sat on the arm at the other end of it.

“I didn’t mean that thing I said,” I began, clutching the cold beer can for security, assurance. “About the threesome. I was just trying to be offensive, to get a reaction from you. To assert myself. I don’t know. It was stupid.”

“It was pretty gross,” Patrick allowed. “But you were angry. I don’t blame you.”

“I guess I just don’t understand how it would help if we weren’t together,” I said. “I wouldn’t automatically go and be Shawn’s girlfriend. I love him very much, but not like that. I can’t just rewind time and decide not to be in love with you, just to save him some hurt feelings.”

“I understand that,” Patrick said. “And I was wrong to suggest that there could be some sort of solution along those lines.”

“It made me think that you don’t take what we have seriously,” I said. “I think that if I were someone else—anyone else—who was older, closer to your age, someone you were in love with, you would understand how ludicrous it is to forsake something you believe in. Just because I’m younger doesn’t mean I’m any less real.”

“I’m not interested in hiding our love away,” Patrick said. “I just…you have to understand, Loren. This will always be harder for me to justify than it is for you. I’m the old man preying on the young girl.”

“It’s not like that.”

“I know it’s not. We know it’s not. But that’s what anyone on the outside will think. They’ll be looking in on something they don’t understand.”

“Then fuck them.” I raised my chin, defiant, at Patrick’s raised eyebrows. “That’s right. You heard me. Fuck them. Who cares what other people think of us? The only thing that’s important is what we think of each other. If the love is there, then nothing else matters. Is the love there, Patrick?”

It was an important question, and my stomach careened around my insides as I waited for the answer. He’d told me he was in love with me before, but if he wanted to back away now, he could escape. He could explain it all away as a heat of the moment thing and walk away from me forever. I wouldn’t see Patrick or Shawn again, and I’d move forward in life alone.

Instead, though, Patrick leaned across the couch and seized my hands, pulling me down onto the cushions.

“Of course the love is there,” he said. “You amaze me, Loren. You surprise me at every turn. Just when I think I’ve got you pegged down as one thing, you do something completely unexpected. I haven’t felt like this in longer than I care to admit. You make me feel different, like a young man again. I feel selfish about you. I want to guard you and keep you close, and yet I know that you’d never allow that. You’re so independent, so wild and foreign. In all my life I’ve never met someone like you before.”

I leaned forward to kiss him—it seemed like the right time—but he stopped me.

“What about it, Loren?” he asked, his voice soft. “Is the love there?”