The Best Man: Part Two

The Best Man: Part Two

First Digital Edition

©Copyright Lola Carson 2014

THE BEST MAN

PART TWO

“How’s it going? You know, with Patrick being there.”

Noah looks up from where he’s been staring a hole into Julie’s kitchen table. He didn’t come here to give her the silent treatment, but he hasn’t had much to say, and he doesn’t know what to say now either. How is he supposed to answer that question?
Oh yeah, it’s great, you know, aside from watching him getting his dick sucked last night. Totally normal.

He settles on: “Fine.”

She frowns at him. “Is there a problem?”

“No, why?”

“I dunno,” she says, shrugging. “You’ve just been weird about him since he turned up. It’s not still because you fancy him, is it?”

Embarrassment floods him, making his stomach lurch. “I don’t fancy him!” he insists, sitting up straight in his chair. “Stop saying that.”

She considers him for a long moment. “It’s okay to look, you know,” she says gently, wrapping both hands around her mug. “You’ve got eyes, and you’re only human. Just don’t, you know…”

He swallows. “What?”

“Act on it.”

He almost wants to laugh, a weird kind of panicked delirium rising in his chest. “There’s nothing to act on,” he states firmly. “I don’t fancy him. He’s not interested in me. So can you just stop going on about it?”

“Fine,” she says, lifting her hands from her mug in a gesture of submission. But he knows she’s not convinced, and he hates it. “Whatever you say.”

There’s a pause while she studies him, and he picks at his fingernail, feeling smothered by her implied accusation, and at the same time desperate to talk about it, figure out what’s twisting up inside him.

“Tell me how the wedding plans are going instead then.”

He latches onto the new subject, anything to stop him running his mouth off and getting himself in trouble. “Not much to say really. Going to pick up the rings on Tuesday.”

“That’ll be nice,” she says, smiling. “What about flowers and everything? Music?”

“Not done any of that yet.” He gives an awkward shrug. With so little time left until the wedding, he should be more on top of things.

“Well you need to get a move on, Noah! There’s only a month to go.”

“I know,” he says, slumping back in his seat. The hem of his shirt rides up a little with the movement, sending a chill across his skin. He shivers. “Cold in here. You not got the heating on?”

She grimaces. “Boiler’s packed in.”

“Do you need me to—”

“Nope,” she says firmly, no room for argument. “I’ve got it covered.”

He looks around at his old home, at the peeling wallpaper and mould creeping over the skirting boards, the torn net curtains and the creaking sofa. She’s got out their box of ancient Christmas decorations, has it sat by the TV, waiting to go up. “I miss this place, you know,” he says, a heaviness to his tone. “We had some good Christmases here, didn’t we?”

“Oh yeah.” She rolls her eyes. “Freezing, starving, no money to get each other presents.”

“You’re not getting me anything for Christmas, are you? I know money’s tight.”

“Never you mind,” she says, giving him a stern look.

“’Cos it’s enough that you’re just spending Christmas day with us.”

She smiles, warm and bright. “Where else would I spend it, eh?” He returns the smile, and he’s suddenly struck with a pang of missing not just this old dump, but also her, and the relationship they shared when living together.

He wraps her up in a hug at the front door on his way out, murmurs, “I miss you,” into her ear.

She tightens her arms around him, rests her chin on his shoulder. “I haven’t gone anywhere.”

“I know, but…”

“You know you’re welcome here at any time.” She pulls away, places her hands on each side of his face to get him to look her in the eye. “This will always be your home, Noah,” she says, and it hurts him somehow, a sharp jab to his gut.

* * * * *

Patrick comes in at gone midnight, when Noah’s once again sitting up alone in the darkness, watching the telly.

Noah’s not seen him since the incident in the club’s bathroom, Patrick having disappeared soon after, and he’s glad for it. He wouldn’t have been ready to face him this morning, wouldn’t have been able to look him in the eye without wanting to die, the ground to open and swallow him whole.

But he’s had an entire day to come to terms with it now, and he’s not fine about it, not at all, but he can cope.

Patrick stops in the living room, looks at the TV.

“Come Dine With Me?”

“Yep.”

“D’you want a cuppa?”

“Yeah, if you’re making one.”

And just like that Patrick goes to the kitchen, and he puts the kettle on, and things feel normal enough. And while Noah knows he’s lying to himself, it’s a coping mechanism that’s working for him, so he goes with it.

“Here you go,” Patrick says a minute later, handing him a hot mug of tea.

“Ta.”

Patrick sits beside him, puts his feet up on the coffee table, blows the steam from his mug. “So where are we tonight?” he asks, nodding at the telly.

“Southampton.”

“Went there on holiday once.”

Noah turns his head to look at him. “When you were a kid?”

“Yeah,” Patrick says, nodding. “Connor’s family used to own a house down there. Not sure if they still do.”

Noah huffs out a laugh. “They seem to own houses everywhere.”

“Well at least you know you’ll never be homeless,” Patrick says with a smirk.

They settle into silence, and they make it through half the episode before Noah’s coping mechanism disintegrates around him. He was fine while Patrick wasn’t here, and he was fine while Patrick was talking, but now they’re just sitting here, and they’re not saying anything, and the elephant in the room is swelling and expanding until Noah has to mention it, can’t just sweep it under the carpet like he so wants to.

He sucks in a breath of courage. “Look, about last night—”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Patrick says instantly, cutting him off, as though he was waiting for it. His tone is low and dark, and there’s a hint of warning there.

Noah can’t let it go, though, because he’s a tenacious idiot, and Patrick might not be affected by what happened, but he is. He’s never been in that kind of situation before, seeing something he shouldn’t, something dangerous, unable to look away from it. He can’t get it out of his head, and he doesn’t want Patrick to think that he doesn’t care, that he feels no guilt or awkwardness about invading such an intimate moment. Not just invading it, but sticking around to watch.

“I just. I didn’t mean to walk in on you.”

“It’s a public bathroom, Noah,” Patrick says levelly. “You’re hardly to blame.”

“Do you—I mean.” He can’t believe he’s about to ask this, but he has to know, has had the question going round in his brain all day. “Is that something you do a lot?”

Patrick takes a few moments to answer. “A man has needs,” he says slowly, his tone measured. He looks into his mug as he speaks. “But I’m not usually so… I like to think I have more dignity than that.”

“So why’d you do it last night?”

“I guess I just didn’t have the patience to go somewhere more private.” He smiles wryly to himself, and then he looks over at Noah, and it’s the first proper eye contact they’ve had since he walked in and Noah’s hit with it, his chest seizing. “I was too…worked up.”

Horny
, is the word he’s looking for, and Noah licks his lips, wants to press for more, searching Patrick’s face for a hint of something else. But he doesn’t know how he can ask more questions without coming across as massively inappropriate, so it’s with a sigh of disappointment that he decides to drop it.

“Well, still. I’m sorry.”

Patrick still hasn’t looked away, and the television lights are dancing in his eyes as he stares at Noah, and once again his gaze flicks down to Noah’s mouth, only he’s not drunk this time, has no excuse for it.

“If you’re gonna apologise for anything, Noah,” he says, almost whispering, the words hushing out beneath his breath, “it’s not for walking in on me.”

Noah swallows, and he tries to level out his breathing. “Then what?”

Patrick looks him dead in the eye, doesn’t give Noah the ability or the desire to avoid him when he says, slowly and with intent, “What do you think put me in the mood in the first place?”

“Is it…” Noah’s voice cracks, and his stomach squirms, and he wants to walk away from this conversation almost as much as he wants to lean in to Patrick’s heat. “You can’t say it’s ‘cos I was dancing for you,” he croaks. “I look stupid when I dance.”

Patrick’s eyes glint with something dark and unrecognisable, and his lips twist like he wants to grimace, or smile, or something that shows what’s just raced through his head. “No you don’t,” he says, breathy. “And don’t let Connor hear you say that.”

“He already knows I can’t dance.”

“No.” Patrick pins him with his eyes now, and there’s nothing disguised there. Noah can see it all. “That you were dancing for
me
.”

The words sit between them, and they stare at each other, and in this darkness, this blanket of night, it feels like it’s just them, that Connor’s not in the next room, that there’s nothing stopping Noah from voicing those dangerous thoughts lurking on the edges of his consciousness.

“I didn’t mean to say that,” he says instead, not denying what Patrick said, but not owning up to it either. Safe ground, far removed from what he really means.

Patrick smiles, but it’s mirthless. Then he breaks the look at last, and he sits back in the couch, and he brings his mug to his lips. “And I didn’t mean to watch you,” he says before taking a sip. “We all do things we shouldn’t sometimes.”

There’s so much veiled significance in Patrick’s words and tone that Noah’s head spins with it. All he can do now is get away from it all. “I need to get to bed.”

“Yeah,” says Patrick, gaze fixed firmly on the television now. “Goodnight, Noah.”

It doesn’t feel like the end of the conversation at all. It feels like the start of something that goes beyond words.

Noah doesn’t fall asleep until dawn.

* * * * *

Noah’s woken up by the exquisite torture of wet, sucking heat on his dick. As soon as he opens his eyes, arching into it on instinct, the heat disappears, and suddenly Connor’s smiling face is in front of him.

“Morning.”

“Uh…morning.” Noah blinks in confusion. This has never happened before. “What are you doing?”

“Giving my sexy fiancé his wake-up call,” Connor drawls before slithering back down his body.

There’s noise coming from the kitchen, and Noah feels a moment of panic piercing through the wash of arousal. “Patrick’s out there.”

“So?”

“He might hear us.”

“I’m sure he won’t care,” Connor says, before taking Noah’s dick in his hand and licking a stripe up the underside. “Just lay back and let me make you feel good.”

The pleasure overrides his indecision, and he does what he’s told. It’s such a novelty—Connor initiating sex in the morning—that he doesn’t want to say anything that might put him off, lest it lead to him never being this spontaneous again.

When they eventually make it into the kitchen, Patrick is gone, but the untouched, steaming cup of coffee on the counter says he left only recently, and apparently in a hurry.

Noah tries not to read too much into it, and he tries not to think about last night, or the night before, or any other moment that’s twisted him up ever since Patrick walked into that restaurant and tipped him upside down.

The wedding. That’s what matters now. And Connor.

He pours a cup of coffee and leans back against the counter, watching Connor make toast. “We still going to get the rings on Tuesday?”

“Yep,” says Connor, smiling at Noah over his shoulder. “And we’ve got a meeting with the events manager at the hotel on Monday. It’s all getting going now, isn’t it?” He comes over to Noah, puts his hands on Noah’s hips. “You excited?”

Noah smiles. “Very excited.”

“This time next month you’ll be my husband,” Connor says, shifting closer, his hands dragging up Noah’s sides.

“Can’t wait,” Noah says, swallowing past a weird lump of dryness in his throat.

Connor kisses him, a feathery kiss on the corner of his mouth, and then breaks away to finish his toast.

“What are you doing this weekend?”

“Uh…” Noah rubs a hand over his forehead, tries to see through his clouded mind full of the wedding, and Connor’s excitement of it, and Patrick. “Christmas shopping.”

“Right, well take this.” Connor pulls his wallet from his back pocket, takes a credit card from it and holds it out for Noah. “Treat yourself to something while you’re at it.”

The irritation that so often plagues him recently creeps into the edges of his morning haze. “I don’t need your money, Connor.”

Connor tutts. “Will you stop with that? We’re getting
married
, Noah. Which means what’s mine is yours now.” He grabs Noah’s hand, forces the card into it, makes him take it. “Soon as we’re back from the honeymoon, I’ll be adding your name to everything anyway. So what’s the problem?”