“About what?”
Julian skidded around the corner in the kitchen and slipped barefoot down the hallway, footsteps thudding on the hardwood. He threw open the door to what he’d started to think of as Patrick’s bedroom and froze. “Shit.”
The bed was neatly made, the pillows fluffed. The windows were closed; they’d been open for the duration of Patrick’s stay. Patrick wasn’t there, and neither was his suitcase.
Jack came up behind him, looking over his shoulder. “Uh-oh. Got it. I thought his flight didn’t leave until tonight?”
“It doesn’t,” Julian said grimly. “Or at least, it didn’t. Do me a favor and check online to see when the next flight out is, will you?”
“Yeah, sure. What are you going to do?”
“I’m calling Brad.”
“Hello?”
There was a relieved-sounding sigh on the other end of the line. “Brad, it’s Julian. What are you doing right now?”
What the hell? Brad hadn’t quite forgiven Julian yet, even though it seemed like Patrick was out of his life for good. “Julian? It’s my day off. Why, what’s going on?”
“It’s kind of complicated. Listen, did you and Patrick have a fight?”
Was that a joke? Did Patrick seriously not tell anyone? Brad started to feel sick. Well, sicker. He hadn’t felt quite right in a week. “What the fuck? That’s none of your business.”
“Brad, it’s important. Please.”
Brad had never heard Julian sound desperate before. Whatever was happening, he was legitimately worried. “If you have to know, yeah, we broke up. Patrick didn’t tell you?” Brad’s stomach demanded that he sit down before he fell down. Every time he said Patrick’s name, it hurt.
“No. Sorry. He didn’t. God, no wonder he’s been such an asshole this last week.”
What? “What?”
“I told you, he’s emotionally fragile; he doesn’t deal well with rejection—”
Brad cut him off before he could get any further. “Julian.” He took a shaky breath because fuck, he did not want to talk about this, not now and especially not with him. “Patrick is the one who left.”
There was a long pause on the line. Then: “No no no no no. Not again.”
The hair on the back of Brad’s neck stood up. “Julian?”
“Patrick always fucking does this; he gets too close and he gets scared and he panics. I can’t believe I didn’t see this coming, I didn’t think you were that close—”
“Hey!” That stung, even more so when Brad realized that Julian was right—they weren’t that close. Not anymore.
“Brad, no offense, but it was more than a year before he tried to do that to me. I thought it’d take a little longer.”
Brad didn’t know whether to be flattered by that or not, but if Julian didn’t get to the point soon, the suspense was going to kill him. “And you’re calling me now because?”
Another long breath. Julian was definitely panicking. “Patrick’s missing. I think he took an early flight; all of his stuff is gone. You really must have made an impression.”
“Julian, this is really fucked-up, you know that, right?”
Julian huffed impatiently. “Look, are you coming to the airport or not?”
Like he had to ask. “Of course I’m coming.”
“Good. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
Brad flipped his phone shut, white-knuckled. What had he just got himself into?
Brad was in the truck almost before it had stopped moving and had the door closed before he even realized he was riding with the dog. Robot gave him big, sad puppy eyes and put her head in his lap. Brad scruffed her absently behind the ears and fastened his seat belt with his other hand. “Let’s go.”
Jack was a pretty good driver, and Brad wasn’t normally the kind of backseat passenger drivers wanted to hit, but today he couldn’t keep his anxiety from showing, and he kept silently urging Jack to drive faster, gripping the door handle and rocking until Jack told him firmly, “Do you want to pay for the ticket?” at which point he managed a modicum of control. He couldn’t have said why he was so anxious. Just because Patrick possibly, maybe, loved him didn’t mean they could fix anything.
It might even make everything that much worse.
What if they missed him?
Well, so what, right? Patrick had broken up with him, after all. Well, sort of. It was more of an argument that never got resolved.
Patrick wouldn’t see it that way. Patrick would see it as—
“I can hear you thinking,” Julian said from the front seat.
“Would you like me to stop?” Brad would have been more than happy to oblige, if that were even a remote possibility.
“Relax,” Jack commanded. “Worrying about it isn’t going to change anything. You can freak out as much as you want when we get to the airport.”
Brad fell silent, nervously watching the country flash by. He tried calling Patrick’s cell phone a few more times (he’d been dialing more or less continually since Jack had pulled up in his driveway), but Patrick must have had it turned off. All Brad got was a recorded voice repeating the same message: “The wireless customer you are attempting to reach is currently unavailable.” It was the same one he’d been getting for the past hour, the same one he’d gotten the night Patrick had walked out of his life.
Unavailable. That almost covered it. Brad ached.
Finally, Jack pulled up in front of the domestic departures terminal. “You guys go. I’ll stay here with Robot.”
Brad climbed out of the cab and stood staring for a second at the clear sliding doors. The last thing he needed was to start thinking about this, but it was too late. He grabbed Julian’s arm before he could make it inside. “What if he doesn’t want to see me?”
Julian stared at him. “What do you mean, ‘what if’? He’s leaving the province, you scare him so bad.” He gave Brad a push toward the doors. “Go on, hurry!”
Patrick’s flight—or the one Jack predicted he’d try to take, anyway—left in just over an hour. Brad pushed through the crowd, standing on tiptoe, trying to see. A few times he saw a tall man with a head of dark brown hair making his way to a ticket counter, but they always turned before he could call out, allowing him a glimpse of their faces.
Patrick seemed nowhere to be found.
Brad was just starting to despair when Julian grabbed his elbow. “There!”
Brad followed his gaze. Patrick was in line at the security checkpoint, shoulders hunched, boarding pass in hand. Even from behind, he looked broken.
Brad opened his mouth before he could think about it. “Patrick!”
In the distance, he could see Patrick’s whole body stiffen. Brad wanted to soothe the tension out of him, to make him relax, to fix this.
“Patrick!”
He didn’t turn around. Brad watched as he toed off his shoes, unbuckled his belt and put everything into one of the X-ray machine trays. He didn’t flinch again.
Julian appeared at his elbow again.
“Why doesn’t he—I thought you said—” I thought he loved me.
Julian’s voice was quiet and a little rough. “Patrick doesn’t look back, Brad. Not if he can help it.”
“He did with you.” Brad surprised himself by keeping an even tone.
“That was a long time ago,” Julian told him ruefully. They both watched as Patrick handed the woman at the security checkpoint his boarding pass.
“Why did you bring me here? I mean, if you knew….” If you knew I’d have to watch him walk away. “What good does this do him, if he won’t even say good-bye?”
There was a certain soft sadness to the doctor’s eyes that Brad had never seen before. “I didn’t bring you here for him, Brad.”
They both stared as Patrick collected his things, shoving his feet into his shoes without tying the laces and slinking off with his head down. When he disappeared from sight, Brad surprised himself by whispering, “Good-bye.”
The word had barely left his mouth when he felt his throat close up, and suddenly Julian was there, wrapping him up tight enough that Brad almost thought he wouldn’t fly apart. “I don’t,” he choked. “I’ve never… what do I do?”
“The only thing you can do,” Julian told him. “Wait.”
Epilogue
Three Weeks Later
“Has he called yet?”
“No.”
“Why the fuck not? Do you want me to go and kick his ass?”
Brad sighed as he flopped onto his couch with the phone in one hand and a glass of juice in the other. “I don’t think that would work very well, Graham.”
“What? You don’t think I can kick his ass?”
“In all honesty, no, I don’t.”
“Hey, I can hold my own.”
“I know that. I remember all the shit you used to get me into by fighting.” Brad gave the phone a slightly annoyed look. “You know, you really did get me in a lot of trouble. Why are we still friends?”
“Because without me your life would be boring and meaningless.”
“I’m not sure if that makes me feel better or worse. What were we talking about?”
“Why you don’t think I can beat up your boyfriend.”
“One, he’s a cop. He could probably beat the shit out of you before you got a punch in. Or he could just shoot you. Two, he’s gone back to Ontario, so unless you can teleport, it’s not going to happen. Three, I’m not even sure if he is my boyfriend.”
“Did you break up?”
“Maybe?” Brad growled in frustration. “I have no clue. We had a fight and then he left without telling me. And he hasn’t called.”
“Have you called him?”
Brad fidgeted uncomfortably on the couch, feeling sullen. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want him to tell me that we did break up. Plus, I’m still kind of mad at him.”
Graham’s laughter flooded the line. “You’re a bit of a freak, you know that, right?”
“So you keep telling me.” Brad sighed and leaned back into the couch. “So how’s Cooper’s dad doing?”
“He’s getting better, but the recovery is going slower than he wants. Of course, if he’d stop trying to do shit with a broken leg, it might heal faster.”
“That sounds like him.” Brad chuckled lightly, not really feeling the amusement. “How’s Cooper?”
“Fine.” Graham’s voice had lost some of its humor. “Why didn’t you tell me that Cooper is gay?”
Brad nearly choked on his juice. “What? Cooper’s what?”
“So you didn’t know that he was gay?”
“No! How did you find out?”
“He told me after I caught him making out with some guy.”
“He was making out with some random guy?”
“No, this guy is apparently his boyfriend.” Graham nearly growled the word “boyfriend.”
“So, do you have a problem with Cooper being gay or the boyfriend?”
“I don’t give a shit that Coop’s gay. I just don’t like this guy.”
“Why?”
“Gives me bad vibes. I don’t like him, Brad. He doesn’t fit.”
Brad sighed. Graham had had hunches about people since they were kids. And the scary thing was, his hunches tended to be right. If Graham said someone didn’t fit, there was usually something wrong with that person. Brad normally gave him the benefit of the doubt, but he was still reeling from his own emotional fallout and didn’t want to deal with anyone else’s. “You told me that you thought Patrick fit.”
“I still think he does.”
“He left, Graham. He left, and I haven’t heard from him in almost three weeks.”
“Don’t count him out yet.”
Brad sighed once more. God, I’m sighing so much I sound like I have respiratory problems. Shit. I am so pathetic. The thought annoyed him so much that he actually sighed again. “Fine, I won’t give up on him yet.” Brad heard the sound of the mailbox on his porch closing. “Look, my mail is here. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Bye.”
“Bye,” Brad echoed. He hung up the phone and tossed it on the couch. Groaning, he pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. He needed to stop thinking about Patrick all the time. All it did was depress him.
Brad pushed himself to his feet and headed for the door. He was waiting for the new issue of a graphics magazine, and he was almost positive it should be arriving within the next few days. It was sad to think that a magazine was all he had to look forward to. Now completely depressed, Brad opened his front door and collected his mail.
He closed the door with his hip as he looked through the pile of mail in his hands. Most of it appeared to be bills or junk mail, but there was a box that appeared to be some type of package. Brad tossed everything except the box on the table by the door and then walked over to the couch with the box. He sat and looked at the postmark. When he saw that it was from Ontario, his hands started to shake. It took two tries before he was able to open the box.
It was just a plain shipping box; Brad pulled back the flaps, revealing a mess of packing paper. With still-clumsy hands, he yanked the paper out and reached further inside. His hands encountered something soft. Frowning slightly, Brad pulled it from the box. He stared for a moment before he felt a smile. In his hands was a stuffed giraffe wearing a green, blue, and white striped scarf.
Brad remembered the giraffe. He and Patrick had taken a trip into a neighboring town for lunch one day and had been wandering around when he spotted it in a window. Patrick, knowing about the collection of stuffed animals that Brad’s grandmother had started for him when he was twelve, hadn’t batted an eye when Brad dragged him inside the store to look and see if they had one with a scarf. All of his animals had scarves. The first one had been a polar bear with a scarf that his grandmother had brought back from a trip to Alaska. He really wanted a giraffe.
Unfortunately, while the giraffe in the window had been perfect, the store didn’t have one with a scarf. Brad had left feeling somewhat down, but spending the rest of the day with Patrick had made everything better. He couldn’t believe that Patrick had remembered how much he had liked the giraffe. What was even more astounding was that Patrick had somehow found a scarf for it.
Settling the giraffe in the crook of his arm, Brad dug back into the box. He pulled out a matching scarf, mittens, and socks for himself. Brad flung the scarf around his neck. Okay, I don’t think anyone has ever sent me knitted socks before. So either Patrick had someone make these, or he’s gone insane. It was kind of amusing to imagine him at some kind of gay man’s stitch-n-bitch.
At the bottom of the box was a CD with “Play Me” written on it in Patrick’s handwriting. Biting his lip, Brad stood, giraffe still in his arms, and put the disc in the player. He hit “play” and then curled back up on the couch, scarf around his neck, giraffe in his arms. “Hey, Brad, it’s me. Patrick.”
Brad shivered as his estranged lover’s voice washed over him. With Patrick’s voice echoing around the room, he could almost smell the scent of his skin.
“So, I bet you’re wondering why I sent you this instead of calling. Well, I couldn’t really send the giraffe through the phone, now, could I?”
Brad chuckled softly.
“Okay, I’ll be honest. I was afraid that if I called, you’d hang up on me. And I’d deserve it, I really would. God, I was such an asshole. I’d completely understand if you never want to talk to me again. It would break my heart, but I’d understand.” He let out a frustrated sigh. “Look, I’m horrible with words, well, at least words of my own, so I’m going to try and tell you how I feel a different way.”
Brad settled against the couch cushions as a piano started playing a vaguely familiar tune. Patrick’s surprisingly good singing voice joined it a second later, and the feeling of connection that Brad had with Patrick, which had been fading since Patrick had left three weeks ago, flared back to life
as he listened to the words of the song.
Patrick still thought about him.
And if the words in the song were true, Patrick still cared about him, too.
Brad was shaking slightly as the song finally came to an end.
“Well, I guess that’s everything I have to say. I would really like to hear from you, Brad. I know I have a lot to make up for, but I’m willing to do it if you’ll just give me a chance. Please, Brad, just give me a chance. Be my Angel again.”
In the sudden silence of the room, Brad could hear the sound of the wind hitting the side of the house. A loud gust startled him so much that he actually jumped and clutched the giraffe tighter to his chest.
Shaking his head at his own reaction, Brad took a deep breath and turned his attention to the phone. He reached out a still-shaking hand and picked up the phone, dialing the number from memory. Brad started to breathe faster as the phone rang.
“Hawkins.”
“Patrick?” Brad whispered. He flinched as a loud thud came over the line.
“Shit! Brad! Brad, are you still there?”
“I’m here. What was that?”
“I dropped the phone.”
Brad felt a small smile cross his face. “You dropped the phone?”
“Well, you sort of surprised me.”
Brad laughed softly. “I find that hard to believe. I never really took you for the type that is easily surprised.”
“No. I’m more the type that makes stupid spur-of-the-moment decisions.” Patrick took a deep breath. “Did you get the package?”
“I did. Where did you get the giraffe?”
“At that store we went to a few towns over.”
“But where did you get the scarf?”
“I may have pouted until Cam’s mom made it for me.”
“You had Cam’s mother knit a scarf for a stuffed giraffe?”
“Yep. Plus, there was so much yarn left over, she made one for you.”
“She also made me mittens and socks.”
“Mittens and socks? What are you going to do with knit socks?”
Wild Angels Page 24
