He was so tall he had to bend down to kiss the top of her head. His long fingers massaged the back of her skull and sifted through her hair, rubbing her scalp in small circles. “Just let it all go, Steph. Get it all out of your system.” His warm, buttery voice was such a pleasant and familiar thing, like a child’s favorite blanket or stuffed toy.
“I just…can’t…believe…he’s gone,” she sobbed.
“I know. Me, too. Talked to him that morning. It was nighttime there.”
“God, I hope he didn’t suffer,” she said between sobs.
She could tell he wanted to say something but held back. Instead, he squeezed her harder. “It’s going to be okay, Steph. You’re strong. You’re a strong woman.”
“Right now, I don’t feel very strong. Now I wish I hadn’t made him wait so long. Patrick, he wanted to get married last time he was home. I told him no. I didn’t want a…” She couldn’t finish.
“Shhhh. Now you’re talking gibberish. No way we can change the past. You have to live for the future, Steph. He’d want you to do that. He’d want both of us to do that.”
He was right, of course. She didn’t know why, but she blurted out something she immediately regretted. “You smell like him. Sort of.”
Patrick flinched, but covered it up quickly. “I know you miss him, Sis.” He steered her around a large hedge.
“I kept looking for him all evening, like he’d just appear, walk with you in the front door. I expect to see him still. I just can’t…”
And then his mouth was on hers. He didn’t push, but fed her a gentle kiss, a touch of passion to remind her she was in the present and not in her dreams or in the past. It worked, too. Her thoughts immediately shifted. The scent of him was familiar, even though the taste of him was new. In spite of her grief, she felt her bones unthaw. Her excitement heightened in a nonsexual way, and she gave herself to the kiss before logic began a steady pounding on the door she mistook for her own heartbeat.
What am I doing?
As quickly as it had happened, she pulled away, breathless, needing to see something in his eyes that wasn’t pity or pain. She soon confirmed it had not been a sympathy kiss. His eyes sparkled with lust, focused on needing another taste of her. He licked his lips and leaned forward again, but she ducked back this time. He was telling her in the only way she’d understand that she was alive and not ready to be buried in the coffin with Ryan tomorrow morning. He wanted more of what she could give him, and he’d give her what he could in return.
“Forgive me, Steph. I couldn’t help it.”
“Neither could I.” Thank God he didn’t call her ‘Sis.’ She became self-conscious about the people leaving the Rosen home and was grateful for the small amount of cover the landscaping provided. What would they think if they could see the two of them kissing?
“It was good to see you, Patrick. I wish it were under different circumstances.” Then she remembered when she had planned to see him again—at her wedding. The tears threatened to spill out over her still-puffy lower lids.
With the softest touch, he raised her chin and spoke. “Hey, Steph. I’m here for you. Call me tonight if you want to talk.”
“No. I’m going to try to get some sleep. I’m exhausted, and I think maybe tonight I can. Thanks, though. I have to buck up for tomorrow, and then I can collapse.”
He nodded, and she wanted to ask him, If I do collapse, would you pick up the pieces? But she was too tired to have that conversation right now. He stood motionless while she got into her car and pulled away. Watching him in the rear-view mirror, standing there in the moonlight, his image getting smaller and smaller, she started to cry all over again, like she’d lost him, too.
She couldn’t trust herself to have a coherent thought.
After all, she was the grieving almost-bride-nearly-widow-kissing-her-fiancé’s-best-friend.
Which meant she had completely lost her footing.
Chapter 4
Patrick cursed himself all the way back to his hotel. He was second-guessing every decision he’d made since learning Ryan was gone. He shouldn’t have been at the Rosens’. He shouldn’t have left so early and certainly not with her. He shouldn’t have kissed her.
Grief was getting to him. In his haste to put the pain of losing his best friend on ice, he’d reached for something comfortable. Instead of running from pain, he was hiding behind pleasure. His bad habits on the team had spilled over into the wholesome parts of his life, the parts he wanted to protect, not abuse or take advantage of.
Stephanie wasn’t like those girls who hung around the stadium and haunted their hotels. Had he lost his good manners? His sanity? She was the gold standard.
No fucking way should he have anything to do with her, regardless of the messages he was getting. He had to keep a straight head. He had to get rid of the tent in his pants. He needed to forget about all the fantasies he had about her growing up, fantasies which had picked this incredibly inappropriate moment to bloom again, just below his belt.
Too late for a workout, since the hotel gym was closed, he decided he’d sneak into the closed pool for a swim. He dove in, traveled the length of the pool underwater before surfacing to take long breaststrokes. He preferred this anyway. It would physically tax him more than anything else he could do. Most days after a game, he would tire easily, but tonight he felt like he could swim forever. He let his mind wander, wondering if he should have tried out for the swim team rather than play soccer. Rather than baseball. Rather than basketball or place-kicking at football.
When he and Ryan had started swimming in grammar school, Ryan had made the team, and Patrick had not. The Guppy program was his first defeat. He’d vowed to never again fail to make the cut, and he’d kept that promise.
Ryan had been a fish. But more than that, he was a natural athlete, succeeding at everything he did. Gymnastics could have been his sport, but he stuck with Patrick—hitting, dribbling or kicking a ball. Only team sports. That meant they could play together.
Just not possible that he was gone. That Stephanie was all alone. He wasn’t going to be the man in her life the way Ryan had been, but he wanted to help her get back on her feet. Help her with the numbing cold he knew she must be feeling. But that kiss had not only lit her flame, it had done a pretty damn good job of lighting a bonfire under his ass, too. That had been totally unexpected.
He’d maintained his friendships over the years, players he confided in who’d been traded or gotten injured, and had to leave The Beautiful Game. He made friends easily, and the shared experience of being expendable or only as good as your last game made fellows of complete strangers who came from places he would never visit or even know much about. They had their own kind of brotherhood. Playing on a team meant not letting your mates down, stepping up to the plate when a buddy was having a bad day, covering for a defender who missed something he shouldn’t have, and not making a public display when someone’s sliding tackle missed or they lost possession of the ball, or when the communication just plain broke down.
He knew this happened to the SEALs overseas. He’d talked about it with Ryan the last time they were together. The only difference was that Ryan admitted he’d die for his brothers. Willingly die. Patrick couldn’t see that as something that made much sense, but he respected his buddy’s decision, and honored it. But damn, the cost was too great, the price too high.
“So, you think she’ll say yes, Patrick?” Ryan had asked him Christmas two years ago.
“Of course, she will,” he’d replied. “She’d be a fuckin’ nut case if she ever turned you down. And then that would mean the dregs, guys like me, might have a chance.”
Ryan played with the towel around his neck that day while they sat in the sauna after a workout. His bright white smile nearly glowed inside the steam-filled and darkened room. “Was a time I thought she was hot for you.” Ryan didn’t look at him, like he didn’t want to see anything in his friend’s eyes he couldn’t live with.
&nbs
p; “Well, if that was the case, it was only so she could get close to you, my friend. She’s fuckin’ crazy about you, Ryan. She wants your babies. I just know she does.”
That had finally made him smile. “Yeah, I want her fuckin’ babies, too. I want to get pooped on and spit up on and shit like that. I’d do anything for that little lady. I’d give up anything to have her.”
Patrick couldn’t tell Ryan then that he was so filled with envy it interfered with their friendship. He told himself he was happy for his friends. He told himself the way she used to look at him was just what young girls did when they don’t know how to control all those hormones. It had nothing to do with him. It had everything to do with just plain growing up.
There had been that middle school dance. Ryan was sick with a cold, so, instead of the three of them going together, Patrick had his mom drive him and Stephanie to the dance. He was so nervous that he split off soon as they entered the gym, found a shadowed corner, and tried to stay invisible, watching her turn around and around, searching for him. He watched her dance with few other boys, and then she’d turn and scan the room again.
He’d had to take a piss, so he slipped out the side door. Before he could make it to the boys’ bathroom she called out to him.
He looked up at the sky and swore to himself. He was in serious danger of wetting his pants. She was making him hard, and he had to take a pee at the same time, so now he had to worry about that too.
“Patrick, you’re hiding from me.” It sounded so stupid when she said it. Why would he go and do something like that? Her pink lips glowed under the light of the moon. Her breasts were just starting to develop, and he didn’t think she wore a bra yet, because everything was perky, just sticking straight out, like trying to make him fondle them. He was afraid she’d catch him staring at her chest, so he winced, dropping his eyes from the heavens, and tried to look into her face.
Except he looked right at her little perky tits. Again.
“I’m not hiding from you, Sis.” Maybe if he called her that, reminded her they were just good friends, maybe then she wouldn’t stand so close to him.
“Then why are you frowning? And what is going on with your hands. Are you rubbing yourself?”
Fuckin’ yes, he was rubbing himself because he was so hard, which didn’t usually happen around live girls, just the ones in the XXX movie houses he and Ryan tried to sneak into. So first she’d called him out on hiding from her, and then she pointed out his inappropriate behavior with his fuckin’ Voyager. That was the nickname he and Ryan gave their dicks, from the Star Trek movie. They lovingly called it veeger. They’d imagined that actress giving them a blow job, and they laughed at how it made them want to spurt.
But none of that was helping him right then.
Stephanie stepped to close the gap between them. Her wide brown eyes looked up at his face. They weren’t as far apart in height they would later be, but she reached up and put her hand on his cheek and said in her innocence, “Kiss me, Patrick. Do it with your tongue. I want to feel that. Can you do it for me?”
With my tongue? Holy fuck, who does that?
But of course, he couldn’t say that. He didn’t understand how it could feel good. Not at all. He wondered if he’d brushed his teeth. He was sure he hadn’t flossed. Was his deodorant working? And what about that fuckin’ Willy in his pants?
Veeger was bouncing in avid anticipation, and it made his balls buzz. Things were going off in all directions. Alarms were sounding. He thought he might pee and fart at the same time.
But then he looked at her. She licked those full pink lips and watched as he couldn’t help himself and did the same. Next he knew, he was tasting her cherry lip gloss and loving it. She’d opened her mouth, like she expected him to put his tongue inside, and then they heard the catcalls from one of the other boys on his baseball team.
Looking back on those years now, Patrick would have to say that he’d been obsessed with her, and the more Ryan seemed to lean in her direction, the more he was losing her, the more he wanted her.
When they were in grade school, they used to go hiking up in Annadel State Park, swim in the lake, and rest by the water’s edge, the three of them holding hands, Stephanie always in the middle. The sky was so blue, and the clouds all funny clown shapes. Later, those shapes would look like ladies’ private parts. When he and Ryan had secretly discussed it, Steph always wanted to know what they’d been giggling over, but they never told her.
She was the best part about summer time, being out of school. She could ride a bike as fast as he could, at least until they got to middle school. She played soccer like a boy, which he kept telling her was a compliment.
He and Ryan would defend her honor if the girls in class got mean with her. He knew most of the girls in the class were jealous that she had not only one handsome boy’s attention; she had two. He knew her favorite ice cream, her favorite TV program, and her favorite music. He got to thinking he knew what she was feeling on some of those long summer days when the sun lasted forever and kids stayed outside to play in the street after dinner until dark.
If he could, he would roll back the clock. He’d talk Ryan out of going for the Teams. He might even get bolder with Stephanie. So much might have changed if he had it to do all over again.
But that was folly. The reality was that Ryan was gone. He’d be buried tomorrow. He and Stephanie shared a common pain, hers more painful than his, but she wasn’t going to be his girl, and never was.
She was still Ryan’s.
And Stephanie would just have to work all that out as best she could, and he’d stand by to protect her, but not take on the role of the leading man. That role had already been taken.
Chapter 5
Flowers covered the grave site. Stephanie had never seen so many. The somber crowd of mostly older people—friends of Ryan’s parents and parents of their friends growing up. Many of the kids they’d gone to high school with were scattered all over the world, so she recognized only a few.
She stood up front, next to Mr. and Mrs. Rosen. She missed her mom and dad. The vacant spot next to her was filled instead by Patrick’s hulking presence. Though she didn’t look at him, he slipped his hand in hers like they used to do in grammar school. Their fingers didn’t entwine like they did when Ryan always took her hand, but her palm pressed against his, and she could feel the pulse of the underside of his wrist as their forearms touched.
On the other side of the coffin stood several uniformed SEALs, presumably all friends of Ryan’s. They were different heights and sizes, but all wore identical black wraparound sunglasses, spoke little, didn’t smile, and had square, sober jawlines.
After the opening hymn, they were instructed to be seated. During the short sermon, she thought about Ryan and the things she would miss the most about him—the little mischievous smile he got when he was going to do something she didn’t expect. The flowers he liked to bring her on the spur of the moment. How he loved puppies and always stopped to pet them, no matter where they were or how late they were going to be. How he loved the children and how they loved him when he stopped by the preschool to pick her up for lunch. She remembered the tenderhearted letters he’d written her from places she had no desire to ever see.
The words of the pastor droned on in the background as she said her private farewell to the man she thought she’d spend the rest of her life with. She was relieved that her tears, at least for now, seemed to be under control.
She examined the SEALs, this time more carefully. One by one, she was acknowledged with a slight nod of the head, something probably no one else in the crowd would recognize. She sucked in air, bracing herself for an outburst of tears, until Patrick squeezed her hand. She wondered how many of these gatherings Ryan had attended. How many other fiancées and wives had to sit and listen to the final words delivered about a life not yet fully begun. She and Ryan had never talked about this, about death or what could happen to a man on the Teams. Like it was bad luck to
do so.
At first, Stephanie thought Patrick had dropped her hand because he somehow felt self-conscious that they were showing affection for one another in front of these SEALs. But then she saw the clergyman nod in Patrick’s direction. He stood then, perhaps the tallest person in the crowd, his black jacket hanging from his straight shoulders when he turned and faced Ryan’s coffin in front of him.
“Ryan and I were friends before I understood what that meant or what a gift it was,” he began. “He was always there. My first memories of staying out late and playing in the street until our parents dragged us in were with Ryan.”
Stephanie remembered those hot summer nights that seemed to go on forever, hating to leave the childhood games in the streets in front of her house, being so excited to be alive it was hard to sleep.
He glanced up at Stephanie, and her heart clenched in her chest. “And then there was Stephanie. After that, it was the three of us. Inseparable.” His voice trailed off when he studied her face then smiled, looking at his feet.
Stephanie peered over at the crowd. The SEALs were all focused on this tall best friend who had been such an important part of Ryan’s childhood. A couple of them glanced back at her and watched as Patrick’s words filled the garden area of the cemetery.
“I couldn’t imagine playing on a team without Ryan there right beside me. It took me a while to get used to it, actually, when I first played in Europe, like I’d expect him to just come onto the field and make some half-assed—” he glanced at Mrs. Rosen who was watching with rapt attention, a Kleenex poised at her nose—“sorry, ma’am. I just expected he’d walk on the field and touch the ball, send it clear out of the stadium somewhere. I expect to see him show up here and just hold court, laugh at all of us all dressed up on his behalf.”
A gentle rolling chuckle filtered through the crowd.
Patrick’s shoulders dropped when he sighed. “He was the best friend a boy, or a man, could ever want. If you were going to get into trouble, Ryan was the guy you’d want to get sent to the principal’s office with. He had the craziest ideas for dumb stuff we used to do all the time. I never could outdrink him, and believe me, I tried.”
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