Archive of Our Own

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Parking lot puddles reflecting a night sky after rain, two little rain boots splashing into them. The lights from the laser-tag arena coloring each one as a different world, thrumming pop music filling the concrete beneath. Neon red and the soft splatter of blues within dance in their peripheral vision, the on-off blink of the restaurant's open sign across the street. There’s a low buzz in the air, the hum of some kids still racing each other through the rope course and arcade inside. But inside the noise, there’s a static chill like the wind. Underneath the glow of alluring lights, there’s the flash of the pale white moon as clouds cross over it.

Patrick tugs his coat closer around his body, the denim jacket doing little to keep out the bite of the breeze as it tugs at his collar and sleeves. Still, it’s with a smile that he tucks his shoulders inwards and moves to stand by Pete.

“Think she had a nice night?” He asks, nodding towards the brown-haired girl stomping furiously into puddles.

Pete shifts the bags in his arms, the dolls and books, and grins— warmer than the wind and softer than the sky. He rests his head to the side, eyes caught on the scene. “I think so. But, of course, a night of laser tag and friends can’t compare to the rain, it seems.”

Patrick laughs, bumping his shoulder into Pete’s lightly and taking a bag from him.

“She’s your daughter,” he says, a smile wrapped around his words. “Would you expect anything less?”

Pete doesn’t respond but the light in his eyes, the glow of his pride, says everything he can’t.

The girl pauses at the last puddle— saved for its size, no doubt. It’s in the corner of the sidewalk and the street, a hole large enough to warrant question. But, tonight, the crater catches only the attention of the nine-year-old girl peering in as if she has no choice but to accept its hypnotic gaze. She squats beside it, a hand extended as if to touch the world reflected up at her. Her own face— the dimples and long eyelashes— flutters in the wind’s touch, but she pays it no mind. One small finger pokes out into the image of car lights and strangers with umbrellas folded beneath their arms; with a soft giggle, she yanks away from the ripple.

“Hey!” Pete calls, unlocking their car and packing everything inside. “We’re gonna need to head out now if you still want to get ice cream, Elmo!”

“Don’t tell me you’re gonna keep that nickname up. She’s a big girl now, Peter,” Patrick says, smirking at Pete as he helps him pack presents and gifts into the trunk. The girl stands and runs to join them, legs kicking out to the side in that overexcited childish way. Patrick’s smile softens as he looks at her. “What do you say? Gonna have your dad call you by your name yet?”

“But everyone calls me Elizabeth,” she says, pausing by Patrick, shoving her hands into her shorts and rocking on her feet.

It’s answer enough and Patrick shakes his head.

“You’re the only one who likes your dad’s nicknames.” He’s careful not to tease her too much, settling on a smile as he puts the rest of the bags in the back and shuts the trunk. When he turns around, Elizabeth is back to splashing in puddles, dropping herself into the water like a coin into a wishing well.

“In the car now, Elmo,” Pete says, his voice only a fraction sterner than before. Elizabeth stomps one last time, water splashing up to her knees, and then marches over. She glances at the back of the car and then tilts her head back to look up at Pete.

“Can I sit in the front tonight?” She asks. Big brown eyes— bigger than the stars and twice as bright— blink and shimmer and plead. Patrick grins and leans against the passenger side of the car, watching the typical parking lot exchange take place.

“Not tonight,” Pete says with a laugh. He ruffles her hair, Elizabeth scrunching up her nose and swatting his hand away.

“When I’m older?” She asks— not because she means it but because she knows that’s what comes next.

Pete winks.

“Yeah,” he says. “When you’re older.”

<><><>

Dusted pages and the scent of coffee from the shop down the straight. There's a slight ring in the air as a customer leaves, a bag kept in the crook of her arms as goes. Too soon, the bell fades to silence and the air is filled only by slight huffs for breath. Another box of books finds its way down from the shelf onto the front desk, Patrick wiping his hands off on his jeans and frowning at the boxes left to go.

“You gonna be able to get those or should I get Andy to take the job?” Joe asks, leaning over the counter and eyeing the boxes on the shelf. Patrick’s arms ache from unpacking and packing the new and old releases but he shakes his head all the same.

“I’m fine, thanks,” he says, rolling his cardigan sleeves just a bit past his wrists though he knows they’ll only unroll and get in the way again. If he doesn’t at least try to make life easier, what’s the point? “I’m sure I need the practice, after all.”

“Right,” Joe says, eyes widening and voice dropping. “How is Pete, by the way? With, uh, with the time coming up and….”

“About as you’d think,” Patrick says. He shrugs but the action travels down his spine like a chill, like a ghost of something he can never forget. He presses away from the phantom touch, trying to convince himself to change the topic but finding he can’t. It’s like picking at a scab; he knows it’s damaging but, for now, the senseless itch can be eased. “We’ve been talking more so that’s good. Obviously. I’ll actually be staying with him for a bit to help, so—”

“Staying with him.” And the eyebrows go higher; the words are followed by a soft whistle. “That’s a good sign, I guess. Do you think—”

“No. And I’m not trying to,” Patrick says. He sounds like he’s lying and he knows he is, his throat trying to tighten around the words as he says them. “I’m going to be there as a friend and as, like, support. The last thing he needs is me trying to step in as some kind of, I don’t know, boyfriend again. He doesn’t need that.”

He turns, taking one of the smaller boxes and setting it down on the floor at his feet. When he pops back up, Joe’s eyes are still on him.

“You know, I love you both and my heart hurts in every way for Pete but… You don’t need to put yourself through anything either,” Joe says, causing Patrick’s teeth to clench because he knows where this is going, knows where it always goes. “I get that you want to help and, seriously, I think you’re a saint for doing it but this can't be healthy for you at all. You love Pete and I’m sure he loves you in his own way still but… don’t pretend it doesn’t hurt.”

“Shit, Joe, what part of it are you talking about?” Patrick asks, not meaning to snap but tasting the acid on his tongue all the same. “All of it hurts and it’s not going to stop. And I have no right to complain about losing my boyfriend when he lost—”

He cuts off, jerking his head to the side with a heat crawling up his neck. Joe sighs, soft and kind, and Patrick bristles at the sound.

“You lost her, too.” Joe’s voice is too low, the same therapist-tone used in every failed counseling session Patrick attended after— “We all did.”

“Yeah, well.” The words are clipped, broken wings trying to keep in the air without dropping to the ground. “It’s not the same and you know it.”

Another moment passes, this one long enough for Patrick to reach into the first box of books and pick through which ones they’ll be setting in the front displays. He’s halfway through arranging a series when Joe shoves away from the counter, a heavy breath falling from his lips.

“Just take care of him,” he says. “And take care of yourself, too.”

Patrick doesn’t respond.

He'll love and protect Pete first, the way he always does.

The rest can come after but it doesn't matter for now.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

It’s a hot August Sunday, air thick and sticking to the back of Patrick’s neck as he sighs and steps out of the car. He doesn’t dare park in the driveway; he doesn’t dare take his jacket off.

He walks up the porch, sure and steady steps, and stares only at his feet as he does so. On either side of him is a memory— a chalk drawing that never properly washed away, a stain from some art project gone wrong, a slowly dying patch of flowers that were planted by small hands and bright smiles.

Patrick’s shoes are new, laced up and still a bit stiff. It’s easier to look at those.

He doesn’t make the mistake of glancing up until he’s reached the front door, eyes flicking towards the doorbell and then, clumsily, at everything else around him. He’s been here before, felt the smooth press of the doorbell beneath his fingertip a hundred times since that day, but the hollow thud in his chest never fades.

Like always, there’s something new to see, something for him to notice. Today, tugging at his sleeves and biting his lip, his eyes catch on the empty air around him. Silent and still and thick with laughter he hears only his mind, it settles around him like a taunt; the windchimes that are usually hanging by the door have been taken down. He wonders if Pete did that before or after he decided to move.

Patrick’s hand falls from the doorbell and he waits, always waiting. His breaths are thin strips, thin as the cracks on the concrete beneath his feet.

The door opens. Patrick looks up again.

“You’re early,” Pete says. “Or maybe I just wasn’t paying attention to the time. Which one is it?”

Patrick smiles and shrugs. Pete’s bright when he steps outside, the sun and summer air fitting around him— holding him up, holding him together. He cocks his head to the side, dark hair grown out and grazing the tips of his shoulder, his shoulders covered by a denim jacket matching Patrick’s own. His eyes are darker than they should be but he’s smiling— trying to, at least— and it heats Patrick like the sun never can.

“I never actually pay attention to time so I guess I can’t say,” Patrick says. “Can I come in? Or were you just stepping out?”

“Oh, no. I wasn’t doing anything. Picking out boxes, I guess,” Pete says without pausing to think. He shakes his head and the rest of his thoughts seem to fall from him like petals to the ground. Patrick does the same, though his actions are less certain when Pete turns to let him in. Perhaps Pete doesn’t think Patrick notices when he rests his hand in the center of Patrick’s burning back, leading him in. The touch is gone in a matter of moments but Patrick shudders all the same.

Pete pauses as Patrick sets his bags down— just two overnight bags, enough packed to last the week or so it’ll take to move Pete out.

Already, small shoeboxes rest on tables and countertops, half filled with trinkets and half torn apart. Patrick looks away, eyes fixating on the winding staircase instead. He inhales deeply but it still feels like he’s holding his breath.

“You can put your bags wherever upstairs,” Pete says. “There’s nobody here but us.”

<><><> <><><> <><><>

There are rules in Pete’s house, private rituals Patrick helped construct. Words not to say, places not to go, wishes to never make lest they come true in the worst of ways. Patrick obeys the terms easily, whether or not Pete’s watching.

He spends most of the first day outside, waiting by the bundle of blue and violet flowers tucked away in a corner of the yard, forget-me-not petals that should have known better than to bloom. Though it’s still hot, still horribly hot, leaves fall like bullets and thorns prick like chains. Patrick waits, listening to Pete shift around inside, moving boxes and setting up the guestroom.

Sitting in dry grass, knees pulled up to his chest, Patrick sighs and imagines he can see the air that leaves his lungs.

Don’t say her name. Don’t say her nickname. Don’t mention her age. Don’t go into her room.

Don’t admit that he still loves Pete.

But if Patrick follows that last rule there are a dozen more that come along. Because he doesn’t just love Pete, he cherishes him. He adores him. He makes way for him in his life, makes himself better for him, looks at him and always him. To tie back the affection he feels whenever Pete steps forward is to lie and Patrick’s caught up in it. If he can’t love Pete then why is he here?

The question answers itself.

Stand up. Go inside. Afternoon sun dulls to the dimmed lights of Pete’s home. Patrick’s eyes don’t adjust as quickly as he’d like.

Pete’s somewhere in the house, subtle shifts and shakes traveling through the air as he continues cleaning. Patrick follows the sounds to the bedroom, barely thinking before he opens the door and steps inside.
It’s brighter than the hallway, curtains half drawn and bedsheets tossed back. Pete’s seated on the edge of the bed, hunched over and watching his hands.

Patrick wants to say that the floor’s become so interesting over time; it’s all their eyes can ever seem to see. But the words are difficult to say and his voice doesn’t feel like his own when he tries to remember what his words would mean.

He takes a step forward. The floor creaks.

Pete should look up, wide-eyed and startled. He doesn’t.

“Sorry, I don’t usually do this. Look at old things, that is,” Pete says, laughing without humor. “I used to do it a lot, I guess, but I stopped. Stopped looking at certain objects, certain places. That’s why you’re here, right? To look at them so I don’t have to?”

A cold rope tightens around Patrick’s stomach, ice and sharp spikes of nerves as he tries to take a step closer and fails.

“I’m just here to help,” he says. It’s easier than saying that he’d rather be with Pete than anywhere else, even if it’s only as a helping hand. “I know you don’t like doing this kind of stuff.”

His lips feel numb as he speaks, his throat just the same. He blinks in what feels like slow motion, Pete blurring but never quite fading away. For a moment, it's as if he’d said nothing.

“But that’s not

all

there is, right? Anyone could have come help but you were the first to take the opportunity to show up. I wasn’t thinking about it at the time but… Why are you here? What aren’t you saying? You’re acting so careful and—” He cuts off, eyes hard when they turn on Patrick. “I don’t want to sound cruel or selfish. But you’re just here to help me move. Nothing else.”

Neither of them is truly cruel and neither of them is terribly selfish but it’s easier to say they are then to see the reasons behind such unsettled actions.

Pete stands, moving stiffly across the room to rest his shoulder against the wall. He’s across from Patrick now and, somehow, it makes the distance greater. He shuts his eyes, head tapping against the wall, and tosses his words in Patrick’s general direction.

“It won’t take long. Moving.” He pauses. Breathe in; breathe out. Patrick tries to keep up, tries to wonder if Pete’s counselor suggested a different breathing technique than his had. “I’ve tried to get all that shit out of my head but I still can’t get it out of my life. It’s always there, day and night.”

When Patrick reads, it’s Pete he’s reading. When he breathes, it’s Pete he’s breathing. When he walks, it’s always Pete he’s walking for.

He knows exactly what Pete means. Perhaps that meant something once.

“I was doing fine, though, until you showed up. Because you’re

here

and you have all this shit that comes with you. I’m moving and that should be exciting but, instead, you walk in and it’s like an anchor. Like I’m making all the wrong decisions because you have this look like, like…” Pete cuts off with a grunt, opening his eyes. They’re drawn instantly back to the floor. “Why do you always do this to me?”

He brushes past Patrick and through the door, the unsteady tempo of his steps telling Patrick that he doesn’t quite know where he’s going, just that it can’t be here. Patrick stays put, eyes still watching the place Pete was.

The front door opens. The front door slams.

Patrick brings his fingertips to his cheek. The skin there is terribly dry.

<><><> <><><> <><><>

The night’s just as hot as the day. The air’s just as strange. Patrick rolls over to his back on the guest bedroom mattress and wonders— how can his skin still be so sticky dressed in night clothes and shade? His body’s weighed down by the summer’s intensity, it’s heat, like a saw through his mind when he shuts his eyes.

Perhaps it’s all just a bad dream.

He breathes deeply and sighs, stretching his fingers across the cool linen and silk of the bedsheets, falling into its stitches like a stain. He’s still not quite comfortable but pain is a condition that’s difficult to fix and he's too tired to try.

Drifting off, floating away, bobbing up and down on the waves of his dreams, and he hears it. A memory or a ghost, the tap of a crayon to the wall beside his own. It pauses and something shifts. A colored pencil this time, the scratching more distinct than before.

“He’ll be upset,” Patrick says with his eyes still shut. “You’ll have to clean that off.”

No one answers but Patrick still imagines Pete’s laughter in his mind, the sound falling across him like a blanket or a kiss. He knows for certain that it’s his own dream that’s echoing throughout his ears but he doesn’t turn away, doesn’t push it back.

“Good night,” he whispers. His voice is still soft, still broken.

No one answers but Patrick’s asleep before it matters.

<><><> <><><> <><><>

Why do human beings need memories? It’s a silly question but memories themselves are silly things.

But then, of course, there are the larger memories, the important ones, the things without a proper end. Once done, they don’t evaporate and leave the mind to smaller details— birthday parties and holidays. Once done, they grow and gain dimension. They trip you on the stairs and slip into the nighttime. A black hole, sucking up its surroundings so not even the lightest of laughter can escape.

Better to remember nothing? Better to be a child than a heavy-headed grown adult?

Since children are what got them in this mess, Patrick’s decided to take his chance with adulthood.

So in his dream, in his memory, in his thoughts and mind, it happens.

It’s still summer but this is the one with t-shirts and shorts, the one with sunglasses and ice-cream breath. Pete and Patrick take turns spraying the hose across the car in the driveway, laughing as they splash each other with soap and suds. The car’s too old to save and they drip too much wax over it, their towels too thin to pick it all back up. Pete presses a rag to Patrick’s knee when he slips on the driveway. It stains red.

Elizabeth’s in the background, squatting in the yard as she shoves chewed up apple seeds into the dirt. They won’t grow but no one bothers saying it.

It was her idea to wash the car, to play outside before school starts, and Patrick was the first to agree when Pete passed the message along. He’d shown up with a bucket and a sponge, cheeks spotting red because it’s the first time he’s seen Pete at home and it feels somehow more intimate than anything else they've done before. More than dinner or a movie or a cup of coffee walking each other to work. Maybe it's because the Elizabeth he’s heard so much about keeps glancing over at the stranger smiling so widely in the shadow of her home.

Patrick doesn’t have many people he needs to impress but, over the few hours it takes to scrub all the grime away from the car, he learns that he needs to impress Elizabeth. When she looks at him, all chubby-cheeked and narrow-eyed, he feels like a window just begging for a brick. Standing next to her father, leaning into her father, ducking away from kisses a second too late-- the sun shines on him like a glare on glass. He trails behind when Pete runs to Elizabeth, Pete calling out to her before scooping her up in his arms, tossing her in the air with her squeals running alongside his “Elmo, Elmo, Elmo!”

Patrick excuses himself to grab some water from inside, bubbles of soap trailing down his cheek as he goes. He doesn’t need to leave but, then, maybe he does.

Patrick has a lot of memories. Not all of them are things he should consider so seriously. But when he dreams, it’s a bit like watching the same story every time.

He hates the ending but the beginning is so lovely he watches the whole thing through without a blink.

<><><> <><><> <><><>

It’s flattering to believe that the sun rises for a reason other than the fact that it must— to believe that, perhaps, life has meaning, after all. That, without eyes to open or windows to glance through, the day would be incomplete. Or, if not incomplete, then at least inconsistent.

At first, Patrick keeps his eyes shut though the curtains have parted enough for sunlight to peek in. If he refuses to wake, will the day shrivel away? Will time abandon him and everyone else? And would that truly be so bad?

Still, the sun does not set just because he wills it. Patrick’s eyes open and the sky is still there.

He dresses to the sound of Pete doing the same in another room down the hall, dressers opening and shutting to some broken tune. Patrick matches it beat for beat, his heart pounding to find some other use than the what it was born to have. He doesn’t bother with his appearance as once might have, running fingers through his hair because he forgot a comb and can’t bother to ask Pete. He feels like a husk as he drags his jacket back on over his body, a hollowed existence when he hears Pete pass by the room without a word.

Patrick does nothing to tell himself he’s wrong. People collect shells, don’t they? So what’s the matter in accepting that this is all they’ve become? Perhaps it’s nothing worth displaying but someone’s bound to take interest. Someone’s certain to admire how far they’ve come, no matter the fact that the distance measured is simply their fall.

Sleeves buttoned tight around his wrists and jeans hanging loosely from his hips, Patrick blows into his hands. It’s simply to reassure himself that his skin still feels but, in the hazy shade of morning, he swears he can see dust unsettle from his fingertips. Or maybe that’s just the shadow of what should be here instead— laughter and magic and a name he still refuses to say.

Hat on. Thoughts off. Patrick goes into the hallway and down the stairs, turning only to follow the sounds of Pete outside.

Inside. Outside. Patrick’s always in the wrong place these days.

Out front, Pete’s on the sidewalk, hands hanging limply at his sides and his back turned to the house. Even after months apart, Patrick falls victim to the sun settling on Pete’s skin and the power resting in the curl of his fingers as they sway back and forth.

But the sun rises an inch higher and Patrick sees past what once was his. He sees the kiss of light against the rusting metal of a car, the cracks in the window, the gentle press of tire to the street.

He didn’t park in the driveway yesterday because he didn’t want Pete to see, to think; he knows Pete’s triggers as well as he knows his own and he knows Pete hasn’t driven since the event. Walking or taking a bus or biking down trails that make the journey twice as long, Pete’s sworn never to enter another car.

Patrick stops at the edge of the driveway. Pete tenses and Patrick doesn’t know if it’s because Pete wishes for him to step closer or step away.

A moment passes. Pete turns, his hands falling to his side. There’s no expression on his face— no anger or pain or confusion— and, instead, he looks almost as if he’s barely aware he’s awake.

“You drove here,” he says. Patrick licks his lips, looks at the car, and then looks back to Pete.

“I had to bring all my things with me,” he says. “A friend let me borrow it since I… I don’t drive around too much unless I have to. I can have him come pick it up if you’d like.”

He shoves his hands into his pockets, fingers curling as if to hide his fingerprints— as if to reclaim an innocence that slipped away too fast. Pete’s face changes and Patrick almost believes it’s a smile until he sees the dull darkness in his eyes.

“No, you’re gonna need it around, aren’t you? To come and go and leave when you’re done. I know what people use cars for, I’m not a fucking idiot,” Pete says. “But I guess I just thought you wouldn’t plan on leaving. You’re always so determined to stick around my life.”

Patrick wouldn’t dare disagree but protests rise in his throat all the same.

“Hey, you were the one who asked for help. All I did was show up,” he says, his words as broken as vows. “If you want me to leave, just ask. The same way you did before.”

“How can you say that so easily?” Pete asks, taking a stunned step back. He watches Patrick a moment more before turning, walking to the car. His hand raises and shakes in the air, a leaf tugging free from a branch, before his palm lands flat against the side of the car. “How can you just drive up and then offer to drive away, like it means nothing to you? Shouldn’t you feel something more than that?”

Patrick’s breath catches in his throat at Pete’s frenzy, at Pete’s piercing words. They’re a hurricane in the morning silence, hushed and shouted all the same.

“I feel everything, Pete,” he says. “You know that.”

“But I don’t!” An exclamation, a cry, a wounded shout punctuated by a sudden fist against unyielding metal. “I never know what you’re feeling anymore.”

Odd that Patrick could say the same— both to Pete and to himself.

“Pete, come on, stop,” he says instead, taking a step forward but stopping short as if he’s reached the end of his chain. “Stop, you’ll hurt yourself.”

Pete pauses, pulling back with a ragged breath. From where he stands, Patrick can see wide eyes and parted lips, red cheeks and trembling breaths.

“I need to go,” Pete whispers. Patrick only hears him because he was expecting it. Pete spares one glance at Patrick, one look of acknowledgment and pain, and then he makes his way down the sidewalk, shoulders hunched and head down.

Patrick turns his gaze away. He looks back at the car.

Only when he sees the small dent left behind does he move, stomach turning with threat of sickness and mind burning from every thought such a simple wound can bring.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Before Pete had Patrick, Pete had Beth; with Beth, Pete had his daughter. When Beth was around, Pete called her Elizabeth; Elizabeth Morgan Wentz, her mother’s name with Pete’s pinned at the end. Now, though, he calls her Elmo. Elmo, the first two letters of her first and middle name because Pete can’t say Beth if she’s not around. Patrick knows this story by heart.

He knows that they were happy in the four years they were together, coworkers who only looked forward to the office because it meant they could see each other. He knows Pete planned to marry her— though

wanting

to do so gave a different answer— but never felt the time was right. He knows Pete might have been waiting for a fairy tale moment, a slip into fantasy and away from the mess he so often fills his life with.

Then, six months into their relationship, Beth told Pete she was pregnant; he didn’t propose to her, though he recognized he probably should. Instead, he properly moved her into his apartment and they started looking at houses, started looking at car seats and cribs. Nine months after that, they held the entire world in their hands in a hospital room, their daughter’s warmth pressing back into their palms with each shift of her tiny body; Pete thought of proposing when he saw Beth's smile on smaller lips but, still, he held back.

Three years after the birth of their daughter, Beth stood on the doorsteps of the house they'd bought and asked if he’d ever be able to propose. With petite fingers wrapped around her suitcase strap, with cheeks pale and hollow from too many restless nights, she asked like it was every wish yet to come true. Her eyes blazed and Pete thought that maybe he could marry her, that maybe he had the idea of love all wrong. Maybe it’s not supposed to feel like magic and madness. Maybe it really is just kneeling and reciting a line simply because he thinks he should.

Beth’s eyes kept on him as his will wavered.

But, Patrick knows, Pete never said those words. He never gave in, never fulfilled that part of happily ever after. And, when Patrick asked, he said it’s because, as she stood there with one foot already out the door, he realized that Beth never once looked at her daughter. Elizabeth was in the room when the ultimatum dropped, sleeping on the couch and curled around her favorite stuffed pup, and Beth couldn’t spare her a glance as she threatened to leave. 
And, so, Pete let her go.

At least, that’s how he tells it whenever Patrick asks.

And hearing Pete tell it is always a bit like crewing a submarine on his own, Patrick’s found each time the words are said. Because they always need to go deeper than the surface and Patrick’s learned the easiest ways to steady the travel down. Turn the lights on and close all the entrances, say goodbye to the outside world for the foreseeable future and remember what makes the adventure worth the dark. Looking into Pete’s past is like gazing into the parts of the sea where the light can’t reach, pressing flat against windows and waiting for a glimmer of something the world has not yet named.

And Patrick’s always alone, always figuring things out by himself, because Pete’s friends were Beth’s friends and talking to them about it is like testifying in court. Patrick’s been around those conversations, most often at Elizabeth’s birthday parties, and he hates every idiot who pretends to know what’s best.

As for Patrick’s friends, he can’t tell them much, either, simply because Pete asked him not to. So, together, they sank deeper in their love-lined, lead-lined ship. Too late, they realized they only brought enough air for two.

Pete doesn’t tell the story anymore. Patrick’s learned to pretend it doesn’t exist. The past is a luxury they can no longer afford so ignoring it is a virtue to practice.

Still, Patrick doesn’t know quite what to do, quite how to breathe, when he picks up Pete’s mail and sees an envelope with

Beth Morgan

scrawled across the top.

Almost a decade after disappearing; almost a decade after walking out from a family with no promise to return. Patrick has no right to the anger that burns through his blood as he tosses the mail onto the counter, eyes narrowed and cheeks hot.

Pete’s in the backyard, mowing it before the realtor decides to come take pictures and pretend it’d be great for a family to buy. He has earbuds in and sunglasses on and, chances are, he won’t look twice at the counter before heading upstairs for a shower so…

So Patrick doesn’t need

to tell Pete that Beth reached out. He doesn’t need to open that wound, doesn’t need to open that door. Pete’s already failing to heal and there’s no promise Beth will walk back out once invited in. Pete’s moving and he’ll be gone before Beth notices her letter was never read.

Patrick reaches out, fingertips pressing down on the ink soaked into the page. In his head, he hears Pete’s voice.

“I don’t hate her for leaving me. I hate her for leaving her daughter.”

That’s how the story ends. Patrick knows.
He wonders, though, how much of that hate remains, how much of that anger still stirs at the mere mention of her name. Pete's true north has always been Elizabeth so what happens when the compass has been broken? Cracked on gravel with a snapped needle as proof that it ever pointed at anything at all? Can Pete hate Beth if there's no one left for her to hurt?And could Pete hate Patrick if he ever caught him stealing another loved one from his life? The thought strikes Patrick like a needle of its own, an ice-cold prick into each vertebra of his spine. Pete may not love him, Pete may not want him, but he could never live with himself if he ever made Pete hate him.
He pulls his hand away, the buzz from the mower outside fading as Pete crosses to the other side of the lawn— as Patrick realizes how little Pete has left. He’s never stolen from Pete, though many may question what he’s trying to do each time he shows up more unwanted than the time before. The only time he’s taken from Pete is when Pete’s offered it himself, whispers brushing against Patrick’s mouth before their lips meet. Pete used to offer Patrick every second he wished, every moment left untouched. Patrick took it all without thinking of the cost. Only later would he learn that the price was in brackets.

Patrick puts the letter back with the rest of the advertisements and notes. He tries not to think of times when he’d feel comfortable going through Pete’s letters, leaning over the counter and reading out each name with a curious tone. Pete would laugh and tell Patrick who’s who, using the same voice he’d have when teaching Elizabeth how to read.

Fetching Pete’s mail for him is Patrick’s way of crawling back into his life and snatching back those memories for himself. It’s a clearly marked memento, envelopes falling across the countertop like a deck of cards— pick one, anyone, and watch it disappear.

Patrick wonders what memories there are left to take. He wonders which ones are worth keeping.

The mower buzzing grows closer again. Pete must be close to done.

Patrick glances down at Beth’s letter again, frowning but not quite as deeply as before. The center of each side bends in and Patrick can imagine the ribbon that might have been wrapped around it before ultimately being regarded as gaudy or dramatic. It would have been a nice touch, though; Pete hates presents and Patrick would have had the satisfaction of removing the bow before it could be seen, protecting Pete from that, at least. He’d known that he'd done something to help and, more importantly, he wouldn’t be so afraid of whatever may be inside. Probably.

As it is, a ribbon of fear takes to Patrick’s skin regardless, a winding string wrapping tight around his wrists and throat, cutting off circulation and shaking him with each breath. The bow fills his mouth, keeping him from admitting what it is he’s scared of. Wrapped up like a gift by his own mind; it’s a nice touch. He's certainly not a presence Pete wants around anymore; will Beth fill that role?

Patrick leaves the letter where it is, burning it in his mind as he walks away. It’s terribly easy to destroy the past but nothing will ever help them forget it.

He’s already memorized that story, after all.

<><><>

Pete works night shifts. It’s nothing new, really— far from it, in fact. Working the night shift guarding a convenience store no one visits, he first claimed it was to distract him from his own insomnia. Then he said it was for his daughter, so he could be there in the mornings when she needs to be driven to school and so he could still be there when she gets back.

Now, though, Pete sleeps fine and only his will keeps him awake. Now, though, Pete’s days are hollow but he still hides in the night because at least a job will keep the nightmares away.

That’s where Pete is when Patrick decides it’s time to help with the packing. At work. Distracted. Gone.

It’s been dark for a while and Patrick’s done nothing but wait in a room down the hall from the one he once knew as his own— the one he once shared with the person he loves. Like Pete, sleep doesn’t come easily to him when he’s alone and the walls fill with shadows the shade of bruises.

Anything has to be better than looking at that. One moment, they leave him to rest but, the next, they fill him with memories he’d rather forget. So, standing in his pajamas and walking into the hall is the best next step to take.

Though Pete’s just started packing, the house feels emptier than the day before. Perhaps it’s the lack of light; perhaps it’s the fact that Pete’s gone, too. Boxes take the place of people, standing in corners and peering in as Patrick sighs and reaches for the string leading to the attic door.

Pete hasn’t gone up there yet, hasn’t mentioned the materials left to pack away. And Patrick knows better than to offer so, alone, he climbs the stairs that stretch down to meet him. The steps creak beneath his weight, moaning the months they’ve been left untouched. But there’s no one here to answer them. There’s no one here who cares.

Only halfway up, head peeking into the chilled air above, does Patrick pause. Perhaps he should start with the room he sleeps in. Maybe he should call Pete and ask permission first. Options extend before him like vines and he doesn’t know which will snap if he pulls them. He’s in another forest than the ones he calls home and his hands shake as he wonders which one will lead him back. Which one will show him what he’s done wrong? Pete’s usually the one to choose their path but he’s left driving behind.

It’s up to Patrick now. The thought stings but it pushes him into the shadows of the room above. Somehow, the darker shadows here frighten him less than the blues and purples of those by his bed.

The last step groans as Patrick lifts his foot from it. The sound fills the room as Patrick’s presence does, coughing into the crook of his arm as he glares into the space around him, eyes narrowed as if to say this terrible place won’t scare him away.

Though, he knows fear must be evident in his eyes. The dusty boxes and random toys do frighten him. They’re objects built to last as long as memory but, here, they’ve been locked away and forgotten. They look at him as if trying to place where they’ve seen that face before, as if trying to understand that time has moved on without their aid. Without the doll’s smile lit dimly by the hallway light creeping up, without the frills of the shirt poking out of that box. They each fail to understand that they, too, should be buried. How can Patrick not be afraid of that? How can he not shudder at the reminder that time always ends?

He doesn’t touch these objects, not yet. He walks past each carelessly taped up box and each broken toy with light steps, certain not to wake any ghosts that may reside in such things. Time ends but memories don’t.

As he ventures deeper into the darkness, his right arm burns. If he pays it no mind, if he pretends the skin there doesn’t exist, then it’s only to play along with the idea that past tragedies haven’t happened yet. He walks as if there’s a hole he cannot see and any moment he may step into it. For this, he is careful not to notice the old scars across his arm or the thoughts of where they're from. For this, he is careful not to displace any dust as he makes his way further and further from the light behind.

In the back of the attic are the newer boxes, the ones packed away first because they held the fresher memories. Near the opening, they have baby clothes and bibs but the back is another world. The back has boxes of gifs half-opened and books half-read, schoolwork ungraded and photo albums unfilled. These are the boxes that hurt the most but Patrick walks towards them like a preacher searching for a saint. Where will he find proof of salvation?

The boxes are still but Patrick swears he can hear them call his name.

Gifts half opened. Books half read.

Reflections never seen.

Patrick pauses at the large white cloth covering the length of the final wall, stood before him like one of those ghosts he keeps expecting to see. He stutters back a step, breath caught in his throat at the sudden bright shade in the dark, and then curses himself for his ignorance. He knows what this is and he knows exactly why Pete would tuck it away.

Weeks before that night, Elizabeth had asked for a specific birthday gift. Pete pretended not to understand each time she explained it, each time she pleaded and begged, but Patrick was with him when she was distracted in the mall. Patrick was there when Pete pointed across the way into a separate shop and said, “That one, Trick. That’s the one she’ll like.”

This is all wrong. This is the moment where Patrick’s supposed to break apart, tear open and let memories bleed out of him in a moment of regret and healing. This is the moment where he’s supposed to call Pete with words thick with tears and tell him how hard it is to be in this house alone and ask what he’s supposed to do. This is the moment where he’s supposed to ask if Pete hates him and of course Pete hates him but he wants Patrick there anyway. Where they understand what this sign means and take the road to recovery together.

But the gift gazes at Patrick like God gazed at Adam and Patrick is transfixed by the possession calling out from such an inanimate thing. He wants to cover himself and hide away; he wants to reveal what’s hidden beneath that sheet.

It’s a sin when he reaches without thought, fingertips chilling the second they make contact with that unstained cloth.

As he pulls, the mirror and glass beneath the fabric whisper his name.

“You brought me into this home

,” he imagines it saying with a voice like fabric falling to the floor.

“What is my purpose now?”

To be a present for a little girl. To let her have fashion shows in her room and brush her hair all by herself. To hang on a wall and watch her grow up.

None of these have come to pass and Patrick feels the mirror hates him for it.

Can this mirror— this thing only inches taller than Patrick, bought hastily from a display with all the excitement of finally joining a family— truly be saying all this or is Patrick simply reading something that’s not there? Is he shipwrecked and pointing at help in the horizon, his fingers only reaching towards more waves? The mirror towers over him with all the glory of a mountain he must climb and his hand, not yet fallen after pulling the sheet away, presses flat to the surface of the glass.

The air around him goes cold and dust kicks up around him, glittering like stars as they fall upon his arms and hands. They pull him towards the mirror and he goes willingly.

The sheet he dropped so carelessly before now wraps around his ankle, tries to tug him to the floor. But Patrick has nowhere to fall but forward.

Glass meets his cheek and digs into his face like ice but he feels no cuts upon his skin. His eyes shut and he knows the mirror is all that is there to catch him.

He falls. And he keeps falling.

As the darkness envelops him into its arms, he wonders why it’s still so silent.

He wonders why nothing has yet shattered.

<><><>

Where is Patrick when he lands? What does he see? Shadows close his eyes but it’s a different darkness now, as if night’s forgotten how to become day.

The ground he’s fallen onto is soft beneath his cheek, pressing against him like damp grass. It’s a garden, he imagines, and he’s a weed waiting to be pulled. Soon, a stray pet may come and dig him up. Soon, a child will pierce him with plastic shovels and disappointment when they see he has no petals to pull.

“The prettiest flowers are green.”

It sounds like Elizabeth, the certain squeak of her voice distinct though she sounds closer than she’s ever been, though she sounds as if she may be here.

Eyes open and still unseeing in the grey-blue darkness around him, Patrick pushes himself unsteadily to his feet. He sways, gravity pulling him in all the wrong directions, and falls against a sudden wall at his side.

“When I’m older, I’ll have a garden and I’m gonna paint all my flowers green.”

Patrick turns towards the sound of her voice, leaning heavily against the wall. Her mumbled tone is his moon and he fixates on it like a boy wondering if it can see him, too. Distantly, he knows he should wonder whether he’s dreaming or dead but it’s harder for him to question the things that seem impossible to understand. It’s hard to pretend he’s upset when all his tongue tastes are wishes left behind.

When Patrick first moved in with them, Pete and Elizabeth were addicted to starry nights. It was a tradition that began a few weeks after Beth left, taking Elizabeth to a place where she could lose herself in stars. They’d talk and they’d laugh and, Pete used to say, they’d trade wishes while sipping the gas station slushies steadily melting in their hands.

Patrick was rarely ever invited on these outings but the nights he did go, he felt he understood what wishes were. The back of the car would be a makeshift bed when Elizabeth would grow tired, her small body stretched across the seats as Pete and Patrick made their own wishes up front. Twice, Patrick joined them but only once did he see the stars. The first attempt was nothing but clouds set on burying all lights but Patrick didn’t feel as dejected as Pete had seemed. The darkness, he told the two on the drive back, was okay because it was theirs.

And so Patrick doesn’t fear the blindness he’s faced with now because the dark only means the night and night always means stars. He’s kept wishes beneath his tongue for moments like this and, with Elizabeth’s voice to guide him, he feels them slipping away into the open air before him.

“I wish,” he says, “to know how to give this family the love it deserves. I wish for a happy ending.”

The wishes he never told Pete when he asked; the wishes never answered.

His walking edges towards a run, the hair on his body standing straight up at the sound of his own voice. His breaths are heavy in his mouth and he sprints forward, Elizabeth’s name on his tongue but never pressing against his lips. Shadows twist like strangers watching with confusion but it only quickens his speed. His feet pound at the ground, echoing Elizabeth’s distant laughter. He runs to stay afloat, runs until he’s met with a glimmer of light.

Patrick’s hands press flat against what first appears as a wall but makes itself known as a door when the knob presses into his gut. Light from the other side, white-bright and warm, outlines the door through the cracks and carries Elizabeth’s voice on a string.

The door opens with a gentle click and light floods Patrick’s vision. Ground thickens into carpet beneath his feet and walls form a bedroom he’s nearly forgotten, locked away at the end of the hall in Pete’s home. Horse posters cling desperately to the walls as the tape steadily loses its stickiness. Piles of clothes sit in the corner, waiting to be collected and dropped in the hamper. A tent in the shape of a palace rests beneath the window, its flaps fluttering lightly from some unfelt breeze. The violet curtains are drawn and the bedsheets hang off the mattress, their black and blue stripes caressing the floor.

In the middle of everything, there is Elizabeth.

She’s tugged her butterfly blanket to the edges of the room, kneeling upon it with a certain stiffness in her posture. Focus and concentration radiate from her as she faces the wall, inches from it with a marker held firmly in her hand. Already, flowers have been scrawled upon the wall and, as he steps inside, Patrick realizes he’s been here before.

His fifth day of living with the Wentzes. He and Pete had been together for a few months by this point and Elizabeth finally seemed to be warming up to him. Her music taste was much closer to his than Pete's and she’d sit wide-eyed on the couch each time he messed around on GarageBand, creating songs that no one but he and this girl would hear. She liked the way he wore his headphones, hanging beneath his chin by his ears, and he’d caught her doing the same sometimes when she thought no one was watching. The day before this, in fact, she’d even let Patrick tuck her into bed because Pete had been called into work early.

But that’s not to say they didn’t still have problems. Like when Elizabeth would put her stickers on Patrick’s glasses and didn’t understand that he couldn’t see when Sesame Street characters were covering his eyes. Or like when he suggested that she put on a jacket before leaving the house and she blatantly ignored him, making eye contact and storming out. Or like when she tugged his hair the first morning after moving in and said she was glad she had her dad’s dark curls and wouldn’t have to worry about getting his weird color. They aren’t really family, after all, she’d said to his astonished face.

Or like now when, years ago, Patrick caught her drawing on her walls. He’d been tired that day, been arguing with Pete that day about missing him when he worked at night, and Pete had left to take a walk. Patrick had heard Elizabeth talking to herself in her room and, frustrated and lonely, he’d invited himself in.

“Hey, your flowers are great and all,”

he’d said through a sigh, tired when Elizabeth looked back with that Wentzian glare.

“But your dad’s already had a rough morning. We should clean this up before he sees it.”

She’d hated the idea, of course, mouth screwed up in a sour pout as Patrick researched ways to clean markers off of walls. He’d done most of the scrubbing once they’d found the sponges and rubbing alcohol and Elizabeth had complained of the smell. When she said Patrick’s name, it sounded like a curse.

Why had he done that? Why pull petals off her flowers? Tie knots in the stems and file down the thorns? Was it worth the fracture in their fragile friendship, worth the satisfaction it brought only himself? The, he felt as if it may make Pete appreciate him more, though Pete never learned of what Patrick did. Now, it feels like a crime to bury such a seed so soon and, so, he keeps still. Watching. Holding his breath and wondering if she’ll notice him.

When she does, it’s moments after when he would have told her to stop, moments before the attempts with soap and angry tears. She turns and the smile falls from her face. She turns and scrambles to her feet, staining her clothes with marker as she tries to hide what she’s doing.

“You can’t be in my room without knocking,” she says accusingly. “Get out!”

She says it like she knows she can make the universe move with her voice alone, tripping over the edge of her rug as she rushes Patrick, fire in those plump childish cheeks. And though she’s shouting and throwing a fit, Patrick cannot move.

“El—” Her name sticks in his throat. Can he imagine her doing something she’s never done before, shoving at his arms and hands like she’s not afraid to fight him? Can he imagine her alive after so long of accepting that she’s not? This doesn't feel right; this doesn't feel like another one of those dreams and he doesn't dare call a ghost by that name. “Okay, I’m leaving. I’m—”

A step back, his shoulder brushing the doorframe. Another step back and there’s no floor anymore.

He steps back and he’s falling.

By the time he lands, pain crashing through his mind with the urgency of cymbals and signs, he’s certain this can’t be a dream. With the dark and light assailing one another in an to be the one to claim his vision, he’s certain this can't be false.

He’s certain he still hears Elizabeth shouting and crying that Patrick’s invaded such a tender moment.

And he’s certain it’s no coincidence that the blood rushing through his ears sounds just like a car engine revving to life.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Eyes open in the middle of the hallway, between his room and Elizabeth. Pete’s at his side, a hand at his shoulder gently pressing but refusing to shake. His lips form Patrick’s name and Patrick searches the air for the sound of it the way one may search a map for proof of treasure. His eyes scatter across the space around them, taking in white walls and rough beige carpets, Pete’s work shirt and his heaving chest.

“Patrick,” Pete says and Patrick looks back at him, not realizing how dazed he is until he finds himself exploring the sound of his name on Pete’s tongue, staring at his lips and trying to remember the last time Pete said it so recklessly. “Hey, what’s up? Are you okay?”

Pete’s fear redraws Patrick in whatever manner it sees fit, pulling him to a seated position and rubbing at his head. He doesn’t remember choosing to move but, then, he doesn’t remember falling asleep out here, either.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I was just… I was cleaning out the attic and then—” He trails off, trying to find a nonexistent headache behind his eyes when he shuts them.

Pete’s voice lowers. “The attic? Why would you go up there?”

“To help,” Patrick says though now he sees how stupid that sounds. “It doesn’t really matter, I wasn’t able to do anything. The mirror distracted me.”

He opens his eyes and finds Pete’s before he can take his next breath. For a moment, boundaries fade away and they’re one nation of pained memories, sorrow and grief.

Mirror

— the one word has Pete watching Patrick the way Patrick watched him when he said his name.

“The mirror.” There’s no emotion in Pete’s voice the way there’s no water on the wrong side of a dam. He pulls away from Patrick and Patrick aches from it, a small sound making its way from the back of his throat as Pete withdraws.

Come back

, he wants to say.

Hold me, touch me. Prove that you can be as tender as this wound.

“Sorry,” Patrick says, hoping his words are sweet though something bitter stains the back of his throat. “I would have asked but I didn’t think it was something you’d want to think about.”

Pete’s mouth twists in that way Patrick knows so well, that special scowl of hiding words too dangerous to spill. When he reaches out to help Patrick to his feet, it’s a brief touch and that’s almost worse than not touching at all.

“You should get some rest,” Pete says, glancing away and towards a pastel blue window, shades of morning lingering on the glass and in the shadows. “It’s still early and you sound tired. We can talk about it later.”

It’s strange how hearing the same sentence years ago could have had those words sounding so much lighter, so much more precious. Now, though, they’re nothing more than what they are. Words. Commands. Sounds.

“Yeah, okay. You’ll get some rest, too, right?” And Patrick’s voice is the opposite. His sounds are barely heard; his words are crackling through the air with everything left unsaid.

“Sure.” Pete turns away before every broken meaning in Patrick’s voice can be understood.

And Patrick wouldn’t expect anything else.

<><><> <><><> <><><>

Afternoon. Hotter than the day before. Patrick never did end up going back to sleep the way he told Pete he would, too afraid of another dream like the one he’d had of the mirror. The mere thought of it has his heart kicking against his chest like the hoof of a horse, unlucky and untamed. Neither he or Pete discussed the attic activities but that only means more time for Patrick to obsess over it on his own.

And the time he has, he uses.

The small hours are spent in an even smaller room, his fingertips at the keys of a laptop he brought along, typing in whatever details he can remember from that moment-- a moment that most certainly must have been a dream. The thoughts consume him, never sated. There are patches of relief whenever he finds an article long enough to distract him, moments of tranquility as still as an artificial lake, but always behind him roars a rising tide of impossible wishes.

There are scholars online who’d claim his dreams aren’t important, he finds in the early afternoon.  They claim that daydreams and internal dialogue are what define your life. Patrick doesn’t doubt that this is a well-researched theory but is it a truthful one? Dreams are all he has left. After all, dreams are easier to collect than depressing thoughts and unsaid confessions, each one wrinkled and torn like old IOUs. Dead are the days of candles and champagne, roses and breakfasts in bed, late night phone calls and impulsive kisses that last longer than his hopes. No, all of that has escaped and left him with the lukewarm heat of dreams. Out of the fire and into an empty home warmed only by a heater groaning out each breath.

Patrick shuts off his laptop and shoves it to the other side of the bed, feeling far too much like a cliche when he pulls at his hair and closes his eyes against the memories poking at the sides of his mind. He’s looking for something that doesn’t exist, in every way; he’s searching for an answer to a question that isn't real.

And the most impossible thing, of course, is that damned mirror upstairs. A nightmare without end. A dream that he knows was not a dream. Sure, he knows it makes no sense but he gave up on that when the world took his life and love with nothing more than the crashing collision of cars. Something nonsensical’s bound to catch up sooner or later. That’s how it always seems to happen, anyway.

Patrick’s on the edge of losing his mind and he shakes his head before he can fall off that particular cliff. He’s overly romantic and terribly paranoid and being in this house isn’t making any of it better. The hardest part is knowing why it hurts, knowing why he feels so selfish, knowing how he can’t change a thing.

He knows that he could leave, the way friends and family have suggested he do for his own sake, and he knows that he should go before either he or Pete get hurt in the crumbling remains of aftermath. But each time he imagines such an act his mind’s immediately filled with the past. His heart beats to the memories of shared sunrises and goodnight kisses.

Another shake of his head. Patrick reaches for his phone, needing someone’s voice other than his own to fill his mind for once. He runs a hand through his hair, his other flicking through contacts until finding the friend he’s known the longest and, thus, the friend he fears judgment from the least. Joe’s always been straightforward and, Patrick supposes, he’s grown numb to the blunt tones over time.

“Trohman, here,” Joe says though there’s no real need for him to introduce himself. Patrick has no chance to chide him before he’s run over by Joe’s voice again. “You know, I had to double check my screen when I saw your name. It’s been a bit since I’ve heard from you. Hardly fair for you to wander back into the past and leave the rest of us in the present, man.”

“I guess I could apologize but I wouldn’t mean it and you wouldn’t accept it.” Patrick’s words are the right shade of teasing but something in his throat is still tight, still prepared to weep at any given moment.

“Yeah, but that’s because you hate saying sorry,” Joe says.

“I hate it because it makes me feel like a bad person.” Patrick doesn’t say that he always feels a little guilty and he doesn’t know if he’d ever be able to stop saying sorry if he started. “Anyway, that’s not why I called. Ignore the present and come join me in the past for a sec.”

Joe makes a sound and Patrick can’t tell if it’s a scoff or a laugh. “Don’t you know that’s how you go insane?”

“Don’t worry,” Patrick says. “I’m close enough to crazy for the both of us. Now, are you gonna listen to my question?”

“Are you gonna want to hear an honest answer?”

Is he?

“Well, I called you so I might. You’re the only friend who doesn’t care about hurting my feelings,” Patrick says, digging his nails into the bedsheets at his hip and ignoring Joe’s wounded protest. “No offense. Anyway, I was just… I had a weird dream, I guess, and I’ve been trying to work out what it means.”

“It’s not my job to tell you what’s going on inside your head. And, even if it was, I’ve already tried warning you about overthinking things like this. Especially when… when you’re there,” Joe says, his voice already more serious than it had been mere sentences ago, his words crisper and sharper when they hit Patrick’s ears. It’s both what Patrick expected and feared. “It’s as simple as this: If you’re having nightmares, you’re stressed or sad or afraid and shouldn’t pretend otherwise. And if it’s about Pete, then you need to talk to him, not me.”

“You haven’t even heard what the dream was about. Aren’t you the smallest bit curious?” Wouldn’t anyone be curious to hear a broken man’s nightmares? Isn’t that horrid desire in everyone’s minds or is Patrick imagining it because he’s the man in question?

“I’m not,” Joe says. “But you can tell me if you think it’ll help.”

“It’s not like any of the other dreams I’ve had before. And I don’t even think it counts as a nightmare,” Patrick says, picking his words carefully. He’s not one to ramble to his friends but sometimes, like today, thoughts swell up on their own and he has to take care in releasing them into the outside world. “It’s actually about the mirror we were going to give her for her birthday that year.”

“Oh. Wow. I haven’t heard about that mirror in a long time. Wasn’t it going to be this big deal for her? Why did that come up? Were you talking about it with Pete or something?” Joe asks when Patrick pauses, struggling for breath. He doesn’t sound curious, just as he swore, but the questions still reek of interest. “Sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt. Feel free to tell me to fuck off. I just want you to know I’m really listening.”

“It’s fine, I just… I don’t know how to really explain it. Like, it didn’t feel like a dream at all. At first, I was just in the attic looking for things to pack for Pete. And then I came across the mirror and all these memories about… about her came back. So I started to back away but then I fell. I fell

forward

and I hit the mirror and it didn’t break. I went through it.” Patrick takes a deep breath, hiding behind the sound when his eyes slip shut. They open again before fully closing, though, his mind traitorously tossing him back into the images of his dream, his night, his impossible experience. It’s horrifying. “It was terrible because it was real. I was alone in the dark but then I found her bedroom door and it was just like this one time I caught her drawing on the walls. I thought it was just a memory but then it changed.”

Again, Patrick pauses. Again, Joe cuts in and saves him before he needs to find more to say.

“You don’t need to tell me anything else. I think I get it. I know you said it wasn’t a nightmare but, you know, you make it sound like one. And I get why it would be.” Joe can’t possibly understand and it shows in his stumbling tone, his hesitation before each breath. The words are simply sounds trying to fit into a script he didn’t write. How could he ever get what’s going on? “I don’t know what it means and I’m not going to pretend I do. I don’t want to make that assumption. But I can say that any sort of magic mirror is sure to be an ominous experience.”

“Magic mirror,” Patrick echoes.

“I mean, I obviously don’t know what it was you saw but I’d go—”

Patrick feels bad about hanging up in the middle of Joe’s sentence but, more than that, he feels sick at what Joe had been saying before. The thought of a magic mirror sticks with him and his computer’s back in his lap, his fingers flying across the keys to type the phrase in.

Though he taps impatiently at the side of the screen as results load, Patrick tries to remember that such a search can’t be trusted. If scholars say dreams aren’t real, why would anyone say magic is?

Perhaps the answer is desperation.

The results aren’t immediately promising, all storybook definitions and fairy tales. But neither are they disheartening. Patrick takes his time scrolling through each suggested site, bent over the screen with gravity weighing heavily on his shoulders and back.

The sky outside steadily fades to the grey of clouds, the pink of sunset, the black of night. Pete calls out from downstairs that he plans to head back to work but Patrick’s sure the words aren’t for him. Patrick’s isolated himself and, for once, it’s for a reason other than hiding.

He spends hours looking for an answer to what happened in the mirror.

No sites can give him a solid guess but, with each word he reads, his own theory begins to grow.

<><><> <><><> <><><>

After research comes physical testing.

Patrick takes his time coming to this particular decision, however, memories thick with the sensation of the mirror’s weight and grandeur. Back then, he and Pete had carried the mirror everywhere together. It was their shared secret, their favorite prize. A sort of physical bond each time they lifted it into a new room, keeping it hidden until it’d be safe to reveal. The first few nights, they left it in their closet and only Patrick’s startled heart at his own reflection had him convincing Pete to move it into the attic above. It was trouble taking it up; it was fun.

Patrick doesn’t suppose bringing it down will be much easier. If anything, it’ll be more difficult. The same tedious task of lifting paired with the new addition of emotional weight and mental trauma. He’ll have to maneuver through the maze of memories, toys and games, lest any of their rusted edges give him some new infection in his heart. And the stairs are too narrow to dream of conquering. Still, Patrick pulls them down.

Pete’s at work and the night is dark once more. Patrick supposes he should call Pete all while knowing he has no intention to do so. It’s simply a favor— this, at least, gives him a lighter conscience to hold. He’ll put the mirror back as soon as he’s proved it’s safe, he swears.

Unfortunately, nothing seems to be safe anymore.

He doesn’t know how long he stands at the bottom of the attic stairs but he knows it’s long enough that he begins to fear Pete’s return. Pete may work late but Patrick doesn’t know how late late is. Late enough that Pete has no patience for thoughts when he comes home, no time for reminiscing or other painful things. It’s Patrick’s job to hide those away, make the world seem sunny again. He’s good at that— good with broken glass and scars, good with children and the things they leave behind. He’s just not good with himself.

Patrick supposes that’s why he and Pete worked so well for so long. Patrick with his oversized glasses and the shadow of his hats, Pete with his burning grins and caring eyes. Pete was good with the one thing Patrick wasn’t. Of course, Patrick hadn’t seen that at first. After his own series of failed relationships, he’d come to believe he had little in common with anyone else— particularly Pete, blonde and bright and bigger than life. Patrick liked tea and clever jokes; Pete liked late nights and discussing the perils of broken hearts.

And, in such discussions, he stole all of Patrick’s time. He pulled him in and, even when he tried to cut the string, Patrick never found a way to leave his orbit.

Pete fixed him, once; it’s his turn to fix Pete.

Patrick steps onto the first stair. It creaks and Patrick grimaces as if taking the sound personally. Still, he carries on, each groan of the steps echoing the wallowing thoughts in his own mind. Projecting his own emotions onto meaningless sounds— he may as well be Pete himself. Though, he supposes, Pete’s more likely to hold onto his suffering in more reliable ways. Not for him the painful dilemma, the agonized choice. No, he knows what hurts him and he shoves it away.

And here's Patrick, walking back into a nightmare with eyes open and hands outstretched. That seems about right. At least he’s doing it for Pete’s sake.

Patrick walks past dolls and other gifts with less hesitation than he had the night before, their painted faces seeming less haunting now that he knows they’re there. Perhaps that’s why he imagines facing the mirror again will be a good idea; perhaps it won’t be there, at all.

Quicker than Patrick would like, the mirror greets him with its steady glare, its certain gaze. Patrick pauses before it, his own shadowed face staring back at him. What is it trying to make him see?

No time for questions such as these. Patrick swallows thickly and grabs the edges of the mirror with sweaty hands, pulling it free from where it’s been leaning against the wall. It’s tedious trying to turn and drag it out, bumping into boxes and knocking over stacks of unread books, but Patrick stares at his feet and forces himself to move. He entertains no fears, no considerations of right and wrong and good and bad and real and false and life and death. Above all, he thinks only of what he saw the night before.

Elizabeth. He thinks only of her.

This memory, he does linger on. He was never a parental figure in her life and he’s still not sure he’d ever truly fill that spot. He wasn’t a father like Pete was and he can’t imagine ever having such a life. These are all thoughts he’s had before but, as he stumbles and bumps into cool glass on his way through the attic, he supposes it’s strange when he has them after Elizabeth is gone.

At last, Patrick reaches the stairs and, blinded by the mirror held before him, he takes his time going down. He doesn’t want to imagine the symbolism of watching the reflection of his feet taking each descending step, the meaning of his own breath fogging up the image as he gasps and tries not to fall. The stairs are sturdy and he knows his way but knowing is not seeing. Knowing is not the opposite of fearing.

What if he should fall, should crack the glass? He’s certainly clumsy enough for that. Maybe he wouldn’t shatter the mirror, though. Maybe he’d only leave a dent in the border, add some character to the lifeless thing. Would that be better than the bad luck certain to follow anything else?

Patrick never finds out, landing on the carpeted floor as he takes his last step down. Breaths burn his throat as he leans against the mirror, arms aching as he sets it on the floor again. How can such a simple thing weigh so much? He doesn’t remember struggling before. He can’t recall if Pete ever complained about how heavy it is.

Pete. The thought of him has Patrick lifting the mirror again, bringing it to the guest bedroom with him. The whole time Patrick’s been here, Pete hasn’t looked into his room. Though it hurts, Patrick supposes he can use it to his advantage.

Mirror against the closet, Patrick considers it. Somehow, under the bedroom’s lights, it doesn’t look quite as expensive as before. It has no glimmering threats or promises to make. It’s nothing more than a mirror.

And Patrick’s just the same in the reflection, a pale mess of tired shadows and pajamas that cling to his sweat-slick skin. In the window behind him, the mirror shows clouds over stars, nothing to give reason to the manic hope in his eyes as he presses his palm flat against the glass. The mirror reflects a bed he doesn’t plan on sleeping in, blankets and sheets that try to call to him with their soft texture and promise of rest. Patrick wouldn’t typically turn down such a suggestion but, tonight, he does.

“I know it was real,” he tells himself, tells his reflection. “I know what I saw. And you’re going to let me see it again. You’re going to let me see her again. I need to.”

Patrick presses harder against the glass, interrupting whatever it is his mind thinks he needs to do. He needs to what? Hide out in a house he no longer has claim to? Mope over lost love like the self-centered idiot he is?

No. He didn’t walk back into the scene of the crash just to do the same things he did on the other side of the caution tape.

His other hand takes it spot on the glass, his fingers framing his reflection’s face. In his mind, he hears the friends that gently told him he was going to go crazy and, not for the first time, he believes them; magic mirrors are for children, not the people left chasing after their ghosts.

Patrick pulls away from the mirror, swearing loudly as he takes a step back. His own eyes regard him with wary disapproval, watching him the way one might watch a criminal who’s due for another crime. And what crime is that? And who will the victim be? Patrick scowls at himself. Crazy, he’s gone crazy. The glass is nothing more than that— glass, a reflection of his own insanity and hopes. It’s real and it’s solid and it’s…

It’s marked up, smudged by something that’d been stuck on Patrick’s hands when he pressed against it. Green and yellow, small stains of…

“Marker,” Patrick says, reaching out to scrape it away. He holds his breath with all the delusion of a known alcoholic glancing hopefully at a bartender. He’s insane, he must be, but…

Elizabeth was drawing on the wall with markers

No, that can’t be right. It can’t add up. It’s late and he’s imagining things, wanting to see something that’s not there. He’s already given up and now it decides to appear? What sense does that make? He tried pushing back into the mirror, back into whatever world he saw. It didn’t work.

But there’s marker on my hands, just like when she was shoving me away. There’s marker on the mirror and I know it wasn’t there before

.

Patrick’s head hurts. Why is his simple miserable life suddenly weaving towards something impossible, something that only happens to those with happy endings on the horizon and true love in the distance? He struggles to understand it, his mind slipping on every step it tries to take. Should he accept it? Reject it? Should he laugh it off and go to sleep, check again in the morning with Pete at his side?

He wants Pete here to tell him he’s crazy, to give him someone other than himself to justify his theories to. But it’s difficult to think of Pete calling him crazy; difficult because it’s so easy. Pete knows him better than most and Pete would know better than to pretend Patrick’s making sense.

But Pete’s not here and Patrick’s not so sure he’s making this up.

There’s only one way to find out

The mirror stands before him. What is the reflection telling him now? What do those frightened eyes in the glass see when they look back at him? Patrick bites his lip, wrings his hands together and feels ink spreading across the skin. If he doesn’t look straight at the stain on the glass, it almost takes the shape of a flower.

Patrick thinks of Elizabeth’s green garden. He wants nothing more than to see it again. He wants to see her, to slip into the past and understand why he’d been let into the family for such a small amount of time; he wants to do it all again if only to make it feel like it lasted longer than it did. No more playing the same memories on repeat. He wants the past again in the least complicated way. He wants to take back the times he told Elizabeth not to bother him and he wants to learn how to soothe her when she cried. He wants to redo the times they fought in passive ways, ignoring each other behind Pete's back though Patrick knows Pete knew.

He wants to go back to before Pete saw him as just a reminder of what he lost. He wants to go back into spring gardens and starry-night love.

“This,” he says. “I want this.”

The mirror beckons to him like an old friend with a new secret.

Patrick presses his hand to the glass and, this time, it goes through.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“Looks like those two are heading our way. You want to get them? You want to— Dude? Hello? Ground control to Patrick Stump?”

Patrick tries to breathe, the air somehow different across his skin and tongue-- lighter than it had been just a moment ago, full of glass and desperate words. He’s answering the childhood joke before he’s fully realized where he is, when he is. “Ground control can screw right off.”

Joe laughs and Patrick opens his eyes.

He doesn’t hear Joe’s response as he takes in the sight before him— the clean glass windows and dusted shelves, the stacks of books still waiting to be read. The room’s quiet but for the gentle rush of the street outside. The sign on the front door sways as Joe continues wiping away glass cleaner with a rag he’d brought from home, the declaration of the bookstore’s grand opening sitting beside him in a pile of other reminders of the day. Streamers and welcome signs, a poster with the date.

A poster dated six years before Patrick stepped through that mirror.

He looks up in time to see two figures bounding up to the door, Joe stepping aside to let them in. The two— a father and a young girl— laugh to each other in happy tones, the small girl muttering a thank you to Joe when he holds the door open for her. They look around with wide eyes— the same eyes, brown and bright and beautiful— and then the man lifts the girl up into the air. Holding her on his hip, he smiles at Patrick.

“She noticed the new spot and wanted to come check it out. Sorry, I know we missed the actual opening,” he says. Then, “I’m Pete and this is my little Elmo. Welcome to our town.”

For a moment, Patrick says nothing. For a moment, he only stares.

Elizabeth’s hand is by her mouth, her thumb knuckle between her teeth in that habit Pete had to break her from— or, rather, will need to break her from once teachers start sending notes home about how she tries to talk around it. Her hair’s not as long as it will be, thin and tucked behind her ears. And her cheeks are rounder and her eyes are brighter and, god, she’s so

alive

.

Patrick remembers this day. Then, he smiled at Elizabeth and then locked his gaze on her father. Pete, dark hair gelled up into spikes and smiling around all of his words. Jeans that will embarrass Elizabeth when she’s older and eyes that watch Patrick like he’s the reason they’re here.

(And, of course, one day, months from now, Pete will say that. He’ll say that he promised Elizabeth they’d check out the bookstore but he didn’t mean it until he glanced through the window and caught sight of the man behind the front desk.)

Patrick remembers this. He remembers stuttering out that they’re closing soon but taking it back when both their faces fall— exact replicas of each other.

“Thanks,” he says if only to fill the silence, if only because it’s what he said last time this happened. “We’re closing soon but… you two can stay. Stay as long as you need.”

Pete nods and sets Elizabeth on the ground, her five-year-old legs waddling off towards a pile of books taller than her. Pete follows, flicking his gaze at Patrick with a fond roll of his eyes as he chases after his daughter.

Patrick looks back forward, heat flooding his cheeks. Joe says something— jokes about Patrick’s clear attraction— but Patrick barely hears. He stares ahead; he stares at the window.

His own face— softer, paler, framed by thick black glasses— stares back.

<><><> <><><> <><><>

Joe left a while ago, tossing Patrick the keys and a grin— and an obvious glance Pete’s way. He told Patrick to take his time, to take care of himself. Patrick had smiled and shoved him outside— that’s what he did before, after all.

But what does he do now? What is he supposed to do now? Does he play along with Pete and Elizabeth, pretend he doesn’t know what comes next? Pretend he doesn’t want to pull her away from the sound of the street, pretend he’s not shocked when he sees Pete’s car parked outside? Should he make an excuse and leave? Should he tell the truth and hope this is all a dream?

Patrick can’t choose one or the other. He had his minor freak out— his realization that he’s caught himself in the past— and he knows better than to change any detail. He’s been given the chance to see this again; it’d be wrong to take more than that.

When Pete asks for Patrick’s opinion on a book, though, maybe he casually suggests a different one, remembering the slump Pete fell into after reaching the morbid ending. When Elizabeth nearly knocks over a stack of books, maybe Patrick’s there a second earlier to catch it before it falls.

He should be content with this. When he goes back— if he goes back— he’ll have reason to feel stronger when facing the darkness there. His memories will be better, sweeter. These are his thoughts as he smiles at Pete; and if his smile wavers at all when Pete asks for his name, Pete doesn’t say a thing. Patrick watches as, again, Pete swings Elizabeth into his arms and asks what books she got— a picture book of planes and boats and cars.

Should Patrick have made her pick a different one?

By the time the two have curled up in the reading corner— a place of cheap chairs and pillows— Patrick’s empty and exhausted. Pete, ever cheerful, looks up and crosses the room to him, leaving Elizabeth to her study of childish pictures. He stops by the front desk, ringing the bell by the register. Both Elizabeth and Patrick look up at the sound, and Patrick struggles to recall what he did next.

“Hey,” he says. “Are you ready to check out? Did you find everything alright?”

Though the words come easy, a script he’s been given by something like fate, he feels neither relief nor satisfaction. He only watches, wide-eyed, as Pete leans over the counter as if to join him.

“I’m just missing one thing,” he says. “Can I get your number before we go?”

Patrick smiles— just like he did the last time they were here.

He wonders which one of him meant it more.

<><><> <><><> <><><>

As Pete and Elizabeth leave, books of fairytales and simple worlds in their bags, Patrick realizes just how much he’s missed moments like this. On every side, he’s battered by books with pleasant endings, dazed by happily ever afters. And Pete, glancing back once more, wears his smile like a medal. A grin here, a smirk there— he’s the epitome of the perfect ending.

Or, at least, he should have been.

The fantasies, the mysteries, the mythologies, the romances and young adult stories that couldn’t possibly understand the tragedy Patrick’s faced with when he turns to see his own reflection looking back at him— a glass wall where the door to the office should be. Those stories, those words, those titles like pearls and gold that outweigh any sort of realism, shrink away from his sight.

All these stories are escorted from his vision with each step Pete and Elizabeth take from the store. The air itself twitches when the two disappear and Patrick gasps as if to call it back into his lungs. The mirrored wall glints a warning at Patrick’s bare throat, his bare arms. Because Joe opened his store in the summer and Patrick wore short sleeves, low collars. Patrick had no leftover scars to hide.

He touches his simple moss green shirt, jade and emerald against his borrowed pale skin.

“What was the point of this?” He asks himself, pressing hard into his own gut. “What’s the point of falling into this moment if it still hurts when I go back? Will it burn every time I step through the mirror?”

He looks up. He can’t tell quite what year it is when he sees the haunted hollowness of his eyes.

“What’s the point?” He asks. “Is there even a point, at all?”

The mirror stays frustratingly silent.

“Right. I’m a fucking idiot,” Patrick says, pressing his hand to the glass. It reaches back out for him, wrapping around his touch. “The world isn’t mine to change.”

<><><> <><><> <><><>

When Patrick opens his eyes back in the right year, Pete’s talking about fairytales.

“I think this book was yours. I found it on the shelf in my room and… I guess I forgot to return it,” he says. “It’d feel wrong not to give it back.”

Patrick’s in the guest bedroom, door open as if he’d crawled out of bed to open it. It’s day— dawn, light blue— and Pete’s standing in the hallway like he’d been knocking. Like there’s nothing out of the ordinary here.

The doorknob is warm in Patrick’s hand. He’s been holding it for a while.

It feels wrong that it isn’t night, wrong that he stepped through a mirror and now he’s facing Pete after so long of both of them avoiding it. His gaze flicks down to the book in his hand— a thick black book that is neither Patrick’s or Pete’s.

Patrick opens his mouth and forgets to check his words before they leave.

“It’s ours. We shared it,” he says, meaning the three of them that used to live here.

Now that he’s blinking the past from his eyes, Patrick can see the book he gave Pete back in that store the first day they met. He’d almost forgotten how he switched out one book— how he offered a magical tale over a tragic one. He hadn’t thought of how it could change something, how it’d appear back in his time, and he struggles to properly breathe.

Red-faced and eyes lowered, Pete can only twist his head back and forth as he says

No

over and over. Pete, drawn in on himself and shoulders slumped, thumbing through torn and twisted pages with almost superstitious reverence. If this book is here then, certainly, it must mean something.

And, so, Patrick reaches out to take it. Pete lets it go; Pete looks up. His eyes widen slightly and his lips part only to say, “I don’t remember ever reading this thing.”

Patrick doesn’t either and he hates that he can’t bring himself to say it, that he doesn’t know how to explain that it’s here.

“You just forgot,” he says. “You have a lot of books. It makes sense that you would.”

Happily ever afters beneath Patrick’s thumbs, flipping past each other with each smile brighter than the last. Even as he keeps his voice calm for Pete, his chest feels tighter and his vision swims— his words are barely alive. Unfortunately, the days of Pete noticing such a difference have passed and he steps back, courting isolation. Patrick refuses to look at him for much longer, incapable of bearing the sad image of him next to the thought of his good looks and easy manners— the past of affection and kind eyes. Those days, too, are gone.

Neither of them moves.

If they were in those days, Patrick thinks, he’d try to trick Pete into a conversation about whatever book they’ve last read. They’d go for a walk, passing Joe’s shop and laughing about the first time they met. As it is, Patrick’s feet keep still, refusing to take a step towards that store.

When Pete reaches for the book again, he’s gentle. His fingers brush Patrick’s, cold and shaking. Patrick finds comfort in how similar they are to his own. Then, Pete takes the book back, holding it to his chest. Patrick looks up slowly, knowing it will hurt but accepting it anyway.

The pain is confirmed when he sees Pete smiling not at him but at a spot just over his shoulder, hips already turned to walk away.

“I think I do remember this one,” he says. “You gave it to me when we met. I should probably read it again, find out why you picked this one.”
Patrick's mouth is dry."If you do find out, let me know."