Will & Patrick Meet the Mob (11 page)

“Rumor has it Addison Rowe’s father is pretty upset the hospital won’t let you practice until the Hammond situation is resolved.”

“He should be. I’m her only hope.”

Jenny winces, sadness dampening her usual glow. “I heard it was terminal.”

“It is—if I don’t get in there and work a miracle.”

Jenny frowns. “I could talk to my friend at
The Healing Times
about maybe doing a piece on you and this situation. See if we can get some attention on the hospital. That might get them to change their tune.”

“They’re willing to reinstate me once some bonehead gets back from adopting a kid in China.”

“So, you just have to be patient.”

“Gimme the pickles.” She hands them over and he pops one in his mouth before adding two to his sandwich. “Anyway, so Will talked to Missy today. He gave it his best shot. Didn’t change anything.”

“I’m sorry.”

Patrick takes a bite of his sandwich and groans. “This is delicious.”

Jenny follows suit and nods. “Gourmet mustard makes everything taste good. So, you sounded surprised. When you said Will went to bat for you, I mean. Why?”

“I’m not sure why he did it.”

Jenny smiles affectionately. “Aw, Patrick. He loves you. Of course he’s going to want to fix this.”

“Growing up… No one ever stood up for me.”

Jenny glances up at him, her brow wrinkling. “Oh?”

He shrugs. “Poverty’s dog-eat-dog, even as a kid.”

“What about your parents? Didn’t they try to buffer it for you?”

“No.” A memory of his mother, pale and thin, bending over him to pull his blanket higher, floats to the surface. It’s not fair to lump her in with Gerry. “My mom died when I was eight.”

Jenny’s face contorts into the patented “Oh my God, I’m so sorry” expression everyone takes on once he delivers that news.

“Don’t bother with the sad eyes,” he says. “I barely remember her.”

“Well, that’s it’s own kind of sad, isn’t it?”

He shrugs.

“You don’t like talking about her?”

“I don’t like talking about being a kid. It wasn’t good for me. Parents are supposed to protect their children.” Patrick looks down at his wedding ring and sighs. “Even Will’s parents—screwed-up crazy people—try to protect him. Keep him safe.”

“True.” Jenny’s voice is soft, and she’s watching him carefully, like he’s a bird and she’s afraid he’ll startle away.

“My dad threw me in with sharks.”

“You lived near the ocean?”

“Figurative language. Look it up in the dictionary.”

“Jerk.”

Patrick smiles. That’s better. He doesn’t want her pity. “Will tries to keep the sharks away.”

“Of course he does. He adores you. He’d probably lure them with his own blood if it would keep you safe. Figuratively and literally, jackass.”

Patrick twists his wedding band around on his finger. “I feel safe with him.”

“That’s good. Since he’s your husband.”

“He keeps doing things for me.”

“Again. Patrick, sweetie, this is what spouses do. I’m sure you do things for him too.”

“But he does so much for me.” Patrick ticks off on his fingers. “The neurology unit. The sex. The hugs. He accepts me. He doesn’t judge me.” He feels like he’s missing something, the biggest thing Will gives him. And then it clicks hard when he says it again. “I’m
safe
with Will.”

“This is the most introspective I’ve ever seen you. You’re freaking me out.”

“Safe.” Patrick says the word again and it feels foreign, the sibilance buzzing his tongue and lips.

“You’re safe with me too, you know. And Don, and even with your frenemy, Andy.”

Patrick nods and scratches his ear. He’s not safe with Andy, but that’s not Andy’s fault and he’s not about to tell Jenny that story.

“That’s where you say:
Thanks, you’re safe with me too, Jenny
.”

“What you said.” He eats more of his sandwich, his brain feeling the contours of the word
safe
. Spelling it out, testing the edges. He likes it. It feels good. “Hey, don’t have your friend at
The Healing Times
do that piece.”

Jenny takes another bite of sandwich and asks around a mouthful, “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. Don’s been great to me since I got here. I don’t want to make him or the hospital look bad.”

“Okay. If you’re sure. But if they don’t treat you fairly, I’m going to personally lead the ‘Justice for Patrick’ rally.”

“You would?”

“God, you big dummy.” She slaps his leg. “That’s what friends do. They help each other.”

Patrick clears his throat and takes another bite of his sandwich. He needs Jenny’s help, actually. He just has to figure out how to ask for it. Maybe he should just say, “Hey, I need help.” Maybe that would work.

“Oh my God,” Jenny says. “You’ve truly never had a friend. Have you?”

“What? Of course I’ve had friends. I have colleagues, and in college there was a girl I didn’t hate.”
And Dinah.
“And it’s not like I’ve never had a relationship before.”

Jenny crosses her arms over her chest and narrows her eyes.

“What?” Patrick asks.

“You’ve never been in a relationship before Will. Admit it.”

“I’ve had men that I…”

“Slept with.”

Patrick’s heart races. Somehow they’re here. They’re right next to the conversation he needs to be having. He just has to make the leap. “Well, yeah. Emotions and sex. It gets all…messy.”

“If you’re doing it right.”

He touches his wedding ring again. “It’s easier, neater, to just get your needs met and get out.”

Jenny makes a face and laughs. “So what changed? How did you go from a guy who doesn’t have any friends, much less relationships, to falling in love and marrying Will in Vegas?”

Patrick stares at her, feeling like a deer in the headlights. His mind goes horrifyingly blank. This is his moment. He needs to tell her the truth. He has to ask her advice on how to make Will love him too.

Jenny laughs and slaps his leg again. “Oh, who am I kidding? We’ve both met Will. Who wouldn’t love him?”

Ryan
, Patrick thinks. Abusive, crappy, resentful Ryan who doesn’t see all the ways Will is beautiful and good. Patrick’s known Will is amazing from the start.

His mind floods with memories: Will riding his dick in Vegas and the shy smile he gave after he orgasmed and nearly fell off the bed convulsing. Will’s amber-brown eyes wet with tears in the afternoon light through the airplane window. The softness of Will’s smile as they stood by Manny’s stall together, and the stubborn set of his jaw when he confronted his father on the sidewalk.

“Patrick?”

He rubs his fingers over his eyes.

“Are you okay?”

“No.”

Jenny puts her hand on his arm, about to say something else, when Dylan’s wake-up cry comes piercing through the monitor.

“Little baby dreaming is screaming,” Patrick says miserably, picking at his sandwich. “I’ll go get him.”

“No, no, it’s too soon. He needs at least another thirty minutes or he’ll be off schedule. I’ll go soothe him back down. Wait here.” She stands, tightening her robe again, pausing by the doorway with a tender, worried glance at him. “I’ll be right back.”

Patrick hears her shushing Dylan through the baby monitor. He rinses off his plate and drops it into Jenny’s sink. Staring at the water running from the faucet, he tries to think of what he’s going to tell her.

Jenny’s not wrong. He’s never had a real friend. Not the kind of friend Will is or Jenny is proving to be. He’s had people he could laugh with over a joke, or talk to about the complexities of the subparietal sulcus, or get a beer and a blow job from without any shenanigans afterward.

But, aside from Dinah, he’s never had a
friend
. Not someone to share his problems with, or to expect any kind of help from if he needs it. Not unless he counts the time his fellow intern Richard Martinez sat with his arm around Patrick in the hospital stairwell for about thirty seconds after Patrick had lost a patient for the first time. Sure, it wasn’t long, but that was half a minute Richard Martinez didn’t
have
to spend with him, doing something that nobody else had wanted to do.

He doesn’t want to lose Jenny.

“Patrick,” Jenny says from behind him, wrapping an arm around his lower back, and shutting off the water. “He’s asleep again.”

She guides him over to the couch and pulls him down next to her, gripping his hand and tucking up her feet. “Talk to me. What’s going on? Is it Will? Are you guys having problems?”

Patrick takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. It’s been too many weeks since he practiced his yoga. He needs to get back to it.

“I can’t help you if you don’t spill.”

Patrick nods and lets the words form in his mind. He admires the shape of them and how they make his heart ache and flip like an acrobat. “Jenny, I need to tell you something.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m in love with Will.” Patrick blows out a long breath, a joyous hilarity rising up in him, and he says it again. “I’m
in love
with Will.”

“Okay? I already knew that?”

“I didn’t.”

Jenny’s eyebrows quirk and settle into a frown. “What?”

“I didn’t know I loved him until a few days ago.”

Jenny stares at him. “I…don’t understand.”

This is the hardest part. Telling his friend he’s a lying liar who lies. Patrick closes his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “We were drunk when we got married. Out of our minds. Didn’t even remember doing it the next morning. Not at first.”

Jenny pulls her hand away. “What are you saying?”

Patrick looks into her blue eyes and says firmly, “Our marriage has been a fraud. Well, it’s
legal
. Which is the problem.”

If he can make Will fall in love with him too, maybe they won’t need a divorce anymore. They’ll still have ninety-nine problems but that won’t be one.

“Wait, what?” Jenny shakes her head. “Why are you saying this?”

“It’s true.”

Jenny’s mouth hangs open. “I don’t get it. Why would you two come back here and tell everyone you were in love?”

“Money.”

“Money?” She blows a raspberry. “You don’t care about money. That’s ridiculous.”

“It’s complicated. I can explain.”

“Oh hell yes, you will! But you’re not a very good actor, and I’ve seen you with Will. You are in love.”

“
I
am. Yeah.”

“Are you saying Will isn’t?” She shakes her head and laughs shakily. “Is this a crappy Molinaro joke? You’re not making sense!”

Patrick takes hold of her hand and starts at the beginning, pretending that he’s talking to a two year old, using the smallest sentences he can. Finally, after he’s told everything twice, it’s clear that Jenny understands. She pulls her hand away and stares at him like he’s a stranger. It makes the deli meat in his stomach crawl up the back of his throat.

“I can’t believe you lied to me. I can’t believe you let me think we were friends.”

“We are friends. Which is your fault. If you’d let me have the jam doughnut and then left me alone, we wouldn’t be here now.”

“It was
my
doughnut.”

“I was there first.”

She crosses her arms and glares at him. “I can’t believe I agreed to share it with a liar.”

“I can’t believe I shared it at all.”

Her lips quiver and a small smile is accompanied by a giggle. “Don’t make me laugh. It’s not funny.”

“I know.”

She closes her eyes and shakes her head, taking steadying breaths. She’s distant and cool when she opens her eyes, but demands that he tell her more. “So what happened after you got to Healing? After you met me?”

He tells her about meeting Kimberly and Kevin, and the threatening letter from Tony. He tells her about Will’s initial determination to get Ryan back. He tells her how important it is she keep all this to herself, even now, and he’s relieved when her eyes soften with sympathy.

“Now, tell me how you fell in love with Will.”

“I didn’t mean to. It was a mistake.”

She shakes her head and laughs softly. “I hate that you’re so adorable that I’m about to forgive you for being a piece of crap liar.”

“I didn’t lie about the important things.”

She sighs. “So you didn’t mean to fall in love with Will?”

“It’s been horrible. Why does anyone want to feel this way?” He touches his chest, where his heart aches, and shudders. “Love is awful.”

“Love is beautiful, Patrick. Don’t regret it.”

He snorts. “I knew you’d say that.”