You're a Hot Mess (Peterick)

Chapter Three - A Suitcase and a List

His fingers wrap around the glass as the liquid drains and the room's simultaneously got cold and hot.

I know he's too drunk to react, to know what he's even saying. Or maybe he isn't that drunk, and this is his newfound confidence. I can't tell. I don't want to.

"You have to... 'have' me?" I repeat, watching him stare at the wall across from him. For a second I thought he was going to kiss me, but then he said that and it feels worse. The guilt is heavier.

He nods, looking uninterested as if I should know this. "It's only been a few hours but I'm already filled with all this fucking desire. You do things to me."

"I wasn't good enough for you back then."

He shrugs, and I know he won't say anything else on the topic, not tonight at least. I don't want him to. I need to go.

"You can sleep in my room, I'm not going anywhere." He mutters after a few minutes. And I take up the offer because the view's beautiful.

"Uh.. night, Patrick." I say hesitantly, setting the glass I was previously holding on the coffee table beside him. I'm surprised it doesn't have finger marks imprinted into it.

He doesn't react. In fact he doesn't move until my hand's on the handle of his bedroom door and I hear a smash of glass. I don't have to turn around to know what he's done, but I do, and I see imprints of alcohol against the wall he was staring at, and my glass, shattered, at the foot of it.

"Fuck." He swears, burying his face in his hands. I open the door and don't look back to stop the feeling that I've witnessed something I wasn't allowed to.

I don't sleep that night, and I've a feeling neither does he.

--

I eventually decide to get up after I feel I've outstayed my welcome, and I exit Patrick's room, not needing to put on my clothes because I never took them off.

Patrick's nowhere to be seen, but I don't look for him. Instead I grab a page from the stack he has sitting beside his landline phone and fold it in half.

I scribble a message onto it, 'You can't. Keep in touch.', with my number printed underneath it and set it beside his phone in a triangular-stance.

I think about opening a window, let fate decide if it blows away and we don't see each other again, or stays put. But I don't like the way fate plays sometimes. Sometimes it cheats.

I want to be my own fate, to show it how it's really done. Here goes nothing.

I walk out of his apartment.

--

Not long after I arrive back home and Mikey's there. He asks where I've been, says he called me about a hundred times.

I know he did, I almost called him back a few times.

"I'm sorry." I tell him, because I knew it was a dumb thing to do. Disappear without telling him.

He smiles tiredly and nods, pulling me in for a hug. "It's Brendon you ought to apologise to." Mikey jokes into my ear, laughing lightly. I don't mention that he probably has a pretty good idea where I was.

"You hungry?" Mikey asks, heading into the kitchen to make something for me without waiting for an answer. I'm about to follow when my phone buzzes in my pocket.

I pull it out to see a message from a random number: 'We'll see about that.' is all it says.

I add the number as 'Patrick' before joining Mikey in the kitchen.