Dear Patrick

A strong, cold breeze blew a strand of my hair into my eyes, blocking my sight of the 5'10 silhouette in the live Chicago skyline. He turned around and smiled. "Hey Lana."

"Hi." I whispered. I walked over to him slowly and we sat together. A strange breed of quiet befell us. There was the noise from the sidewalks and the noise from the buildings and the noise from the cars but there wasn't any noise between us. There was just understanding. There was resolved conflict. There was an alien calm in the air and it was a feeling that was foreign to the both of us. Neither of us dared to break its security, its warmth, the confidence it gave us. So we sat.

I thought about what he was thinking about and he was thinking about us. His nose was red from where it curved away from his face to the point where it formed his nostrils. He was breathing slowly, almost carefully- almost like he felt the moment he was in was glass, like he feared its fragility. I gazed passed the small clouds of hot breath he was blowing out at a misplaced star. It was all on its own, in the middle of the sky.

"How weird is that?" I accidentally said out loud, breaking our serenity. Patrick looked at me and then turned to match his gaze to mine.

"What about it?" He asked softly

"There's one star. The whole entire sky and there's one star."

He thought for a moment. "It's pretty foggy, that's probably why."

"My dad used to tell me that stars were what watched over us."

He smiled slightly, "Not angels?"

I shook my head, "My real dad. My real dad used to call my mom an angel. So when she went off the edge, he changed the story to guardian stars, not guardian angels."

Patrick nodded his head slowly, almost knowingly. "I can understand that."

There wasn't much to say. "Maybe that's my guardian star."

Patrick smiled. "Let's go inside. I think the cold's hitting you pretty hard."

When we got up I felt an abnormally sharp pain in my abdomen but decided to ignore it. "You okay?" Patrick said, worried.

"Yeah," I nodded, "I just got the chills."

"Hey Lana," Patrick said. I turned my head up to him to see what he wanted. He put his lips on mine and held them there for a couple of seconds. The warmth of his body enveloped me. For that moment, I wanted to die. I sincerely wanted to die. I prayed that the single star, my guardian star, would crash and burn and kill me in its explosion. I wanted to die feeling safe, because I'd come so close to death so many times feeling the complete opposite. But the star didn't, so I figured that it was just a normal star. And that I'd have to savor the moment.

***

"I just really fucking missed you."

I was wrapped up in his arms on a bed big enough to fit fifteen bodies. I removed my head from his chest and kissed his cheek. "I missed you too."

I could tell that what I said wasn't enough for him. His reaction expression was fake, I could see right through it. He needed to hear more than what I had said. He needed an explanation for what had happened between me and Toews. He needed to know why I loved Toews enough to sleep with him. Or why I didn't love him enough to not sleep with Toews. All these questions he needed answers to, and more importantly, all these questions he deserved answers to. But I wasn't able to provide with him anything. All I could say was sorry. You can't bullshit someone's heart. You can lie to it, if you're really good, and you can even trick it- but you can't bullshit it.

I wanted to tell him I was sorry but he had fallen asleep.

There was a ring on my finger but it didn't feel like there was anything between us. So I thought I'd get up and take some sort of walk, to get some fresh air. I scolded myself for the terrible idea but went along with it anyway. I took a sweater quietly from Patrick's drawer, put on a pair of his socks and my boots, and then slipped out of the room and down the hall. When I got to the entrance of the living room, I heard a noise- a loud creak like the one the floorboard in front of the fridge in the kitchen made when someone stepped on it. I felt a strong urge to throw up, but I didn't. I tried to get back up the stairs but my anxiety fucked with my control systems and my knees started getting all shaky. You'd think I'd be fucking used to this by now but I wasn't. My legs were numb, I couldn't feel them. I looked down at my hands, they were shaking furiously. I heard my heartbeat pounding in my ears. It got black around me and suddenly, it was all black. I passed out.

Notes