Unstuck (32 page)

“Better than ever,” he smiled wider “I feel alive, I feel like I could do anything,” he kept on smiling.

“I meant about the project,” I said confused.

“The same. Right now I feel everything in my life is falling in its rightful place,” I nodded. I knew that everything included me but I wasn’t in a place where I wanted to think about it.

“Well, this surely is going great,” I finally looked back at the syllabus “I know,” he grabbed the paper from my hands and smiled again. The smile he gave when he was proud of himself like the one he had when he came up with the idea of buying the academic content from Stinson, or the one he had when he told my mother whatever he told her back in the golf club.

The ornaments came around 4 in the afternoon and Patrick asked them to put them in the living room. There were at least thirty big boxes around in Patrick’s living room (yes it was that big). Patrick asked me if opening the tree was also part of my excitement and I said no just decorating so he asked the guys from the store to do that for me. They opened the tree and placed it in one corner of the living room next to the ceiling to floor window that overlooked the property. I was happy to have the tree in there because I was sure I would be able to see it from the pool house.

We spent the rest of the afternoon coming up with ideas for MBU instead of relaxing or work on anything else. We loved the idea of having a dream so big that could actually grow into something amazing. Patrick actually dared to dream about making this so big that people from all over the world would apply. I didn’t doubt one second that he could do that. I was scared I wasn’t going to be there to see it. How could I? How could our little kissing game end in something that would allow me to be here when that happened? Those thoughts definitely put a dent on the good mood we had built through the day. So , when dinner was over and Patrick went back to his office I went to my room and took a bath and after that I phoned Nick.

“Sugar,” he said after only one ring.

“Nick,” I said throwing myself on my bed still wearing my purple robe.

“How are you?” he asked in a soothing voice.

“Confused as fucking hell,” I answered with my eyes glued to the ceiling.

“Tell me,” I could hear him moving around.

“Do you have time?” I asked still admiring the ceiling.

“I do but Stacy is here I don’t know if you mind that,” I heard him whisper “I don’t. I’ve already talked to her,” I sighed.

“I know,” he said speaking in a normal voice.

“Of course you know,” I smiled. It was cute that they had the extreme communication where everything was shared. It was so corny; it made me sick but happy.

“So tell me,” and on I went telling him everything while he made the oohs and ahs in the right places.

“So, you’ve kissed a lot,” he concluded.

“Yes but now… what?” I asked.

“The real question is: do you want to sleep with him, Sugar?” he asked in a serious tone.

“Yes,” I was reaching out for Nick because I was in desperate need of honesty, brutal honesty and in order to receive that I had to be honest as well.

“Ok, so? What are you afraid of?” he asked as if it was that obvious what I had to do next.

“Ruining the friendship we have. Losing everything I have. Losing him,” Honesty. I shocked myself when the words came out of my mouth because I always thought carefully about placing the word best friend in my erratic thoughts.
Losing my best friend
was something I always thought but that night I said
Losing him
.

“I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that having sex with your friends reaffirms the friendship,” “Nick, be serious,” I said.

“I am, Sugar. You have to stop over thinking this. You have to let go of your obsession with control. Who knows this could turn into something more.”

“No,” I said almost too loud “This can’t turn into something more than great sex once or twice,” “Why?” he was being patient. I already heard in his voice that he wanted to strangle me.

“Because I don’t do relationships,” I whispered.

“Sugar.”

“I just don’t, Nicholas,” I said interrupting him.

“So you are attracted to him. Why don’t you go up to his room right now and just jump his bones,” like it was that easy.

“He’s not in his room,” I said as I turned over and stretched my neck to see that he was still in his office.

“You don’t know that,” he said because he loved to argue with me.

“I do actually,” I was still looking at him. He was on the phone with someone. Smiling. The smile he had for Brian and sometimes for me.

“How do you know that? We’ve been on the phone for almost an hour,” He really loved to argue “I’m looking at him right now,” I said embarrassed.

“Ew, Lucinda Stuart are you stalking him?” I laughed out loud.

“No, I can see him from my window. He is in the phone with Brian,” I said as I looked at him.

“I really don’t want to know how it’s that you know it’s Brian,” I sighed. I didn’t want to tell him so I was grateful when he went on “Seriously, Sugar, you need to figure this out because this is no way of living. Besides you haven’t had sex in months, that’s awful.”

“It’s,” I nodded to myself.

“Talking about sex,” I heard Stacy’s voice.

“Ew, enough I really don’t want to picture you two having sex. I’ll let you to your night activities for now,” I said.

“Who said we only do it at night?” I heard him holding back his lau.ghter “Ew. Stop. I’ll talk to you later,” at this point I was laughing as well.

“Later I might be busy still.”

“Bye Nick,” I said and hung up.

I close the blinds and changed into my pjs before opening them a little. There he was, still on the phone not smiling anymore. He had a small frown; it wasn’t even a frown he looked as if he was talking about something important. I sighed and turned on the T.V. I flipped channel after channel until I was tired of the nothingness that meant to do that. I was bored as hell and it occurred to me that I would use my time wisely. I grabbed my laptop and googgled Patrick Maynard for the first time ever. I’d never ventured to search his name just like that. I used to go to specific economy and business sites where I would search for his name or company. Today I wanted to know about his past, his dirty socialite past. I began by looking at the images and of course what immediately stood out were a few pictures of us.

“That’s new,” I said as I opened a picture of the two of us leaving his apartment in NY. We were both laughing at something. Probably some idiotic thing, we hadn’t slept all night, we were tired and in need of food. You could clearly see in the picture we hadn’t slept. I didn’t venture on reading the article that went with the picture.

After that picture I saw some of him alone during galas. Whoever saw these pictures would say that he looked perfect, handsome, and happy to be there; I knew different. He looked uncomfortable in almost all of the pictures in his adult years. Once I got to the old pictures I saw that he was very into being a socialite. There were lots of pictures from when he was in his 20s I assume and he posed for the camera with a wide smile, like he was trying to be sexy on purpose, of course, he didn’t fail. In those pictures I saw him with a lot of girls, models and a couple of celebrities. I had to laugh at that because I remembered what he told me the time we were club hunting with Regina. He had slept with lots of celebrities. He just didn’t take them out on dates.

And then, the party pictures. Those were a revelation; Patrick going into clubs, Patrick coming out of clubs, Patrick making out with strangers and one that I will never forget, Patrick throwing up on the street. Wow! That was special. I wanted to feel sorry for him but it was too funny.

Of course, because of the Maynard last name, a few of his brothers’ pictures popped up. Both of them. Jameson seemed to have the hippie, relaxed vibe since he was young; there were a couple of pictures of him in a protest to save the white rhino, he had long hair and looked weird. I laughed out loud. There were pictures of Stuart. Well, Stuart could have a competition with Patrick to see who had the most exposed teen years because I googled him and I found not only 1 but 3 pictures of him throwing up in the street. A couple of pictures of a street fight with some drunken dude and the rest of them were just like Patrick’s with girls and during red carpet events. It seemed Stuart became the Stuart I’d met the moment he set foot in college because from then on there were only red carpet pictures of him. I guess Patrick wins in the early twenties exposure. I closed my laptop with a smile on my face. It was nice getting to know more of Patrick and his family.

Next Morning I woke up renewed and excited. It was decorating day and I couldn’t wait. I showered really quickly and wore a pair of jeggings, snickers and a sweater with a t-shirt underneath. It was impressive how fast the winter was coming. I was sure it would snow any day then. I went down the stairs and start preparing the coffee pot. While the coffee brewed I went out to the living room and contemplated the tree. It was white and usually white trees weren’t warm and homey but this one was so full; it reminded me of snow, I know it was the whole point of being white but it actually looked like it was snowed in. It made me want to hug it because I was sure it would be as fluffy as a teddy bear.

“You really love Christmas,” I heard Patrick say from the foyer.

“Just the decorations,” I said turning around and walking to the kitchen. Patrick followed me and I gave him the binder as he sat on the stool in the breakfast bar. “We don’t have any leftovers,” I said smiling.

“Oatmeal please,” he said and I nodded. I made two servings of oatmeal and gave one to him.

“Do you want to eat it in front of the tree?” he asked “I know you are kidding but during December the midnight munchies will be held in front of the tree,” I declared and he nodded “As you wish, Pepper,” he said.

After breakfast I did the dishes and told Patrick that he could go to work if he wanted because I was opening all the boxes first to see what I had to work with but he said that he had cleared all his work schedule for today in order to watch front row my complete process. I shrugged and warned him that this would take me all day. He didn’t care.

And so the decorating process began. I opened all the tree decorations first placing them around me and opening them so I could look at them. They were beautiful. I’d decided to go with the black and white with red accents color scheme. I thought it would match perfectly with Patrick’s living room, the black chairs in there, the white couches and black throw pillows on them as well with the hardwood floors. The red accents on the decoration were only to make it more Christmas-y. We had checkered ornaments with little red bows on top, striped ornaments, chevron ornaments, solid black ornaments, solid white ornaments, polka dot ornaments and a few solid red ornaments, not much only to spray some red in the tree.

“So,” I said as I tried to hang an ornament on the lower part of the tree “I googled you last night,” I said and saw Patrick looked up from his iPad.

“You did?” He asked.

“Mmhmm,” I said while hanging more ornaments.

“What did you come up with?” he sounded worried.

“Well I stuck to the pictures because there were so many, Patrick,” I said trying to hold my laugh.

“Oh no,” he finally said.

“I saw the one where you are throwing up in the street,” I finally turned to look at him.

“I wasn’t even drunk! I had some bad shellfish,” He shook his head “Well you’ve seen me throw up, it’s only fair that I got to see you in action,” I said grabbing another ornament and looking for the perfect place for it. “And all the girls, Patrick,” I finally said. He sighed loud enough for me to hear. I heard him moving and then I found him in the couch in front of me. I was sitting on my heels in the floor.

“You know I wasn’t serious with any of them right?” he asked with that frown I had seen the night before while he was on the phone with Brian. I was pretty sure it was Brian.

“I know, Patrick. It doesn’t matter you were young and living the life,” I said returning my eyes to the tree.

“I guess,” He shrugged.

“I saw Jameson and Stuart too,” I said laughing

“Did you see Jameson’s protests?” He smiled

“I did! He had long hair. He looked weird,” I said shaking my head as I grabbed a checkered ornament.

“And it smelled because he was in a saving water phase. I remember I asked him once to collect the rain water so he could shower and not waste water. He smelled so bad,” He said laughing and I did too.

“And Stuart,” I said “he stopped the whole scene when he went to college?” “Yeah, my father told him that he had assured a place in the hotels if he got his shit together. He took it too seriously though,” Patrick said and I nodded.

“It was enlightening, my research,” I said smiling and turned to look at him.

“Well the cat is out of the bag,” he said and went back to his iPad.

“I found a new picture of us I hadn’t seen,” I said with my eyes glued to the tree.

“Yeah?” he looked up and I nodded “from when?” he frowned.