Naked

Patrick caught my wrist before I could get entirely away. “Stay for a while. It’s Sunday.”

“Patrick…”

He didn’t let go. “Alex, tell Liv she should stay.”

“Olivia. You should stay.” Alex, still leaning, smiled.

I smiled, too, even as I turned and gave Patrick a good, hard poke. “I have a life, Patrick.”

He scoffed. “What are you going to do today? Hang around that cold apartment and fiddle with your pictures? She’s a photographer,” he added for Alex’s benefit, and jabbed at my ribs.

“Cool. What do you take pictures of?”

“Everything!” I said over my shoulder as I tried to dance out of the way of Patrick’s poking fingers.

I looked at him, hard. Last night he’d warned me off Alex as though my mortal soul depended on it, and now he was begging me to hang around for the day. Of course, he often persuaded me to stay longer than I’d intended, and often I let him. But I did have work to do in my studio, which wouldn’t paint or clean itself, and which had been sadly neglected since I’d bought it six months before.

“Patrick…”

Knowing he was manipulating me didn’t make it any easier to resist him. When he flashed me the familiar pout, the one that had always swayed me, I sighed. I glanced at Alex, who was watching us both with an expression I could only describe as intrigued.

“Alex is making pancakes,” Patrick said.

I looked at Patrick. Patrick looked at Alex. And Alex…Alex looked at me.

“I am,” he said. “And I’m really good at it.”

I knew enough to admit defeat.

“Fine, but I’m taking the first shower, and I don’t care if you run out of hot water,” I told Patrick, who smirked how he always did when he got his way.

Upstairs I bumped into Teddy coming out of his bedroom.

“You’re staying?”

Another man might have hated the fact I was still so much a part of Patrick’s life, but not Teddy. But then I’d never seen him hate anything. Teddy fully believed in that crap about lemons and life.

“Yeah. Just for a little while. I do have to get home tonight.”

He laughed. “You should move back up here, Liv. It wouldn’t be such a long drive then.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re as bad as he is. Annville’s only half an hour away, for crying out loud.”

Teddy had spent his entire life in Central Pennsylvania, a place where crossing the Susquehanna River could be considered entering a whole new world. He grinned. “But it’s Annville.”

“Pfft.” I waved a hand. “I’m taking a shower. I hear there are pancakes in the making.”

Teddy rubbed his stomach. “Yum. Our guest, I assume, not our beloved Patrick.”

Patrick never cooked. “Yeah. Hey, Teddy…” I paused and leaned against the doorjamb to my room. “What’s the story with him, anyway?”

“Alex?”

“Yeah.”

Teddy shrugged and his smile became a tiny bit strained. “He’s a friend of Patrick’s. He needed a place to crash. He’s only going to be here for a few more days. Nice guy.”

That answer floated between us, a bit of fluff on a current of not-going-to-bring-up-certain-topics. The topic in question being why Patrick felt he had any right or interest in my love life, or lack thereof. I shrugged, finally, because sometimes you simply have to put aside things that have no answer.

“Taking a shower,” I said, and Teddy left me so I could.

Forty-five minutes later, my stomach full of pancakes and turkey bacon and good, strong coffee, I was attempting to kick Alex’s ass at Dance Dance Revolution and failing pretty miserably. I had Teddy beat, and was pretty well matched with Patrick, but Alex…he was a superstar.

“My feet keep slipping on the dance pad,” I complained, out of breath.

“I’ll set myself to advanced,” Alex offered with a wicked gleam in his eye. He was practically rubbing his hands together and twirling an imaginary mustache. “You can stay at basic.”

I wasn’t going to turn down that offer. “You’re on.”

“I knew I shouldn’t have let you start playing,” Patrick said from his place on the couch, where he was reading a thick paperback novel.

At the sound of affectionate amusement in his tone, I looked at him while Alex used the Wii remote to switch the settings. Patrick, bundled under a heavy quilt, had gone back to his book. Teddy’d disappeared, probably to play The Sims on his computer upstairs. And Alex and I were playing DDR. It was a picture of lazy Sunday bliss, so why did suddenly it all feel so…wrong?

“Olivia?”

I turned at Alex’s question and flashed him a smile I couldn’t be sure looked real. “Yeah. I’m ready.”

He tilted his head the tiniest bit. “You want to take a break?”

Patrick must have heard concern in Alex’s tone, because he looked up again. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.” I waved a hand. “Too many pancakes. Let’s go.”

Alex had changed out of his Hello Kitty pajamas and into a pair of faded jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt, but his feet were still bare. He tapped one against the dance pad, but didn’t start the next song. He looked from me to Patrick.

“Okay. If you’re sure.”

“Sure. Let’s go.”

But there was no way I could beat him, even with the different levels set to make it more to my advantage. I was distracted by the sudden, unexpected wave of nostalgia and something else, something I couldn’t parse. My performance was sucktastic.

“I think you’re letting me win,” Alex said.

Patrick scoffed from the couch. “Olivia never lets anyone win. Take your victory and savor it.”

I gave Patrick a narrow-eyed glance. His teasing had a ring of truth to it that sat wrong with me. “I should get going.”

This got Patrick’s attention, and he looked up. “Now? I thought you’d stay for dinner, at least. Alex says he’s going to cook lamb chops.”