Patrick noticed the tears on his cheeks as he was getting dressed and
with an annoyed flick of his wrist he brushed them off, but that didn’t stop
more from appearing.
He
sat down on the bench and pressed his palms to his eyes. He couldn’t stop from
seeing her and hearing her. He couldn’t erase the memory of feeling him and
smelling him. He couldn’t think of anything other than what had happened. And he
couldn’t stop listening to the voices around him.
He felt Larry’s fingers on his wrists, soft and warm pulling his hands
from his face. “You can’t go on like this little Casseau,” he whispered and he
kissed him softly on the mouth.
Patrick reacted immediately pushing Larry off him, but he didn’t react
exactly the way he thought he would. Ten minutes ago in that sauna Patrick knew
he would have yelled at him or punched him. “Please, don’t,” Patrick said
feeling a sob shuddering in his chest. “I don’t think I have the strength
anymore. I’m tired.”
Patrick looked at Larry, pleading with him. Larry didn’t have that lusty
glow in his eyes that Mario did. They seemed to be swimming with soft sadness
and sympathy, almost the way Michele’s did the first time he had told her what
was happening to him. He knew now that he should have just shut up and dealt
with it. Why did she stay with him?
“It’s not about strength, Pat,” Larry said, “Not with me. I’m not trying
to do anything but help you do what you need just to survive. I want to help
you.”
“Help me?” Patrick asked dully.
“We need you,” Larry said, sliding on the bench next to him. “This team
is going to need you, we don’t have anything else.”
“The playoffs?” Patrick snapped. “Is that all you’re worried about? Then
stop! I know what I can do and I know I’m going to do it. I don’t care what you
dumb shits are worried about or thinking.”
Larry’s arm slid over Patrick’s shoulder and he could feel the Goosebumps
prickle on his flesh when he realized how much he liked Larry’s warmth against
his body. There was the tickle of Larry’s lips at his ear. “You need me,” he
whispered. “You need someone in this locker room to support you. You know you
can’t carry a team that you don’t feel attached to, no goalie can. It’s never
been done.”
Patrick closed his eyes feeling the heat building up inside his body. He
was helpless again, just as he had been before. It never seemed to
end.
“I wouldn’t hurt you,” Larry’s voice slid through his brain. “I would
only make you feel so much better.”
He felt the tears begin to drip from his eyes, he felt his lips
trembling; he felt Larry’s mouth on his cheeks, kissing at the tears. “I’m so
lonely!” Patrick moaned
You’re holding your glove hand too high.
You come out too far to cut the angle.
You’re not quick enough on the pucks in corners.
Patrick called his father almost nightly now. He wanted to tell his
father how lonely he was. He wanted to tell his father what had happened. He
wanted to tell the old man what Mario had done to him. These were things he
could never tell his father. So he would merely say to him, “I think I’m playing
terrible.”
You should work on moving more quickly from side to
side.
You should concentrate more on seeing between the legs on screened
shots.
Hold your shoulders up, you’ll get those high shots
better.
Those were the only things he got from his father, the only words of
comfort.
“You don’t have to be lonely,” Larry whispered.
“How could you let him do that to me?” Patrick choked as Larry put his
arms completely around him. It wasn’t unpleasant to Patrick, he felt comforted
in a way, and he felt wanted. Michele didn’t seem to want him touching her
anymore, and he hadn’t realized how much he wanted to feel this with another
person, how much he needed it.
Larry was right, Patrick didn’t feel any pain from what he was doing. He
was amazed at how pleasurable it actually was and now he hated Mario even more
for the clumsy, ham handed way he had fumbled with him. Larry was soft voiced
and gentle with him, asking him at intervals if he was uncomfortable or in any
sort of pain. In a way, Patrick began to feel somewhat alive again, invigorated,
aware of his own ecstasy.
“But I love Mimi,” Patrick said as decisively as he could after Larry had
pulled away from his body, allowing him to get dressed again. “I couldn’t just
abandon her now, not after everything that’s happened. I owe it to her to help
her!”
“How is she doing?” Larry asked, a crinkle to his eyes. He sounded
genuinely concerned.
“Not good,” Patrick said looking into Larry’s face and feeling a blush
fire on his cheeks. He wasn’t sure now how he felt about the man. He felt shy
now, almost unable to believe what they had just done together. With Mario he
could always look at the man with hate, but with Larry... there had been
intimacy there. He couldn’t deny that. “She cries all the time now and when she
does I can’t watch her. I just... I just cry in another room. And I tried to
kiss her and she didn’t want me to. I’m afraid that when I come home she might
have done something terrible to herself. I don’t know if she wants to be
helped.”
“Women always want to be helped, Pat,” Larry said. His voice sounded
gravely and tired. “Even when they push us from them it’s their way of telling
us that they want to see us put a great effort into helping them. Women will
always lay the test for us, it’s just the way it is.”
“You should see her,” Patrick said. “She takes forever with the bath
sometimes. She just yells at the bathtub and cries at it. I think she’s scared
of water now.”
Larry nodded with a slight frown on his mouth, peeking from his mustache.
“Understandable.” he said. “I’m not surprised.”
Patrick looked at Larry and began to feel hope something he hadn’t felt
for a long time. Larry did care. He was sympathetic and genuinely wanted to help
him. Perhaps Larry loved him, but somehow Patrick didn’t think that love entered
into the equation here, not like it did with Michele. This wasn’t the same
between them.
“I don’t know what to do,” Patrick finally said.
“Please.”
Larry smiled and this time Patrick didn’t shrink away from him when he
came to him, tousling his hair with his fingers. “I could talk with her, make
her feel a little safer?”
“That would be great!” Patrick said eagerly, feeling
relieved.
Larry kissed him quickly on the tip of his nose. “Of course it would,” he
replied.
Patrick actually dozed off in the car as Larry was driving. Robinson
could have been taking him anywhere and Patrick really wouldn’t have
cared.
“Here ya go,” Larry barked as he tossed a six pack of beer into his lap.
“Fill up.”
Patrick happily opened up a can and began to chug it down, feeling that
warm comfort of alcohol seep through his empty stomach and to his veins. It was
the only way he felt right sometimes, was to have beer in his system. He felt
content now, knowing that Michele was at home waiting and he would bring in an
actual friend who would talk to her and comfort her. He decided that he wouldn’t
tell her about what he had just done with Larry, however. She didn’t need to be
bothered with that.
After he had swallowed down the second beer, he was in a very good mood.
He couldn’t believe how depressed he had been earlier in the day and how hungry
for attention. What had been his problem? In fact he was almost embarrassed at
how ridiculous a figure he must have seemed to Larry.
“I must have looked real stupid to you earlier, eh?” Patrick said as they
went up the apartment steps. “Crying like I was a baby
whore.”
“Come here,” Larry said as they stood outside of his apartment door and
he surprised Patrick with a tight, warm kiss.
Patrick let him, still in awe of what it felt to be the submissive soft
one in a kiss and then his hand found the doorknob. Of course it was unlocked,
Michele never seemed to lock the apartment nowadays. Patrick lost his balance
and fell onto the floor. He couldn’t stop laughing, why did Larry look so
serious?
And then he heard her beautiful voice.
“You haven’t,” Michele said and then paused. “You haven’t intoxicated him
again?”
Patrick knew she must have been talking to Larry. There was no reason for
her to be worried about Larry getting drunk. Now she was worried and he felt a
little guilty.
“No,” Larry replied and Patrick looked at her as she stood in that large
robe, hiding her pale, smooth body underneath it, a body he hadn’t been allowed
to touch. “He’s not drunk, far from it.”
There! Patrick thought with some triumph. Already he is trying to relieve
her worries!
Where it all got away from them, Patrick didn’t want to admit. The moment
Larry had forced a kiss on her at the kitchen table was where it struck him that
he had probably made a big mistake in letting him in the apartment. But did
either of them have enough in their tanks to put up another fight? All Patrick
could do now, he knew was make sure that Larry didn’t hurt her, that he treated
her as gently as he had with him earlier in the day.
It was his name Michele kept calling. Patrick took a satisfaction in that
as she moaned his name over and over. It was his mouth she kissed deeply and not
Larry’s; it was him that she touched.
Patrick finished the rest of the beers but really, he didn’t feel as if
he got drunk from them. Michele was awake, he could feel how restless she was in
the bed next to him and he couldn’t hear a thing from Robinson. He could hear
them talking and she sounded sad. She wanted him to leave. Patrick knew he had
made a mistake.
“Don’t you dare touch him!” she screamed when Patrick felt Larry’s lips
on the back of his neck.
It cut Patrick through to know that still she cared about him and was
still trying to protect him from the world. He had failed her. Burning tears
began to seep from his eyes as Larry laughed at her and began to talk to her.
Patrick couldn’t really understand what Larry was telling her, he was too
distraught to listen.
But he peeked at them and saw as Larry’s pale body moved upon her, he
could see her thighs open for him and slide around his waist. She was learning
just like he was that there was no use in denying them anymore. He could see the
sharp, abrupt movement of his body as he pressed himself into her and he could
hear Michele squeak almost as if she were in pain.
“Oh you are sweet, aren’t you?” Larry groaned and she kissed him on the
forehead.
“They’re not going to hurt us anymore, Patrick,” Michele said to him late
the next morning after Larry had left.
Patrick was surprised at the calm flinty tone in her voice. He hadn’t
heard her take a tone like that since before... well in a while. He looked at
her and felt himself redden. He was expecting her to yell at him or cry or just
plain collapse after what he had allowed to happen. Instead she looked more
beautiful than he had ever remembered her to look. She seemed animated, her
cheeks and lips had color, and she was smiling without
tears.
Michele poured Patrick a bowl of cereal and one for herself. She placed
his bowl in front of him. “There,” she said. “
“I like corn flakes,” Patrick replied not knowing what else to
say.
“I’ve been thinking all morning,” Michele said through a mouthful of
cereal. “And your friend might be correct. There’s not much we can do to erase
what has happened, we can only protect ourselves in the
future.”
Patrick raised his eyebrows.
“We’re not going to survive as victims,” Michele continued. “It’s not
possible. If they think they can just treat as us whores then they’re wrong! We
can hurt anyone twice as much as they can hurt us, and we can enjoy ourselves
far more than them.”
Patrick shook his head. “Michele, we can’t
attack...”
“Who said anything about attack?” Michele snapped flushing with that
quick temper of hers that had been dormant these past weeks. “Your team, your
sport, your Code seems to be built upon some game. All we need to do is play it
and win it.”
Patrick couldn’t resist a smile suddenly understanding something about
her resilience that he recognized within his own chest. “I think I like the way
you’re talking,” he said.
Michele smirked and the way her eyes flirted with him spooked Patrick
somewhat. He had never seen a look like that on her before; there was something
cruel and catlike about it. “We’re just trying to survive here are we not?
There’s not shame in that.”
Links to other sites on the Web