Clear Water (29 page)

Okay, I’ve got some bad news, and I feel really guilty.
(Here was when Whiskey’s heart failed.)
I don’t think I want to be a biologist like I told you.
(And here was when he wanted to strangle Patrick for scaring the hell out of him.)
I’m good at science, but I’m
really
good at yoga, and teaching, just like you said, so I’m thinking of studying Kinesiology. It’s going to take extra time, and I may be sort of a student freeloader for a lot longer than two years, but…
(And here, right here at the ellipsis, was where Whiskey wanted Patrick
there,
right
there
in his arms, on his lap, even, since he was so slight, because it was awesome.)
but I really like teaching. I like taking people who can’t move well and giving them something that makes them happy and gives them peace, and I think it’s so important and I love it, and I want to know more about it and I want to get better at it. I can be all sorts of things with it—a personal trainer, maybe a gym teacher with extra stuff attached, or a physical therapist. But I can’t be a biologist, even though I can still be your lab boy in the summer.

Whiskey had to take a deep breath after that one, because
Jesus,
wasn’t this the kid who had to get his shit together? He’d just confirmed what Whiskey had always known, which was that Patrick had
always
had his shit together—the world just didn’t know a bag full of prime shit when they saw it.

Of course, after the kite picture, Shawn started texting Whiskey more often. Whiskey wasn’t always excited to be getting texts from the guy—for one thing, it was hard to think he was an asshole when he was another way to know Patrick was doing okay.

@Whiskey—Did you ever get a chanfe do dribe mith my von?

Whiskey had to study this one for a few minutes before he responded.

@Shawn—No. I did the driving. Why?

@Whiskey—Because he’s scaring the fuck out of me and I was hoping you knew a trick to getting him to stay in his lane.

@Shawn—I take it you’re stopped now?

@Whiskey—We’re in a drive-through. He said he was hungry.

@Shawn—Then for Christ’s sake let him eat. Then ask him if he has to take a leak. While he’s in the bathroom GET BEHIND THE WHEEL.

@Whiskey—That’s your advice?

@Shawn—Then ask him GENTLY if he remembered his medication.

Whiskey wasn’t surprised when, an hour later, he got a text from Patrick.

@Whiskey—Good call on the meds, baby. Dad says he’s going to help remind me too.

@Patrick—Awesome. Try not to scare him like that again willya? I don’t think it’s good for his heart.

S
O
WHILE
Whiskey’s body was in the arctic, rolling in the great troughs of the choppy Pacific ocean and freezing his parts until they about dropped off, his heart was usually in Sacramento, and his dreams were all about holding Patrick tight against the gentle rocking of the houseboat. He was feeling particularly sorry for himself around the solstice, and not just because he hadn’t seen the sun for weeks either. When his phone first buzzed, he was hoping it was Patrick, trying to cheer him up.

@Whiskey—Merry Christmas, jerkwad.

@Patrick—What the fuck did I do?

@Whiskey—You’re not here, and I’m not feeling charitable.

@Patrick—You’re right. I am a jerkwad. It’s totally and completely my fault that you PUSHED ME OUT THE DOOR.

@Whiskey—Oh, God. Don’t remind me. It’s embarrassing how depressed I am.

@Patrick—Is Fly Bait there yet?

@Whiskey—She gets in today. Dad and I spent all day decorating—he bought like an entire forest. See?

The photo was of an impressive, twelve-foot tree in the living room of a house with a raised ceiling. It was the first picture Patrick had thought to send of the house itself.

@Patrick—Jesus, Patrick—you’re going to live in a houseboat after living THERE?

@Whiskey—Don’t try to change the subject.

@Patrick—Which is?

@Whiskey—Fly Bait’s coming and I’m real glad, but I also miss the hell out of you. I think of you there and lonely and it makes me all achy. Make March come faster, dammit!

@Patrick—I love you too. Send pictures. Tell Fly Bait she’s a bitch because she never texts. Tell Loretta she’d better be taking care of Fly Bait.

@Whiskey—You and your ‘take care of people’. All we really want is to be loved.

@Patrick—You are.

@Whiskey—So are you.

What followed was a two-week orgy of pictures and texts. Fly Bait had kept her hair trimmed and was constantly seen in girl clothes and makeup—it would have freaked Whiskey the hell out, but she looked happy, and at peace, and, when Patrick was in the shot, even a little bit maternal. Every shot with Loretta and Fly Bait in the same frame showed the gorgeous, bisexual knock-’em-dead bombshell of a woman looking besottedly at Whiskey’s oldest friend, and he could live with that.

Also in the photos were Patrick’s dad and a fortyish woman who had roots she didn’t touch up as often as she should and a sizable ass. She also had a shy smile and was constantly trying to back out of family shots in spite of Shawn Cleary’s surprisingly gentle hands on her arm or her shoulder, encouraging her in.

@Whiskey—This is LoriAnn. She’s not great at yoga, but she’s really sweet to my dad, and we all pretend that she gets there really early in the morning instead of spending the night.

@Patrick—Who are the two girls who look like they smelled your sweatsocks?

@Whiskey—Her daughters. Her ex-husband is a fundamentalist minister. It’s an odd mix.

@Patrick—Be sure to give them tarot cards, rainbow bracelets, and incense in their stocking, okay?

@Whiskey—Be nice. They’re only here for Christmas Eve. LoriAnn will be here for Christmas day, and she’ll miss them a lot.

@Patrick—You humble me with your goodness.

@Whiskey—Shut the fuck up.

@Patrick—That’s better.

@Whiskey—Besides. Fly Bait already got the tarot cards and rainbow bracelets.

T
HE
ship was a big steel coffin locked in the sub-zero anti-firmament of endless fucking night. The only thing Whiskey had to warm his bones and fill the constant, gnawing emptiness spawned by data and statistics on dying fish was the magic glowing box and the people on the other side.

And Patrick, bless him, came through. For five and a half months, Patrick came through. Every day, there was a text or a picture, a joke or an Internet link—and only some of them were for porn. Every day, Patrick reminded Whiskey that when this trip, this supposed highlight of his career, was over, he’d be going back not just to a job at a university and a place that he was truly starting to miss, but also to his home.

Patrick was his home. One day in early February, he got a shy little text about how Patrick’s second blood test had come back clear—“with all that that implies,” and Whiskey’s “heart is home” became desperately tangled with “sex is home too!” and he thought he might end up spending that last month setting a world record for masturbating in a tiny ship’s berth.

He never once thought about sleeping with anyone else, even though there was no shortage of flesh, male and female, much of it willing out of boredom alone, pressing up against him in the crowded hallways of the ship. It didn’t matter. He was more than pretty sure he could make it—the trip was supposed to end in March, and he and Patrick were shored up, they were strong, and then—

“Hey, Keenan!” John Alstridge was a fortyish environmental fanatic who had never gotten into the habit of calling him Whiskey.
No one
on the ship had. But Alstridge was the leader of the expedition and the team leader of the study, and it was his grant Whiskey was working under, so Whiskey smiled at him like a good employee and showed polite interest over the microscope bay he was stationed at.

“Yeah?”

“Did you want to sign on for another six months here?”

Whiskey looked pained. The study was not going well—the supposed restrictions were apparently doing jack to help the fish population, and both Greenpeace
and
the oil companies needed more, better results over a longer period of time.

“Not really,” he said truthfully. “Do I have to?”

Alstridge looked disappointed, which was gratifying, but what he said next was even better. “No—are you sure? We’ll miss you here. You’re a good researcher. Most of these kids can’t tell a microbe from a microscope.”

Whiskey looked at him helplessly. God, there were so many ways to make that funny, and Alstridge had missed all of them. “I miss the holy fucking shit out of my boyfriend,” he said baldly, and Alstridge took a step back in total surprise.

“You’re
gay?
”

“I’m bi. Is it a problem?”

The corner of Alstridge’s lip curled, and Whiskey had the feeling that the two of them never
were
going to be buddies. “No. But if your personal life really means that much to you, you may want to take me up on this. If you don’t want the extended post, we’ve got a plane going to Juno to pick up your replacement in three days. Do you want to be on it?”

Whiskey started laughing from the gut. He was laughing so hard, so deeply, that he couldn’t even manage the “Oh
hells
yeah!” that should have gone with the laugh, but it was okay. Alstridge took it as a yes, and Whiskey finished his bit of business and went to pack.

H
E
DIDN
’
T
tell Patrick. On the one hand, it would have been wonderful to have someone waiting for him at the airport, but on the other hand, he’d been on a boat at the North Pole for five and a half months. He hadn’t seen the love of his goddamned life in that long, and he didn’t want to look like shit.

He rented a car and went to Walmart, buying toiletries and some jeans and a sweatshirt that didn’t scream “geeky scientist locked on an old steel ship for five and a half months” and a razor, because he hadn’t shaved in that long either. Then he drove to the gym that took his money whether he worked out or not, scared the living shit out of the poor girl behind the counter with his membership card, and took the longest goddamned shower in the gym’s history.

He left his hair long, because Patrick liked it that way, but he shaved and remembered deodorant and a brush and all of those things that made civilization civilized. Then he took out his phone and looked up the address where the constant stream of cookies (because that seemed to be what Patrick thought he’d miss the most) had been mailed from.

Oh, God. It was even more frightening than he’d thought when he’d seen pictures of the inside.

The turn-off to the suburb was unassuming, but holy crap on a little bit of toast, once you turned off Hazel into the windy roads of the high-rent, many-acred, six-bedroom minimum Better Homes and Garden showcase pieces, well, unassuming went right out the window.

All Whiskey could think as he drove past big houses, huge houses, and mansions on extensively well-kept grounds was that Fly Bait wouldn’t have thought to warn him about this, and Patrick thought it was normal.

He finally found it. Two stories of marble finish on the outside with a quarter mile of driveway to get there. There was a gardener working on it as he drove in, and (literally) a maid opening one of the upstairs windows as he got out of the car.

But Patrick’s truck—the electric green one that Patrick had shown so much pride in—was parked outside the front, and the bed was full of cans of paint and carpet backing, and Whiskey knew that Patrick would be here and that he was very possibly well and truly home.

Whiskey’s heart was hammering in his stomach when he knocked on the door.

Patrick opened it, wearing yoga pants and a ribbed tank top and… oh, God. The look on his face was everything Whiskey had hoped for. He didn’t say anything, just smiled a little, framing Whiskey’s face with his hands and pulling himself up for a tentative, shaky, wing-flutter of a kiss.

That turned into a striking predatory bird after a poor little jackrabbit the minute Whiskey felt Patrick’s breath.

Their mouths didn’t so much meet as they collided, detonated, conflagrated, and all Whiskey knew was that one minute, he was standing hesitantly on the doorstep, looking at Patrick’s open-faced joy, and the next he had Patrick pinned against the entryway wall. He was holding Patrick’s hands above his head with one hand and surfing his taut stomach and narrow chest with the other, grinding his groin into Patrick’s and welcoming each counterthrust in return.

He pulled back to gulp in a breath, and Patrick said, “You’re early?”

“You complaining?”

“Fuck no!”

And then they lost time again. Patrick’s hands lay limp and pliant in his grasp, and Patrick’s stomach was doing come-hither-and-grope-me flutters every time Whiskey neared the waistband of those loose yoga trousers, and Patrick’s tongue….

Oh. Yeah.

This time it was Patrick who pulled back. “The houseboat’s not done.”

“Don’t care,” Whiskey muttered. He used the opportunity to nibble down Patrick’s jaw and then down the delicate cords of his neck. He found the scars showing under the black ribbed tank and kissed them, laved them with his tongue, completely rewarded when Patrick whimpered.

“Oh geez that’s—”
gasp
“—tender!”
Gasp.
“Whiskey… mmm… yeah… more!”

Whiskey complied, tasting the faintly salty tang of Patrick’s skin and scenting the musk of his sudden-passion sweat, then rucking up that maddening tank top to just suckle on a shell-colored nipple. Good… good… tasted so
good!
He let go of Patrick’s hands to put one hand on Patrick’s shoulder and another on his chest and just held him there while he sucked and nibbled and teased. Patrick’s hands started battering at his shoulders, and the sounds he made were demanding and desperate.