Loveless (Peterick)

♡11♡

It was the night he had been dreading every single day. He had known what his actions had led up to, why they had, but he couldn't seem to wrap his head around his mistakes just yet. He'd been given all the time in the world between his last encounter with Patrick to now with his face in his hands whilst he sat in front of an empty bottle of wine to fix what he had broken. Nothing was stopping him from going over to Patrick's right then and asking for his forgiveness yet again, but he didn't. There was a reason why he wasn't on his knees like he had been a week ago.

Pete was idiotic and stupid and a total jackass, and he knew that showing up at his friend's place would only make things worse. He had to let it go, move on like he'd done with Mikey. It wasn't hard to get over his tall co-worker. In fact, after a day or two of ignoring each other the pair seemed to fall back into their old ways of not realizing the other existed as they had before this whole mess started. It was far more difficult to do with Patrick, though, when he was all Pete could think about at his desk typing out meaningless articles, at home watching the noise on his television screen, or even with that empty bottle of wine staring back at him.

He didn't like having all these feelings built up inside him without any method of release. They didn't go away no matter what he tried. There weren't enough distractions in the thumb scrolls interchanging between social media apps, refreshing as if new content would magically appear because he needed it, or watching water drops plunk from his kitchen sink faucet when all hope was lost on a blank screen and a dark ceiling and a crowded mind filled with images of the blond boy with the green eyes that told magical stories beyond his own comprehension. Pete didn't know what he could do when the night was drawing near, and he was expected to show at some party he didn't even feel like going to anymore. There would be couples there, happy and smiling, things Pete didn't want to witness with guilt weighing him down in his chair so early in the evening or maybe it was just the alcohol buzzing through his head.

Andy was caught in the middle, and Pete hated to do it to him- to force him to choose between friends. He remembered what he had said about Joe and Patrick, but he couldn't let Andy slip away without wanting to know how Patrick was doing or if he had mentioned anything about Pete.
"I don't know, man," Andy would reply, "Why don't you talk to him yourself?"
But he didn't understand- Pete thought- he didn't understand what had happened between them, and he was left confused as to why his friends were avoiding each other like they were infected with the plague.

He wanted to tell him, open up with the new feelings he had developed strangely over the past week of sulking, but he couldn't. They were wounds he was struggling to lick up, things he was trying to hide from the world. If he were to leave them out in the open what would he be? Apparently a guy with his distorted reflection haunting him on a wine bottle because Andy was on speaker phone wondering why Pete was calling him drunk on Valentine's night.

"Sober up and get it together. Didn't you tell me you had a party to go to?"

"I'm not going."

"Why not? It was all you could talk about for months. Is it because of Mikey?"
"What? No. I don't even think about him anymore," Pete uttered.
"Then what's the problem?"

Pete shrugged but then remembered that he was talking to his friend over the phone and he wouldn't have been able to have seen that. He cleared his throat and dragged his fingers across the surface of his table, picking up on dust he must've forgotten to clean this week while miserable. Andy asked him again, repeated the question with much more concern and attention.
"I think I'm in love with Patrick," he told him.

There was a long silence on the other end, and Pete would have figured he hung up had it not been for the fact that his ID was still on his screen. Andy laughed. He laughed hard for a solid minute before it died down, and he was quiet again except for the giggles that bubbled afterward. Pete furrowed his brows and smacked his lips together.