Marianne by Elizabeth Hammer (best books to read in life TXT) 📕

She tipped her head back and tried to make out his face in the darkness. “Is that bad?”

Patrick kissed her lips again, more softly than before. “I just don’t want to hurt you.”

“You didn’t hurt me,” she said. “Well, technically, your teeth did kind of hurt... but I don’t mind.”

Patrick laughed a little and sighed heavily. “I know you don’t. That’s part of what freaks me out.”

“What?” she said.

“Sorry,” groaned Patrick, letting her go. He walked over to the windows and opened the curtains to look out. “I know I’m not making any sense.”

She could see him now, and he looked tortured again, just staring at the driveway. “You can tell me,” she said. “And I’m sorry I yelled at you when you tried to leave. I shouldn’t have done that.”

Patrick turned around and sat down on the floor with his back against the window wall. “Don’t apologize. I was being a jackass.”

Marianne went and sat next to him, bumping the side of his knee with her own. “You’re never a jackass,” she said. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

Patrick shook his head and stared across the room. “I am a jackass. I try not to be, but I still am. And that sucks.”

“I think everyone feels that way sometimes,” said Marianne.

“I know,” said Patrick, breathing out. “Did you ever love something so much that you were afraid to get your fingerprints on it? You were afraid to change it, afraid that you might wound it by leaving traces of yourself on it?”

“You’d better not be talking about me.”

Patrick shook his head again. “I just can’t seem to stop making the same old mistakes. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Impossible. There was no safer place in the universe than with Patrick. “How could you ever hurt me?”

Patrick turned and studied her face. His brown eyes looked black in the darkness. “I could get you pregnant.”

Stupid. He worried too much. “Don’t worry.” Marianne smiled slightly. “That’s not going to happen.”

Patrick continued to stare into her eyes and shook his head almost imperceptibly. Then she remembered what he’d said: old mistakes.

Patrick had a child already.

Marianne’s brain melted. She could almost feel it running down her back. Wait, no. She sat up a little. Everyone would know he had a baby. He was no deadbeat. Patrick would love his baby. He’d be proud of his baby. There was no way that Patrick had a baby. What then?

Ohh... Patrick didn’t have a baby. Not anymore.

Marianne sucked in some air, and Patrick turned his face away. She breathed in again. “Did she...” Marianne paused to change her words so that they weren’t a question. “She had an abortion.”

“Miscarriage.” Patrick’s profile was eerily perfect, glowing in the dim light. “I probably should have mentioned it before,” he said.

No wonder he was freaking out. Oh, man. What was the right comment, here? “So she... your girlfriend—”

“Brook.”

“Brook,” she repeated. She still didn’t know what to say and ended up sounding like a first-grade reading book. “Brook got hurt. And sad.”

Patrick nodded.

He was right before; he should have mentioned it. Hinted, at the very least. It was almost as if he’d lied to her. Marianne watched Patrick breathe in and out and told herself that she was not jealous. She was not hurt. She sat up and ran her hand through Patrick’s hair. He didn’t deserve suspicion. There would be no trace of pouting from her and no ex-girlfriend-bashing. At the very real risk of spontaneously combusting, she decided all of that. And then it was done. She could do this. She ran her finger down Patrick’s jaw. “How old were you?”

“Um... about twenty, I think,” he said. “She was nineteen, a little older than you.”

She waited for more details, but he seemed to be waiting for questions. She tried to think of some, though she wasn’t sure if she actually wanted to know details. “Was it scary?”

Patrick shook his head. “She didn’t tell me about any of it. Not for a while.”

“Wow.” Marianne nodded. “And then, did you handle it badly?” It was a guess based on how guilty he seemed to feel.

Patrick gave her a dirty look. “Aren’t you forgetting, Marianne?” He gestured toward himself. “I’m fricking perfect.”

She smiled.

Patrick suddenly covered his eyes with his hand. “I was so mean,” he breathed.

“Well…” Yeah, not the best reaction. “But I’m sure you were just upset,” she said, moving closer. “She should have included you.”

Patrick laughed. “Oh, I didn’t care about that part.” He sighed and dropped his hand. “Not back then. I hadn’t even known about it. And I didn’t want a baby, anyway; so what the hell did I care? I only got mean when she decided to leave.”

“Why’d she leave?”

He waited a second. “Loneliness, I think. Sadness. Guilt.”

“Guilt?”

“Guilt,” he said again.

Now that she thought more about it, it didn’t sound so strange. It wasn’t logical, of course, but from all Marianne had heard about such things, it wasn’t abnormal.

Patrick ran his hand through his hair, messing it up. “When she left, it pissed me off so bad. I thought she was so selfish, and I told her that. Just ripped her apart. Told her she was self-centered—I think that was the word I used. And that I was glad she was going. I told her she should take her nonsensical remorse to someone who gave a crap; but that she wasn’t going to find anybody.” Patrick pointed to an imaginary person in front of him. “I told her that she was an unstable, attention-whore, and that I didn’t want her anymore. Goodbye.” He looked at Marianne and smiled. “Neat, huh?”

Marianne smiled back. “Yeah,” she said softly. “You were pretty disgusting.”

“Were?” he said. “That part of me’s not past tense, Marianne.”

“Of course, it is. You’d never do that again.”

“I almost did! You could have gotten pregnant tonight.” He looked down at the floor. “What is wrong with me?”

“Nothing is wrong with you.” Marianne sat up straighter. “And that’s a different thing… I just meant that you’d never treat