Chapter 18

I shove through a wall of ignorant Sophomore girls to get through to my locker, which normally irritates me, but when I reach the other side of the wall to see Patrick standing by my locker, it gives me reason to not bother wasting my breath to make snotty comments to them regarding their choice of location for their standing.

"Happy Monday," he greets me, sarcasm rich in his tone. I shrug. Regardless of the day of the week, I feel the same at 8:00 in the morning.

I start spinning the numbers of my combination, "Well, considering I don't buy into the stigma of Mondays being the root of all evil, it is in fact a happy Monday."

"I suppose I should have seen that coming."

"Probably," I agree. He smiles, leaning against the locker beside mine while I empty my books into my locker and remove the ones I need for class.

"Do you have plans for the weekend?" he asks, and odd question since the previous weekend ended less than ten hours ago.

"You mean do I have plans made five days in advance? No, I don't."

"We should go to dinner again."

"As long as you can find a restaurant that serves something other than dead cows, pigs, and chickens….oh, and no fish."

He gives me a weird look that quickly transforms into a smile. "La Casa de Verona will serve whatever is requested." I pause in the middle of putting my Chemistry book away. To say I am shocked would be an understatement. He shows up at my bedroom window at least three times a week, but I have no idea where he lives. It's information like that that he has never willingly offered up. I'm curious, so I welcome the idea, but I wonder why he suddenly wants to let me in to a part of his life that I've never been welcome to before.

"Your house?" He nods and I drop my chemistry book into my locker and turn to him with interest, "You cook?"

"No, I order take-out and put it on nice plates," he says with a smile so charming that I overlook the lack of effort being put forth.

"I appreciate your honesty." I close my locker and we begin walking toward my first hour class.

The small, shabby house on Mountain View doesn't seem any different from a hundred other aging bungalows in the neighborhood. A particularly unfortunate shade of yellow paint peeling off the wood trim on the front porch, a shaggy lawn, a few small trees. It looks quite ordinary, in fact, like you could see it in any quiet, suburban neighborhood in America.

I put my car in park and look more closely.

"It's…." I smile as I try to find the right word, "quaint."

"Quaint." He approves the word with a nod, confirming that he finds it to be an appropriate adjective for the place that he lives. We get out of the car and he leads me to the door.

Any natural scent that the house normally possesses is covered by the scent of the take-out that is already in the kitchen waiting for us to consume it.

"What is La Casa de Verona serving tonight?" I inquire, the scent overwhelming me and making my stomach growl so loud that I swear he can hear it.

"Rice and vegetables. I figured I would keep it simple."

"Wise decision. Not a lot that can be wrong with the basic rice and vegetable meal." I follow him into the kitchen where he opens the oven and pulls out two glass plates that are already made. I glance around, but I don't see any take-out containers. However, a pot with dried up rice still left in it is sitting on the back burner of the stove waiting to be washed. Despite his expressed intentions to order take-out, it seems that he actually made the meal himself. "So you do cook?" I inquire, motioning toward the pot.

"There was a bit of a cooking hiatus after the food poisoning incident last month….but I decided that this event would note the day I resumed cooking."

"On that note…let's eat!" I test one of the plates he set on the counter to make sure it is isn't going to burn me. When it proves to be safe to touch, I pick it up and wait for him to lead to wherever we will eat. He smiles and leads me to a small dining room right outside the kitchen. The many scratches on the wooden table we sit down at imply that it has been around for a while. I notice the faint smell of smoke rising from the cushions on the chairs as we sit down and the pristine plaid curtains that hang from the window, looking out of place in such an unfriendly room. The wall behind Patrick is the perfect wall for pictures and wall decorations, but it has been left a harsh gray. It's a long haul from what my own dining room looks like. "How long have you lived here? In this area, I mean."

"We've lived in the area my entire life. We moved into this house when I was nine," he replies. "I'm still not sure I like it."

"Why not?"

"It's-" the sound of the front door opening makes him pause mid-sentence. From where he sits he can see the front door, and he doesn't look too happy about whoever is coming through it. A middle-aged man that looks like a former frat boy enters the room, his hair gelled and a tight black t-shirt covering what might have been a six pack at one point but has transformed into something completely unlike it as laziness prevailed over the years. He glances in my direction but doesn't bother to make an acknowledgement. He looks to Patrick.

"What the hell are you doing here?" His words are as cold as I expected them to be.

"I'm sorry, did I ruin your plan to do it with another one your little sluts on the couch?" Patrick spits in a tone so shockingly nasty.

"Yes, in fact, great minds think alike, I guess," he retorts, looking in my direction. My jaw drops at the fact that a complete stranger just had the nerve to call me a slut. I'm in such shock that my natural reaction of getting up and kneeing him where it hurts is delayed. Patrick glances down at his food, composing himself, and then sets his gaze back on me. He's speaking calmly, but I can tell that it's just an outward show.

"My room is right around the corner. Can you go sit in there for a minute while I handle something?" he requests, his voice low and monotone. I comply with Patrick's request, though I know this isn't doing much for the slutty image that this man has in his head of me. The bedroom door is barely all the way shut before I can hear muffled yelling. I listen, but through the door it is harder to understand the quickly fired words.

Instead of trying to decode what is being said in the next room, I examine the room that I stand in now. It is the only room in the house that actually looks like it has been lived in. There are posters on the wall of bands that I recognize, a bulletin board full of pictures that appear to have been taken a long time ago, and some concert tickets to the bands whose posters hang on the walls. The bed isn't made, but the black comforter is pulled up to the pillows. The floor is clean except for a few school books and stray papers. On the far side of the room is bookcase with every shelf filled to the max.

I grab one of the books, prepared to read the back to get an idea of what kind of stuff he reads, and then sit on his bed. Before I can read the first line, though, the door opens. Patrick, looking much more distraught than he did when I left the room, enters and locks the door behind him.

"Jump out the window," he says, avoiding eye contact with me. For a moment I am distracted by the blood on his face, but I get the feeling that he isn't up for any argument or questioning, so I do as he tells me. He unlocks and opens the window for me and then holds my hand as I jump out to keep me from falling. He grabs a box of Kleenex off the shelf and throws it out the window before him.

We quickly walk toward my car and get in. He hits the lock on his door and pulls the mirror down. He nurses his bloody nose with a bundle of Kleenexes and takes another Kleenex to take care of the cut on his forehead.

"Sorry," he says quietly, "That kind of ruined the night, didn't it?"

"What happened?" I ask. He shrugs.

"My step dad," he answers. "We clash a little bit."

"A little bit?"

"This is the first time this has happened," he assures me, though it doesn't make me feel much better.

"We should call the police," I say, grabbing my cell phone from my back pocket. He casually reaches over and takes the phone from me, dropping it in his lap as he continues putting pressure on the bleeding areas.

"No."

"Patrick, we can't just let this-"

"Kat, I know you're trying to help, but don't," he says. I put the car in drive and pull away from the curb, "I'm not going to the hospital either."

"We'll go back to my house."

He dabs the wound on his forehead, which seems to be bleeding a little less now, "I don't even know what he threw at me."

"He threw something?"

"Hence the painful injuries."

When we finally make it to my house my dad's car is nowhere to be seen, which is a relief since I am pretty sure bringing my beat-up boyfriend into our kitchen while my dad is making dinner wouldn't go over so well.

"My dad keeps a first aid kid around every corner," I say as I head for the "emergency supplies" drawer in the kitchen.

"What happened?" I hear Bianca gasp from behind me, walking toward Patrick with a glass of tea in her hand. This is the first time I've even noticed her presence. Patrick eyes me, requesting help.

"Oh….we were playing football and…." I shrug as if the rest is self-explanatory.

"Since when do you play football?" she asks, eyeing us both suspiciously, "and since when can footballs do that?" she challenges, and I guess it's true that a football cutting someone in the manner that Patrick's forehead is cut is pretty far out.

"Hey…can you go get me the Hydrogen Peroxide and some cotton balls from the upstairs bathroom?" I ask edgily.

Bianca shrugs, "I guess."

We're quiet for a few minutes while he takes a new round of Kleenex to blot his wounds.

"Is that the stuff that stings," he narrows his eyes at me suspiciously as if I am purposely choosing to cleanse his cuts with something that will burn.

I shake my vehemently, "I don't think so." The smile that immediately appears on his face confirms that I am a terrible liar.

"Kat, I wasn't born yesterday."

"Really? I could have sworn you were one of those rare, 6'1" infants with facial hair."

"I need to teach you to lie," he says as he takes a seat at the counter. Bianca comes back in with the black bottle of peroxide and sets it down in from of me.

"Is this the stuff that burns?" He asks Bianca casually, as if his point isn't going to be riding on whatever answer she gives.

"Like hell," she responds as she resumes drinking her tea. He pushes the bottle away from himself.

"No thanks."

I raise an eyebrow as if to silently question how serious he is about being afraid of a little burning, "Seriously?"

"It hurts enough as it is."

"It'll hurt even more if it gets infected," I say. I feel like I am a mother talking to a five year old kid with a scraped up knee, "Are you sure we shouldn't go to the hospital? Maybe you need stitches."

"It's not that deep."

The kitchen door swings open and my dad enters. His previously happy expression changes to that of distaste, as it normally does when he sees Patrick.

"I thought you two were…" he starts harshly, ready to reprimand me for having "the Manboy" in the house while he wasn't home to supervise. He stops as he sees the blood, but his voice doesn't become any less harsh, "You get in a fight?"

Patrick smiles wryly, because that is all he can manage at the moment, "Gang initiation."

I look at Patrick, not sure where to go from here. It doesn't seem like he wants to make a big deal of this by telling everyone, but I wasn't expecting my dad to be home so I hadn't prepared anything to explain this. I look back to my dad, who looks terrified because his lack of sarcasm-detecting skills have kept him from realizing that Patrick isn't actually in a gang, "Dad, he's joking."

He looks to Patrick, "Ha, ha," he replies dryly, "What actually happened?"

"Can I tell him?" I ask Patrick, barely above a whisper. Out of the corner of his eye he glances at my dad and then back at me, contemplating whether this is a wise decision. He finally nods at me and then gets up and takes the peroxide and cotton balls into the bathroom around the corner without another word. I watch until he is out of sight and then turn to my dad, completely unsure of how to explain this, even if it is all the truth.

"What happened to a nice, safe dinner?" he demands.

"His step-dad came home and was being a complete jerk and Patrick asked me to leave the room and I guess it all got physical and…"

My dad's expression doesn't show any sign of sympathy. "So, he made sure you were safely in another room before letting it get rowdy?"

"Yes."

"Hmm," he replies thoughtfully, "And you're okay?"

"Of course."

"Well, did you call the police and report it?"

Patrick enters the kitchen again, a cold rag compressing his forehead.

"No," he answers decisively, "I'm sure I did just as much damage to him, if not more; I don't need to spend a night at the police station answering a bunch of questions about what happened."

"Does this happen…often?"

"Normally it doesn't get physical."

For the first time, I realize that the reason this fight got physical and none of the other ones did might have had something to do with me, and the comment made toward me. With nothing else to say about the subject, my dad examines the wounds and agrees that they don't need any serious medical attention.

My dad agrees to let Patrick stay the night on our couch, but he sleeps on the floor right outside my door to ensure that nobody has "too much fun."