Teddy thinks I’m crazy for having another party so soon after the last one. But what can I say? I like parties. Besides, I don’t want to go out anyplace around here for New Year’s Eve and nobody invited us anywhere.” Patrick shrugged. “You’ll come.”
“What if I have plans? Turn to the left a little. Hold up the cup. Look like, c’mon, Patrick, look like you’re enjoying it.” I peered through my lens to frame the shot I was supposed to use in an ad for a local café. “I’ve seen you look more enthused about watching Lawrence Welk reruns.”
“What do you want me to do, look like I’m getting ready to fuck the mug?” Patrick frowned and lifted the cup higher and forced an entirely false grin onto his handsome mouth. “Is this better? How’s this, Olivia? Ooh, coffee, I’m so horny for you…”
I snapped a couple of shots just to annoy him with later, when he saw how ridiculous he looked. “Quit being a jerk. C’mon, I need this for tomorrow.”
“Nothing like running behind schedule.” Patrick licked the mug.
I snapped another shot and thought I might frame that one as a gift. “It’s a last-minute job, and I can’t afford to turn them down.”
He shot me a glance, then put his pout into place. “How’s this?”
“A little less constipated, but yes. Good.” Finally I got something that would work. It wasn’t art, but it would do. Patrick put the mug down while I transferred the pictures to my computer.
“You’ll come, right? And dinner on Friday. You haven’t been over since the party.” He flipped through the large album of photos I’d chosen as my best, to show off to potential clients. “Oh, I like this one. Why don’t you do more of these, Livvy? They’re so good.”
I glanced at the picture, a nude I’d taken at a photography workshop I’d gone to the year before. “Because I’m not an erotic photographer and I don’t have much use for nudes.”
“She’s pretty.”
I gave him a look. “Yes. She is. She’s a model.”
He flipped a few more pages. “I like this one, too.”
A landscape. Nothing special. I could add text to it and play with the dimensions to use in brochures or Web sites. I shrugged.
“You don’t take compliments very well.”
I laughed and began toying with the pictures I’d taken of him. “I want to make my living doing this, Patrick. I don’t have any grand ideas of becoming a famous artiste. The work’s good. Yes. I get it. I’m not setting up shop at the street fair to sell my prints, okay?”
“You could have a gallery show. Your work is good, as good as some of the stuff I’ve seen hanging up downtown. You know I have a friend of a friend—”
“Stop,” I told him firmly. “Patrick, I love you, but I’m not having a gallery show. And besides, I know people, too, you know. It’s not like I couldn’t get something going if I wanted to.”
“So why don’t you?” He leaned against the large wooden chest of drawers I’d salvaged from the back alley.
I thought about warning him he’d get his designer jeans dirty rubbing up against the old wood, but decided against it. As fussy as Patrick could be, he liked to pretend sometimes he wasn’t, especially when we were alone and sort of reverted to the way we’d been as a couple. When he’d had to be what he felt was “manly.”
“Because I don’t want to.” I shrugged again.
“You should do it anyway.”
Now I turned to look at him full-on. “You know, you can leave anytime.”
Patrick-my-boyfriend would never have flipped me the finger. Patrick-my-boyfriend had insisted on using tools and playing sports. He’d farted and burped a lot more back then. I couldn’t say I wasn’t happy he’d let go of that.
“You don’t go that way, remember?” I said with a glance at his middle finger.
He snorted and stood up. “You’ll come to dinner.”
The past two Fridays I’d spent watching movies with Alex. “I might have plans.”
“What on earth could you be doing on a Friday night that would be better than games and food and drinks at my house?” He paused. “Do you have a date?”
“I love how you make that sound like science fiction.” I sighed, giving up trying to work on the pictures with him there. “As a matter of fact, my tenant and I are probably going to be watching the entire BBC production of Pride and Prejudice. The Colin Firth version.”
Patrick gasped and recoiled. “What? You…with him? But…”
He looked so shocked and hurt I shouldn’t have laughed, but I did. “He’s never seen it.”
“Liv!”
“Patrick!” I mocked.
He shook his head, frowning, brows pulled low over his blue eyes. “I knew you renting to him was going to be bad.”
“What’s bad about it?”
Alex had been great. He took the big garbage cans out to the Dumpster in back, had cooked dinner for me twice the week before, and hung out watching old movies with me. He had a great sense of humor and didn’t play his music too loud. He also liked to do yoga, shirtless, and that was a bonus. I’d found myself unable to sleep for thinking of him, but I didn’t want Patrick to know that. I sounded a little too gushy, too perky, but my focus was on the computer screen and not my tone of voice. Patrick’s silence alerted me to my faux pas, and I turned to look at him.
“Don’t be like that,” I told him.
“Well, you haven’t called me, like, in a week,” he said. “I thought you were going to come over to watch Supernatural on the big screen. You know Teddy bought the Blu-rays.”
“I’ve had to work, Patrick. I can’t just throw all that aside all the time.” I tried to sound gentle and it came out annoyed. Probably because I was annoyed.
Patrick just glared. He was jealous. This realization punched an incredulous laugh out of me. He hadn’t been jealous of the past three guys I’d dated, but he was jealous of this?
“Oh, Patrick.”
We knew each other well enough that some things didn’t need to be spelled out. He frowned and kicked at the floor. “I guess you’ll be spending Christmas with him, then?”
“Instead of you?”
He crossed his arms and looked dour.
“I do have a family, Patrick. My dad’s invited me home with him and Marjorie. And my brothers have, too.”
“And you’re going to go?”
“I think so. I don’t see them that much.” My brothers had invited
