Shine - Lauren Myracle [8]
“Shut up, I’m not fat,” I’d say, flustered by his touch.
“I’m just messing with you,” he’d say. He’d tickle me again to make me squirm. “Just means there’s more of you to love, that’s all.”
In the laurel thicket, where no one could see or hear us, I widened my eyes and whispered, “Omigosh, Patrick. Did you look? Were the girls pretty? Did they have big—you knows?”
Aunt Tildy called them bubbies. My brother, Christian, called them a word that rhymed with “bits.” I didn’t call them anything, not boobs or breasts or bosoms or hooters. Patrick didn’t call them anything, either.
“There were guys, too,” he said. “In the pictures.”
“Gross,” I said, delighted. “Could you see their . . . ?” This time I didn’t say “you knows.” I just lifted my eyebrows.
The skin of Patrick’s neck grew red, and then all the way up his face and out to the tips of his ears. I assumed he didn’t like talking about boy parts any more than I liked talking about girl parts. Although actually, I did like talking about them, just not labeling them. And actually, Patrick did, too.
I didn’t yet realize that Patrick was as handsome as Tommy, just in a different way. I didn’t see it because Patrick wasn’t a boy. He was my best friend.
Plus, Tommy and Patrick were totally different. Tommy was cocksure of himself, while Patrick was shy, with a habit of ducking his head and looking up slantwise as if he wasn’t sure he was supposed to be there. Where Tommy’s eyes were blue, Patrick’s were green. Not the swampy green of the swimming hole, but a startling bottle-glass green, like a 7UP bottle shot through with light.
“If I tell you something, will you promise not to tell?” he asked me in the laurel thicket.
“Sure,” I said. It was delicious telling secrets in the hushed privacy of the forest, where not even the sunlight could cut a path to the leaf-covered ground.
“Really promise,” he pressed. “You can’t tell Gwennie or Bailee-Ann or anyone.”
I nodded. Did seeing all those pretty girls do something to Patrick? Was he going to confess a secret crush? Or maybe one of the other guys had confessed which girl he had a crush on. What if Patrick was going to tell me something about Tommy?
Patrick swallowed. “Seeing those naked pictures . . .”
I waited. Above us a bluebird whistled tur-a-lee, tur-a-lee.
“I didn’t like looking at the girls,” he said in a rush.
“Oh,” I said. That wasn’t what I had expected, but . . . oh. “Well, that’s fine. In fact that’s nice of you, Patrick. That means you weren’t being sinful.”
“No, I was.”
“Nuh-uh, ’cause you didn’t pull up the dirty pictures,” I argued. Patrick was always hard on himself. He cared about God, and he cared about Mama Sweetie, and he worried about disappointing them. It was my job to assure him he didn’t.
“Tommy brought y’all in and showed you, so if anyone was sinful, it’s him,” I said. “And like you said, you didn’t even like looking.”
“Except I did,” Patrick mumbled.
“What’s that?”
He tucked his chin to his chest. “I did like looking. Just . . . not at the girls.”
“Oh.” This time the processing took longer, but not by much.
Later, when I mulled it over, I realized I’d already known. I just hadn’t known I’d known.
I told myself it wasn’t a big deal. Patrick liking boys was part of who he was, but it was hardly the whole picture.
I WASN’T SURE HOW LONG I SAT IN THE WINDOW nook. When I came back to my body, I found myself gazing at the windowpane, but not actually seeing anything. I blinked to wake up—and then bam, I was awake all right. My brother, Christian, hadn’t attended this morning’s service, which was no big surprise. But there in the dirt parking lot was his Yamaha, and parked alongside it were Beef’s Suzuki and Tommy’s bright yellow BMW.
Where were the owners? If their motorcycles were here, then they were, too. A panicked scan told me they weren’t in the fellowship hall, so where were they?
I located Christian leaning against the church’s brick