Page 45 of Strawberry Kisses

“It… it was back in 2014 when the first gay weddings were taking place. I saw a picture of these two guys getting married, and I suddenly had this huge rush of relief and this singular thought of ‘I can get married now’. And then it all kind of clicked into place. Everything suddenly made a lot of sense.” He smiled at me weakly. “See? Silly.”

“That’s not silly at all, babe. I think that’s adorable as fuck.”

“Really?”

“Of course! And one day you’re going to find someone to have the perfect wedding with, and it’ll be beautiful and fabulous and everything you deserve.” I tried to make myself sound positive, even if I was dying a little inside at the idea of Patrick marrying someone who wasn’t me. A strange expression I couldn’t place dashed across Patrick’s face, but it was gone too fast for me to read.

“Did you ever have a moment like that?” he asked. He’d put our empty plates on the ground and now his fingers were stroking down my arm.

“The clicking into place thing?”

“Yeah.”

“Not really. I mean, I figured it out really early on. My closet door was see-through.” I laughed, and Patrick chuckled. “But when I finally told my mum, it all felt a thousand times more real if that makes sense?”

“It does.”

We sat in comfortable silence for a while, watching the sun set over the horizon. The sky was splashed with colour—pinks, purples, oranges, and reds bleeding across the sky. It was utterly spectacular. Patrick’s hand was still resting on my arm, casually stroking up and down. It felt like an unconscious gesture, something soothing you’d do for the person you cared about without even realising it.

Except Patrick and I did this all the time, and we’d been doing it for years. I couldn’t even remember the first time we’d cuddled like this anymore. I doubted there was anything more behind it than habit. Even if I desperately wanted there to be.

I wondered if I should talk to Patrick about how I felt.

That’s what the characters in romance novels said you should do—the good friends who always came to rescue the protagonist when they were floundering in their own stupidity. I’d done it myself with Taylor and Simon. Well, sort of. More like I’d accidentally drawn Taylor into confessing his feelings while Simon stood behind him without Taylor realising he was there. I was still taking credit though.

Maybe it would be helpful to get some external perspective on this whole mess or at least another voice of reason who’d tell me to quit while I was ahead and not break Patrick’s heart. I couldn’t be what he needed. I just needed someone else to tell me that because my own resolve was starting to wear thin.

I knew we’d both hinted that we wished it were real when we’d been outside after John’s speech, but I wasn’t going to count that. I’d been raw and vulnerable, and I was sure Patrick was just being sweet. Besides, I’d kissed him before we could talk about it, and it hadn’t come up since, which was just proof that it was nothing more than a momentary fantasy. One of those moments where dreams drifted into reality but ultimately were nothing more than leaves on the wind.

If I wanted to keep Patrick in my life, I’d have to work out how to let him go. Otherwise we were going to end up in a short, disastrous relationship that utterly destroyed both of us, after which we’d never speak to each other again. And that was everything I didn’t want. Because no matter what, I couldn’t lose Patrick. I’d never survive the fallout.

Perhaps I was being selfish, and maybe it was stupid to shoot down the idea of a relationship with him before we’d even tried. But I’d had my heart broken enough times by stupid fuckbois to know how relationships went when I was involved. I valued my friendship with Patrick over anything in the world, and I loved him too much to put him through a breakup. And everything with me was always going to involve a breakup. My exes had all made that quite clear—I was the problem in my relationships. My personality was incompatible with anything more.

So I was going to make sure it didn’t happen with Patrick and me. I was going to stop it before it had even started.

The only problem was making sure I actually went through with it.

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