Patchwork Paradise(24)

I sighed and put my beer down. “I don’t know. I don’t want to, but I can see how it wouldn’t be a bad idea to try. I’m . . . I don’t want to move on. I don’t feel ready. But I know he’d want me to. And I don’t—” I fiddled with the label on my beer. The words stuck in my mouth. Even though I’d thought them over the past few weeks, they still felt like a huge betrayal.

“What?” Thomas asked gently.

“I don’t want to be alone for the rest of my life,” I admitted.

He nodded and looked away. “No. Me neither.”

“You?” I sat up in surprise. “Why would you be alone? You’re Mr. Suave, with your door swinging both ways and the ‘I don’t want to settle down’ speech you gave that first Christmas you joined us.” He didn’t say anything, wouldn’t look at me. Unease made me shift in my seat. “Did you find someone?”

“No.” He drained his beer. “But maybe I realized that I’m waiting for something that’s never going to happen.”

I didn’t know what that meant. He jerked his thumb in the direction of the bathrooms, gave me an apologetic little smile, and left. I didn’t see him for the rest of the night.



“You look like you swallowed a lemon.”

I blinked and glared at Cleo, who pushed a cup of coffee across the counter and sat down on a barstool beside me. She and Imran lived in a large apartment on one of Antwerp’s boulevards, high enough not to be bothered by the noise or smell of traffic. Imran was out with friends playing tennis all Sunday morning, so Cleo had invited me over to prove dating sites really did suck donkey balls.

“‘My name is Johnny Deep,’” I read. “‘I’m a nineteen-year-old gay male interested in group casual.’ What does ‘group casual’ even mean? ‘Johnny Deep’? Really? And he’s nineteen! They’re all either nineteen or in their sixties.” I snapped the laptop shut. “I don’t want to date. I changed my mind. I’m getting a cat. Two cats!”

Cleo stopped stirring sugar into her coffee and made a big show of opening the laptop again. “What about this guy?” She clicked on the one guy I’d been trying to hide because I knew she’d zone in on him. “Peter, thirty, veterinarian with his own practice.” She whistled between her teeth. “And he’s the only one with clothes on in his profile picture. Bonus!”

“He’s got a big nose,” I said sullenly.

“That’s just a bad angle. And look! He’s from Antwerp. Perfect! Email him.”

“Cleo,” I whined.

“Email him!” she repeated as her doorbell rang. She stood and pointed a finger at me. “Do it.”

I huffed and I puffed and I clicked on the Contact Me button, dawdling as I heard her shuffle about the hallway, then muffled voices and pounding footsteps on the stairs.

Dear Peter, I wrote, and immediately deleted it. Hi, my name is Oliver and I saw your profile on BoysOnly. Ah, Jesus. Should I be judging him for making a profile on a site with a name that bad? He’d have to judge me for looking at it in the first place, and it wasn’t like the Belgian gay population was swimming in dating site options. I’d love to learn a bit more about you. Oh God, how awful. I backspaced.

“Tell him his profile looked interesting, and you wouldn’t mind learning more.”

I startled and turned around. “Um, hi, Thomas.” My cheeks flushed. He didn’t look much better, only he was scowling.

“Are you emailing the veterinarian? He’s a veterinarian,” Cleo added to Thomas as she wandered back in. His scowl deepened.

“Yes, fine, whatever.” I wrote something approximating Thomas’s suggestion and hit Send, mostly because I wanted to stop these two gawking over my shoulder. “There. Done. If I get ax-murdered, it’ll be your fault, Cleo.”

She blanched, and Thomas gently hit my shoulder. “That’s not funny. And if you do meet up with him, you need to text me where you are and where you’re going if you’re going anywhere.”

“I’m not going to go anywhere with anyone on a first date!” I almost yelled, scandalized. “Oh my God.” I clasped my hands over my mouth as something occurred to me.

“What?” Cleo asked. She seemed concerned, but I knew that sparkle in her eyes. I sometimes thought she was psychic.

“I have literally,” I said slowly, eyeing first her, then Thomas, “never kissed anyone but Sam. In my life. Never mind . . .” Sex, I thought. Oh God. Sex with someone else. How could I even contemplate it?

“You should practice!” Cleo squealed gleefully.

“I’m not twelve, Cleo. And besides, you have too much going on up here and not enough down there”—I indicated the areas in question.

She zeroed in on Thomas, who looked like he was about to jump out of a window.

“I am not going to smooch my friends for practice. I’m just going to have to deal. Right?”

“Right,” she said.

Somehow it felt like Sam was laughing at me.

We didn’t talk about practice kissing anyone after that. Cleo dragged Thomas and me out on a reluctant shopping trip. We only agreed to go because we had Christmas gifts to take care of, and the weather was fairly mild for the beginning of December, so now or never.