AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Secret or no, though, Patrick wouldn’t have changed a thing. He sat in a dazed silence in the car back from the pub, thinking of the people he’d seen not just on the stage but also in the audience—trans kids who couldn’t be older than nineteen or twenty laughing and woo-hooing along to the cabaret next to gay men in their fifties, safe and at ease in this tiny garden with its high walls and glittering priestesses. He hadn’t fully grasped what he had been distancing himself from, until now. Not just the tans, traps, and tank tops he’d come to associate with the WeHo bars he’d frequented when he first moved to LA, but that feeling of belonging. Of being entirely, unquestionably at home among strangers.
Patrick removed the red shoes before exiting the taxi, walking barefoot to Will’s front door with a heel dangling from either hand, reveling in the way the cool night air and rough pavement felt on his tender feet. Pain, pleasure, when was the last time he had been so present in his own body?
Will helped him out of the wig, Patrick unaware of just how much weight he had been carrying on top of his head until the very moment it was lifted, and unzipped the jumpsuit. His touch was precise and impersonal, like a doctor giving an exam, his focus on removing the clothes without bunching or tearing them. Patrick was used to standing still, mentally detached while costumers dressed and undressed him like a mannequin, and had long since shed any notion of modesty. And yet he felt exposed now, stripped to his underwear, face still painted for the gods, a mermaid caught between sea and land.
He pulled his pants and T-shirt back on, then followed Will into the bathroom, where he was handed a packet of wipes and set about removing the last traces of his new alter ego, Infamy.
“Thank you,” he said, once he could begin to see himself again. “Tonight was…I’ll never forget it.” Will smiled at him in the bathroom mirror.
“Don’t mention it,” he replied. “I’m of the opinion that everybody should do drag at least once in their life.”
“I don’t just mean that. Although it was incredible. But also, just…letting me into your world. Meeting your friends, your sister. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this…” He tried to think of how to put it. “Connected, I guess.”
He pulled Will into a hug, his body acting on instinct to fill the gap where his words seemed to be failing him. I am so grateful for this, he wanted to say. I am grateful for you.
“That lot?” Will tutted. “Oh, you’re welcome to them.” But he said it gently, and Patrick could hear the smile in his voice. He drew away and saw that he’d left a trace of makeup on Will’s cheek. Without thinking, he reached out and wiped it off with his thumb. He let himself pause like that just for a second, cupping Will’s jaw in his hand, then dropped it.
“I should go,” he said.
“OK,” Will said instantly, nodding rapidly, and Patrick realized just how exhausted he must be after putting him in and out of drag and taking him out for the night, how ready for his needy new American acquaintance to leave so he could get some sleep. He remembered the way Will had tensed when he had put his arm around him earlier tonight and decided he had definitely misread things.
It was enough, he told himself, to have this funny, strange, kind person as a friend in this unfamiliar place. It had to be enough.
Will walked him to the door, and they paused there on the threshold. Patrick didn’t want this night to end, wanted more than anything to stay here, to go back inside, to grab Will’s hand and do what a braver man might.
“Good night,” he said, instead. “I’ll…call you tomorrow.”
“OK,” Will repeated, and Patrick watched as he closed the door, seemingly nothing left to say now that they were both men again.
Chapter 15
Jordan called the next morning while Will was making coffee. That, in itself, was strange: The two of them tended to communicate entirely via text messages, voice notes, and memes. That was their love language. What made it even odder was that Jordan tended not to surface until at least eleven a.m. It was nine.
“Who died?” Will asked when he picked up, at the exact same moment that Jordan demanded: “What happened last night?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” said Will. “Where were you?”
“Turns out I wasn’t on the rota last night, so I went for a curry with April.”
“Wow. Thanks for cluing me in.”
“Well, I kind of got the feeling that you and your new bestie might want to hang out just one-on-one,” Jordan replied. “Was I incorrect?”
“What do you mean?”
“Just. You know. A vibe I may or may not have picked up on. I’m very intuitive. So?”
Will considered the question. It would be a lie to say he didn’t like spending time with Patrick just the two of them. And last night had taken such a wild direction that he had to admit, he hadn’t even really noticed Jordan and April’s absence. The trust Patrick had placed in him, his game willingness, had been thrilling. But did that constitute a vibe?
It wasn’t his business to tell Jordan that he knew, for certain, that Patrick was gay. Or that he had given him a drag makeover, that there had been a split second when Patrick had wiped away a smudge of paint from his face and their eyes had met and Will’s heart had threatened to pack up shop and retire for good.
“I don’t know,” he said, finally. “We had a good time, then things got awkward and he left.”
“Awkward how?”
“Awkward like…” Will’s phone vibrated in his hand before he could finish the thought. “One second.” He drew the phone from his ear and looked at the screen: It was a text from Patrick.
“That was him. He wants to know if I feel like showing him around the city today.”
