He wasn’t really bad in bed. I just wanted to shut him up. I don’t really care if it’s a blow to his ego. He’s always been cocky and I know that he’ll get over it. Still, I know that words can be pretty hurtful. I hope I haven’t done any permanent damage.
“He’s not the victim here,” I say, more as a reminder to myself than to Anne. “And he hurt me first. What I said pales in comparison to what he did to me.”
We both turn our heads when Patrick walks into the room. I can tell that he’s a little hesitant to order Anne around after I snapped at him yesterday.
“Maybe we can ask a guy’s opinion,” Anne says. “Hey Patty—”
“Don’t call me that,” he interrupts.
She continues anyway. “Has anyone ever told you that you were bad in bed?”
I don’t think she really thought that question through. Patrick begins to stammer, and his face turns bright red. “What … why would you ask that?”
“Naomi told her boyfriend that he’s bad in bed,” she explains. “I told her that it was a pretty mean thing to say. What do you think? Has anyone ever said that to you?”
“This isn’t an appropriate thing to be talking about at work,” he says.
“And with your boss,” I add.
Anne’s eyes widen. “Oh my God. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to embarrass you. You don’t have to tell me if someone said that to you.”
“No one said that to me,” he says. “I just … it’s just … not appropriate.”
He mumbles something about getting back to work as he walks away. Anne watches him leave the room. Once he’s gone, she looks at me and smiles.
“He’s so cute when he’s all flustered,” she says.
I almost choke on my coffee. “Did you just call Patrick cute?”
She shrugs. “In a bossy, balding teddy bear sort of way.”
“None of that sounds cute except for the teddy bear part, and I don’t think I’ve ever equated Patrick to a teddy bear.”
“You’re reading too much into what I said. The point is, he got all upset at the mere thought that someone might think he’s bad in bed. You straight-out told Luca that he sucks.”
“I don’t think that’s what Patrick was upset about. He was upset because his employee was asking him about his sex life.”
“You’re changing the subject because you know that I’m right.”
“I’m not changing the subject at all. Do you realize how weird that was?”
“It wasn’t that weird. He’s walked in on plenty of awkward conversations before.”
“True, but we’ve never dragged him into any of them.”
Anne slaps her hand over her face and groans. “Ugh. That was weird, wasn’t it? You don’t think he’s going to fire me, do you?”
“Probably not for that, but maybe if you keep spending your whole morning talking to me, he’ll have a valid reason.”
Anne takes the hint and gets up. “Now I’m going to have to avoid him the rest of the day. Or the rest of the week.”
* * *
I stop on the third floor of the stairwell and look at the steps leading up to the fourth. Normally I would be heading up there to check on the puppy. Now that I know who Luca is, I hesitate. I’m mad at him, but that doesn’t mean that I’ve stopped caring about Bruno. After a short deliberation, I head upstairs.
His apartment is messier now than it was the other times I’ve been in here. There’s a stack of papers on his small kitchen table. I step closer to see what it is. I recognize my own handwriting. These are the last few letters I wrote to him. I lift the pages and realize that these areallthe letters I wrote to him. He kept all of them. At the bottom of the stack is the very first letter I wrote in fifth grade. I read it, and feel a little sad. I was so nice. So innocent. I had no idea that I was going to get such a mean letter in return, and that it would turn into years of the weirdest pen pal friendship I imagine has ever existed. I couldn’t have predicted that it would all end the way it did.
I set the letters back down the way I found them, and then spot an unopened envelope addressed to me. It looks like the one he had left in my mailbox yesterday. I decide to take it with me. After all, it is addressed to me.
