I'm Addicted to the Thrill

I woke up in the morning to the smell of coffee. I didn’t think that Patrick should be in the apartment, but I could’ve been wrong. The apartment could have had more people in it other than Patrick and me for all I knew. It honestly wouldn’t surprise me if there were more people staying in his Trump Tower condo other than me. I was actually alright with it even if I had more company. I walked out of the room I was staying in still in my pajama bottoms and a bra to find out whether or not the coffee was for me or if someone was going to be greedy.

Patrick stood there in the kitchen on the phone. The coffee he had made himself since I figured that it was what he had to do before he did anything else. He waved at me then finished his conversation. I sighed and went through all of the cupboards looking for the mugs for coffee. As I found one, I started to feel like I was really a guest in this apartment.

“Did you sleep well?” asked Patrick as I took my first sip of coffee. It wouldn’t be my only cup of it for the day. This was just the first sip of many to come in my day.

“I slept great,” I told him. I had slept better in his apartment than I had in all of the nights that I had been in Chicago. Well, except for one night, but I still wasn’t going to be thinking about what had happened only a fortnight or so before then. I was willing to push it all to the back of my mind and forget that it had even really happened.

“Good. I ordered French toast and bacon for you if you’re hungry. It’ll be here in like thirty minutes,” he informed me. Leave it to him to order breakfast for me without asking me what I wanted. I also wasn’t too surprised at the fact that he was ordering food instead of making it.

I turned around and walked towards the living room. I could feel his gaze on my lower back. It finally occurred to me that I was walking around his apartment without a shirt on. He was probably looking at the tattoo and laughing about it. When I turned around, he was standing there smiling.

“C’est la vie,” he said. I turned red knowing that he had read what it said. Above it was a feather and the word “Tragedy.” I hated that people knew about the tattoo. I wanted to get it removed, but I didn’t want to pay the expense or deal with more pain. I liked it better when I could cover it up.

I walked back into my room rather than going to watch the news like I had planned to do. He followed me in there. I grabbed a shirt and pulled it on just to make sure that I wasn’t shirtless in his house again. I should have known better than to go out without a shirt on. It was all just a bad idea on my part.

Patrick watched me pull my shirt on and smiled. He apparently liked to watch me dress. I didn’t care so much, but I wished he would at least give me more privacy. I wished I had pushed staying with Christine more. That would have kept me from dealing with this awkward situation.

I walked past him and back into the living room. The television was on already when I plopped down on the couch. I was glad that he had turned on the news. It was better than what I had expected to be on his TV: sports or early morning cartoons. Maybe I was seeing him as too much of a child. He was older than me for the sake of that entire argument.

Patrick sat down on the couch next to me. I wondered if he was thinking about our kiss from last night or all of the other moments that we had shared. He was the type that I figured would go over that. Any rejection of a girl was likely to sting him and make him analyze all of his behavior. Or he would just try the same thing with a different girl. Both of those seemed like things that he would do.

“Are you working tomorrow?” asked Patrick. I flipped through the news channels that were on. I shrugged at his question then turned my head to face him.

“I work tomorrow, I think,” I told him. I wasn’t too sure whether or not I was scheduled to work the next day or not. Anna had told me what games I worked, and I had them written down on a sheet of paper that was in my purse. “Get me my purse and I can tell you whether or not I work tomorrow.”

He stuck his tongue out at me as he got up to get the purse. It was still sitting on the counter that I left it on the night before. I was glad that he wouldn’t really be able to go through it without me seeing it as I turned around. It was a pet peeve of mine when people went through my things without my permission. He put the purse in my lap when he came back over to the couch. While I went through trying to find the slip of paper with my schedule on it, Patrick took a seat again. He watched me go through my purse with interest. I didn’t see why he liked to watch me, but I wasn’t going to call him out on it.

“Yeah, I work tomorrow, but I don’t work Tuesday’s game,” I told him. On the game days, I would go in at two to get everything in order for the night, but when I didn’t have to work I had my tickets for the game that the United Center had set aside for us. It was the same thing with the Bulls. When I was working during the week without there being a game, I could go in at seven and be out by four. It was all part of my working agreement.

He only said one word in reply to my telling him when I was working for the next week: “okay.” I wanted to smack him for making me figure out when I was working and then not doing anything with the information. I took a deep breath to calm down. I was always changing moods when Patrick was around. I hated the effect he had on me. It was going to drive me crazy if it was always like this when he was around. Aweek of itw ould be bad. I was hoping just the next few days would be all I had to put up with.

“Why did you want to know when I work?” I asked him as the news turned off and a rerun of Rachel turned on. I had missed everything that I wanted to see just because Patrick had asked me whether or not I worked the next day.

“Just curious. I mean, I’m sure tomorrow you’ll eat at the Center, but on Tuesday do you want to get dinner with me?” he asked. I threw a pillow at him. “What was that for?”

“You could have just asked to dinner without making me figure out when I work. Or we could go get dinner tonight or on Monday,” I told him. I wasn’t too big on the late factor of getting dinner after the game just since I had to wait for him after he was done getting ready to leave the Center. He didn’t know that it bugged me, but I wouldn’t tell him of that little fact just yet.

“Yeah, tonight. It’ll be a date. Make sure you dress up nice,” said Patrick.

A knock at the door pulled him away. We got our food and ate in silence. I was wondering about the date we were now taking. I didn’t want to just go out on a date with him. Sure, I liked him. I liked him a lot, but I was sure that if anyone saw us together, I would get armies of puck bunnies coming after me with knives and sharp objects. That was an experience I would rather save for some other lucky soul.