Run Right Back

Patrick Kane wanted to erase that morning. He wished they never saw Kimberly and the little kid that was with her. He wished that Jon was out of the rink by then. Now he had to deal with an irritable Tazer. It wasn’t like Patrick was going to ditch Jon after the community center mishap. Had this been three years prior he would have left Jon without another thought because he didn’t want to get involved in this sticky situation. Jon had become Patrick’s best friend. If Patrick was going through something like this he would have wanted Jon to help him.

The two were camped out in Jon’s living room playing Call of Duty. Jon refused to talk about it. Whenever Patrick tried to bring it up he would be cut off midsentence. Patrick figured that Jon would want to talk about it at some point so he stayed until that moment happened.

Hour passed. The two had Crow and David over and played a few hours of Star Wars: Republic Commando. It was Corey’s favorite game. Jon’s irritability drove Corey and David out of the apartment after his character was killed for the hundredth time that night. Jon threw the remote at the couch. “Why the fuck is this happening to me?” Finally. After hours of waiting, he had cracked.

Like a good friend, Patrick sat still with open ears. He tucked his phone into his pocket. Unbeknownst to Jon, he had been texting Kim the entire day. She never said anything about the kid. Kaner didn’t know how to ask if the kid was Jon’s. It seemed like a personal and invading question to bombard her with after not seeing her for 3 years.

Jon collapsed onto the couch next the remote he threw. “Why does bad shit happen to me? She should have told me.” He angrily scratched his brow line. “I mean, that kid is hers, right? That means that kid is probably mine, right?” Internally he was combusting. “Why the fuck didn’t she tell me?”

“Hey, just because he looks like you doesn’t mean he is yours. You know?”

The voice of calming reason was shot down. “No. I don’t know. You said so yourself, Kaner. He looks like me. He looks less than 3 years old, but more than 2. He is probably 2 years and a couple of months old. We were together until the day we broke up. Kim and I weren’t like me and Virginia. We never had a week of a dry spell and fuck if we used protection. She was on the pill, but Kimberly can do stupid shit. Maybe she forgot to take her pills when she was going through that shit with Sully. Maybe I impregnated her. I am fucked, Patrick.” Jon covered his face with his hands. “Whose kid is that if it isn’t mine?”

“There are plenty of white guys in Chicago, Jonny. I love Kim, and I mean no disrespect, but that girl is so charming that she could probably fuck any guy she wanted.”

“Shut up. That was an insulting compliment.” He lied down on the couch, shoving his face into the cushions. “You have her number, don’t you?”

Patrick’s voice was sheepish. “Yeah, got it today.”

Jon poked his head out of the cushions. “Can you get her address?”

“Of course I can. I am Patrick Kane, dude. That girl loves me.”

“Don’t all girls?” Jon rolled around the couch, constantly changing his position. He then sat up. “Fuck. This is going to bother me until I can confront her about it. Do you think it is her kid? Do you think Kim is a mother? Am I the father? Why the fuck wouldn’t she tell me? Like it is that hard to get a hold of me. It isn’t.”

The words in Patrick’s mind stopped from forming in his mouth when knocking on the door caught the two off guard. David wouldn’t knock because he had a key to the place. Patrick pulled out his phone to check the time, 10:29 PM. Without saying anything, Patrick rose from the couch and strode to the door.

Behind the door was Virginia Hurst. She is as cold as they get. Her face almost never cracked a smile. While attractive, she gave the strongest bitch face that intimidated most men into asking out sleazier women. Virginia kept her virtues high and waited a month after dating Jonathan before they consummated their relationship. Her figure was appeasing and her face symmetrical. She had giant green eyes, olive skin, and dark burgundy hair. She was tall for a woman at 5’11” and only wore modest heels. Her clothes never ventured far from the palette of black, white, grey, night sky blue and army green. The girl was never afraid to say what was on her mind. If someone bothered her, she made sure they knew. Virginia Hurst was an apprentice, on her path to become a lawyer. With all that being said, Patrick could still not find something of interest about her. He never liked her, though he had tried. The first time they met she criticized his arrival (he was late by 20 minutes) and then implied that he was brought up wrong up because of his behavior towards women. It was the first time he wanted to hit a girl across the mouth.

“I know you have your own apartment, Patrick. Why must you always be here?” She brushed past him. “Jonathan, I think we should approach that request you made the other day. Patrick, you should vacate the premise.” Her voice was monotone, lacking any character to it. Before that day Patrick never understood why Jon was dating her. After seeing Kim again he realized why. Virginia lacked everything Kim had. She was the exact opposite of Kimberly Frances Parker.

Jon wasn’t able to catch himself and groaned out loud. Virginia was the last person he wanted to see. He is an honest guy and that meant he would have to tell her that he saw Kim and that little adorable monster child. Jon didn’t like lying. It made his face turn a blistering red and his stomach fold in on itself so many times that he threw up.

Her face contorted as she tried to understand why he groaned. She sat down by his feet. “I am sorry, is the invitation for coitus now revoked?”

The words she said always sounded mechanical to Patrick. One time when he was drunk he tried looking for the off/on switch on her back, like that of a robot’s. “Virginia, he had a long day. We are just having a guy’s night. Maybe you should come back in the morning.”

“Jonathan, the midget is bothering me.”

“I saw my ex-girlfriend today,” he uttered the words into the cushions. Even though he mumbled them, Virginia’s rabbit ears picked them up.

She picked up his feet and put them on her lap. Her stony face looked up to the ceiling. “Which one?”

“I have never told you about her. Her name is Kim. I dated her for like 4 months. It—I don’t talk about it. And right now I really don’t want to talk about it, Virginia. And yeah, I’m kind of having a guy’s night with Kaner.” He couldn’t bear to part with the cushion. “I am sorry. I’ll see you tomorrow. I swear.”

Aggressively, she picked up his ankles and swung them off her lap. “Okay. Fine. Just, why haven’t you told me about her? You told me about your other past girlfriends. Are there more I don’t know about?”

“No.” Jon drew his knees into chest. “She is the only one I don’t talk about. It was messy, Virginia. Talking about it pisses me off. Thinking about it makes me feel…” regretful “like an idiot.” More than an idiot, it made him feel hollowed by sadness. Kim wasn’t his biggest regret. Kim was damn near close it, though. She hit the top 5 of regrets.

Virginia picked herself up off the couch and headed back out the apartment. She grabbed the edge of Patrick’s jacket and dragged him out with her. “What is going on, Patrick?” She kept her voice low in the hallway with Patrick by her side.

He kept his eyes pointed to the hardwood floors. There was a strand of blue yarn near the baseboard. “It was coincidental, Ginny.” She absolutely hated that nickname. It reminded her of her free-spirited, back assward mother. It made Patrick secretly grin that her nostrils flared out when he said ‘Ginny’. “We hadn’t seen Kim in three years. It kind of shocked us both.”

“Why didn’t he tell me about her? I know everything about him, yet I never heard of a Kim.”

Patrick didn’t know why Jon never told her. Kim affected Jon a lot more than he ever let on. He did let it show that she affected him when they broke up. He didn’t stop showing it for months. If Jon didn’t tell Virginia, then that is Jon’s problem. “Things got dirty. Like R. Kelly dirty.”

“I don’t know that is supposed to mean, Patrick.”

“It’s the freaking weekend I’m about to have me some fun?” He cracked a wide open grin. The girl didn’t budge. “What I mean,” his voice deepened and became serious, “is that she kind of represents a dark period he slipped into. We were kicked out of the playoffs after they broke up. He went through a lot of shit and doesn’t want to relive it.”

Virginia looked up at the ceiling. Her eyes looked glossy. “He should have told me,” and she walked down the hall to the elevator.