EMILY
IT'S the evening that we're due to go to dinner with his dad, and I'm standing outside the diner, shivering even in my winter coat. Waiting for Patrick to pick me up like he promised.
I check my watch.
He's late. Nothing new there.
Sober Patrick is a flaky but decent guy. Sweet, even, in that lost-puppy way. It used to make me feel like I could take care of him.
Back then, it didn't matter whether or not he took care of me.
What mattered was the way he would hold my hand in public, no matter all the awful gossip swirling around.
He wasn't ashamed of me, even if everyone else was.
That's why I stayed loyal, long after I should've walked away.
But sober Patrick and not-sober Patrick were two entirely different people, I discovered. The drunk and high version of him was never cruel so much as chaotic: staying out all night, forgetting important class work, blowing his trust fund on tabs he never remembered opening.
