Some Assembly Required (5 page)

“You need to stick with me, buttercup,” Patrick said out of the corner of his mouth. Without missing a beat, he acknowledged the woman again. “You were decorating your daughter’s room, correct?”

The old woman brightened. “Yes. Yes.” She smiled broadly as if finding her train of thought. “I was looking for something bright. The wiring shorted out when I plugged the dang thing in. Shocked me so bad. Right up my arm and into my chest.”

Patrick nodded and thumbed his chin. He kept silent and considered her words.

Benji swallowed, enthralled by the way Patrick was acting toward the woman. It was nothing like the brusque manner he’d shown with Karin or even the teasing, sometimes mean-spirited banter he’d kept up with Benji all day. This Patrick was attentive and kind. Benji was over men who acted one way in public and another in private—Charles had been a prime example of that, being a doting boyfriend when it suited his image and an absolute jackass when it didn’t—but this was different. It wasn’t like Patrick had flipped a switch and become someone different. It was more like he’d just become… more. Benji shook his head. Jesus, he was hard up and on the rebound faster than one of his students could upend a pot of tempera paint all over himself if he could fancy himself falling for a guy just because he was being nice to a confused old lady.

“It’s just so dim in there,” the woman continued. “I needed something bright for my daughter to do her studying. She always complained it was too dark for her.” The woman looked up, her lower lip trembling. “That young woman over there looks so much like her. I tried to tell her that the lamp she was getting had a cord that was too short. She was going to plug it into an old extension cord and start a fire, but she wouldn’t listen.” She stopped and swallowed hard. “I don’t know how I know that, but I do.”

Patrick nodded. “Yes, yes. We have a lovely floor lamp selection. And some wonderful color-coordinated extension cords too. We’ll help you get a much safer power unit for her. Can’t have a lawsuit on our hands.” He gave her an impish wink, and she tossed her head back with a laugh.

“Oh you!” she said. “You are quite possibly the most delightful employee I’ve come across. Everyone seems to walk away from me.”

Patrick raised his brows and made a concerned and sympathetic noise. A breath hitched in Benji’s throat, and he eased back a bit, stopped again when Patrick grabbed his hand, gently stroking his thumb across Benji’s palm in a soothing gesture. The absent thoughtfulness made Benji’s heart pound in a slow thump. He looked to his feet, his cheeks burning. God. He really had it bad if he was hot for the first available guy with broad shoulders and hands that could crush a whole carton of Charles’s certified organic ostrich eggs.

“I’ll have a word with the management,” Patrick said firmly. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll just grab one of those surge protectors for that other customer. I’m sure she’ll be so happy you pointed out that she needed one.” He let go of Benji’s hands and took one of hers in both of his, patting it reassuringly. “There is a young lady named Karin waiting by the registers. She’ll be happy to assist you. We won’t keep you here any longer. I know you have somewhere you need to be.”

The old woman’s expression went oddly blank as her eyes glazed over. “I do,” she said distractedly. She wandered away toward the vastness of the registers without so much as a thank-you.

Benji arched a brow. “Is she okay?”

“Perfectly.” Patrick nodded. He picked up a brightly colored PROLUNGA extension cord from the large bin on the end cap and lobbed it overhand across the aisle. It fell neatly into the other shopper’s cart. She looked down at it and furrowed her brow, but a moment later she shook her head and continued on like nothing had happened. Strange.

Patrick turned back toward Benji with a manic grin as he clapped his hands together. “Now. Where were we?”

Benji struggled as he tried to recall what they’d been doing before the old woman had stopped them. It wasn’t like him to be this forgetful. “I’m not sure….”

“Excellent.”

The more he tried to make sense of Patrick, the more his mind went blank in the fuzzy, cottony way that came with sleep deprivation. His mother scolded him constantly for not taking the time for himself. His time revolved around his students, and he hadn’t been on a proper vacation in years since he only had summers off and Charles had taught summer classes at the university every year, being the low man on the tenure totem pole.

Benji frowned at Patrick. No one had thanked Patrick for his help today. Or Karin, who Benji had seen offer advice to several customers. They’d almost always taken her suggestion, but not a single one of them had acknowledged her at all. That was weird. Maybe it was the stress of being in a crowded store on a Sunday.

“As I was saying, yes, it is indeed that late,” Patrick said, shifting back into their conversation as if they’d never been interrupted. He looked a bit paler and more drawn, which made sense if it really was that late. He’d already had a long day if he’d been here since opening, like Karin had said. “Or I suppose one could say it’s that early. It’s all a matter of perspective.”

“Shit. I have to get home,” Benji said, the now familiar prickly, panicky feeling overtaking him as soon as he got the words out. He swallowed hard. “I have to be at school at six tomorrow morning.”

He jumped when someone touched his back gently, whirling around to see that Karin had crept up, ninja-like and silent. She and Patrick needed to learn to make more noise when they walked, because Benji was pretty sure someday they’d give some poor unsuspecting customer a coronary.

Even though she was looking directly into his eyes, she spoke to Patrick. “It’s time.”

The overhead speakers blared out a reminder that closing was in half an hour, and how had that happened? Hadn’t it only been a little after eight just a second ago? Benji’s breath started coming faster as he searched for the wall clock again, his heart thumping hard when he saw it was now a quarter till nine, just like the announcement had said. What was going on?

Patrick sighed. “We were having fun.”

Karin squeezed Benji’s shoulder before letting him go. “Take a walk to the exit with Patrick, okay? I’d take you, but I think it’ll be better coming from him.” She gave Patrick a sour look. “Which, trust me, isn’t something I say often. But you two did seem to have a lot of fun today.”

Benji narrowed his eyes at Patrick, who looked more somber than he had all day. “What is she talking about? Karin…?”

Benji turned around, but she was gone. Not just walking away, but gone. Which shouldn’t be possible in the open floor plan of a warehouse store like CASA.

“Let’s go,” Patrick said with a resigned sigh. He wrapped his arm around Benji’s shoulders just like he had earlier that afternoon, guiding him out with the herd of shoppers who were heading for the exits. “Listen, this is going to suck. And I’m sorry.”

What was going to suck? Heading out to the enormous parking lot that he had no memory of parking in and trying to find his car? Wait, his pants. They were in the trash in the locker room.

“My keys,” he said, turning to Patrick in horror.

“You didn’t have any keys,” Patrick said, his voice almost painfully gentle.

“What? Of course I did,” Benji spluttered. They’d come up to the doors, but he wasn’t going to leave without his keys. He’d have no way to get home or get into his apartment even if he could get there. Shoppers flowed out around them, not paying them the slightest bit of attention. Oh God. His keys. His apartment. The dog. He’d been dog-sitting, and he’d left the dog in his apartment all day long. Jesus, the mess was going to be apocalyptic.

“You didn’t,” Patrick said carefully. “Look outside, Benji.”

Benji shook his head. “This has been the weirdest day ever, and I’m ready to go home. You can give me your number if you want. I mean, if this is some sort of ploy to get me to go home with you, it’s not going to work, but I’d definitely be interested in seeing you again.”

Instead of replying, he shook his head and turned Benji toward the glass doors so he could see the twilight glow of the parking lot.

Benji was about to yell at him when a group of shoppers approached the automatic doors, which hissed open, revealing the emptiness of space.

Not space as in an empty parking lot. Space as in
space.
When the doors parted, customers vanished into the starry vastness of the universe.

Benji stumbled back, his knees weak. Patrick supported him with a gentle rub to the upper arms. The doors opened, and Benji got a bigger picture of the great beyond. Constellations danced across the dark void. Green, blue, and red nebula clouds twinkled with sprinkles of stars.

The customers passed through, checking their receipts and asking their spouses what they’d like for dinner. They didn’t pay attention to the blackness swallowing them into the great nothing. But when the door closed, Benji could see those same customers through the windows, walking through the parking lot.

He broke away from Patrick and ran up to the doors. They slammed shut. He stood there banging on them until a woman with a cart approached, but instead of seeing the parking lot when it opened, Benji saw the same terrifying void. The woman vanished into the rift of the Milky Way, and then the doors slid shut and outside, the same woman pushed on to her Subaru in the parking lot.

Cold sweat prickled over Benji’s skin when he tried to walk through the doors the next time they swung open, and his stomach turned violently. His vision was graying out when he felt Patrick yank him from behind so hard that the two of them tumbled into a rack of yellow shopping bags.

“I have to get home,” Benji said weakly.

Patrick laughed humorlessly, rubbing his hands up and down Benji’s arms to soothe the gooseflesh there.

“You are home, kiddo.”

What the
fuck
.

Benji blinked once, and the world filled with the same darkness of the consuming void. His head fell back and he leaned into Patrick, falling into the nothing.

Benji’s clawed hand shot through the surface of the Bambini Mondo ball pit. A wave of red plastic balls surged over the lip of the enclosure, spilling onto the brightly colored floor and rolling in a hundred different directions.

Patrick crouched at the edge and waited for Benji to emerge. He ran his teeth over his bottom lip. It was part delight and part of that prickly bothersome thing called concern.

Agnes balanced herself on the lip of the ball pit slide, her lips pressed in a tight line between intense concentration and a disapproving frown. She held out her hand over the pit, waiting for Benji’s hand to come into range. Heaven forbid Agnes fall into the cesspit of grubby fingerprints, boogers, and piss. No. That was for Patrick and everyone else.

Benji’s other hand clamored to the surface, and Patrick held the breath he no longer had any need for.

Agnes snatched Benji’s wrist, and Patrick latched onto her opposite forearm and wrist, providing leverage.

“Pull!” Agnes commanded, and together they yanked Benji from the plastic hellmouth.

Patrick released Agnes, and she tottered on her feet. Once she’d righted herself, she adjusted her snooty bifocals and turned up her nose.

At their feet, Benji writhed like a dying carp. He gulped in air, his eyes wide and wild and his chest heaving.

Agnes’s gaze softened. “The poor dear. He’ll eventually get used to it.”

Patrick crossed his arms as he took his sweet time studying Benji going through the stages of thinking he’d just drowned. “Nothing like a baptism from a children’s ball pit. God’s clearly a comedian.”

Benji coughed and rolled to his side.

Agnes buttoned her cardigan. “He does have a plan for all of us.”

“I can’t tell if a baptism by fire is worse,” Patrick said as he shifted slightly to the left to avoid Benji possibly puking on his Nikes. He brightened. “Do you think they do that at Wallville?”

Agnes shot Patrick a chilling glare. “Are you going to tend to him, or are you going to further affirm my utter disappointment in you?”

He crouched over Benji, watching his eyes roll. Hmm. Patrick had always had a soft spot for brown-eyed boys. He also had a soft spot for his MILAN bed, which had better not be sold by now to some CASA hacker planning to make a fish tank out of the frame.

“Now that that nasty business if over, I have a sweater to finish,” she said and smoothed down her cardigan. “Patrick.”

“Agnes.” He nodded and then slapped Benji’s sweaty cheek. “Rise and shine, cupcake.”

Benji blinked, the first welcoming sign of cognizant thought.

Patrick slapped again. “Hey, hey, Benji. You need to stay with me, big boy.” He extended his middle finger. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Where…?” Benji croaked and then coughed.

“Ah, yeah.” Patrick smirked. “CASA. Bambini Mondo, in fact.”

“What?” Benji’s lashes fluttered and his head fell back.

“C’mon, shake it off.” Patrick slapped his cheek, and Benji’s head bounced before he drifted off to sleep. Patrick set his jaw. The gentle approach sometimes seemed hit or miss. Time to haul out the big guns. Patrick smacked him with a hard crack to the jaw. Benji gasped with the jolt to his system. “Wake up!”

Benji blinked back to the present and swallowed. He felt over his chest, and Patrick nodded as he predicted Benji’s thoughts.

“When you come back, you’re always in what you came in with,” Patrick said.

“I smell like dog crap,” Benji responded, his voice thick, like he didn’t have full command over his tongue yet.

“And that damned funk will never come out of the pit.”

“I smell like dog crap.”

Well, at least he was forming sentences. It was a start. Patrick hooked his hands under Benji’s arms and hauled him to his feet. Benji flopped against him and curled his fingers into Patrick’s borrowed shirt. The close contact sparked up Patrick’s spine. The fresh ones always had the strongest energy. But it definitely wasn’t spiritual energy that Patrick was feeling. He swallowed and tried to cough out the tightness in his throat.