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At 4:56, Patrick has already swept, mopped, taken out the trash, and flipped the sign to ‘Closed’. He won’t actually lock the door until 5:00 on the dot (because he’s still a professional), but that’s basically just a gesture at this point anyway. The store’s been dead all day.
The store’s been dead all week. Since the initial rush of oglers died down, Patrick has only seen a handful of customers. Because, regardless of his feelings on the matter, Schitt’s Creek does still belong to David. And that means he won it in the breakup—
No, the break.
The break.
Not the breakup. The break. The very temporary break they’re taking before they get back together. Before they work this out. Before Patrick figures out how to fix this. Before David forgives him. Before David takes him back.
At 4:57, Patrick knows the day is over. Now he gets to lock up, go back to Ray’s, make himself a sad little dinner, sit alone in his sad little room, fall asleep in his sad little bed, and hate himself another day’s worth for ruining his own life.
It’s dramatic, but it turns out that the understated stage of his grieving process ended somewhere in the middle of the week. He’s done telling himself that he’s fine, it’s going to work out, David will throw open the door any minute now. That sounds like Tuesday Patrick, and Tuesday Patrick is dead. Now, he’s Saturday Patrick, and Saturday Patrick wants to fucking wallow. He ducks behind the counter to find his phone—
At 4:59, the door opens.
Patrick silently asks their business license for forgiveness as he says, “Sorry, we’re closed,” without even looking up.
“Oh it’s fine, I’ll just be a sec.”
Patrick looks up then, disoriented, because Alexis is suddenly flitting around the store. The door hasn’t even closed behind her, and somehow she’s already at the back by the skincare products, idly fiddling with the bottom of her braid like she’s been browsing for hours.
“Uh,” Patrick offers smoothly, while he tries to remember some better words. “I am actually about to lock up, though. It’s almost closing.” It is now past closing, but his customer service filter won’t let him say that.
“No, yeah,” Alexis says flippantly, “I’ll be super quick.” She picks up a jar of clay mask and immediately sets it back down. She walks over to the toners and touches the cap of each one in the row.
“Can I… help you find something?”
“Aren’t you the sweetest?” Alexis shakes her head with a smile. “No. No. No. Nope, I’m good, thanks.”
Patrick starts slowly scooting himself closer to the door, opting for the power of suggestion. When Alexis continues to not notice him, he lifts up the sign and lets go, letting it hit the door as though he’d just flipped it (he flipped it 13 minutes ago, because he’s a horrible businessperson).
Alexis tugs at the pieces of her braid. And she smells a perfume that he knows she already owns. And she wanders over to the stationery display. And when she starts flipping through the pages of a journal like she’s reading it, Patrick finally feels ready to bite the bullet and politely ask her to get the hell out, but—
“You know what sucks?” she asks casually, still looking at the journal, “Having to call off an engagement.”
Wh—
What?
“What?”
“Yeah. Cuz, like, it sucks, right? But it obviously sucks so much worse for the person you’re dumping, like, I get that. But having to call it off sucks and you’re not even allowed to talk about how much it sucks because it’s worse for them, so if you say it was bad for you, it’s like you’re a selfish dick even though you know it’s worse for them and it just. Sucks.” She sets the journal back down. “And it just sucks that you can’t talk about how much it sucks.”
Patrick takes a moment to get his bearings while Alexis nonchalantly samples a bar of solid moisturizer (ignoring the one next to it that’s clearly labeled ‘TESTER’). He remembers some half-conversations with David, some quips from Mrs. Rose that obviously cut deeper than she intended. He already knew Alexis was engaged, more than once (but he’s not sure about that part, because the way he’s heard it, she didn’t actually say yes the second time, did she? How is that two times?). He knew she broke it off. But that always felt like a backstory, some minor detail that’s been sitting quietly in his growing index of Rose Family History. It isn’t until she says this, right now, that he actually realizes: she called off an engagement. She got engaged to the wrong person, and she had to end it.
It’s strange. To have her here, now, after this week. To have her tell him something personal like this. To have this in common with someone. To have this in common with her.
“Yeah,” Patrick says, and his voice sounds a little off, because. She’s right.
Fuck, she’s so right.
“You’re not really supposed to talk about how hard it is to break someone’s heart.”
Alexis drops the moisturizer with a sharp thunk and looks up at him, her eyes wide. “Yes! That’s exactly what I’m saying! Like, I know he gets all the sympathy, and I’m not even saying I want sympathy, I just. It’s. Like…”
“You want to be able to admit that it hurt you to hurt them.”
“Ugh, thank you!” Her hands flail close to her chest (David always calls it an Alexisism; Patrick always says that sounds like exorcism; David says “What’s your point?”). “It was a mistake, I know it was a mistake and it was all my fault for saying yes, but, like, that doesn’t mean I wanted to hurt him! Hurting him is the last thing I want to do but I had to hurt him or I just would have had to hurt him even more later.”
Patrick lets out a breath. “Now, imagine how much more humiliating it is when you’re the one who proposed. Having to be the one to break it off when the whole thing was your idea.”
“Oh, ew, you poor thing!” Alexis pouts at him, holding her braid to her mouth.
Patrick can’t quite explain why, but somehow, he finds that he’s smiling. He even laughs a bit. Because it’s been months since the worst day of his life, since the hardest thing he’s ever had to do, and for months now, he hasn’t said a word. He gave his parents a half-assed explanation, the best answers he could find for them when he didn’t have any for himself. He told worried friends and cousins and coworkers that he just wasn’t ready for marriage—and that was a lie, but at least it was an uncomplicated one.
And he told Rachel, at the motel, a few days ago. He told her everything. It’s the first time he’s actually put it to words, the first time he gave anyone a real answer about any of it.
But, that’s it. That’s all. He hasn’t talked about it.
Which is weird to think about, because until now, he hadn’t even realized that he’s been keeping all of this to himself. He didn’t know he was missing this. He didn’t understand how badly he wanted someone to understand.
Alexis comes around the side of the table so she can grab a jar of honey and gesticulate with it wildly. “And like, okay, so I may not have a great track record of ending things nicely with guys? But it’s never been a big deal before, like, it didn’t actually matter to them. No one’s ever cared. So, the one time I’m with a guy who’s actually, like, nice? That’s the one guy I have to actually hurt, just because I made a stupid mistake? It— hm.” She seemed to be growing to something, but instead, she stops herself.
Then she shrugs, and makes a delicate, huffy noise. “Guess that’s what I get for trying to be with someone who’s good to me, for once.”
For a moment, Patrick doesn’t know what to say to that. He tries not to imagine what the rest of Alexis’s past looks like. And he tries not to think too hard about how all of this is sounding familiar, how he’s heard something so similar from a different Rose. And, not for the first time, he has to stop himself from wondering how exactly anyone has ever been able to look at the Roses and see entirely different people than the ones he sees.
But he’s not sure he can say that. And he doesn’t think that’s what Alexis wants to hear right now, anyway.
“I haven’t broken many hearts,” he says instead, shoving his hands into his pockets and trying to match her sense of morbid levity, “but I broke hers a lot. I mean, she broke mine too, to be fair. Once or twice. But I did it over and over. Fifteen years and we just… kept making the same mistakes.”
Alexis turns to him, and her face is surprisingly soft. “Fifteen years?”
Patrick shrugs. “Off and on, but. Yeah.”
“Oh my god.” She holds the jar of honey against her cheek. “That’s like… fifteen years longer than any relationship I’ve had.” She shimmies her shoulders, and smiles, and he can tell that she’s trying to be flippant about it. And then, he wonders when exactly he got to know her well enough to tell when she’s faking—and then he’s thinking about a conversation about a cookie, and he’s been heartsick about one thing for so many days now that it’s almost disorienting to have something new to hurt about.
Alexis is twirling the jar in her hands. She’s not looking at him. She’s not saying anything else.
Okay.
Patrick clears his throat. “Hey, I have to finish closing up real quick. But you can stick around for a bit, if you don’t mind waiting.”
She looks up, her expression instantly brighter. “Oh babe, don’t even worry about it! I’ll help you.”
Patrick laughs without meaning to, partly because he’s never been on her ‘babe’ list before, and partly because her offers to help around the store usually end with her sitting on the counter and giving orders.
To her credit, she doesn’t give him any orders this time.
But she does stay in her usual perch by the cash, bumping her platform heels against the counter, watching patiently while Patrick finally gets the store shut down for the night. He locks the door (well after 5:00, he notes with pride), stores produce, tidies the displays that Alexis had just untidied. It’s quiet, but it’s not awkward. It doesn’t feel strange. It feels comfortable. It’s nice.
When he starts cleaning the fingerprints off of the door, she breaks the silence.
“So, like, how long were you and Rach engaged, anyway?”
Somehow, Patrick isn’t fazed by the question. In a way, he almost feels grateful for it. He tells her about color scheme discussions that kept him awake at night with heartburn, how he found a reason to disagree with every month she suggested just so they couldn’t set a date. He talks about telling his parents when he broke it off, and how confused and ashamed he’d been when he couldn’t answer any of their questions. Then Alexis talks about how she’d barely had to tell anyone, because barely anyone had noticed she’d gotten engaged in the first place (or second place). Patrick starts refolding the sweaters, and talks about having an anxiety attack in a dressing room when his Dad took him to look at tuxes. Alexis watches him refill the bath salts, and talks about how terrified she’d been when Ted first told her he loved her. And they’re telling these terrible stories, saying these awful things… and it’s a relief. It’s such a relief.
At 5:41, the sun has set, and the only thing left for Patrick to put away is the wine he’d left out for sampling.
He doesn’t even hesitate. He picks up the bottle and raises it toward her. “We can’t sell this now, and there’s no point wasting it. Interested?”
For a moment, Alexis perks up, looking downright eager. But then she pulls back, just as quickly. “Mm, drinking leftover pity wine in an abandoned store isn’t really a cute look for me?” She picks apart her braid again. “Besides, I’m sure you’ve got, like. Better things to do.”
Patrick smiles. “Yeah, my social calendar’s been packed this week.” He grabs two of the plastic wine ‘glasses’ from the tray. “But I could tentatively pencil you in before singing Sarah McLachlan songs alone in my room and crying myself to sleep.”
Alexis laughs a bit (and Patrick is flattered that she takes it as a joke). “I’m just, like. Not used to being offered drinks by guys who aren’t trying to get something out of it.”
“Does trying to get an evening where I’m not sitting at home miserable and alone count?” Patrick fills the glasses as full as physics will allow. “Consider it one of the perks of having a sad friend with access to wine. Well, probably the only perk.” He turns to hand her a glass, and—
Oh. Huh.
He didn’t even think about it when he was saying it, but.
That was probably the first time, wasn’t it?
Alexis spends a lot of time at the store. They’ve all had lunch at the Cafe more times than he can count. He’s gone to the motel to help her with homework. They’ve spent a lot of time together, and not just because of David. And he likes her, he honestly does. Minus the uncomfortably flirty beginning, spending time with Alexis has always felt kinda like having a sister of his own—how he’s always imagined that would feel, anyway. She feels sister-adjacent. Sister Lite.
But he’s never used the word ‘friend’ for her before now. If he wasn’t already sure of that, he’d be able to tell by the look on her face.
He holds out her glass, and raises his eyebrows. “Hm?”
Alexis’s eyes dart from the wine, to him, to the wine again. And slowly, she starts to smile. “Mm-hm. Yep. Yes.” She nods along with the words as she takes the glass.
Patrick keeps his smile to himself as he moves a few bags of coffee to clear himself a spot to sit on the table. He takes a sip of wine (he’s not really a fan, but it’s David’s favorite, and he definitely wasn’t thinking about that detail at all when he chose the bottle this morning), and he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t know what to say. And for a second, he wonders if he should be worried about that. They’ve already talked more in the past hour than they have in the entire time they’ve known each other; maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s all they’ve got.
Then again, maybe he’s underestimating just how skilled Alexis Rose is at talking. Because she takes a generous sip of wine, makes an approving little “yum” sound (good job, David), and says, “Why’d you propose if you knew it was a mistake?”
Patrick smiles against the lip of his glass. From anyone else, that question would probably be rude—he’s not sure that it isn’t a little rude coming from her, either. But it’s genuine. She wants to know, and she’s not afraid to ask the blunt questions to find out, and there’s something Patrick really likes about that. Maybe he would have benefited from having an Alexis around to ask the rude questions, before.
“I didn’t know it was a mistake yet. I thought it was a good idea.” He frowns. “Or, maybe I didn’t. I hoped it was a good idea. I hoped it would fix things.”
Alexis hums. “Probably not a great reason to marry someone.”
Patrick laughs, mostly at himself. “Yeah, evidently not.” He takes another drink, and tries a little bluntness of his own. “Why did you say yes to Ted, if you didn’t want to?”
Alexis tilts her head and purses her lips. “Okay, but like. I didn’t? I basically said no. It’s not my fault we didn’t sell the town.”
“But you didn’t actually say no. And from what I’ve heard, I didn’t think you’d be—” he thinks through his phrasing, making sure there’s still some delicacy in his bluntness, “unfamiliar with turning people down.”
“Okay, but not Ted, though! Not nice, sweet guys who actually like me and actually, like. Care.”
Patrick thinks about that for a moment. “It sure sucks, doesn’t it.”
“It fucking sucks! ”
“It fucking sucks,” he repeats, raising his glass in a toast.
Alexis looks at him for a second. Then she ducks her head and smiles—just a little one, a private, secretive thing. She gathers herself, and grandly raises her glass to toast him.
They drink, and they keep their glasses close to their faces, and it’s quiet again. So, after another chance to steel himself, Patrick goes for it.
“Y’know, it’s almost kinda funny. When I moved here, it was the worst week of my life. The breakup, and then I quit my job, broke my lease. I was basically running away. I didn’t know what to do, and it was all a mess—I was a mess. I honestly couldn’t imagine surviving this place.” He looks around the store. “And then, I ended up here.” He thinks she gets it, that he means more than just this one building. “Funny how things work out sometimes, huh?”
She looks around too, taking in the dim, after-hours glow. And she wrinkles her nose. “Mm, I don’t know. This town’s pretty gross.” She takes another sip, and it’s not quite enough to hide that little hint of a smile in the corner of her mouth. Patrick pretends he doesn’t notice.
At 7:15, on the Saturday of Patrick’s newest worst week of his life, he sits in his store with Alexis Rose, with a bottle of wine put away between them that’s working wonders with his empty stomach, and laughs so hard that there are tears in his eyes. Alexis is on her feet with her shoes on her hands while she acts out a story about 11-year-old David enlisting her in a full-blown heist to raid Mrs. Rose’s boot collection—since David had declared their multiple closets of dress-up shoes to be “passé”. The story is ridiculous, and Alexis is so sincerely invested in telling it, and the wine is just enough to make him feel a little soft around the edges, and…
And he’s not miserable. He’s not lonely or miserable or hating himself.
And isn’t that something?
But eventually, he realizes the flaw in this setup: Alexis keeps telling stories. She’s really good at David’s mannerisms and his general David-ness and all the stories she picks are about him being silly and passionate and deeply, deeply devoted to her and her happiness—and this may be the first time all week that Patrick hasn’t felt like shit but at the same time it’s making him miss David so much that his chest aches with it. He’s been missing David since the moment he closed the door to Room 7—no, before that, he was already missing him before he even knew he’d have to walk away. But until now, he’s been fighting that. He’s been trying to stay distracted, and to only let himself think about David in short bursts when he finds a new gift to send him. He’s been limiting himself.
And now he’s fuzzy and laughing and he’s been listening to adorable stories about the most adorable man in the world and he’s reveling in it—
Alexis snatches his phone out of his hand.
“Hey!”
“Ew, don’t ‘hey’ me, I’m helping you!”
“I wasn’t doing anything!” Patrick says indignantly.
Alexis holds his phone up by her face and puts her other hand on her hip. Somehow, she looks simultaneously like a supermodel and an elementary school teacher sending him to the principal’s office. “You were going to text David; don’t even try me.” She waves the phone around. “And friends don’t let friends drunk-text their exes.”
“Okay, I’m not drunk—” he’s only just at the level of tipsy that makes his face feel all warm, “and David is not my ex.”
“Mm, close enough,” she teases.
“Alexis,” he says, sharper than he means to, “that’s not funny.”
“Isn’t it, though?”
Patrick doesn’t back down. “No, it’s not.”
Alexis tilts her head to one side, looking at him with an expression that she probably thinks is nonchalant—but he can see right through it. “You’re not just, like, so relieved to have him out of your hair for a few days?”
Patrick knows he’s being tested, but still, he can’t keep himself from laughing helplessly at that. And maybe it’s the wine, or the honesty they’ve already given each other, or just the fact that he’s had to keep all of this to himself for too long now, but whatever the reason, Patrick isn’t even a little embarrassed to admit: “I miss him. Alexis, I miss him so much.”
Alexis’s eyes narrow, and her mouth tugs down, like she’s not sure what to make of that. “That’s cute,” she says carefully. Then her face scrunches up, and her hands go to her chest for another Alexisism. “And very, like, off-brand for someone dating David.”
Well, from what Patrick’s been told, pretty much everything about him is off-brand for David, so he decides not to worry about that.
Still, if she’s willing to talk about it… “So how long does this usually last? When he wants time, how long does it usually take before he comes back?” He knows it’s a lot, and although he knows he’s already done plenty to show his hand tonight, some sense of self-preservation still makes him keep his voice light, feigning disinterest.
But judging by the look Alexis is giving him, it doesn’t work. And even though he can already see the answer on her face, it still feels like a clean punch to the gut when she very gently says, “Babe.”
“Okay, but—” Patrick folds his arms, trying to stay casual even as panic starts to set in. “It can’t be never. With how many people he’s dated, he can’t seriously have never taken someone back.”
“Well it’s not like he can let someone win him back when no one’s ever tried.”
So…
Oh.
Maybe he should have known that. Maybe he should have been able to guess. Not that he’ll ever be able to understand it, but still.
“I’m trying.”
Alexis’s mouth does something that’s almost a smile. And she gives him back his phone. “Yeah, that’s pretty obvious? That’s like, really, really obvious.” She blinks at him, twice, too hard, and—is it a wink? Is that supposed to be a wink?
Patrick smiles back, as much as he can manage. “I can’t help it, I—”
No, not that. Not right now. He’s said a lot to her tonight, but… not that. That’s still just his.
He lets out a tired breath. “I like him. I care about him, maybe more than anything.”
Alexis doesn’t have a comeback for that. It’s almost like—for the first time all night—he’s said something she truly wasn’t prepared for.
So after a few more seconds, he takes that very complicated ball out of her court, and tries something simpler. “But, speaking of… that,” (not his smoothest segue, but he can blame the wine) “I have to say, I’m surprised you came here at all tonight. Kinda thought you’d be, y’know. Taking David’s side.”
“First of all, I’m out of lip balm.”
“No, you’re not.” She stole two last week when David was ringing her up for something else.
“And,” she continues like he didn’t say anything, “this isn’t junior high. I don’t have to pick a side in my brother’s boyfriend drama.”
“Well, that’s a surprisingly—”
“And if I was taking sides, I don’t know if I’d even want to be on David’s when he’s being, like, such a little brat right now.”
Whoa. “Okay, that seems a bit harsh.” Patrick knows David and Alexis can get a little cutthroat with each other, but this doesn’t seem like the time to—
“No! He is! He’s being a fucking brat and I’m so. Fucking. Over it!” She punctuates the words with sharp, intricate hand flails.
It’s weird, because he’s spent so many days trying to justify his own mistakes, wanting to let himself think things that are dangerously close to what she’s saying right now, and still, when he finally hears it, the only thing he wants to do is jump to David’s defense. “Alexis, I messed up. I hurt him. He’s allowed to be hurt.”
“Yeah and I get that, obviously. But what you did is supposed to be worth, like, one day of being a bitch and threatening to rebound with Ryan Lochte, and then the next day you’re over it and have really good makeup sex about it. That’s it! This has been, like, an entire fucking week.”
Patrick laughs without humor. “Believe me, I’m well aware of how long it’s been.”
“Okay that’s what I’m saying!” Alexis’s tone and hand gestures both take a dramatic leap in volume. “I know you fucked up and I know he’s upset about it and he wants to throw his little tantrum, but when you have a sweet little button caring about you and trying so hard and just waiting for you to come back, you don’t just sit on your sad fucking bed in a sad fucking motel and waste it! Like, he doesn’t even care what—”
She cuts herself off with a tight, uneven breath. She blinks, and shakes her head, these fast little movements that look like a dog trying to shake off mud. When she speaks again, her voice is so soft it almost hurts. “God, it’s just. Fucking ungrateful.”
Something cracks in the last word, and she holds her braid to her mouth with a look of carefully practiced disinterest, and Patrick realizes that they’re not talking about David. They are, but it’s more than that.
Saturday Patrick wants to wallow. His optimism has been flickering for days, and today it feels like it’s fully snuffed out. But now, with Alexis here, saying this, he finds that it’s easy. “He’ll come around,” he says, and it doesn’t even feel like he’s lying.
Alexis makes a dismissive noise. “Sure is taking him long enough.”
Patrick shrugs. “Some good things take a little more time. Just depends if they’re worth waiting for.”
“Yeah? And how long are you willing to wait, exactly?” Her voice is sharp, and it’s clearly a challenge.
“An embarrassingly long time,” Patrick says immediately, without hesitation, without needing to think for a second. And when it earns him a quiet, surprised laugh, he adds, “As long as it takes. As long as he needs.”
Alexis looks at him for a long moment. Patrick can see the wheels turning in her head, but he can’t tell what she’s thinking about so intently.
And then she says, “So I have my Econ final tomorrow,” so apparently, he’ll never find out.
Still, he recovers quickly enough. “How’re you feeling about it?”
They don’t talk about David again. They don’t talk about Ted, or Rachel, or engagements, or family, or things that could have been. They talk about Elmdale college, and the store, and Alexis makes a shockingly good pitch to sell a line of toiletries to the motel, and the wine’s been gone for hours now but Patrick still laughs like he’s tipsy, still feels that fuzzy warmth high in his stomach. And at some point, he recognizes it as the feeling of being okay, the lightness that comes when he isn’t weighing himself down.
At 8:57, Patrick rinses out the empty wine glasses for recycling, and Alexis finally puts her shoes back on, and he locks the door again—this time from the outside. Alexis assures him for the eightieth time that she doesn’t need a ride back to the motel, and he finally concedes (only after she not-so-subtly implies that David might not want to see his car in the parking lot).
The Roses aren’t huggers; Patrick has known this from the beginning. So he shoves his hands into his pockets to fight the impulse, and contains himself to a softer, simpler, “Thank you.”
Alexis smiles, and shimmies her shoulders in a way that’s so familiar it goes right to the sore spot in Patrick’s chest. “For what? I was just here for the free wine.”
Then she lifts her hand with an elegant flourish, and boops him on the nose. Patrick laughs without meaning to, and somehow it’s this, more than anything else that’s happened tonight, that makes him feel pretty confident that they’re both going to be fine.
Alexis takes a step away, and then immediately turns back—an elegant pirouette in spite of her ridiculous shoes. “David loves slipper socks.”
“What?”
“Fuzzy ones,” she adds, like that clarifies anything. “He says they’re a tacky abomination, but he has like, ten pairs. He thinks no one knows because he always wears his Uggs over them.” She tucks her hands under her chin. “That’s just, like. A fun fact about David.”
She’s trying not to smile, trying to pretend this is casual and inconspicuous. So Patrick tries to do the same. “That is indeed a fun fact. But I don’t know why you’re telling me.”
“No reason.” She blinks again, several times, very hard—which means that yeah, it probably is supposed to be winking. Patrick is polite, so he doesn’t let himself laugh until she walks away.
He can make it out to Elmdale after closing tomorrow. Hell, with how slow business has been, maybe he could even sneak in a long lunch. He’ll have to do a bit of research tonight, but he’s sure there’s some store in some Elm where he can find a nice pair of slipper socks.
He smiles to himself.
Fuzzy ones.
He’ll wrap them up at the store, probably write another embarrassing little note to go with them. He can drop them off at the motel on his way home. And, while he’s at it, he thinks he’ll drop off a few more lip balms, too.