Nothing but stage lights. Author: Indy Baggins Pairing: Pat/Ryan, Ryan/Greg, Ryan/Colin and Pat/Deb. All on the non-explicit side, for those of you who worry. Rating: R Summary: This is Pat’s story. Her love for Ryan, her impression of his never-ending friendship with Colin, a flash of Greg, her fond memories of Deb, and most importantly, the circumstances that bound them all together. Disclaimer: When you read this, please understand that this is fiction. While I did try to stick with the timeline of actual events, I am not portraying the authentic lives of these people. Author’s comments: I always felt like this was a side of the story that still needed to be told. Never knew I would be the one telling it though. *smiles* Many, many thanks to clayangel, the endlessly patient and enthusiastic beta-on-duty. Pat had been young, attractive too, and she had definitely known it. But still there had always been a certain feeling of duplicity underlying it all. It was just a game when she carefully painted her lips in the beer-stained mirror behind the bar before she returned to bringing drinks to rowdy costumers, the rumble of the comedian on stage nothing but a background noise. Just a game when she moved in between those that were very drunk, and those that were getting there, expertly avoiding the grabbing and prodding they all seemed to be so sure was included in the entrance-fee. Just a farce when she laughed with a joke she had barely heard and found tasteless to begin with, flirted a bit for a tip, wasn’t afraid to swear when anyone got too touchy. And when the customers started laughing, booing and yelling at a particularly dirty joke and stopped her to say “That guy is good!” she laughed, dutifully, and then glanced at the stage for a second before averting her eyes again. She knew who he was, the comedian on the stage; she knew his name and the way his lanky body had felt against hers just a couple days ago. Now she put beers on the table closest to the stage and waited for the money without looking up towards his eyes that might or might not have been on her. He’d been a catch, absolutely. He had been chatting up with the waitresses for months, and when she had bumped into him just outside the bar, and he’d leaned down to kiss her, gently, she’d been charmed. She had never thought it would have been more than one night, not really, but she’d been purposely cheeky and daring around him, and she’d liked it, in a way. Her shift would be over soon and she felt the tiredness already settle in her back and feet as she walked towards the bar again. A couple minutes later he was sitting there too, the smell of aftershave on his clothes and a cigarette between his lips, and she felt her hand shake slightly as she handed him his scotch. He held her gaze for a moment too long and whispered something about getting out of there. She’d agreed, not right away, not expecting too much. Two months later they were sharing her apartment. Looking back, she would always be amazed at the fact that they even made it through those first months. Ryan performed at the bar she worked, but at other bars too, sometimes staying out all night without ever even entertaining the notion that she would question it. When he came back in the mornings he had wrinkles in his clothes and riddles in his eyes she knew he would never make her part off, and she hated him for it. So they fought, more often than not, long silences and angered remarks, pushing each other away, and in the end she didn’t know why she did so anymore, only maybe because he had come to expect her to. Every morning she woke up, sure he would have left. Sure his fascination for her would have ended, sure he would have found someone else he thought he understood but really didn’t. But he didn’t leave, and as weeks turned into months she felt her doubts change into resignation. She never knew what he wanted from her, why he stayed, and why she felt both grateful and unbalanced with his presence, but she came to enjoy it, even felt a certain amount of pride in the fact that it was her he was with, her he came home to. On early mornings in bed together, she desperately clung to the softness in his eyes only to realise he never told her he loved her. She never told him either, and she caught herself wondering how long they could live like this. How long she could live like this. Desperate to feel his touch, and when she did, certain again he would find some else’s better. She often wondered if she held on too hard, or too little. When she looked at Ryan she saw someone who was strikingly good-looking, thin and tall and tender and incredibly talented, with a hell of a temper but always capable of making up. He was distant too, she thought, never completely there, never a genuine smile, never everything all at once, just parts of him, slivers and shimmers but never his whole heart, and she wondered what had happened to the rest. The only passion he had was the stage. Even she, who would never want to be up there in her life, could see that. He saw right through people, finding their weaknesses, what made them laugh. She wondered if he ever saw through her. Later on she would think it odd, that in the first years they lived together, she didn’t once hear him mention the day he met Colin. When she actually met Colin for the first time it had been a late evening in April, and Colin had been nothing but a stranger with a shy smile and evident brown eyes she had opened the door to. She’d had no idea of the times in the future she would think of him and wonder. No idea how closely she’d start to associate him with Ryan, how she’d secretly start hating him for being the one who got the most genuine smiles, the gentlest touches. All that was years from then. Right then, he had been nothing but a stranger at the door, and the chill of premonition that had run through her body was nothing but the cold of the evening. He’d asked for Ryan in a soft voice, and before she had to yell Ryan had been there, passing her by completely and throwing his arms around the man, squishing him fondly before quickly grabbing his jacket and wallet. They’d been gone together, their laughter resonating in the hallway, before she’d even said goodbye. That night Ryan hadn’t come home, and she hadn’t thought much about it. As the seasons floated by she saw more of Colin. He’d come by together with large groups of Ryan’s improv friends and sit away from the rowdy circle of people that were drinking and smoking, more often that not with Ryan, smiling softly at his side. She’d liked that about Colin at first; she’d thought he’d temper Ryan into something gentler, less profound maybe. But why they were even friends in the first place, she had never understood. Colin was timid, soft, shy, so different from all of Ryan’s friends, and she had had no idea what Ryan saw in him, why he treasured that side in Colin, when he had never even acknowledged it in her. She’d tried asking him once, somewhere in the late hours of a Saturday evening. She’d waited until she had heard the door open and him sink on the bed next to her. He had just come home from a stand-up gig, the smell of smoke and beer still in his hair and clothes and a tiredness in his shoulders and voice. She’d asked, trying to keep the tremor of accusation from her words, “Why do you really like Colin?” He’d laughed and stroked a strand of her hair behind her ear, actually giving her question some thought. Finally he’d settled on “He doesn’t need to talk” and she’d momentarily wondered if that was a stab pointed at her before he had kissed her and they’d made love, slowly, gently, and he’d fallen asleep. The first time she saw them on stage together, she’d understood. As soon as he stepped on stage Colin seemed to turn on some switch that made him noticeable in a way; he was funny, fast, witty, but more than anything else she’d noticed Ryan and how good he was when he played off Colin, eyes lighting up in a way she’d never seen when he was doing stand-up alone. Even then she’d known that it would be improv for Ryan, improv and nothing else. And before she ever really acknowledged it, their first years together had flown by in a fast whirl of stages and lights and combining stand-up with improv for Ryan, and avoiding questions and emotions for her. It left her feeling drained sometimes, and she wished she could see the future, know if it was all really worth it or not, know if she would ever really be happy, or if she already was but just didn’t feel it. When Ryan made it to Second City, she’d been glad to move along with him, even if only to move away from everything that still seemed to keep them apart on a daily basis. As she packed the last boxes from their apartment, she’d secretly told herself everything would change as soon as they would reach Toronto. Ryan would have a chance to start over, but so would she; she’d try to be more open to him, to understand him, everything she’d tried before would finally change things, and she had really believed it could. Everything did. She’d always remember that first night Ryan performed there and how she had worn her best dress and had styled her hair only to sit in the far side of the audience where she knew he wouldn’t see her. The audience had been filled with energy, Ryan confident, nothing but a slight tremor in his voice giving away that he was nervous. As he towered over the other players, she couldn’t help but feel proud for him. His dreams were coming true, and she could see by the glow on his face as he performed there, by the slightly higher note in his laughter, that he was happy. At home. When the show ended, they got an amazing applause, the audience mumbling and laughing still even as they filed out of the theatre, Ryan receiving pats and hugs from the other players, on his first day already one of their own. Ryan had been wickedly funny, and she herself had laughed harder in those two hours than she had ever done before with a show. But what she had ended up noticing most on the stage were the women, rowdy, funny and self-assured, and she secretly wondered if they were the type Ryan thought she’d been when they first met. Maybe he still thought so. Backstage, he’d draped his arm around her shoulders and introduced her to the cast, and she had suddenly felt as if she was nothing more than a prize he had won, an accessory he wanted to show them all, only to put her away again afterwards. Her feeling slowly ebbed though, as the company proved to be openly pleasant, all of the players genuinely interested in them, and after just a couple hours she was feeling more at home than she had done in a long time in a group of people. She was still allowing Ryan to tell the stories but laughing freely, unexpectedly feeling more comforted than restricted by being at his side. Near the end of the evening he’d introduced her to a woman named Debra; she’d seen her on stage, and as she stood before her it was almost impossible to imagine this frail woman, smiling and buzzing with energy, had been the one up there, outwitting even Ryan. Debra’s hand was lingering at the lower back of a woman named Linda, but she’d only momentarily wondered at that before she had accepted Debra’s outreached hand and smiled. Debra had spoken up in a voice that been both teasing and warm, “So, you’re the woman behind this man?”. When she’d said “Yes I am” without the slightest trace of hesitation, Ryan had tightened his hold on her and had laughed, deeply, but it was only when she replayed the moment in her mind later on that she realised he had. Instead she had blushed just bit when her eyes met Debra’s again, and she had shyly admitted that she could never be so bold on stage. Debra had laughed, melodiously, and had said it was just all about putting up a farce for the world. She had nodded, suddenly sure she understood. When they finally made it to their bed, the first light was peeking through their window, and she secretly looked at Ryan when he fell asleep. For the first time since she met him, he seemed happy. Truly happy. After that first night, their first months in Toronto had involved a kind of fond and slow settling down between Ryan and her she had neither expected nor assumed possible. She had felt content, a frail understanding between them growing, and for the first time she’d thought that she could possibly marry Ryan, if he would ever ask. She had been making pasta, his favourite dinner, standing over the stove in their small apartment with the steam waving around her face, when he had suddenly came up from behind and had wrapped his long arms around her, lifting her off the ground. She had shrieked, completely surprised, and had asked him what was up. He had told her, lights in his eyes and a smile in his voice, that Colin was coming to audition too. She’d hugged him a little too hard, but he hadn’t noticed and had been out the door to tell the others before he had really looked at her. When he didn’t come home that night, she found a certain pleasure in throwing the pasta in the garbage can without ever even tasting it, and she came to realise that for Ryan, happiness would never be complete if it included just her. He would never acknowledge her shyness, her need to be protected, because why would he want to see it in her when he had already found it so openly in Colin. She’d thought about it all night, and then decided that she could stand it, that she liked Colin even, and that she was just silly to be jealous. Lots of men had best friends. She even secretly wished she would have someone like that, someone who would see right through her and recognise her for who she was. The next morning she got an unexpected call from Debra, and they went out together, laughing over ice cream and buying shoes with money they didn’t have. She could almost forget that Colin was speeding towards the city as they spoke, dropping everything to be with Ryan. Of that she was sure, whether Ryan actually realized it to be so or not. …After Colin had aced the Second City audition, Ryan had had to comfort him in his arms because he’d cried, or so she had heard from Debra later on. And slowly throughout those early Second City seasons she came to think of Colin as someone that was in Ryan’s arms, and nowhere else. One late evening Ryan had invited them all over for dinner; she’d suddenly and viciously started hating how Ryan had shortened her name to Pat early on out of convenience when she saw him hold on to Colin on the couch and call him “Col” with a soft lingering undertone she knew she was no part of. For them, “Col” meant a secret, a password to something she could only be a witness to. For Ryan, she was a given. And Debra… Debra had followed her when she had ran out to the bathroom to calm herself and had hugged her, told her she would be fine, even succeeded in making her smile. Looking up at her from the bathroom sink, she had realised she’d unconsciously started to admire Debra. She saw something in her she wished she had too. Debra was independent and funny, and almost without effort they had become good friends, without her ever telling that she’d seen her kiss Linda once on a late evening in a deserted hallway. She’d hugged Debra back and had thanked her. After that evening she started referring to Debra as Deb and almost wished Ryan would at least notice. He never did. Days and weeks and months went by, and she went to shows to see Ryan on stage, to see him crack up rooms full of people every single night. And she saw Colin too, she saw him make the delicate and more subtle jokes at the back of the stage that only seemed to enhance Ryan’s popularity, never asking anything for himself. And she got used to it, to the flow of it all, to the fact that Ryan and Colin were a team now, to the fact that she paled in comparison to Colin day and day again. She talked to Deb in a small cafés afterwards, laughing, getting drunk, and at times she felt happy, but at other times she realised everything was slipping away from her; her age, the years, Ryan, her life. And Colin, she saw him look and care and gaze, and for a couple insane moments when Ryan didn’t come home late at night, she was convinced she’d lost Ryan to this pale and shy man that was Colin forever. She’d told Deb and asked her if she was being silly. Deb had just looked at her and told her there were many kinds of friendship. Deb never told her when Linda suddenly left Second City, and by the time she’d found out, she knew it wasn’t up to her to ask about it. Looking back, she often wondered if she should have. Instead, she and Deb went dancing together, stumbling home on early mornings with their shoes in their hands and the air filled with tired laughter, collapsing on the couch, smiling until they fell asleep, shoulders leaning against each other. When Ryan found them in the morning he never said a word, but she could see by the lines in his face it annoyed him. When she and Ryan finally did have a fight about it, it was explosive, with things being thrown, and for the first time she had felt confident enough to include Colin in the list of accusations being mentioned. When she did, he had looked at her with such anger etched on his face she had felt scared of him for a moment. The silence they fell into after that had been telling. They both had things to lose, and neither of them realised how close they were to doing exactly that when they decided to stay together, to try just one more time. A month later Deb asked Colin out on a date, urged on by Ryan. More as a good-will kind of thing than anything else, Pat had thought at first, until Ryan had come home drunk with a temper. He told her they’d really hit it off, his voice filled with strained happiness, but with a tremble underneath that caught her attention. She’d cried that night, fiercely, as if she had lost something she never knew she had, even though she would never dare to define it. Ryan grew even more distanced in the months Deb and Colin dated, and by the end they were doing little more than sharing an apartment, both falling apart in the tense silence, both tied up in their own undefined misery. When one day a call from Deb and Colin came to tell them they were getting married, she’d almost thought they were kidding. They weren’t though, and as she and Ryan sat, side to side, in the small chilly church in January and saw those two exchange their vows, she’d cried again, silently this time. Ryan had too, but only after the reception, when he had been drunk, and they’d ended up moving in their bed together with more violence in that single night than she’d ever remembered from before. As she woke up the next morning with shy bruises marring her skin, she’d been afraid to think about the whys and wherefores and decided to concentrate on what she could control. Ryan asked her to marry him two weeks later. She’d said yes as an automatism, looking into his gentle eyes and forbidding herself to dwell on why she felt a sinking feeling in her stomach. She had always thought of happiness as something that could be forged if one only tried hard enough, and now, driven by the emptiness she felt inside her, she set out to do just that. When accepting Ryan’s proposal, she asked for one thing, and that was that they’d move. In her mind, she knew that getting away from everything again wouldn’t help, not forever, but she still hoped. Ryan had seemed almost relieved at that and transferred to the Los Angeles Second City troop, away from Colin, away from Deb, away from the small Toronto cafés and streets they both had grown to love and hate so much. And in a way, Los Angeles became a liberation for them both. The busy sun-lit city made it easy to forget all that had been so subtly wrong the past between them, almost too easy. When they exchanged their vows in a large L.A. church filled with flowers, friends and family, it had meant something real, to both of them; their life was coming together and finally they could laugh together too, with only a small hint of sadness underneath it all. When Deb got pregnant, she’d called Pat first before allowing Colin to tell Ryan. Pat could hear that she had been crying, even through the phone line, and she had been quiet, not knowing what to say. Ryan had seemed genuinely happy for Colin, and had explained to her with lights in his eyes that Colin had always wanted children and that he would make an amazing father. A couple months later Deb and Colin moved out to Los Angeles as well. Officially, it was for their child, for the money, for both of their careers. But she knew Colin would have been perfectly happy to stay in Toronto if staying would have meant that Ryan was there too. And Deb… She came to L.A. to write for a TV-show. With Linda. As they went to meet them at the airport, she saw Deb confidently hug Linda, Colin wrap his arms tightly around a gleaming Ryan, and she’d felt more alone than she ever had before. That night, she looked at her golden wedding band on her nightstand and wondered what she had done. When Colin and Deb’s son was born, they were the first to get the call, and Ryan insisted on driving out there right away. Colin had been waiting for them at the entrance of the hospital, smoking one cigarette after another, and as soon as he saw them he ran for Ryan and hugged him tight, a mixture of tears and wonder on his face. Ryan had patted his back and had whispered some words in his ear that made him relax visibly, smile even. She had pretended not to notice, and together they had walked on to the maternity ward, Ryan with one arm so comfortably around Colin and she walking two steps behind them. When they entered the room, Colin showed his new-born child to Ryan with an actual glow in his eyes, and Deb had sent a tired laugh her way. The images of the smiles on their faces stuck with her, and she realised she had never really thought about having children before. That evening she looked at the birth control pill she was about to swallow and then threw it in the sink, letting the little yellow pill flush away with the circling water. The first year of their marriage Ryan accepted a permanent performing job on television in England, and at a party he tensely introduced her to part of the American cast. The first time she met Greg he was looking at Ryan out of the corner of his eye, the overhead lights reflecting in his glasses, before he had turned to politely smile at her and ask her who she was. She shook his hand and felt somewhat confused at the guarded expression on Ryan’s face when he introduced her as his wife, only to be distracted when Greg expertly included her into the conversation. Throughout the evening, he continued to talk in rapid succession about things that seemed to matter so little that he made her feel almost childlike, stupid, as if she didn’t know Ryan at all, and the sad part was that at a certain level she knew it to be true. She never dared to ask Ryan why he liked Greg. When her parents gave her a ticket to fly over to England and visit Ryan as a surprise, she had done it, knowing full well she would find something. She only hadn’t known it would have been Greg. She’d walked into a hotel room where Ryan was blissfully asleep between the sheets, naked, the smell of sex still in the room. Greg was in the bed too, looking at Ryan with a look of pure adoration that quickly changed into fear as he saw her standing there with a key the hotel manager had given her. Her heart had been beating in her throat, and she’d shook her head, fast, soundlessly closing the door behind her again before she burst out in shaking tears in the middle of the hallway. She thought about going in again, waking Ryan, letting him see and feel what he had just done to her. Instead, she composed herself and walked outside, through a cold and rainy London, the wind blowing rainstorms around until she was chilled to the bone, trying to think of an answer to what she had seen. After hours, being lost in a strange city, she took a cab back to the airport and the first plane home. For the rest of her life, she would refuse to go to London ever again. ...When Ryan came back home after that first London summer, he had caught her in his arms and spun her around, whispered in her ear that he had missed her and had looked at her with such admiration in his eyes she almost wished she had never gone over there. When they were in bed together that night and he told her, seriously, that there was nowhere he’d rather be than with her, she had believed him. Later on she decided that she would never tell him what she saw that day. London had been a different world, she convinced herself. It was too far from home, too far from her, with nothing but illusions for him to hold on to. And deep down she knew she was being naïve. She knew, but there just seemed nothing else to think or to do, and so she relaxed in Ryan’s arms and told him that she loved him. He looked straight in her eyes and whispered it to her too, and she smiled. Two months later, on an L.A. beach, light and sun all around, she took Ryan’s hand and placed it on her stomach, telling him she was pregnant. He had smiled and held her closer, and she had dared to hope again that maybe… everything would change. In the mean time, Deb and Colin were having a hard time in L.A. She knew when she tried to call them and the phone line had been disconnected. She knew when she saw Ryan write a check and mail it to Colin with a sorrowful expression in his eyes. They both knew Colin would never accept it, and he never did, the check came back in the mail a couple days later with a yellow post-it note attached to it. A month later she sent one out to Deb. Colin had auditioned for Whose Line before and failed; Ryan knew that. But when he called in some favors to get Colin an audition for the U.K. show in L.A., she’d encouraged it. Deb needed it. Colin needed it. Hell, even Ryan needed it, she knew so. He needed Colin’s light, his gentleness, or he fell to pieces; she’d seen it happen before. She realised she wanted Colin in London just as much as Ryan did. Colin got the audition and flew over there but was too timid without Ryan to be the performer she knew he really was. When the producers had said no to a re-appearance, to both Colin and a pissed off, even depressed Ryan, it was her who had felt she needed to do something. With shaking hands, she had looked up Greg’s phone number in Ryan’s booklet and called him. She had told him, in a clear voice, she’d tell on him and Ryan to his wife if he didn’t talk to the producers and get Colin another chance, put Ryan and Colin together on a show. Greg had agreed in uncharacteristically few words, and Colin had got his third chance, which led to him being permanently contracted over there. Later on, she’d secretly think that was the greatest thing she’d ever done for Ryan. She deeply enjoyed being pregnant, the feeling of having something of Ryan so close to her heart. It changed him too; he started calling her often; a gleam of love slipped in his voice when he called her Pat, and for a couple months, she thought she’d fixed everything. Almost, at least. When their daughter was born, they held her in their arms, endlessly counting her fingers and toes, marveling at the fact that together they made something that perfect. And as she looked at the expression on Ryan’s face when looking at their child, when holding her in his hands, she felt certain that now they had a connection between them that never could be broken. In that same year, Ryan got a steady job in L.A. as well, regular hours on a sitcom, and slowly their life settled in a comfortable rhythm. They had it good together. For the first time they didn’t really have to worry about money anymore; she saw Ryan light up every time he looked at their baby, and the love between them was easier then than ever. Comfortable. Right. In the following summers, with Colin on the show and Greg walking around in London somewhere, Ryan grew edgy but dedicated. He called in often to check on her and their child, even laughing for no reason at all sometimes, and she wondered when he would realise exactly what Colin meant to him. Four years later, her son on her hip and their daughter running around in the garden, she got her answer from Colin. Colin and Ryan were sitting on the wooden bench in the back of their garden. Not that Colin was saying anything, no. He glowed. He smiled. He laughed. And Ryan looked at him as if he was the only thing in the world before he trailed his finger over Colin’s cheek and pressed his lips on his, softly. Hands shaking, she took the children inside and started serving dinner. What she both loved and hated about it was that from that point on, their marriage became better than ever before. Ryan had become happy, blatantly so, walking around the house singing and playing with the kids, and she almost couldn’t help but like Colin for making him that way. Colin, however, would look at her when he thought she didn’t see it, deep pools of guilt in his eyes. At times she wanted to yell at him, hit him. Sometimes she wanted to thank him. When Christmas came around that year, they all celebrated it together, the Mochries and the Stiles. As she looked around the room, she secretly wondered when they had all become so grown-up. The picture of their first years was still so evident in her mind, and somehow everything had been more real back then than it was now. There was a large green tree in their living room, gorgeously decorated, with the children hesitantly playing under it. Colin and Ryan were quietly drinking together on the couch, red wine, and she knew the blush on both their faces wasn’t because they were drunk. Deb had a glow in her eyes too, and when they were in the kitchen together, doing the dishes, she couldn’t help but taking a little foam on her finger and dabbing it on Deb’s face. Deb had looked shocked for a moment, and then had laughed her musical laugh, chasing her through the kitchen until she had her pinned up against the counter and tickled her, their easy friendship never really lost. When they had left that evening she had held Deb in a long hug, smelling her perfume and already regretting that she would be gone, feeling as if her being there gave her the strength to be the funny and shy woman she had always wanted to be. When they parted, Colin was there, looking at her hesitantly, before she had wrapped her arms around him too, stiffly. When she wished him the best she realised she had actually meant it. Winter moved into summer again, and even though Colin and Deb had moved back to Canada as soon as they could afford it, Deb came by when Ryan and Colin were in London, letting her son play with her kids, doing some camera work, being the friend Pat so gladly remembered. They sat in front of the fire place together at night, drinking wine, not saying too much but enjoying the quiet. She often thought it was almost silly how many secrets they managed to keep between them. When she told Deb she loved her, Deb had laughed and said a “Thank you” that was almost mocking, and she had been too afraid to say anything else before getting up and going to bed. Deb had followed her. They first time they’d kissed she could almost convince herself it had been accidental, and she’d stammered some excuse. The next time was excruciatingly slow and impossible, and she’d suddenly felt like screaming too. Instead she had turned away, and Deb had apologized, silently. She had mumbled something about “friends”, and tried hard, heart hammering in her chest, to ignore the glimpse of pain in Deb’s eyes. Ryan never asked why she “forgot” to invite them the next Christmas. When the show moved from England to the U.S., Ryan fought like crazy to keep Colin on, refusing a quarter million dollar contract if he wouldn’t be there. She’d rubbed his shoulders in their bed at night and told him, genuinely, burying her own memories, how close it all had been, to “fight for it”. He had looked at her, so grateful, that she couldn’t help but smile. He pulled her close and whispered a “love you” that had made her shiver. That night, he’d caught her in his strong arms and they’d made the long, desperate kind of love that made her almost believe he was all hers. The next morning he’d succeeded in getting Colin on, and as he called Colin with the news he’d looked like a nervous schoolboy, fiddling with the cord, almost dialling the wrong number. When he did manage to tell a just as nervous Colin, she’d heard Deb’s whoops through the line, and had involuntary laughed, breathy and fast, the pain of what she had lost shooting through her. The years after that, with The Drew Carey Show, the American Whose Line, and relative fame and wealth, turned out to be the hardest ones. Ryan was gone too often, working two very popular shows at once, hurting his back, his leg, and she thought he would crack up and cry out of misery some day. He never did. Only the summers were respites for him. She’d take the children up to Seattle and he would stay in L.A., taping Whose Line, calling with a tired and worn voice at night, and she didn’t know what to tell him, only that she understood more of his pain than he would ever realise. He seemed constantly torn between life, her, the children, work, and Colin. She heard from Ryan that Colin grew more famous in Canada, constantly working, leaving Deb behind to take care of their son, and she knew what drove Colin. She knew he still played a part in Ryan’s life, a silent, desperate part, the one that made Ryan cry out at night and drink more than he did before. She would turn forty soon. She started to long for the days in Toronto, so long ago, when it had all seemed so simple, choices not really made, life not really started, and she silently wondered where the years had gone. She waited for the day Ryan would ask her what they were still doing together, really, and knew what she would answer. Ryan didn’t speak up though, and she felt a despair settle over her, sometimes grabbing hold of the phone, but putting it back down before she could dial Deb’s number. Something needed to be done, but she didn’t have the strength for it, the time becoming a continuous loop of days and the incessant habit of silence between all of them so logical by then that it seemed as if there really was nothing to do but just live, just wait. She saw Greg at parties, sometimes, and he always avoided her gaze. He had gotten older too, she could see. There were more lines around his eyes, a sharper edge to his voice and a cynicism in his words that pointed more towards pain than actual age, and she felt a shimmer of compassion for him. He had talked to her, once, when they had found themselves standing next to each other, accidentally, at a Whose Line season wrap party. When she had been impossible to avoid, he had nodded at her, “Patricia”, and then had lowered his eyes again, a small layer of politeness covering up all the rest. She had swallowed and had hated her own soft voice when she had acknowledged, “Greg”. He had granted her one last look, such emptiness in his eyes, that for the first time she wondered if he had maybe really loved Ryan at one point. As he walked away, she saw him skilfully avoid Colin too, and she thought she understood something of his hurt. Her fortieth birthday passed without a real party, only the one the kids threw her, and as she held them both she realised she did get a great gift out of the years. Their son and daughter were probably the only things in the world that she and Ryan still equally loved, and she knew for a fact he would do anything for them. As Ryan was playing with them on the lawn, she suddenly let out a heartfelt laugh at the image they made, Ryan with his sore back still lifting them up and spinning them around, before she went inside to make them all a snack. She had never known she would become such a … woman. A wife, a mother. She enjoyed it, she did, but it still surprised her at times. Inside, she felt as if she hadn’t changed a day from the woman she had been in Toronto, laughing with Deb, playing, everything so complicated but yet so light, bearable. And here she was, a wife in a beautiful house with two children and a husband with a major career, and she wondered where it had all come from all of a sudden. When she told Ryan, right after her birthday, that she wanted to fly out to Canada and go visit Deb for the first time in years, he had looked at her, surprised, and had asked her if they were still friends. She had said an “of course” she didn’t know she had in her, and had seen something of trepidation in his eyes. So Deb knew then. She still took the plane, and when she arrived in Toronto, it was Colin picking her up at the airport, telling her in his familiar apologetic way that Deb had been in a meeting so she had asked him to pick her up. On the drive towards their home, she realised she had never been somewhere with Colin alone. They had both shared their years with Ryan and Deb, always hovering between them, without ever actually connecting themselves. Colin was quiet, but she could see he was nervous, hand tapping on the steering wheel, little hitches to his breath. When they pulled up to the drive way, a huge weight seemed to fall off his shoulders, and he smiled at her. When he opened the door though, it was obvious that no one was inside, and a red blinking light on their answering machine illustrated why. Deb had left a message that she would be late, and her electronic voice asked Colin, rather pointedly, to be “nice to Pat”. She laughed. As they went outside again and Colin showed her their newly done garden, she felt her thoughts gear up. Looking at Colin, she realised that even though they must have a lot in common, she had no idea what to say to the man. This person who was so openly good and shy and dependant on Ryan, on Deb, even on his son. This person who probably knew more about Ryan than she ever would. When she spoke, there was a hitch to her voice that made Colin face her with sadness in his eyes. “Colin?” “Yes?” He asked, tone too silent not to know what she would ask, and she took a deep breath, realising this moment had been long overdue between them. “You… you love him, right?” Colin continued to look at her, brown eyes unwavering. She was glad he didn’t try to deny anything, but she hadn’t expected to see so much hurt so clearly written in his face. He didn’t speak. She wondered if he had anything to say, really, and tears started blurring her vision. Shakily, she reached for his hand. She wanted to tell him… Hell, she didn’t know what she wanted to tell him anymore. Colin let go of her offered hand quickly, and they didn’t speak, just looked at the flowers, arranged in beautiful beds, trimmed and planted by Deb in the many days a year Colin wasn’t home. She wondered if they had just settled anything between them, or if she had managed to make Colin feel even more guilty. Deb’s arrival was announced by the excited barking of their dogs and the high voice of a child entwined with softer comments from Deb. As Deb found them in the garden she gave her a hug and a smile that made her breath catch, and she tried not to think about why she really had come. Deb made some comments about how well she looked, asked about the children and then started making dinner for all of them. When Luke came in, peeking around the corner, Deb introduced her as “Aunt Pat” and she smiled, secretly wondering whether she was an aunt by relation to Ryan or to Deb. Where she thought the next day would have been horrible and tense, nothing between them ever really settled or spoken out loud, all just shades of grey, it was not. She and Deb went out to buy shoes, the kind that neither of them needed, and drank cappuccinos in the middle of the city, laughing and talking and for once, she felt young again. Free. Light and happy, and she didn’t even blink as Deb planted a soft kiss on her cheek for no apparent reason. Right after her birthday, she had told herself that she would go over there with the plan to settle something, to either close a chapter or open one. She had wanted to ask Deb about Colin and Ryan, to ask her about Linda, from so many years ago, to ask her about the both of them, and wonder, daringly, out loud whether they made some mistake long ago. Instead she laughed so hard her stomach hurt, and they ended up getting drunk and dancing in the street, afterwards almost setting off the alarm when they sneaked back in the house, and even though they were both perfectly capable of going up the stairs they fell asleep on the couch together. Colin found them in the morning with the kind of indulgent smile she had only see him use on Ryan before, and she wondered if Deb and Colin’s marriage was better than hers. It probably was. A few days later, she flew back home with a lingering hug from Deb, new shoes and a renewed sense of direction. When Ryan came home at night, tired, she had dinner ready. She laughed at him from over the table, told him funny stories of what happened, and asked him if they could invite Deb and Colin, and maybe Greg and his wife over some time. Ryan almost choked on his salad. Where she had thought she could handle life again, she hadn’t counted on the fact that summer came without Whose Line that year. Just like that. It had never been cancelled, nothing had ended. It was just… not there anymore. She had wanted to ask Deb over to L.A. to drink wine in front of the fireplace again. She had wanted to see some happiness on Ryan’s face once more. She had wanted to change everything for the best again over the course of one summer and instead there was nothing. Ryan was home, listless, tired, and for the first time she really noticed the evident lines those last years had shaped on his face and the dull ache in his once radiant eyes. He missed Colin. She knew he did, but yet he didn’t speak of him, ever. He became short-tempered, the silent and only slightly annoyed patience he always seemed to draw on during the year worn thin, and in the third week she couldn’t take it anymore and took the children up to Seattle. She barely heard from him in the next weeks and knew she was forcing him into… something, to fall and break or to let his fall be stopped, and she wasn’t going to do it. Hell, she knew for a fact he hadn’t seen Colin in months, maybe even a year. She wondered when it all would be bad enough to bring Ryan to call him. She wondered exactly how much it would take for everything to fall apart and realised she longed for the day it would. She was sick of it all, so sick of the drag of almost everything, so sick of pretending, so sick of life as it was. She had promised herself that she would never go to London again. But she had been so much younger then. Twelve years had passed, twelve years for her to realise that it wasn’t London she was so afraid of. That it wasn’t Greg who had done anything to her. That it was the relief she had seen in Ryan’s face as he slept next to Greg that had hurt her more than the fact that he had slept with Greg. In the sixth week, she took a flight back home without telling anyone. When she arrived at their house, it was quiet. Eerily almost, and as the sun shone outside she felt the cold of what she knew she would find there settle around her. It wouldn’t be their bedroom. She knew that. It would be the guest bedroom down the hall, the one where Ryan never went during the year if he could help it. She knew. As she turned the doorknob, she still felt calm. As she opened the bedroom door, she saw the pale tone of bare skin against white sheets. She saw the light enter the room through the half-opened blinds. She saw the familiar form of Ryan, holding Colin down, kissing his shoulder, his chest, slowly, leisurely, but so intently, so filled with pain. She felt the heat creep up from the back of her throat, and she had to force herself to take another breath. In the sudden, time-stopping moment after that, both Colin and Ryan saw she was there. Colin’s eyes widened, round, brown globes of guilt, and he scrambled up, away from Ryan. Ryan half-grabbed his arm but missed and scrambled up on the bed too. Colin grabbed his clothes, mashed them together in his hands, and jumped to the side, back against the wall, all color drained from his face. Ryan moved and then sat on the edge of the bed, completely still. He didn’t even seem to realise or care that he was naked. His elbows were leaning on his knees, his back a long and impossibly tense line of wiry muscle, his head momentarily hidden in his hands. Then there was silence. She felt as if it was oppressingly warm in that room. Her palms were sweating, her cheeks burning, not enough breaths to clear her head. When she looked back at Colin, she thought he looked like he wanted to disappear into that wall entirely. She could hear his breathing, quick and shallow. Ryan… he shifted, and then painfully, stiffly, moved his eyes up to meet hers. He looked so small in that single moment it took her breath away. So broken. Slowly, she stepped closer, and as she stood before him his hands reached out to her, so insecure and so tired, and she let herself be pulled towards him until his head rested against her stomach and his arms were around her waist. She could feel he was crying. Ryan never cried. Never. Hesitatingly, her hand moved up and tangled itself in his hair. She closed her eyes as she smelled his scent, so familiar, all of it, and yet it wasn’t. Oh god. She knew he loved Colin. She had always known. But not until… not really until that very moment did she realise how much he suffered because of it. How much they all did. When she looked up, it was because she heard the creaking of the door as a fully dressed Colin left the room. Ryan wanted to go after him, she could feel it in the way his muscles clenched at the sound, but he wouldn’t if she continued to hold him. She knew, and for a moment, she was certain that she would hold on forever, that they could change it all, that it would all work out, if only… and then she closed her eyes and let go. Ryan went for him, and she sagged down on the bed, sat there, dazed, for a long time. Later, she flew out to Canada again, to Deb, and they had their wine on Colin and Deb’s porch, right by the overly manicured flowerbeds. She kissed Deb once, on the couch, and then again after they had slow danced in the garden together. It wasn’t perfect, she knew. Nothing was ever perfect. It wasn’t even close to what she’d dreamed of. She had never thought about the pain of facing Ryan again. She had never thought about the impossibility of life now, about their children, their family. And she hated herself for never really understanding, never seeing the future for what it could have been. She had never thought about the rage she felt against Colin for being better, for always being better, for having all the pieces of both Deb and Ryan she never had. But she forgave him too; she forgave them all and then herself last, everything mixed together and stretched out until there were new shapes, new possible futures she both feared and wanted. She had never thought about the sheer naturalness which being with Deb held either, how many laughs they could pack into a single day, how young she felt again, how all the chances they had missed suddenly mattered so little, only the now and what would come after it. The reunion show at Second City came too soon and too late, the little hallways bringing back memories of different days, so long ago, but still there, in her heart, still the same, all of it. And when they performed, she sat at the first row of the audience this time, where she knew they would see her. She had worn her best dress and sandals she could go out dancing in later. She had painted her lips, styled her hair, but not for the farce. Not for the game. It was all there, all she had ever felt and wanted, all brought together in the impossibly long years since she had sat in that very audience for the very first time. She watched the stage lights play off Ryan’s slightly greying hair and noticed something she hadn’t seen in a long time. A real, bright smile. He was having the time of his life up there, improvising. It all sounded new, inventive, and she realised that had been missing for years. She saw Colin’s now completely white hair and still shy smile, the expression in his eyes so open now, his steps gentle but confident, his jokes sweet and complicated and outrageous and all for the smiles, all for the smile of Ryan. And then she saw Deb, whose glittering eyes were scanning the crowd only to rest on hers, unwavering. And as they all took their bows, the last applause, she suddenly, fondly, saw the outline of the people and the relationships they had always pretended to be on that stage for what they really were. Nothing but stage lights.