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Patrick woke up hazy, tasting the reek of his own mouth and ashes from where he was pressed into the car cushion. He was going to see them again, the thought sour as his teeth. After twelve years of radio silence save for Tashi in Atlanta and then Tashi saying, angry, three years later, that if he was going to butt-dial her he should just delete her fucking number, and she was going to delete his too, and was it just that he forgot all their arguments that he was using to get off and needed some new material, was that all she was to him? Which no, but he had used the rage of her voice then to get himself over the edge for months after, years if he was being honest, which he may as well be, since clearly it didn’t matter. He was as over it as anyone could pretend to be, which was not at all, and sick of pretending and pretense, and he missed her so intensely it was like a migraine if he was the kind of person who got migraines. He wasn’t, but he read about the pain, the slicing stabbing lightning and the slightest sensation overwhelming you, and he thought nothing truly bad had ever happened to him in his life. His parents didn’t even cut him off, not officially. He just ran out of what he was given all those years ago. There was no explosion, no revelation. He told Leah that he was fine. Leah said, Mom says you don’t even text anymore. Like not even High Holy Day shit. What is your problem? then sighed and said, Look, my break’s over, let’s table this, can I call you next we- and the phone beeped because Patrick had hung up. Reminded that she was an on-call doctor for whateverfuckingunit that he did know when people said its name but otherwise always fumbled through forgetfully.
Funny what he could forget and what stayed around lingering.
But Leah was a good sister and a busy full-time employed adult, and whatever problem Patrick was having shouldn’t be hers to consider in the first place. He was doing the thing again where he was too much and too intense and jabbering on about himself when he was supposed to be sensitive to other people, which was something one of his tutors said when he was in 3rd grade right before she’d got fired. After all, whatever he was feeling wasn’t actually his own loss. It was secondhand, passed down in one day and not his to claim. He’d gone years without watching the footage from the game; then, when he’d finally told himself to suck it up and be a man and hit play, he saw the girls walk on—women’s tennis, is what they were called, but it was college, and from his mid-20s viewpoint Patrick understood more than ever how young they were—and Tashi looked up to the stands, searching, ducking her head down like whatever (That’s right, Patrick thought to young Tashi from eight years in the future, I’m whatever, don’t think about it) but then she looked back up and Patrick dropped his phone so abruptly it fell straight to the ground and cracked. He shoved it back in his pocket and got out his lighter. Fingers shaking. Pussy. It wasn’t even the accident, the moment the muscles and bones of her knee distorted and separated from where they were joined together, it was his absence from it when he should’ve been there, or when he shouldn’t have—because they fought—but they always fought—but it was different.
He wouldn’t be able to change it, to cradle her and tell her he was sorry. And he wasn't enough of an idiot to think, especially after Atlanta, that she wanted it to change. What did he want? Question of the century, probably. He wished she was meaner. When he blew cigarette smoke in her face and she said “Can you blow it away from me, please” and he apologized and did, he wished she’d shoved him to the ground. Or cursed him out. There was this veneer of politeness that neither of them could break, at least in the first moments of encounter, like they were both perfectly normal people without a history or a lust between them, and Patrick hated that.
But this was all for his masturbatory fantasies, remember, because he was selfish. Patrick laughed to himself, coughing a little, checking his phone. 4:30 AM. Art was probably up already, probably doing his stupid little regimented exercises and liquid meals, probably looking at their daughter and smiling. Tashi eating, like, fruit or something, citrus. In Patrick’s mind she beckoned Art to their bed and put her hand under his jaw softly. Not not sexy. In every article Patrick had skimmed in the last few years they spoke not just of Art’s devotion to tennis but his devotion to his wife. His unwavering, steadfast bullshit. It was like being stabbed without any pain, like being hurt with no way through to release. Patrick put his hand at the band of his shorts and thought, distinctly, whatever. They weren’t opening the facilities this early. He got a dinky paper thing to put on the windshield saying he could park here. And he had, at best, two pairs of cleanish underwear left, which was more than one. Acceptable. He slid his hand further and thought about Art angry, too.
At some point Patrick’s schoolboy wet dreams of rutting against Art or making him get on his knees for Patrick had dissolved into something more masochistic than he’d like to admit. With Tashi it was one thing. Being pushed around by her was easy access from his well of memories, choking on her fingers, silently crying out when she pressed into his hole. With Art it made him feel bad, like, you felt like he was the kind of guy who’d call sex making love and wanted to take it slow, but there was a fury in his tennis that’d made Patrick sometimes wonder if people would one day call them fire and fire, back when they were a duo, a team. It didn’t come out often. He pressed the heel of his palm against his dick and thought about Tashi holding him down and laughing, saying “You act like you can’t just get up.” He didn’t know how to explain that when she was pushing him he wanted to fall. Couldn’t tell Art that one, either.
He thought about Art cursing in the locker rooms, mindful to never swear on court, Art cursing at him, so rare it felt like a gift for the part of his mind that was only sated when someone was snapping at him and he was snapping back. Banished from his head the memories after of Art saying “Man, I didn’t mean it, I’m sorry,” clapping him on the back and pressing in close, for as long as he’d let Patrick hold him there. He didn’t have that urge like Patrick did, to fall when pushed, until Tashi came around.
Years of marriage had made both of them soft, careful people. Patrick didn’t care if that wasn’t true. He would bring them out of it, could make them wild again. He envisioned Art, shorn and severe, bending Patrick’s legs up, calling him a slut, saying he was so fucking easy, saying he would just slide in and know Patrick fucking loved the drag. Patrick would say no fuck you no one likes when it hurts you idiot and Art would push in, all hard hot pressure and edges of pain, nothing real because Patrick’s pain was not his and not true. He would tilt his hips down, seeking more, and Art would stop and say, with his old snark, don’t you need time to adjust? You’re not that big, Patrick would spit back, and Tashi would slap him on the chest, abuse his nipples between her fingers and sink down onto his face, saying couldn’t he just be quiet for once, and reach for Art over him as Patrick licked into her and grabbed onto her thighs, Art fucking him viciously as he kissed Tashi deeper, moaning and finding his rhythm. Tashi praised him for how well he was fucking Patrick, how good he was doing. Nothing for Patrick as he pistoned his tongue into her, letting her lazily ride his thrusts, not being allowed to touch her clit. The truth was that this would never happen, or they would be kinder, because they knew him better than anyone else in the world, or they would be harsher, because they knew him.
He wanted Art to pull out and flip him over and spank him until he’s red and gasping into Tashi’s thighs. Art would hate doing it, he’s certain, participating in this degrading thing even when he’s not the one being degraded, but Art’s hate made his face feel hot, made his blood rush faster. Patrick moved his hand rapidly over his cock, spreading his precome to the root; Tashi once told him that he got wet as a girl and he’d touched himself to the words so many times that he’d long since lost count. She hadn’t even said it during sex, just a joke on one of their many phone calls. Still it made him feel like he could be open and wanting in some unfathomable, impossible way—like he would be allowed to, if he wasn’t himself.
She never hit him, either. When they were going over things they liked in bed casually, she’d mentioned that as a turn off, she could deal with playfights but not being hit like an actual kid, whataboutyou, she’d said. I don’t know, he said, truthfully. He could never bring himself to ask anyone to do that, and they never assumed he wanted it. There was a world where it was written all over his face every time he got hard for her and she understood and did it without saying a word. This was not that world, not even close to it. He thought about them fucking gently, making love, and came uselessly in his boxers when the Art in his mind slid his hands under Tashi’s thighs and she sighed and leaned up to kiss him. Whatever. He would peel off his shorts, his crummy underwear, and rinse in the lockers. His breath still smelled like shit. There would be free toothpaste in the motel, he was pretty sure, he hadn’t thought to check.
With the two of them there on him surely he would put up a good fight, Patrick thought. Make them really jump him, pin him down properly so he wasn’t just obeying but really being held. And that was his problem, also. He knew he wasn’t supposed to want stuff like this; that all his life he’d been spoiled and yet ever wanting, gluttonous and greedy. Everything necessary had been more than provided for, tenfold. Was that why he wanted these twisted up things, this shit that left him feeling hot in the chest and restless even after orgasm? A mind made to invent wanting more. He was stupid, and he was a loser, and still. One day one of the losses would feel so bad it would be like winning. Not this week—this week he had to keep going, had to make it to Art, to her. Another twelve years spun past, another lifetime, and he’d be fixed.