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When he arrives home, the rented apartment looks exactly as he left it: tall ceilings and light oak accents, linen curtains breezing open to reveal a strip of ocean. Clean and anonymous. The mood is still vacation. Art isn’t sure why he expected any different, when he’d been gone less than four days. It should’ve been a relief, that the white walls remain unmarked and upright, the way he should be. Instead, he feels like he’s about to dissolve into a red puddle, and stain all the spotless furniture.
Tashi hasn’t noticed him yet. She’s curled on the couch, barefoot, fiddling with her laptop. Bobbed hair frizzier than usual, hunched in one of Art’s old Stanford shirts. A bolt of black silk peeks out from beneath the tattered hem. He feels himself settle, fixed on the frenzied clack of her nails across the keyboard, the scrunch of her eyebrows. Things only Art is allowed to see.
“How long are you gonna stand there, staring like a creep?” The question comes out smooth, conversational. Tashi hasn’t looked up, still typing.
Art startles for a second, before his mouth curves into a smile.
“How long?” Tashi asks again.
“Forever,” Art replies, then adds, “Until you look at me.”
Tashi sighs and shuts the laptop lid. Her dark eyes find him across the room, arresting, like she’s staring him down from her seat in the stands. You got this, I know you do. Art gazes back steadily, the same way he always does – but she must see something new in his face.
“What did he do now?”
Art flinches, a bright arrow of pain shooting through his chest. “He…” Art starts, and Tashi waits patiently as he collects himself. “He told me he loved me.”
“Ah.” She looks away, the line between her eyebrows deepening. Art feels his heart pound. In a decisive motion, Tashi springs up from the couch and tosses her laptop aside.
“You know what? I’m not touching that,” she says, flattening her hair down with her palms. “This whole morning has been a shitshow already.”
Art nods, and lets the tense moment pass them by. “Kyra still struggling with her serve?” he says.
“I wish that was the problem,” Tashi huffs. “She’s giving me a migraine.”
“I’ll get you some painkillers.”
Art is breathless with relief, grateful he can perform this simple service. He dashes to the kitchen and comes back with a glass of water and some Ibuprofen, handing them over without touching her. Tashi’s throat ripples as she swallows, and Art drinks in the beautiful arc of it.
“Art,” Tashi says, placing the drained glass on the coffee table. “Why are you acting like I’m about to stab you? I’m your wife.”
It’s a tendency of her’s, to express this on occasion. I’m your wife, like she’s reminding him, like she knows he still finds it so unbelievable. It makes Art feel seen and held, even with the bubbling undercurrent of humiliation.
He lets out a bitter laugh. “Exactly,” he says. “You should stab me.”
“Nah,” she says, a wry smile tugging at her lips. “You wouldn’t even put up a fight – it’d be fuckin’ boring.”
Tashi lifts her hands and cradles his face, tilting it from side to side. Checking for signs of injury. Art lets his eyes slip shut, heart steadying at the gentleness. Her fingers slide into his hair, neatening his unruly fringe, tugging at the longer tufts. Tashi’s touch is brisk and exact, unlike Patrick’s blunt fingers, which raked with desperate urgency. The Klonopin he’d popped on the plane to Florida is starting to wear off, and Art feels pulled along by an undertow, the flow of his blood rushing and spiking.
“I know, I know,” he croaks. “I need a haircut.”
When he opens his eyes, Tashi looks bothered. “I didn’t say that,” she says, sounding almost hurt.
Finding it difficult to look at her, Art’s attention drifts to the paintings on the wall behind her. They came with the apartment, a blue-and-white triptych. Swathes of foam and oil. They aren’t particularly distinctive, consisting of nothing but the sea – an enveloping sea that could’ve bordered any beach, any coastal city. He was supposed to be here, over the weekend. They’d planned to shop around for a place that was less liminal, more textured, where they picked the paintings. A home for Lily. He was supposed to do a lot of things.
“Daddy?”
Art looks to the doorway, where Lily is standing. Her curls are sleep-mussed, little chin sticky with jelly. The twist of her mouth is uncertain – and Art can’t bear that look for another second. It makes reality snap into place, sudden and bracing.
He drops to his knees, holds open his arms. “Come here, peanut.”
*
Through an unspoken agreement, Art takes the week off from foundation work to spend time with Lily. He ducks out while her tutor is taking her through basic units and measurements, to watch Tashi coach near Pompano Beach. Kicking his feet up on the plastic chairs, Art tracks the swing of Tashi’s arm as she pounds balls across the court, one after the other, pulling Kyra wide on her weaker forehand side.
At sixteen, Tashi’s new baby is faster than Art ever was, a whip-pan of ice blue braids and dark skin.
“PICK IT UP,” Tashi screams, “MY GRANDMA’S CORPSE CAN MOVE FASTER THAN YOU!”
Art froths a laugh into his morning coffee, when he catches sight of Kyra’s determined glare. He knows that look, has repeatedly felt his own face glaze and harden into its mold.
It’s weird, seeing it from the outside. In the early years of his career, it had been an expression of complete devotion. When he caught Tashi’s eye from across the net, from her throne in the audience, he felt like they were two souls inhabiting the same body, and by being one body, they were generating something he’d always craved: absolute closeness, absolute perfection. It didn’t matter how the press spun it, whether they thought he was a puppet or that Tashi was a tragedy.
All that mattered was he was her, and she was him.
He isn’t sure when that stopped. The commentators cite his fucked up shoulder, but he knows the slow dive started long before. When his muscle tore, in that flash of dazzling agony, all he’d felt was a relief so pure, he was sick with it. It’s the same relief he feels now, Art realizes with a knot of guilt. Relief that he’s drinking an over-sugared cappuccino; relief to be up here instead of sweating down there, waiting for the match to end.
“Having traumatic flashbacks?” Tashi asks on her break, collapsing into the seat beside him. She gulps water from her bottle with the lid off, rivulets pouring down her chin and onto her chest. Art resists the urge to slide a hand across her clavicle and wipe the droplets away, like some kind of fussy handmaiden.
“Not at all,” he says, smiling. “You were way nicer to me.”
Tashi is always looser after time on court, and he’s hoping she’ll respond with something sappy, like, that’s ‘cause you’re my favorite student. But she’s locked into coach mode, and the look she flicks over is clinical. Assessing.
“That’s because different people need different kinds of enrichment. You like being told you’re a good boy in, like, a firm way. Kyra likes sweating for it.” Tashi tilts her head, thoughtful. “Also, I think she’s in love with me.”
Art grins. “Who wouldn’t be in love with you?”
“What I meant,” Tashi says, exasperated by the throwback, “was that being a bitch gets her going. She’s kinda like Patrick that way.”
The smile drops off Art’s face. He stares down at the pristine white of his laces, at the whorls in the concrete.
Patrick. It’s an ordinary name. It can’t hurt him. That’s what he used to tell himself, in the period right after he stopped seeing, talking to or thinking about him. Safe in the darkness, swaddled in increasingly bigger orthopedic beds, Art would recite the name furiously in his mind: Patrick, Patrick, Patrick, on a loop, until it lost form and meaning. Of course, he failed, because he fucking sucks, because he’s a failure, and it remains a hot pinprick. Pulsing away at the back of his skull.
If Tashi has clued into this train of thought, it doesn’t show. “You should hit with her sometime,” she says casually. “She needs someone who’s fast on their feet.”
Art looks up, and sees Tashi squeezing at the scar on her knee.
“Yeah, of course,” he says, feeling a pang in his sternum. He swipes a damp strand of hair away from her forehead. “Whenever you want.”
*
The sun blasts down on Art and Lily as they rollerskate down a wide stretch of tar, honeyed light glinting off the tips of palm fronds. Great all-year tennis weather. The sky is so empty and blue that it makes Art feel nauseous; it’s like he’s about to fall right in, body weightless and rolling away. Lily has taken to the heat, the neighborhood and skating like a fish to water, using her low center of gravity to spin herself around in deft circles.
Art grins, and shakes his head. “Show off.”
“You can do it too,” Lily says, skating over to grab Art’s hand. “I’ll teach you.”
He lets her tiny hand tug him along, until they approach the bustling boardwalk, shards of the beach visible now. The vacation crowd thickens. A few strangers look twice at them, eyes narrowing in that familiar way: aren’t you…? But his hair hangs over his forehead these days, sunglasses secured over his eyes. And he’s moving too fast, weaving through the throng, busy rattling off questions about what Lily’s been watching.
“Paw Patrol is for babies, dad,” Lily says, chastising. “My favorite is Bluey.”
“He’s that little Australian dog, right?”
Lily looks appalled. “Bluey is a girl.”
Art blows out a laugh, unable to keep up with the conga line of cute cartoon animals – not to mention the real ones.
There’s a man standing near the mouth of the boardwalk, Cheeto-coloured midriff revealed by a tight fluorescent tank. At his feet, a hyperactive litter of puppies are crammed into a cardboard box, bounding up and down to get their attention.
“Pleasepleaseplease,” Lily crows, zeroing in on the fattest dog, a slobbering mutt with a riot of chocolate curls. With stunning dexterity, the puppy launches its round body into Lily’s lap, coating her forearms in eager licks. It reminds him of someone, Art thinks grimly.
“Lily, we’ve talked about this,” he says. “We’re about to move, we can’t –”
“But he’s soooo cute. The patch on his head looks like a star – he’s special!”
“That’s right, little lady. A lucky star,” the guy grins, jabbing a finger at the white spot, which looks to Art like a vague smudge, not a star at all. “He can be yours for just thirty dollars.”
“Okay, bye,” Art snaps, towing Lily away by the arm. He waves a frantic hand at the box of puppies. “I’m pretty sure this is illegal.”
“Hey, fuck you buddy.”
Art claps his palm over Lily’s eyes and flips the beach bum off; the guy shrugs, light and unbothered.
The further away they get from the yelping box, the more Lily starts to drag her wheels. She’s never been a hell-raising tantrum thrower; much like her parents, her sour moods are more in line with a deathly arctic winter.
Art sighs. “I’ll think about it when we get our new place, okay? But you have to be serious about this – puppies are a lot of work.”
“I’ll do everything!” Lily exclaims, lighting up again. “And if I forget, grammy can help or mommy can pay someone to look after him.”
Art feels a terrible flash of mortification. It’s one of his great fears – that he isn’t a normal dad, and Lily isn’t a normal girl. That he’s just like his own painfully suburban father, emotionally inept but generous with his spending. Whenever he expresses these thoughts to Tashi, she gives him a nuclear eye roll: yeah okay, rich kid.
“We won’t pay someone and grammy isn’t your maid,” he says, trying for stern. “If you want a dog, you’re picking up the shit yourself.”
Lily giggles. “You said shit.”
“No, honey, I didn’t,” he stutters, deciding the most appropriate parental option here is to gaslight. “I said…poop. Doo-doo.”
“Nuh-uh, I heard you. It’s okay, mommy says it all the time. She says fuck, too.”
“Lily!” Art gasps, aghast.
“When she’s on the phone,” Lily says. She mimes a phone with her hand and brings it up to her ear. “She’s like blah blah blah FOR FUCK’S SAKE –”
“Alright, that’s enough, young lady,” Art interrupts, clamping a broad palm over Lily’s mouth. “I’m taking you to the principal’s office.”
Due to her homeschooling, the principal’s office is a make-believe place to Lily, like Zootopia or hell. She laughs harder against Art palm as he hoists her up into his arms, rolling them deeper into the busy crush.
“We’re here,” he says, plopping her down in front of an ice cream truck. “Boss tells me you’re too cute for detention. You want sprinkles?”
When Lily beams at him, her smile massive and toothy, Art decides that Tashi is right – it’s stupid to worry so much, when Lily is the sort of kid that deserves to be spoiled, who should get all the ice creams and puppies she could ever want. He’s not biased.
They sit on a bench with their towering cones, Art licking at his vanilla soft serve, eyeing Lily’s mound of sprinkles and chocolate syrup with some envy. The sea-salt breeze whistles through their hair. Art raises one hand and pets absentmindedly at Lily’s dark mass of curls, glancing over at her expressive almond eyes, those deep pools of feeling. She looks nothing like him. It’s like all the suspicion and rot inside him hasn’t touched her at all, and he feels so incredibly grateful.
“Are you less dizzy?”
Art blinks. “What d’you mean, honey?”
“Mommy said you were dizzy and you went away to get less dizzy,” Lily says freely, like the explanation has a clear logic.
Art experiences a sudden, intense wave of affection for Tashi. They hid from each other, even while trying to express everything – but it was easy for her, to be honest with their daughter. He lets his mind drift back to the memory of his hand caught in Patrick’s sure grip, blue-green eyes open and soft as he guided Art’s fingers into his mouth.
“I’m still dizzy,” Art tells Lily, choosing honesty too, but feeling dangerously ill. “But I’m here now. I’m better when I’m with you.”
“Okay,” Lily says. She packs herself tight against Art’s side. “Then I’ll be with you all the time, daddy.”
Art doesn’t give a single shit that she gets chocolate all over his white shirt.
*
He remembers a night at boarding school, an insignificant one, where he’d stayed up ‘til 3AM squinting at probability questions instead of sneaking out to a house party with Patrick. Tongue syrupy with the energy drinks he’d been chugging, Art felt like a clown. He had spent the whole night thinking about the party anyway. Wondering how much fun Patrick must be having, knowing he was going to return a wizened pussy expert, sprinting ahead of Art in the arena of life. His eyes burned, the questions bled together. They looked like lines and curves, paper and ink.
He was switching off the bedside lamp, giving up for good, when Patrick stumbled back into their room. He stunk of weed, ten different types of deodorant and – as Art mournfully predicted – sex.
“Seems like it was a rager,” Art said, mouth lifting into a grin. Patrick blew a raspberry and stumbled towards the wrong bed, his big, gawky limbs crashing into Art’s side.
“Dude –”
“It sucked,” Patrick sulked against his arm. “Everyone was annoying and lame and I couldn’t even make fun of them with you.”
Art felt a pleasant zip in his stomach, satisfied that Patrick had missed him, even for a few hours. This close, Patrick’s musk was overwhelming, thick in his nostrils. If he closed his eyes, Art could pretend he was at the party right now. He was surrounded by annoying ass people, wreathed in tobacco smoke, the walls throbbing with bass. Patrick’s arm slung around his neck, in its usual place.
“Got to third base with Jen though,” Patrick added, and Art’s eyes snapped open, taking in the lazy smirk in front of him. “In the bathroom, with someone banging on the door. That just made my dick harder.”
Even with his eyes glazed and red splotches staining the jut of his cheekbones, Patrick looked disgustingly smug. He was fucking – gloating, Art thought, appalled, like a predator carrying around its dripping prey between its jaws. Being wasted made him worse. Patrick’s brown curls were loose and dishevelled, the collar of his forest green polo gaping open to reveal a patch of chest hair. All this gave him an air of legitimate debauchery.
“Go to bed, Patrick,” Art says, shoving uselessly at his face. “Your own bed.”
“Arrrrrrt, come on. I wanna cuddle.”
“You smell like a wet dog.”
Patrick pressed himself closer, snuffling his nose against the ticklish hollow beneath Art’s chin. “Ruff ruff,” he whined, and Art let out a surprised laugh.
“Down boy,” he said, bracing a palm against Patrick’s shoulder. “Before I fucking kick you.”
Patrick’s face went slack. His eyes were freaky in the night, pupils so blown that they looked demon black.
“Woah,” he breathed. “That’s, like, animal abuse.”
“Yeah, it’d be worth getting arrested by PETA, to kick you in the nuts.”
“It would be cool actually,” Patrick slurred happily. “If I could stop playing tennis and just be your dog forever.”
Art let out a derisive snort, but confusingly, Patrick’s expression only grew more earnest. “No, seriously, you’d be such a great owner. You’d never kick me. I’d be so well-trained and pampered and all the other dogs at the dog park would get jealous.”
There was a strange and husky quality to Patrick’s voice, his mouth twitching nervously. “And I’d get to lick you all the time,” he said with a manic grin, and he grabbed Art’s chin and licked his face from cheek to temple.
Art made a low, choked sound and Patrick jerked back – but not far enough. His hand still cradled Art’s chin. His face was still too goddamn close, which was a thought Art’s never had before, not when Patrick seemed to always be this close. But now Art could see the spit wetting his lips, feel the heavy rise and fall of his chest. Heart thundering, Art was paralyzed as the pads of Patrick’s fingers slid down to his neck, the hold gentle. He leaned in again, inching impossibly closer, until all Art could register was Patrick’s beery breath, his broad tongue laving over Art’s chin and clamped lips. Settling on the tip of his nose.
Panic jolted through him. “Get the fuck off me,” Art barked, shouldering Patrick with his whole body, until he rolled off the bed and onto the floor.
“Ow,” Patrick groaned, and immediately passed out, mouth open and snoring against the carpet.
Art wiped the saliva off his face, glaring at Patrick’s slumped back. His breaths were coming out in craggy bursts, as he grew more and more infuriated. He knew Patrick was just drunk and rambling, but the scenario made no sense. Patrick would make the worst dog. He’d hate being groomed, and hate taking instruction even more. He’d piss over all of Art’s rugs, and chew his table legs into pulp. The other dogs wouldn’t be jealous – they’d be mad as hell, if they weren’t terrified.
And, crucially, Patrick could never be a dog in the first place, leashed and loyal. If anyone was the dog here, it was Art.
When Art thinks of that moment now, what he remembers most is the brilliance of his own anger. It’s easier than pondering the basest and ugliest part of himself, the bit that genuinely hated his best friend. Easier than the memory of being uncomfortably stiff in his sleep pants, blood rushing south the second Patrick touched him. It’s preferable to despair.
He knows better now, which is the problem. When he looks into the bathroom mirror, eyeing his boyish shag, he has the knowledge that Patrick loves his hair like this. So many old memories of Patrick forcing him into headlocks, giving him noogies, getting Art’s attention with quick, sharp tugs. Newer ones too: Patrick’s fingers idly trailing against his scalp. A fistful of his hair caught in Patrick’s fist, locking Art in place. He’d never seen Patrick look so serious in his life. The expression was distressing and wrong. It made him think that they were on even ground, that Patrick actually –
Art exhales a harsh breath, and stares harder into his own face. Bruised hollows beneath his eyes, lips an unhappy, tight ridge. His hair makes him look younger – but he’s just playing pretend. He was pretending in New Rochelle, in Los Feliz, in the US Open final where he was drawing from an ancient well of passion and energy. Who the fuck do you think you are? Art thinks viciously. You’re not him. You’re not a real person. He’s an old hunting hound, who has fulfilled its purpose, beyond love.
He fishes around for scissors, and starts sawing off unkempt bits of hair, expressionless and numb. Yellow tufts land in the sink, satisfaction building the larger the pile grows.
He’s someone who might never kiss Patrick ever again, Art realizes, skewered by shock. Who won’t ever talk to him or see him or hear another one of his dumb jokes. Even when he hadn’t acknowledged Patrick for years and years, it had never felt this final. But now he knows. He’ll never be that boy who saw Tashi play for the first time, electrified by her howl of triumph. Or the boy who held her against his car door, her long legs wound around his waist, who thought with incredible hope: this is it, you made this happen, your life starts now.
By the time he’s done, his hair is short and patchy, a literal hack job. But it’s fine. He looks like he feels. Anyway, he can get it fixed tomorrow – he’s super rich, and can afford the best barbers in town.
Tomorrow, everything will be perfect.
*
His favorite time of day is the interlude before sleep, when the bedroom lights are on low, and a hushed simplicity sets in. Art hasn’t applied his sunblock properly these past few days, and livid red patches bloom across the back of his neck, on his shoulders and feet. Earlier, Tashi slathered aloe over all his sore spots, silent and efficient. His grandma used to do this for him too, but she hummed jazz standards while she worked.
Belly-down on the mattress, he waits for the sting to cool, watching Tashi strip down to her bra and underwear, her hands hypnotic as they rub lotion into her willowy limbs. Art feels wonderfully average. They could be any couple in the universe, or the only people left in it.
“Are you mad at me?” he asks, when she climbs in next to him.
“Were you mad at me?” Tashi replies, blunt. She scratches her fingers against his shorn hair. “Is that what this is about?”
They haven’t actually talked about this part before. By now, everything else was on the table: Tashi fucking Patrick in Atlanta, their few drunken make-outs in Miami one year, Tashi fucking Patrick (again) in New Rochelle, Patrick fucking Art a few weeks ago. It was simpler, to be factual and crude, instead of tackling something as thorny as betrayal.
“No. Not anymore, anyway,” Art says, then swallows. He thinks he sees himself clearer now, but it doesn’t mean he can put any of it into words. He makes an attempt, for Tashi: “When I saw you two Atlanta, you looked – right. I felt like I was disturbing you, like it was wrong for me to even be there. I was nothing again, the way it should’ve been.”
Tashi is quiet for a long time, the pulse in her throat jumping.
“Art,” she says, voice clipped. “That’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.”
Art tries to press his face into the covers, but Tashi sways closer, so he can’t escape the bottomless hazel of her eyes. “Do you think I would be wasting my time, busting my balls, over nothing ?” she demands. “Do you think Patrick would?”
Art feels his face crumple. “That was about tennis –”
“No it isn’t,” Tashi snaps. “It’s about us.”
When Art doesn’t respond, focused on wriggling around his wedding band, Tashi sighs gustily. She tears herself away, like she can’t stand to be near him, and seats herself at the edge of the bed. He catalogs the exposed brown curve of her back, lean muscles bunched up in frustration.
“You’re so fucking annoying, you know that?” she says, finally.
"I'm annoying?” Art asks, letting out a surprised laugh.
“Yes! God. It’s like you want me to tuck you in every night and tell you how much I love you, how I can’t live without you. But even if I did all that shit, it wouldn’t change anything. You still won’t see –”
Yourself. Me. Tashi’s shoulders slump. Art feels himself thaw, shard by shard, and crawls over to her on his hands and knees. “Sorry for being such a burden,” he says, pressing an open-mouthed kiss into the back of her neck. Some tension drains beneath his lips.
“Don’t be,” Tashi murmurs, leaning back against him, until she’s tucked underneath his chin. “It’s my favorite thing about you.”
She takes his hands. “Can you just – listen to me for a second?”
“All I do is listen to you.”
“No,” Tashi says firmly. “You hear me but you don’t listen.” She spreads one of his hands against her heart, the other on her knee, right over the scar. “Listen.”
Her grip is urgent. Art stares at their hands, at the vulnerable slant of her lips. Under his flat palm, Tashi’s heartbeat is fluttering, trembling. Art rubs his thumb over the protruding bone of her knee, and traces the jagged white line.
Over the years, he’s caught her out a few times: when she stared at the sleek images of Art, emblazoned across posters, magazines and rackets, and her face froze into a shell of cold, diamond-hard hatred. It’s all you, it should’ve been you, Art wanted to say, but never did, because for the longest time, he was glad it was him. And Tashi would inevitably turn back to him, the real him, expression shifting like the drift of clouds. Fleshy and soft again. The slide was so seamless, the feelings so entangled, that Art didn’t know what was real and what was the mask. Now he realizes there is no mask, no boundary, no more tennis. Only them.
“I was so alone,” Tashi says simply. “And then I wasn’t.”
*
He wakes in the night to the sound of both their voices, hushed and secretive, dancing together like wisps of incense. Art rolls onto his side, wiping the grit from his eyes, and catches one of Tashi’s private smiles – the one that lights up her whole face, mean and frothy. The one she never spares him.
“Hang up,” she hisses into the phone. “It’s so nasty that you’re still standing there.”
Art hears the familiar tenor of Patrick's voice, muffled and crackling on the other end, and his stomach goes fuzzy. It’s like the static is being funneled directly from Tashi’s ear and into the line of his body.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Tashi huffs. “Wash it right there in the sink, you fucking loser.”
She ends the call in the middle of Patrick’s heated response, placing her phone primly atop the bedside table. Art watches as she adjusts her silk robe, feeling the severance like a real, physical gash: Patrick was here beside them, and now he isn’t.
“Sorry, did you want to join in?” Tashi asks, without looking at him. Her lips curl into a feline smile. “I could call him back.”
Art exhales a noisy breath, and slides his palm across the flat of her stomach. It’s warm and slick with sweat, sinuous under his touch. He moves his hand lower, until his palm is cupped against her drenched panties.
“Is this because of him?” Art asks, voice hoarse and needy.
“Yeah,” Tashi says, shuddering, and Art slides two fingers under the lace trim. He dips them inside of her, pumping into the wetness, just to feel. Tashi lets out a relieved sigh, clenching around him, her hand coming up to caress his short fringe. Their eyes lock. It sizzles between them – the rare, exhilarating charge of twinned lust.
It used to embarrass him, how he’d spent years wanting Tashi, playing for her number, only to get psyched the fuck out in the grand final. It had turned out fine, in the end. Blossoming into a game of theirs, Tashi coaching his dick to hardness, fucking him until he was weak and whimpering beneath her – but he knew it wasn’t the feverish ease she had with Patrick. It’s not what you had with him, Art thinks with a flood of shame and want, instantly hardening in his underwear.
Seized by a wild desperation, Art shifts onto his knees and travels down Tashi’s body, until his mouth is pressed between her legs. He sucks greedily on the cotton, basking in the heady, intimate taste of his wife. And underlying that, the taste of Patrick, the essence of uncontrollable desire. Patrick, who made bodies grow hot and alive, simply by staring or talking or sitting with his perfect thighs splayed wide.
“Yes,” Tashi gasps, “Yes, Patrick,” and Art’s answering moan vibrates hard against her cunt. He shucks off Tashi’s panties and laps at her clit, before pushing his tongue deep inside her. The strong muscles of Tashi’s thighs clamp hard around his temples, and Art feels whole again, like an immaculate vessel.
Tashi rakes her nails against the back of his head. “Sit up,” she orders. “I wanna ride you.”
Art shoots upright on autopilot, kicking off his underwear, getting into position. Back against the headboard. Obedient and waiting. He watches as Tashi slips off her robe, revealing her lissome curves, the dark nubs of her nipples.
When she climbs into his lap, he burrows his face into her hair and inhales. She’s perpetually fresh and green and crisp, like the grass courts that she worshiped. Art loves her smell so much that, early into their relationship, he’d started buying the same moisturizers and sharing her shampoos, as if he could bind them together by scent, remake himself into something just as pure.
He slides in easily. Tashi’s cunt is soaking wet – because of him, because of Patrick. The thought sends a powerful downpour of blood to Art’s cock, and he can’t do anything except pant like a dog, overwhelmed, as Tashi grinds against him in tight circles.
“What was it like?” Tashi asks. “When he was fucking you?”
“Like you don’t already know,” Art fires back, and the simultaneous rush of outrage and longing is so ridiculous, he almost laughs.
“Yeah, but I’m not a blushing virgin.”
Art flushes. “Shut up. I’m not a –” he starts, then immediately cuts himself off, horrified that he’d just told Tashi to shut up. But Tashi doesn’t seem offended at all: she tosses her head back and laughs, shaking so hard that Art has to tighten his hold on her hips to keep her from falling off. Her palms rub soothingly across his broad shoulders, the sharp lines of his jaw, and suddenly, Art wants to confess everything.
“It hurt – a lot,” he whispers. “But I didn’t want him to know he was hurting me.”
“Baby,” Tashi says, cupping his face. She forces herself down more roughly, mouth falling open with the effort. “My poor baby.”
“Then it started to feel good.”
“Yeah? You liked having his big dick inside you?”
“Tashi,” Art groans, starting to squirm, cheeks growing unbearably hot.
“Tell me. You can tell me anything.”
Art’s eyes slip shut involuntarily. For the first time in weeks, he lets himself remember it: being stretched open by Patrick’s thick, heavy cock, the pelt on his chest scraping against Art’s smooth ribcage. Warm and dense muscle weighing him down. The wave of pleasure when Patrick slammed into that blinding spot, buried inside him, again and again. When he opens his eyes, Tashi looks gorgeous and doe-eyed in the circle of his arms, the way Patrick did.
“I liked having his big dick inside me,” Art says in a rush. “I loved it.”
“I rode him – just like this – in his car.”
Art grimaces, and Tashi’s lips stretch into a wicked smile. “Oh, you too?”
“We didn’t –” Art starts, before breaking off abruptly, remembering what they actually did in the car. Patrick’s beard scraping roughly against his bare thighs, white globs of come sluicing down Patrick’s face. “His car is disgusting,” Art chokes out.
“It’s so gross,” Tashi agrees, “I was scared I was gonna start seeing pee bottles.”
Art lets out a helpless laugh, as Tashi grips his wrists, bringing both his hands up to her chest. “He loves my tits, he’s always groping and pinching them.” Her gaze grows cold, accusatory. “You never do that. Do you not like them?”
“I do, baby – of course I do,” Art babbles, pawing at her chest. He ducks his head, and sucks and bites at her nipples. As a reward, she starts to bounce harder in his lap, using him ruthlessly, drawing out strangled whimpers.
“Hold me tighter,” Tashi moans, “C’mon, crush me.”
He does as he’s told, hands sliding down to squeeze at the swell of Tashi’s ass, compressing her tighter around his dick.
“You wanna finish inside me?” Tashi asks, and Art nods enthusiastically, his nose jabbing into her cheek. “Did you want Patrick to finish inside you? Wanna feel his come dripping out of you?”
“Fuck,” Art gasps, eyes prickling, his vision blurring. He feels, ridiculously, like he’s about to cry. I do, I do, I do, he thinks with a punishing sense of defeat, knowing that he would always need it: more of Patrick, more of Tashi, more of everything.
“I know he wanted it. Wanted to fill you up and get you all dirty and wet.”
“Patrick,” Art whines, feeling a powerful throb in his cock that sends him careening near the edge. “I wanted it – want him so bad.”
“But he didn’t get to, did he?” Tashi says, grabbing his chin hard, the points of her nails digging into skin. He feels trapped under the full-force of her possessive gaze. “You’re not his, you’re mine.”
“Yes – yes. I’m yours, Tashi,” he stutters, so aroused he feels like he’s being ground and mashed into paste. “Always.”
“That’s right.”
Her smile is severe and sweet when she leans in for a bruising kiss, their first real kiss of the night. Her tongue licks across his teeth, into his mouth, and he feels her shivering climax from the inside. The pressure around his pelvis feels so good that he promptly loses his mind, thrusts turning erratic and animalistic. Moaning brokenly, he pumps his come into Tashi, until there’s no more left, until he can’t move at all.
Anesthetized, they stay like that for a while: Art softening in degrees, his arms still cradling Tashi against his heaving chest. She’s so delicate like this, her humid face pressed to his throat. It’s the only time she ever feels small, when she lets herself be held.
Distantly, Art registers that his face is damp. He thinks: if I never say another word, if I never come or cry or hold a racket or think another thought again, that will be okay.
*
One morning he wakes up to two notifications from Patrick, and decides to put his screen away forever. Art’s phone is like a hot coal in his pocket, small but present, as he brushes his teeth, mechanically runs through his reps and scrambles a heap of eggs for his family – all before 6AM. He has the phone near at all times, knowing that he’s being pathetic, but comforted anyway. It doesn’t matter what Patrick had actually said: if he hates him, if he thinks Art is a coward and an asshole and the worst friend in the world, or if the message is infuriatingly casual in the way Patrick always was: Hey, man – what if we just, like, forget about it? It’s chill.
It doesn’t matter, because Art might never find out; he feels good, just knowing that Patrick’s voice is nearby. That he’ll hear it again, sometime in the indistinct future.
Tashi is sitting at the dining table, forking violently through his eggs as she glares at spreadsheets. They’d both made such a big deal about going to college, only for this to be the natural end result: staring angrily at spreadsheets.
“Wanna go on a date?” Art asks. When she doesn’t respond, he holds out his finger and starts poking her arm, then her cheekbone.
Tashi looks up at him, mouth set in a skeptical line. “Are we twelve?”
“Yep,” Art says, grinning toothily, and Tashi huffs a laugh.
They pull on their bike shorts and tanks, matching in dark navy blue, and cycle around the loop that passes by Lighthouse Point. It’s early enough that the shoreline is still bare, the expanse of sea saturated in molten dawn light. Tashi’s bike is clicking ahead of him, and he watches the flounce of her bob, the determined trundle of her legs. He enjoys this type of intimacy – where he’s moving but doesn't have to talk or compete or calculate, where muscle memory takes over, and all he needs to do is be with someone. Art started cycling and jogging with his grandma as a kid and, when her bones got too bad, he’d convinced his dad to join him a few times. Then, there was Patrick, who – admittedly – never got the no talking bit. But that was fine. Art came to love the bitching and moaning too.
With Tashi, he feels that they’re flawlessly calibrated. The rhythm of their movements, their quiet breathing, locked together by instinct. He still doesn’t know what they mean to each other outside the suffocating confines of the majors, but he feels a little less terrified, knowing this is the best part of them. It’s marriage.
They duck into a cafe after the sun has fully risen. The brunch crowd is starting to mill around, sitting at tables in packs, sandalled feet tracking in sand. In the coffee line, he sees Tashi watching a big group of twenty-somethings, who are hyena-laughing over their green juices.
“Ugh. I wish I could be normal,” she says, catching his eye. Off Art’s questioning look, she says, “Whenever I see young people having fun, all I can think is that I hope they all die.”
“Tashi!” Art laughs, pleasantly scandalized.
“Like, what’s so funny?” Tashi grumbles, running a hand through her sweaty hair. She sighs. “It’s not their fault – I’m just terrible. I was dropped on my head as a kid and now all I care about is hit ball good, like a miserable fuck. And I can’t even do that.”
“Hey,” Art says, dropping a kiss onto her forehead. “You’re not terrible, you’re brilliant.”
“Yeah, well, I’m starting to think un-brilliant people are way happier than me.”
“Happiness is overrated,” Art says, and instantly realizes he sounds like a horrible cliche. The glum poster child for the clinically depressed, tiny violins harmonizing worldwide. Tashi seems to be thinking the same thing.
"You’re not allowed to say that,” she scoffs. “In fact, say it again and I’ll bite you.”
“I like it when you bite me,” Art says, mouth twitching. Tashi snorts, her glare fond and long-suffering.
They sit outside the cafe and sip their coffees in silence, staring out at the horizon line. Two sunburnt boys shove at each other as they walk towards the surf, and Art can’t stop tracking them like a freak, until they dissolve into blurred dots amongst the tableau of faraway, blissful people.
Abruptly, Tashi says, “You should listen to the messages.” Art stares at her blankly. “I looked at your phone,” she explains. “What? You were acting like someone died all morning. I was curious.”
“Did you listen to them?” Art laughs.
“Yeah,” Tashi shrugs, unapologetic. “They warmed my cold heart.”
Art feels throat swell. “I can’t,” he says, seized by a terrible panic. “It’s – it’s going to freak me out.”
Tashi tilts her head. “Why? It’s only Patrick.”
Only Patrick. It’s only a name, only some broke dude in L.A. that they once knew. Art takes out his phone. Clicking play, he raises the phone to his ear, feeling Tashi’s eyes drill into the side of his face. The second he hears Patrick’s drunken singing, he lets out a surprised laugh, and sees Tashi smiling too. It’s a ferocious relief to just sit there, listening to Patrick be stupid. He hadn’t realized how much he'd missed it.
His chest loosens. Art taps play on the next one and listens. And listens. When he’s finished, he immediately replays it.
Art used to think that he didn’t feel things like a normal person. He experienced either intense flares of anxiety and excitement, or a state of utter emptiness. The emptiness had encroached slowly, until it obliterated all other feeling – and Art grew convinced that this was his real self, one he wasn’t bothered to hide anymore. He didn’t trust that anyone could love someone like that, who was more void than flesh. So it’s strange, replaying the last bit of Patrick’s message over and over and – for once in his life – believing him fully.
Tashi clutches at his fingers, Tashi who has seen every petty and dull inch of him, who resented him for years. Who wants to hold his hand anyway. “I love you, I love you,” Patrick repeats in his ear, and Art realizes he’s over that bit already. He wants to hear him say something goofier, something new. He wants to be surprised again. He doesn’t know everything about Patrick at all, Art registers with dizzying clarity. He needs to know more.
“Art?”
Art looks up at Tashi, feeling mildly horrified. “I think I’m in love with him,” he tells her, dazed.
Tashi’s mouth quirks. “You think?”
He gazes back at her and, for the first time in ages, thinks that they understand each other completely.
“I know I am,” Art says, breathing evenly.
“Well, tell Patrick I said hi when you see him,” Tashi says, easy as anything, and Art feels his face twist.
“Baby, I can’t –”
Tashi holds up a palm. “And tell him that if he’s coming here, he’s not staying with us. I don’t care how ratchet his hovel looked. That’s how he gets you – through pity.”
Art laughs, a bright puff of air. When it comes to Patrick, there’s an intense carousel of emotions involved for them both – but pity has never been in the rotation. Before he can say as much, Tashi sighs and starts talking fast.
“Like, the second he comes through the door he’s going to start stealing our laundry and watching porn in front of Lily and leaving crumbs in my bed,” she babbles, “and I really don’t need that energy right now –”
“Tashi,” he interrupts, and yanks her close to his chest.
They cling to each other in a crushing hug, like they’re trying to fuse together, become one person again. Tashi nuzzles her face against Art’s neck and kisses the underside of his jaw, as Art squeezes her shoulder blades, her lovely waist. When they finally pull apart a little, he grabs her face and kisses her with fervor, right as the sun begins to grow blazing and insistent, warming both their faces.
“I love you,” he gasps against her mouth.
He feels the shape of Tashi’s smile. “I know.”