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GAME
Sometimes, when Patrick thinks about Art’s face, he gets this unspeakable urge to smash his racquet against the ground. It’s not a problem. It’s not. It’s just a thing. The sky is blue, Tashi Duncan kicks universal ass at tennis, Patrick’s got a flashy serve, and Art Donaldson’s face makes him want to put his fist through a wall, but he’s a tennis player, which means he needs his hands, and so his racquet is the victim in all these fantasies.
The first time is when they’re twelve, and Cat Zimmerman is the prettiest girl at the academy, which is good for her, Patrick guesses, because she fucking sucks at tennis. She injures herself a week later, which is no major loss. Patrick’s already gotten everything he could out of her: something to talk about while jerking off, a cautionary tale by way of a damaged limb, and Art’s wide eyes and wider mouth when he spills over himself, shocked at how tangible want can be in his own hands.
But a week prior to her fall from their attention, he’s talking about her legs as she jumps, and Art is saying something about the flick of her wrist when she serves, because he’s a fucking gentleman or some shit like that, and Patrick is jerking off, and he’s looking at Art, who’s looking at his own hands, still muttering something about Cat Zimmerman, and then he’s fucking coming all over himself like some goddamn newbie, which is what he is, and for a second, Patrick has an almost-graspable thought about the way Art’s face lights up.
Then Patrick’s coming too, and he closes his eyes on the sight of Art Donaldson, looking at the liquid pooling on his stomach with something like dismay and fucking wonder, like Patrick had shown him how to do something incredible instead of inevitable.
They’re fifteen the first time Patrick asks Art if he’s fucked anyone, and Art looks at him, and scoffs, and says, “You know nobody looks at me like that when we’re here.”
Patrick doesn’t think that’s true, but he can’t figure out a way to shape his mouth around that whilst also holding onto the smile that’s almost-permanent when he’s looking at Art.
Instead, he says, “I mean, doesn’t have to be a tennis girl.”
Art gives him that look he gets sometimes, like he’s exasperated and hopelessly endeared at once. Like Patrick has said something completely incomprehensible, but Art can’t help but stay and talk to him anyway.
“Who else would I do that with?” Art asks.
Patrick has nothing to say.
“Hard luck, man,” Patrick says. They’re seventeen and Sienna Lucas just kissed Art on the cheek after three days of coy glances, brushing her fingers against his as she rushed out to catch her bus back to fuck-knows-where in the ass-fuck of nowhere (Indiana, he hears Art remind him in the back of his head, tugging at his thoughts the way his smile always tugs at his lips. Don’t be a dick.), out of their lives forever, probably. She’s not that good at tennis. Not like Patrick is. Not like Art is.
Art shrugs. “I don’t mind,” he says.
Patrick barks out a short laugh, but the worst part is that he thinks Art means it. Sometimes, he thinks Art doesn’t want things enough. Or maybe he’s just bad at knowing how to want things. Patrick can’t decide. He doesn’t know if it even makes a difference.
“She might have stayed if I played like you,” Art says, and it’s thoughtful, maybe a little teasing, self-deprecating, not jealous at all. Patrick cannot fucking stand it.
“You play better than she ever could,” Patrick says, and he means it.
“That’s not always the point,” Art says.
“Hey,” Patrick says, slinging an arm around Art’s shoulders, pulling him in tight, knocking their hips together and ignoring Art’s muffled sound of protest-turned-laughter, pressing together and apart and together again at every inch, jostling each other, Art’s shirt too-loose beneath Patrick’s fingers, always always together—
“Hey,” Patrick says, pulling Art against his side. “Who the fuck cares about Sienna whatshername? She’s not even going to Juniors. We’re going to be champions.”
Art looks at him, something so fond on his face that Patrick wants to run headfirst into a motherfucking wall. He says, “You’re the one who keeps talking about her,” but there’s a smile tugging at his lips, so Patrick just knocks their heads together and grins.
It’s just unbearable, that’s all.
Patrick looks at Tashi Duncan play and thinks, that’s the hottest fucking woman I’ve ever seen.
He looks at Art, wanting to nudge him in the side, catch him in the eye, grin at him like, told you she was fucking hot.
Art’s eyes are glued on Tashi’s serve. His mouth is moving, some shit about her backhand being incredible, and he’s right, and it is.
The sun is shining on the court today. Tashi’s racquet gleams in the light. Art’s hair shines, almost as much as his eyes, constantly tracking the arc of that racquet through the air.
For a second, Patrick wants to smash his doubles trophy into—
God, into Art’s face? Into Patrick’s own? To the ground?
He doesn’t even know. It doesn’t matter anyway. The impulse passes, just like always. Breathe in, set up your serve, jump. Exhale. Connect. Exhale. Put down the trophy. Exhale. Art Donaldson smiling in the sunlight, the only person who knows you and still smiles at you like he means it. Exhale.
Racquets are replaceable. This—the trophy, the moment, Art’s delighted expression at a particularly breathtaking return from Tashi—isn’t.
The urge to break things, it’s just—it’s just a thing, that’s all.
That’s all.
SET
In a perfect world, Art would be able to look at him right now.
Then again, in a perfect world, Tashi would still be able to play. Art would have won a career slam. Patrick would have won fucking anything, anything at all, instead of his only two titles being from the Juniors, both inextricable from Art.
That’s not a problem, really.
At least not for Patrick. He thinks it might be for Art.
Then again, Art’s won six titles now. Real ones. Nobody remembers him from the Juniors, when he won his first title alongside Patrick before losing one to him the very next day.
There’s something tense in the line of Art’s throat. Thirteen years ago, Patrick had his hand nestled against its base, feeling a swallowed breath run down it. Thirteen years ago, Art’s hair had been soft and tousled and half-slick with sweat around Patrick’s unhesitating fingers. Thirteen years ago, Patrick had learned what it tasted like when Art wanted something desperately.
Thirteen years ago, Art had been able to look at Patrick.
This Art is a champion. He didn’t get here on his own, but he did it without Patrick, and that feels like the same thing sometimes. There’s a tautness to his expression that makes Patrick ache a little. The boy he knew always cared too much—had too many people he didn’t want to let down, even when he never knew how to back himself the whole way—but there was an ever-present ghost of a laugh on his face, like Patrick just had to get too close in his space and something in him would break. Not like a racquet. Like—like the fucking dawn, or something.
Patrick misses when Art was too bright to look at, and Patrick got too close, looking anyway.
The uncompromising truth of the matter is that Patrick has always been more talented than Art. This is a known quantity, the kind of thing that Art always entrenched as fact and Patrick would suggest wasn’t, until Tashi Duncan looked at them both sidelong and Patrick wanted her, the same way as he had wanted anything.
Tashi had been more talented too. She might have been more talented than Patrick, even. It’s the kind of thing he’d never have admitted back then, not unless it would score him points with her, but nowadays, he thinks he probably owes her that truth. The third worst thing he ever did was go toe-to-toe with her that day and tell her he wasn’t her student, or her groupie, or her fan, but her peer. It’s not the actual words that make it so terrible. It’s what followed. Patrick doesn’t think that day was his fault, not really, but there’s always going to be a tightness coiling in his gut at the memory of the last words he said to Tashi Duncan before her supernova crashed out.
So Patrick had been more talented, and Tashi had been more talented, but here they are: Art Donaldson still looking photoshoot-ready in a sauna, steam making those fucking peachy cheeks of his glisten, and Patrick wants to fling himself into oncoming traffic almost as desperately as he wants Art to just look at him.
But Patrick’s bad at moderation. When Art finally looks at him, Patrick wants him to look at him and mean it. When Art looks at him, and means it, even if the thing he means makes Patrick’s goddamn lungs hurt, Patrick wants him to look at him, and mean it, and tell him he matters.
That’s the thing about Patrick Zweig. All he does is want. He doesn’t know how to stop.
Her name is Tashi Donaldson now, but she’ll always be Tashi Duncan to him. Part of it is ego, part of it is grief. Even more of it is misplaced denial, but he doesn’t look at that too closely. He’s not ready to chase that thought to its inevitable conclusion.
She looks at him like she hates him. She looks at him like she wants him.
Maybe they’re the same thing. Sometimes they are for him.
You are a deadbeat, and a washout, and a waste of working legs, says the Tashi in his head. She’s somewhere in her twenties this time. He hears her often, usually when he chokes.
It’s funny. Back in high school, when the world was his oyster and he didn’t want anything as much as he wanted to be pro—hitting a ball with a racquet’s a great way to avoid getting a real job, he says, seventeen and smirking and on top of the fucking world, with the hottest girl he’s ever seen rolling her eyes at him and the brightest boy he’s ever known at his side, smiling quietly to himself, more resigned than happy—he couldn’t imagine choking. He’s never had an issue betting on himself. Talented and handsome and charming. Big dick, big swing, and the kind of easy confidence that Art never even pretended to have.
Patrick’s had a long time to think about it. The thing is, now that he and Art don’t talk, he doesn’t really have anyone who talks to him.
So, really, it’s not his fault he has to listen to ghosts.
It’s always Tashi these days. There’s probably some dumb fucking psychoanalytic shit buried deep there, why it’s her and not him, why he thinks about her at every age and every single time, she’s disappointed in him. Part of it is easy—he’s a fucking disappointment, a washout who peaked in Juniors, just like he said to Art all those years ago, even if part of him had always expected to be the one-in-three-hundred exception.
There are a lot of reasons for the rest of it, but the one he keeps coming back to is that day at Stanford all those years ago. Not the fight with Tashi, not how it all ended, but the hour beforehand. Art’s serve and smile and backwards-facing cap, sunlight playing over him as he vaulted himself over the net and Patrick chased after him, the whole court laughing. Art getting them both churros, Patrick’s foot hooking the stool closer in the moments before Art sat, the way Art prodded at the things that could have been vulnerabilities if Patrick had cared about Tashi more than he wanted her.
It’s not that he didn’t care. He doesn’t mean that. He cares more about Tashi than almost anyone, even all these years later.
But he wanted her more than he cared about her. He doesn’t feel bad about that. He knows it was the same for her. She wanted him more than she cared about him, and she wanted tennis even more.
The Tashi in his head berates his play, his work ethic, his commitment to the sport they all ostensibly love, and the Art in his head is forever on the cusp of nineteen, with sunlight streaming through his hair. He never opens his mouth. Patrick can’t decide if that’s his head’s gift or punishment.
“You should have had a better career,” Tashi says once, and he can’t even tell if she’s fucking real or not, if she’s really sitting in his hotel bed or if he’s dreamed up another want that won’t materialise. “But he should still be better than you.”
Maybe she’s real, and these stings are from actual barbs catching. Maybe she’s a fantasy, the kind that’s safe to have.
It doesn’t really matter either way. The thing about not being able to say what you really want is that you get used to watching it slip through your fingers, unable to catch anything you won’t let become true.
MATCH
Once, when Patrick was twenty-seven, he’d fucked a girl wearing one of the collab shirts Art had done with Uniqlo. She’d flirted with him in the bar, admiring his biceps and curly hair and the way his eyes had been fixated on her tits.
Specifically, he’d been fixated on the embroidered signature emblazoned over her left boob, thinking about the week he and Art had spent practicing their signatures when Patrick had said they’d both need autographs for when they became champions. Art had laughed at him, and rolled his eyes, and said, you more than me, probably, but he’d shot Patrick that indulgent smile he used to wear so easily back then, and done it anyway.
She’d taken off the shirt when they got up to her hotel room, which was to be expected, but Patrick had tangled the fabric up in his fingers as he’d settled his hands on her hips to fuck into her. Rhythmic and repetitive and bold, like a goddamn spike drilling into his head, over and over, Art Donaldson Art Donaldson Art Donaldson Art Donaldson. The boy who never really believed he would be the best, with his signature that hasn’t changed since they were sixteen now embroidered into fucking apparel. Too bright to look at, and now the whole world can see it.
He fucks Tashi. Of course he does. He fucked her as a teenager, over and over, and he fucks her now, because she’s just like him. She is an ugly, ambitious thing, wanting and driven and ferocious, wrapped up in something goddamn beautiful. He wonders what it says about Art that he’s spent so much of his life with people like Tashi, people like Patrick: talented, beautiful pieces of shit, who say they’ll give him what he wants but hold back the things he doesn’t know how to ask for.
Sometimes when Patrick’s feeling charitable, he thinks Tashi might even love Art. It’s not enough, though. She’ll never love him more than she wants what he has, meaning potential, meaning a chance, meaning a comeback story that gets to write itself on the court instead of on the sidelines.
He means it when he says he thinks Tashi hates Art, but he thinks she hates him more. Art may be giving up, and he may never have the same potential Tashi once did, but at least he did a good fucking job for a while. Patrick has talent she thinks he squandered, potential he sacrificed to protect his pride, not asking for help until he’s in his fucking thirties with seventy dollars in his bank account and one more good season in his bones if he’s lucky.
She hates him, he’s sure.
But she wants him too. She wants him to fuck her, she wants him to want her, she wants him to give her something to fight, because Art’s so many golden fucking things, and none of them have ever pushed her to scream like she did on the court that day. A wordless yell, emotion ripping itself out of her throat.
Patrick might fill her with rage, but at least it makes her feel alive.
He gets that.
Here’s a secret: the most beautiful thing Patrick Zweig has ever seen is not a tennis serve, or Tashi Duncan, or even a trophy etched with his name and a cheque issued with the same.
No, it’s Art Donaldson in the wake of defeat, meaning the moment he wakes up and shows up on the court, meaning the second Patrick places the tennis ball in the neck of his racquet.
Patrick loves sex, and he loves winning, and he loves people telling him that he’s good at what he does—that he’s talented, and that they give a shit about him, and that he matters—but the thing he loves most in the world might be this: Art Donaldson, lit up, wanting.
The second worst thing Patrick ever did was fuck Tashi in Atlanta. He can’t bring himself to think of it the same way that night in New Rochelle. This is a side effect, he thinks. This is just because we’re both fucking pieces of shit. This is just because we’re both beautiful. He thinks, fucking her isn’t as bad as her not believing in him. He thinks, you’re still the hottest thing I’ve ever seen as he runs his hands down her arms, and he thinks, do I matter now? as she talks about how he has to make Art believe it when he throws the match, and he thinks, too bright, too bright and remembers sunlight spilling over Art’s face as he watched Tashi play for the first time all those years ago.
“My name is Art,” a boy says. His bed is as neat as his hair is messy, but his eyes are friendly and clear, fixed on Patrick’s.
“Patrick,” he says in response, holding out his fist for Art to bump.
Art looks at it, like he’s never seen anyone do it. Fuck, maybe he hasn’t, and Patrick’s got the most boring guy on the planet as a bunkmate. Whatever. It’s not like where he sleeps matters as much as showing the coaches what he can do on the court.
Then Art’s mouth quirks up a little at the side, his lips stretching into a smile, and he forms a fist, pressing it gently against Patrick’s own, knuckle to knuckle.
Oh, Patrick thinks, feeling his own mouth curve into a delighted grin of its own volition. Maybe a friend wouldn’t be so bad.
“Fuck off,” Art says, snorting as he shoves away Patrick’s hand before Patrick can finish his movement to rub his knuckles in Art’s hair. “You’re so full of shit sometimes,” Art is saying, and Patrick knows this is true, and Patrick knows Art doesn’t really mind, and Patrick knows that the only person who’ll know him forever is Art Donaldson. His mother might twist her lips at that, and their coach would probably sigh something fierce, but Patrick is fourteen and he’s the most talented person in their school but he already knows that Art’s impressed grins are more rewarding to chase than any of their instructors’ approving nods.
He’s got all the talent and time in the world. Why shouldn’t he have a little fun? He’s got the rest of his life to have a career. Right now, he’s got his best friend at his side, and the court beneath their feet. Everything is more fun when it’s just the two of them.
Art is staring at him, and, okay, sure, his serve almost took Patrick’s fucking head off, but he’s staring at him. He’s looking at him, and everything in Patrick is fucking thrumming with it.
This is what he was missing all those years, he thinks. This is what he’s been waiting for, he thinks, and it’s the worst thing about him, the worst thing he’s ever done, all these years of waiting, all this twisting, all this wanting.
Patrick looks at Art, at how lit up his eyes are, at how awake he looks, how fucking present he is, and how he’s looking at Patrick, really looking at him, the way he hasn’t in years. He thinks about Tashi saying tennis is a relationship, saying a good match is perfect understanding, saying so many things over the years that all run together into a white noise that fills his head with static and his echoing heartbeat, thudding against his ribs in time with Art’s shoes thudding against the court.
He thinks about Art’s smile, the indulgent thing he used to bequeath on Patrick, and he thinks about the exhilarating, bright thing burning across his face now, challenge awakened despite years of calcification, and he thinks about Tashi saying to Art, you could beat him. In fact, you should. He thinks about Art asking him not to demolish him all those years ago, and Patrick telling him they didn’t know who would win.
Tashi is in the crowd. He can feel her gaze, can tell she’s rising, knows in his goddamn bones that something about the court right now is filling her the way she’s been seeking desperately for years, but he can’t look at her.
He can’t look at anything but Art, and he thinks to himself, too bright to look at, and he still looks anyway.