Work Text:
The texts trickle in one by one.
Patrick
March 3 2007
[10:32] How are you feeling? Are you still at the medical center?
[11:18] So I’m going to stick around for a couple of days. I know you’re busy but let me know when’s good to call, okay?
[23:45] Tashi, can we talk?
Patrick
March 4 2007
[09:23] When can I come see you?
[15:56] Tried to visit but they wouldn’t let me in. Your mom said you’d been in surgery? She said she’d tell you I dropped by but maybe she forgot
Patrick
March 5 2007
[12:02] Thinking of you.
[22:39] I miss you Tashi please call me back
[22:41] I’m sorry I’m so sorry you know I didn’t want this
Patrick
March 9 2007
[21:07] Are you still mad at me?
[21:35] Is Art there? Are you guys a thing now?
[21:59] Come on tashi what the fuck you can’t ignore me forever
Patrick
March 10 2007
[00:23] Tashi I’m sorry
[00: 23] Tashi
Tashi, Tashi, Tashi. Every time her gaze meets her name, it catches, sticks, pulls, a sleeve caught on a door handle, the straps of velcro on her brace. She hears it in his voice, Tashi, low, slow, loud, snapped, sharp, jagged, the bone in her knee, not as painful but almost, maybe.
She thinks about calling him back, just for the satisfaction of screaming down the phone. She wants to tell him: you ruined my life, am I still mad, what do you fucking think, asshole? She wants to yell until his ears bleed. She wants to howl .
She doesn’t.
What good would it do?
Still, she picks up her phone, and she types out: Fuck off and die, Patrick , letter by tortured letter.
As she goes to hit Send, she stops, tripped up by an unthinking moment of hesitation that swiftly spirals into a thinking one: when did she become the kind of person who hesitates?
Another text message comes through.
Patrick
March 10 2007
[11:11] Tashi can you please just let me know if you’re okay? I’ll leave you alone if that’s what you really want but I’m losing my fucking mind and nobody will tell me what’s going on
She swallows, hard, before erasing her message and switching her phone off.
When she switches it back on again, two, three, four days later, he hasn’t sent another.
Patrick’s drunk when the text comes in, too early for it to be respectable, too far gone to care. Why should he care? It’s not like he’s got anything left to play for. Might as well make use out of the room while he’s still got it.
Oh, yeah. The text.
He picks up his phone, and almost fucking drops it again.
Art
July 2 2007
[15:11] Hey man, hope you’re okay. Caught your match yesterday. It looked like a close one. My grandma’s telling everyone who’ll listen that she knows someone on TV. What am I, chopped liver?
Art’s name on his screen feels like a slap to the face. No — a kick to the balls. Not sobering, but enraging.
He starts to type: Hey, man. Fuck off and die.
His fingers fumble, trip, slip. D becomes E becomes F, T becomes U becomes V — fuck, no, backspace — stupid fucking piece of shit brick fucking Nokia—
Another message comes in.
Art
July 2 2007
[15:12] Anyway, we were wondering if we’d see you this summer? I told her she could just call, but she said she wants to congratulate you in person. Let me know when you’re free?
Another slap. Kick. Punch to the gut, maybe, driving the air out of his lungs, leaving him speechless. Coward, he thinks. Fucking coward, hiding behind his grandmother .
But he shouldn’t be surprised. Art’s always been a coward. Even now, even after winning, he doesn’t have the spine to acknowledge it.
That’s what pisses him off the most, he realises — his total, infuriating inability to just own it.
Well, fuck that, and fuck him. Patrick’s spent way too long enabling his bullshit. He’s done.
That’s why he hits the call button instead.
It rings. It rings, and rings, and rings, until—
Hi, you’ve reached Art Donaldson. I can’t answer your call right now, but leave a message and I’ll call you back A-S-A-P. Thanks!
His voice — even like this, polite, careful — maybe especially like this — isn’t a kick to the balls. More like a door shoved closed in his face.
“Yeah,” he says. “That’s what I thought.”
And then he hangs up before he has a chance to embarrass himself.
And yeah, maybe, a part of him hopes, but — it doesn’t matter.
Art doesn’t call back.
Of course he doesn’t.
Nobody texts Art any more.
Well. Except for Karl, he guesses, but only because Karl’s his coach, and texting is an easier means of communication than any of the alternatives.
It’s fine. Like, he isn’t lonely. He has friends — from college, or other guys on tour. He has his hitting partner. He has his grandma. He even has his parents. There are people to talk to if he ever wants to talk. They just don’t seem to want to talk to him first.
Not like Patrick.
And it’s not like Patrick would text him incessantly or anything. But he would text him the same way he used to talk to him, random observations or memories or out-of-the-blue questions he must have known Art didn’t have the answers to. Turns out Finnish food is just raw fish or Why are zucchinis called that? or Remember when Hancock tried to make that fuckass racket the school mascot in ninth grade.
Sometimes there’d even be a, Can’t wait to kick your ass on the court again. Or even a, Wish you were here, stupid.
It had annoyed him at the time, and that had been the same too — a small, sharp prick of annoyance that only Patrick had ever managed to spark, easily brushed off with a roll of his eyes or a shove to the shoulder or a scoffed, yeah, okay, whatever you say, man .
He shouldn’t miss it, but he does. It’s so stupid, how much he misses it — how much he misses Patrick, even now, years later. How it’s stopped being a conscious act and started being something that’s just woven into the fabric of his being.
It’s extra fucking stupid given how Patrick doesn’t feel the same. It’s been years since he’d tried to extend an olive branch. If Patrick missed him, if he wanted to get in touch, he would have. He hasn’t gotten in touch, so he doesn’t miss him. It’s that simple.
So when his phone beeps that evening, Art shouldn’t think of Patrick, because he knows it’s not him.
He shouldn’t, but he does. Just for a split second. Just on instinct. Just enough to hate himself for it.
Still, he picks it up, sinking into the too-soft mattress of his hotel bed. He’s expecting Karl, or maybe his hitting partner, but the name on his screen stops him in his tracks.
Tashi Duncan
August 13 2009
[19:46] Hey, you’re in Cincinnati next week, right? Want to grab dinner?
Tashi. Someone else he hasn’t spoken to in years. After she’d left Stanford, he’d thought—
It doesn’t matter now.
He reads her message. Rereads it. Chews his lip as he taps into the text box to reply.
[19:47] Hey! I didn’t know you’d be there too! Of course I’d love to catch up. How does Wednesday sound? The 19th?
There’s no answer, not for a long time. For a moment, he thinks he’s fucked it up — sounded too eager, maybe, or replied too soon, but a couple of minutes later, his phone buzzes again.
Tashi Duncan
August 13 2009
[19:50] Sounds like a date. :)
And just like that, Patrick is the last thing on his mind.
That's what he tells himself, anyway, biting back a smile as he taps out a response.