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He has, briefly, something that could approximately be called a boyfriend. It’s not exactly right - the whole time they’re seeing each other, it isn’t that serious, not exclusive, nothing that’s going anywhere (reminds Patrick of someone, har dee har). When it’s all going on, Patrick finds himself weirdly averse to the word. Something about boyfriend just feels both too immature, like he’s a middle schooler and not a man in his twenties, and also substantial and permanent enough to make him claustrophobic. But it’s silly - he’s had girlfriends who were a lot less to him.
It’s not that he has any misgivings that this might be a fluke or a phase. No sir-ee, Patrick Zweig knows himself well enough to know that he well and truly bats for both teams. He sleeps around on the reg starting pretty much as soon as things end with Tashi, mostly women but more than a couple men as well. All on the side, all quiet. Closeted feels like too strong a word, but he’s certainly keeping things on the down low, him being a professional athlete and all. Anyways, he still likes girls - he could be up front about all of this if he wanted to, but it seems like it might be wasted effort when he feels like he’ll end up with a woman in the end, if he ends up with anyone. The sleeping with men - it’s something he likes, for real, but it may still end up not to matter.
Anyway, the man is named Jared. He organizes tennis summer camps for little kids at the club Patrick briefly talks into hosting him. He’s athletic but slight, more elegantly built than Patrick by far, and seems not to have noticed that he could be with someone a lot nicer, a lot more put together.
(Or maybe he has. A woman a few hookups ago had called him dirtbag hot, the words tripping from her and leaving her with a sheepish look on her face after, though she didn’t take them back. Patrick felt - he didn’t know, exactly, but he knows now that that’s a side of him that there’s a market for.)
It isn’t much of a story, really - hurried hands in a locker room becoming visits to Jared’s apartment becoming burgers in Patrick’s car, sometimes with sex afterwards, sometimes without. He tells Patrick about the things the kids do, smiling and rolling his eyes.
Jared is doing this all on the side while he works on a social work master’s. Jared likes it - Jared isn’t sure if he’d rather stick with it or go back to his original plan once he graduates. Patrick has zero life plans and zero college degrees, really only got through high school by sneaking glances at his best friend’s test paper, but he doesn’t bring that up. Jared likes serious conversations. Jared likes to go for early runs, likes to drag Patrick along if he sleeps over, likes to smile and say between this and the sex, I’m really helping you get your cardio. Are you looking to hire on a trainer? Jared’s life does not begin and end at tennis - it’s a side gig, set dressing for a life that feels many times more full than Patrick’s, a life where Patrick is set dressing too.
One day, after the summer camp lets out, they’re eating burrito bowls in Patrick’s front seat (Should professional athletes really be eating all this fast food? Let’s at least go get something with vegetables on it-) when Jared goes, “Can I ask you something?”
Patrick makes a little… assenting, questioning grunt, then feels like a little bit of a caveman for it. “Sure,” he says, mouth still full.
“How did you know you like boys?” Patrick blanches slightly, and Jared laughs. “Are you about to give me the what do you mean, I’m straight act?”
He snorts. “No. No, definitely not.” He swallows. “Just- caught me off guard. But let me think.”
He knows the answer, of course, deep and innate - there’s only one answer that makes sense. But he hesitates, half hoping that it’ll make it look like he had to think about it. “My old roommate. He was my doubles partner too.”
Jared hums. “I forgot you went to boarding school. Can’t imagine - I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who went to boarding school before.”
“What, you didn’t grow up with a lot of children of foreign dignitaries?”
“Ok, tell me that’s a joke-“
“Mostly, yeah. There were a couple, but, like, this was tennis academy, not some international school with classes on foreign affairs or whatever. More celebrity athlete parents if anything.”
Jared’s eyes are wide. “Ok,” he says slowly, “I want to ask so many questions about that, but let’s stay on topic. You had a baby gay crush on your boarding school roommate. Honestly, that feels so classic.”
“I’m a walking stereotype,” Patrick says, his voice carefully light. Mission successful - Jared laughs. “No, we were just… together, all the fucking time. Classes to practice to our room to these trips for the junior open together. I once spent winter break with his family. And like… I knew when he had his first kiss. I knew when he lost his virginity. I mean, we slept in the same room, I taught him how to masturbate when we were preteens.”
Jared laughs again. “When you say taught-“
“Verbal instruction! Verbal instruction only. I never - nothing ever happened. I mean, I overheard a lot of shit, Jesus, we shared a room for like six years, but, y’know, not between us.” We kissed once, Patrick doesn’t say - too hard to explain, and it isn’t like it had meant anything. Anyway, the memory feels so ephemeral, like it might disappear if he tried to recount it to someone.
“But you wanted it,” Jared prompts.
He nods. “Yeah.” It’s the understatement of the year. There hadn’t been one moment where he’d put it all together, just a creeping wanting that had sunk over him until it was obvious, coloring his entire field of vision. Patrick liked boys, and he liked Art - his slight wrists, the graceful and precise way he moved, his bouncing shaggy hair and the ripple of his shoulders. His drive, his determination. The kiss happening had been a shock, but Patrick liking it had not been.
Jared nudges his shoulder with his elbow. “So did you have a crush on this boy or did you just want to fuck him?”
Patrick laughs in surprise at how blunt his words are. “Uh- I don’t know, a little of column A, a little of column B? Like I said, we were together 24/7.”
“Mmm, sure. Sounds a little, uh, emotionally incestuous.”
He laughs again. “Yeah. Yeah, no lie there.” He takes another bite of his food, then shakes his head. “Anyway, we haven’t spoken in years. We, uh, actually had a falling out over a girl.”
Jared laughs brightly. “Oh my god,” he says, rubbing at his forehead, “of course. That’s a lot. Poor girl probably didn’t know what she was getting into.”
Not true, Patrick doesn’t say. “They’re engaged now, believe it or not.”
He raises his eyebrows, still laughing under his breath. “Don’t tell me you’ve been Facebook stalking him.”
“Nah, I just heard it around.” He read it in a Sports Center article, actually, coach and fiancee Tashi Duncan, but he keeps that to himself.
“Well,” Jared says, “That’s a lot. Glad I asked. Good news is, you never have to do it again.”
He rolls his eyes. “Right.” Maybe he wants to, faintly, but that is way, way too pathetic to say to anyone he wants to have touch his dick. “Okay, I showed you mine, now show me yours.”
“Okay, okay. So, I had this math teacher-“
~
Patrick thinks about it that night, back in the shitty studio apartment that he can barely afford with all his travel and training expenses. He doesn’t think about Art that much, really - or, okay, he does, but not in excess. Just fleeting thoughts, little memories of training with someone. Being nagged out of bed for morning runs. Jared is much nicer than Art was, and Patrick honestly misses being bitched at.
And the callouses on his hands. The sweat pouring off his neck, darkening his clothes. The freckles, all over, because Patrick had seen him from head to waistband and upper thigh to toe. The unimpressed looks he would give Patrick, or the grins when he managed to goad Art into participating in some stupid joke.
There had been a handful of guys in the years since, and Patrick wonders what it would have been like with Art instead. He feels something at the thought: tight chest, shivering spine. Really, he doesn’t usually let himself think about it - my gay awakening was my boarding school roommate is funny and light, nothing like I wanted to fuck my high school best friend like crazy and also I honestly might have been in love with him and anyway, we haven’t spoken in years.
And it has been years. That knocks a little bit of sense into him - at this point, it’s been a long time. And nothing had happened, or ever would happen. So he should go back to not thinking about it. He has a life, albeit a small one, but one where he can make most of his expenses and sleep around and keep playing tennis, and it isn’t so bad, really. He’s not a rising star, or getting married to Tashi Freaking Duncan, and he’s not going anywhere fast, but… well, the silver lining is hard to find, but Patrick supposes things could be worse.