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Chapter Text

♡ ♡ ♡

The first time Patrick saw Art, he was struck nearly dumb by how much Art looked like a mouse. He was a mouse with snowy pale skin and fluffy angel-blond curls and big ears flushed a tender pink at the tips, a mouse who made Patrick’s palms go sweaty immediately before they had even exchanged a word. Patrick’s mouth went dry and numb like when he would go to the dentist and he got cotton swabs shoved into his cheeks. His tongue felt far too heavy to speak, which was a foreign experience for him—silver-tongued charmer, lead-mouthed clumsy child. He could not recall a time that a person made him feel genuinely nervous in a way that made his intestines twist like snakes, but he knew that he needed to impress this boy. 

It was foolish too; this boy was practically surgically attached to his grandmother as they inspected the hallways of Mark Rebellato’s tennis academy. If it were anyone else, Patrick would have sneered. They were far too old to cling to their mother’s skirts and to tear stitches away as they were forcibly yanked by the advancement of adulthood. But something about this boy screamed tentative, shy, cautious in a way that set Patrick’s blood hot like fire. Before he even knew his name, Patrick thoroughly documented the soft, downy fluff of Art’s blond eyelashes and his side profile, a broad nose that made his silhouette entirely unique. Before he even knew his name, Patrick would recognize him anywhere. He would know him at the world’s end. He would know him even if he’d never met him. 

They almost ran into each other outside of their shared dorm room. Patrick was busy looking around at the activity going on: older boys reuniting with their roommates all around him and families milling around the halls. He (and his roommate, DONALDSON, A., according to the pink housing slip the Resident Advisor table outside gave him) seem to be the only 7th graders on the entire floor. Patrick had never been easily intimidated; he had always been charming and funny, but he felt smaller than he ever had before, watching boys all around him, much older, saying words that stung his ears, even though he’d practiced them with the kids back home. There was something different about twelve and thirteen year old kids sneaking out back to smoke their mother’s Marlboro Golds and spit curses at one another and hearing seventeen year olds crassly shout back and forth.

Patrick was distracted and Art was staring at the toes of his shoes instead of looking up, so they very nearly collided head-on and instead, their shoulders crashed against each other.
When Patrick looked at the offender, he saw a mouse. He saw squinted soft blue eyes, furrowed blonde eyebrows, and soft pale eyelashes. Patrick wondered how they would feel against the back of his hand. Would they be soft? They looked soft. 

“P. Zweig?” The stranger asked, in a soft, reedy voice that had not grown into a masculine depth yet. 

“Zweig. It’s like a ‘v’ not a ‘w,’” Patrick corrected him automatically after a lifetime of mispronounced names. This boy mouthed it a few times. Zweig… Zweig… Zweig…

“It’s Patrick, though. You can call me Patrick,” he said quickly. The idea of this boy saying his name made his heart palpitate uncomfortably, but the spasms continued even after his voice stopped.

 
“I’m Art.”

Yes, you are, Patrick thought, but didn’t yet understand why. 

Debbie came up behind him, startling him nearly out of his skin. He’d forgotten about her the moment he started mapping fluffy blonde curls and pale skin, especially since she was behind him, carrying in a bag from the car. Debbie was technically Patrick’s step mother, but she had been around since Patrick was five years old, way more than his so-called real mom who rarely answered the phone these days. Besides, she was here. Even his dad couldn’t be bothered. 

Debbie glanced between Patrick and Art, calculating, before gently placing her hand on Patrick’s shoulder. 

“Who’s your friend?” Art clammed up immediately. It’s not like he’d been particularly chatty, he’d said all of two words, but his eyes go wide at the sound of her voice like he’s a fawn caught on a highway, staring down the barrel of a set of headlights. Patrick noticed the pale blue of his iris as well as the patch of brown eclipsing the blue in his right eye. Art stared at Debbie, not blankly, but like he was terrified of her. Patrick rolled his eyes, partially because he was always good at playing cool and for some reason, he needed to show that off to Art, and partially because he was trying to avoid being drawn into the dark splotch, swirling in the clear blue, an optical illusion.

“Art,” Patrick said, gesturing at him. “And that’s Debbie.”

Debbie ruffled Patrick’s hair with a scoff before looking to her right and evaluating the door to their room before opening and poking her head in to investigate. Art looked horrified, but waited until Debbie had disappeared into their shared dorm room to speak. 

“You call your mother by her first name?” he whispered, sounding agitated. 

“No, she’s not my mom, she’s my stepmom,” Patrick explained, which doesn’t seem to help.

“Still,” he insisted. 

“Patrick,” Debbie called.

Patrick toed his way to the doorway, observing the room. It was smaller than the one he has at home and much more utilitarian. Two slightly elevated twin sized beds occupied the room on opposite sides of the room and the walls were blank chalk-white concrete. He had never shared a bedroom before. 

A duffle bag already sat on one of the beds—Art’s. A small window on the farside of the room overlooked the tennis courts outside, but it’s not quite enough to lighten the sudden dark, heavy clouds filling his chest. Debbie stopped fidgeting with the plain gray sheets on the unoccupied bed to look at him, her thin eyebrows knitting together at the expression on his face. 

His belly turned uncomfortably and she crossed the room in two steps before wrapping her arms around him. She was still taller than him, but probably not for much longer, so he relished in the moment and savored the feeling of pressing his forehead into her shoulder. 

“I know, Patrick,” she soothed. He took a deep inhale of Debbie’s coconut shampoo and vanilla lotion. When she let him go, he missed her already, but instead of asking for just a little longer, he sniffed a little, feeling the warmth of his nose starting to run. Just a little bit.

Debbie reached into her purse and pulled out a small packet of Kleenex. It was only when she reached over to wipe his cheeks that he realized that he was crying. “I’m sorry,” she said. Patrick understood. Neither of them said another word for several minutes.

It had been Debbie’s idea that he go to Mark Rebellato in the first place. Patrick had been angry that she’d been researching places to send him as a backup plan, but truly, nobody in the world knew Patrick’s father like Deborah Zweig. She had foreseen Patrick’s banishment coming from a mile away and prepared herself for impact. 

Patrick’s father had actually pushed to send him off to a military academy, but Debbie had insisted. She had always been his ally, his only real ally, especially against his father’s expectations and his mother’s, well, everything. Debbie was far from a shrinking violet, more than willing to spit fire back at his father when he was being a dick. 

Patrick recalled the final conversation for the millionth time since it happened, him shrinking in his father’s study as his parents shouted at each other about what they would do with him for the better part of two hours. 

He had fucked up, he knew that, but no worse than usual. 

That was the lie he told himself over and over and over again in his head, trying to force his seasick feeling to subside, trying to make the Earth stop tilting beneath his feet and giving him dizzying swells of vertigo.

“He’s your son,” Debbie had snarled, full upper lip curling in disdain for the man she’d married. “Not just something for you to pawn off-”

“He’s a stain on this family is what he is.”

“He’s a child, Robert. He’s no more of a stain than Abby or Riley.”

“Don’t bring up the girls, you know they would never do anything of the kind.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

Patrick shrunk even further at the mention of his sisters. Abby was his full sister, just as much an agent of chaos as Patrick, if not even more so, but the apple of their father’s eye, so no matter what she did, it was never nearly as bad as anything Patrick did. Riley was still just a kid—Debbie and his dad’s kid, so his half sister, a distinction he only remembered to make when he remembered that she was usually better behaved than he and Abby, even if only because she could hold still for longer than thirty seconds. Otherwise, she blended right in: freckles, lack of an ‘inside voice,’ and eyes that never could quite decide if they wanted to be blue or green.

“Deborah, stop. He’s got to go.”

“At least let him go to that Mark Rebellato place I found. For tennis. That way, he can focus his energy into something he’s really talented at.”

“Oh, talented-”

“Yes, Robert, talented.” 

Afterwards, Debbie sat with him while he sobbed. His father couldn’t be bothered (“Be a man, Patrick.”), but Debbie sat and listened while he choked on his tears, unflinching as he swore at both her and his father (“Fuck both of you, you’ve always wanted to get rid of me ‘cos I’m not your real son…”). And now, she was the one here with him. 

“I’m so sorry, Patrick. On the plus side, your roommate seems nice,” she said with a gentle smile. He nodded, wiping his face with the back of his hand, neglecting his crumpled tissue.

Patrick cried himself to sleep that first night, alone, wrapped in thin gray sheets, sweltering in the humid North Carolina August. His sweat stuck through his t-shirt and his boxers, plastering him to the mattress. It wasn’t like it was hotter than home; Fort Lauderdale felt about the same as Winston-Salem, and the Floridian beaches were much more humid. Still, he was sticky with discomfort in addition to the tears rubbing his cheeks raw as they dripped down from the corner of his eyes down to rest in the shell of his ears. He stared at the ceiling, missing his glow in the dark star stickers.

In the middle of his tears, maybe around midnight, he heard Art get up and pad over on sock feet across the floor. Patrick had thought he was being quiet enough that Art wouldn’t be able to hear him, and to Art’s credit, he had enough tact not to bring it up. Instead, he simply turned on his small desk lamp light and looked across the room at Patrick, his face illuminated on its broad planes, with his delicate features drowned in shadow, his golden hair backlit and shining white. 

“D’you want a blue gatorade?”

Patrick wouldn’t find out until later that Art considered blue gatorade to be nectar of the gods and regarded it nearly as a holy relic and savored each bottle, but he appreciated the electrolytes anyhow. While he drank the offered beverage, Art hopped up on his bed next to him, and together, they played with Art’s tamagotchi well into the early morning hours before they both fell asleep in Patrick’s bed. 

Art’s neck smelled cool and soft, like lavender and his skin felt like a soothing aloe salve on a blistering burn. Patrick woke up almost cold, his nose buried in Art’s blond curls.
It helped him forget to cry, and it also gave Patrick his first glimmer of hope since what he’d done in May. It really was worse than anything he’d ever done, but he tried to ignore the twists of guilt and to take deep breaths until his heartbeat settled back into the ordinary. Until it matched Art’s, still sleeping, his heart thrumming against Patrick’s belly. 

Maybe Mark Rebellato wouldn’t be as bad as he’d thought. 

Patrick had originally felt sour when he found out that at Mark Rebellato, they practiced both singles and doubles and that feeling only further embittered on the first day of New Student Orientation, when he woke up with his eyelashes sticky and his mouth dry, then proceeded to flail miserably with his first two doubles partners. Patrick liked playing by himself, all wild limbs and chaotic moves, and he was irritable about lacking the opportunity to be the star player. He was also irritable about working with people he didn’t connect with. Patrick had too much fire; he wasn’t always a good fit.
Cameron Pierce (Match One) was far too methodical. It was like playing with a robot. He was stiff and slow, like he was just barely calibrating, and he seemed to dislike Patrick’s mess all over the court, with flailing long limbs and erratic shots that seemed to only just land, scraping just inside the court. Cameron seemed nice enough, didn’t argue or sneer, but Patrick could tell his patience was wearing thin by the end of the final set. Patrick’s was too. It seemed like Cameron didn’t have an ounce of passion in his entire body.

Match 1

Pierce/Zweig     5     4

Walker/Zhao     7     6

 As if noticing his need for chaos, Coach Jake, an equally chaotic seeming person, paired him with Jackson Moore (Match Two). This was even worse because of the complete imbalance of playing two wildcards at once. They ran into each other at full speed three different times, got into five screaming matches, and nearly got into one fistfight before an assistant coach broke them up. Fire does not play nicely with fire very often, and neither of them were willing to snuff theirs out to keep the peace.

Match 2

Moore/Zweig    3     4

Chen/Walker    6     6

A lot of students at Mark Rebellato played with their roommates. They already had a built-in practice companion, why wouldn’t they? Still, they tried multiple combinations first, just as a test. But the third time's the charm, and Art fit Patrick like a glove. Calmer and more level headed on the court, he walked on with an air of confidence he hadn’t had anywhere else in the day Patrick had known him: not in the corridor outside of their dorm, not in their bedroom, not at breakfast, not through the first half of New Student Orientation. Art took steps onto the court like he owned it. 
And together, they absolutely did.

Match 3

Donaldson/Zweig   6     6

Garcia/Nguyen       1     2
 
The moment he stepped back off the court, Art turned right back into his mousy self, curling in on himself a bit more than he had before. But there was an undeniable smolder, one that stitched their fast forming bond even tighter.

♡ ♡ ♡

Art’s grandmother stuck around for the first few days after she brought him to Mark Rebellato’s Tennis Academy. He appreciated it. Art’s anxiety was somewhat quelled by having a familiar, loving face around, even just to get him through New Student Orientation. Plus, he had always gotten along well with his grandmother. His parents had spent his twelve years of life being invested primarily in their jobs, with their only child as an afterthought. That was not to say that he wasn’t loved by them, just that he spent a lot of his time alone. 

His grandmother took care of him when he was too small for school, then began to pick him up from school once he was old enough to go. He was always seen when he was with her. She heard him without being preoccupied by real estate or by whatever middle management was.

Art spent a lot of the first few days pondering his luck and his new roommate. He was surprised when Mrs. Zweig (w pronounced like a v!) had to leave early the next morning. She must have seen it on his face, his has always been an open book, because she stopped to assure him that Patrick would be okay and that she didn’t want to leave but her patients needed her back at home. Art supposed that he could let it slide, however, Patrick seemed to need her, even if he tried to pretend he didn’t really care so much. 

“Bye, Deb,” Patrick had said as she left the first night. After she was well on her way, Art couldn’t help himself. 

“I can’t believe you call your mom by her first name.”

“Dude, I told you, she’s not my mom. She’s my stepmom.”

“Aren’t they basically the same?”

Art understood a stepmother in a conceptual sense. Patrick’s parents weren’t together anymore and now his dad had a new wife. But he thought that she seemed like his mom anyway. She looked like she’d scrubbed Patrick behind his ears when he was little and cleaned up his scraped knees. As far as he was concerned, someone like that was as real a mom as any, even if you didn’t come out of her. Art tried to explain, but then Patrick started talking about babies and vaginas and Art didn’t want to hear anymore at that point. 

“I didn’t come out of her vagina, so she’s not my real mom,” Patrick insisted. Art flinched at the word. He didn’t want to seem like a wuss, he just grew up around parents and other kids who never said dirty words like that.

“What’s the matter with your face,” Patrick said. It wasn’t a question.

Art explained politely. Perhaps Patrick didn’t know that vagina was a dirty word and that it wasn’t something that people were supposed to talk about. Patrick stared at him with incredulity through his entire explanation, like Art was suddenly speaking Greek.

“You shouldn’t use dirty words like that.”

“Vagina isn’t a dirty word, it’s a body part, dude. Like a foot. Deb says so. It would be dirty if I called it a ‘pussy.’”

Art could not believe his ears.

“Well, don’t call it that!” Art said, horrified yet again by his new roommate.

Much of the evening was spent in this way. Patrick spoke in unfamiliar ways, but something about it made Art’s stomach flip. It had flipped anxiously and irreverently when Patrick said the p-word, sort of like on a rollercoaster, and before going to sleep, as he laid on his bed in the dark, back turned toward Patrick, he tried mouthing it out a couple of times. Just to try it out. Maybe Patrick had been right when he said Art had been too sheltered—a brutal read for a first meeting. 

Art had never been able to sleep away from home. He spent many nights having to have his parents called to come pick him up from failed sleepovers, and he’d skipped any boy scout camping trips because he couldn’t stand the idea of being away from home at night. This was for two reasons: he missed his parents and because he didn’t like the dark. He refused to use the word afraid, but he definitely needed some light in order to sleep.

In his bedroom back home, he had glow in the dark stars stuck to every perceivable surface in his room and multiple night lights in various shapes scattered around; at least one on each wall. Art didn’t bring them with him because he hadn’t wanted his randomly assigned roommate to think he was a baby, or scared of the dark. He wasn’t scared—he just didn’t like it and the lurking sense of dread it brought with it. He was regretting this choice now, curled in his bed, staring at the wall, feelings of anxiety creeping in, heavy and dark in his lungs, like a weight on his chest. Art had never been able to sleep away from home and that didn’t seem to be changing any time soon.

As he pondered the lack of light and why he’d insisted so fiercely on wearing a brave mask for someone he didn’t even know, Art’s ears perked up as he heard Patrick’s breathing become heavy across the room. It didn’t get heavy with sleep, but heavy, slow, and wet, with his breaths sharp and shaky. Patrick was crying.

It was for different reasons, Art thought, than his own homesickness. His stepmother was the only family who had been there, and Art’s grandma was the only one there with him too, but it seemed different. For one thing, he called her by her first name, which seemed like a strange distance to him. For another, he had seemed weirdly sad, even through his brash loudness and large white teeth he showed off with large smiles. It was like those big grins didn’t fully meet his eyes. They didn’t crinkle up around the edges until he’d laughed alone in the room with Art. 

Art didn’t want to embarrass him, but he wanted to comfort him anyways, so he uncoiled his body and slipped from his bed, landing lightly on his tiptoes. He turned on a desk lamp as he passed it, just so he could see, not for any other reason, and began to rummage around for his holy grail, his favorite drink, his sealed new bottle of blue gatorade. He found it and for extra measure, grabbed his tamagotchi. 

When he turned to see Patrick, his nose was slightly puffy and pink at the tip. His eyes were bloodshot and shone a nearly electric teal color and his cheeks were wet. 

“D’you want a blue gatorade?”

Patrick took it like he didn’t know he was doing it, almost hollowly. Art climbed up onto the bed next to him and showed him his Tamagotchi, which he had lovingly named Gizmo 2 (Gizmo 1 had died and in his bereavement, he had raised a second, named in memoriam). He showed Patrick how to feed it and play with it as Patrick took little hits of vibrant blue electrolytes and readjusted back into the boy he had met that afternoon. Up close, Art could see the freckles all over Patrick’s face and the way some of them hid in the crinkles of his eyes and in his dimples when he laughed.

One moment, Art was watching Patrick and the next, he was waking up with his head laying heavily on Patrick’s belly at 6:30 a.m. Patrick was warm, like a sentient, breathing heating pad, relaxing and cozy for Art’s anxious sensibilities. Art allowed himself to move with the rhythm of Patrick’s breaths for a few beats before disentangling himself.

He celebrated internally at his victory—falling asleep—before realizing that the lamp light was still on, cruelly reminding him that he had still needed it after all.

Coach Jake Martinez led his orientation group in a way that felt too casual for Art’s taste, personally speaking. He wore flip-flops and gestured vaguely at confusing sets of buildings on a tour that was supposed to take thirty minutes but stretched into two long hours, with frequent side tangents and long stops, which left Art more disoriented than ever. Ancient-looking buildings, carefully tailored to appear worn, despite being no more than thirty years old, loomed all around him. They all looked the same, and Art felt smaller than ever; insignificant, like a dandelion fluff floating in the wind. Art’s panic rested on the back of his tongue as he desperately tried to distinguish between the Mark Rebellato buildings. He’d need to know the difference in only a few days when he was trying to go to his classes, but the dizzying, artificially weathered, gray stone walls all blended together.

The sight of a deep forest green court surrounded by chain link fence caught his attention and he immediately forgot his navigation-based woes. The white asphalt baseline marked the outline of his safest space, and he ached to get onto the court. When he wasn’t at his grandmother’s house, he was spending most afternoons, evenings, and weekends playing tennis at the local community center. 
He’d picked up his first racket at age six at his grandmother’s home for the summer, and he’d never been able to remove it fully from his hand. He felt the weight of it heavy at all times like a phantom limb, his muscles never wanting to let go of the memory, even momentarily. He spent the next six years of his life practicing whenever he could. It almost felt like the court was what sparked him to life every time, reviving a body that otherwise felt useless. 

Watching Patrick play was like watching a raging wildfire; beautiful but chaotic, elegant but overwhelming. His movements were fluid but unexpected, and they didn’t match well with his first two partners, the stiff android and the additional wildfire. But when the other coach, Coach Mark Collins, sent Art in to play with Patrick, their styles snapped into place, two halves of a whole, equal but opposite. Hot and cold, red and blue, wild and calm, chaotic and practiced all at once. 

Coach Collins stood off to the side, watching them as they wiped their opponents all across the court, not turning his head when Coach Martinez came to stand by him.

“I think we may have something beautiful on our hands,” Coach Collins said, taking a sip of his now stale, cold coffee, unblinking. Despite barely having finished his bachelor’s degree in athletic training and a very quick teacher certification that had him now beginning his first year coaching professionally, at such a prestigious academy no less, slipping into an imposter-syndrome sinkhole, Coach Martinez felt inclined to agree.

That night, Art’s grandmother took him and Patrick to some little diner on the edge of town. Patrick didn’t act as lonely as he was. He was crass and loud, but he called Art’s grandmother ma’am and that was good enough for Art. Besides, the fact that Patrick was all alone made the cavity in between Art’s ribs ache with both sameness and sorriness at once. And Art and his grandmother had always been on the same wavelength, even since he was no bigger than her knee. She’d known to invite Patrick without Art even opening his mouth.

“Art and I are going to a little diner next to my hotel. Happy’s, I think it’s called. Why don’t you come with us, Patrick?”

It didn’t take much convincing, or any really. Patrick had brightened up immediately, so bright it was like the scarlet North Carolina sun was in their room with them, a brightness that radiated an overwhelming heat that left Art’s skin feeling pink and tender, like he had a sunburn from overexposure. Patrick had seemed a little gloomy when his grandmother had showed up at their dorm room, but it was gone so fast that Art was sure he’d imagined it and he didn’t see it resurface again for the entire night. Besides, it was eclipsed by the euphoric high of being around Patrick, who was already becoming an emotional support source of dopamine.  

Sitting in the backseat with Patrick, Art’s chest constricted and his heart swirled in his chest. For one thing, he was with Patrick who was fun and made his heart beat so hard he felt like he’d been running uphill for a mile and a half. For another, his stomach sunk with sickening anxiety: his grandmother would be leaving early the next morning, and he already missed her. He was able to sleep somehow (fitfully), but that didn’t mean he wasn’t afraid of the chasm of loneliness destined to follow after her departure. 

Patrick ripped open his straw wrapper, placed it at the end of his straw and shot it at Art as soon as he got it. After it hit his cheek, Art’s grandmother showed Patrick how to fold it into a worm. 

“If you fold it like so… then drip just a little water on it…”

Art had watched the trick many times, and something about watching Patrick’s eyes go wide as she eased a drop of water out of the end of her straw, landing on the crumpled worm and it began convulsing immediately, hurt him. It felt like getting stabbed, not that he’d had any experience with such a thing. The diner lights hitting Patrick’s eyes made the gold in the center glow even sharper, which made Art’s stomach feel funny and his tongue feel heavy, and he placed his napkin on his plate, his appetite now gone. 

“How does it… do that?” Patrick asked, sounding for the first time like a vulnerable young person, wishing for an adult to pay attention to him. He was a different person than the person who called his stepmother by her first name only the night before. Despite the present height difference—Patrick stood a few inches taller than him—he looked genuinely small. Art’s ears felt like they had been submerged in hot water. He could barely hear the two of them as they continued to speak.

At the end of night, Art’s grandmother dropped them off at their dorm building. Patrick began the walk back to the front entrance, but she stopped Art after he shut her car door. 

“Hang on just one second, Artie,” she said kindly, getting out of the car. “I have a gift for you.”

She handed him a small, brown paper bag, gently pressing it into his palms, her long acrylic French tip nails sending soothing scratches over the backs of Art’s hands. 
“Hopefully this will help you out while you still need it. Remember that you can call me anytime you need me,” she said, then pressing her lips to the top of his head and ruffling through his soft, fluffy curls. “I love you, Artie.”

“Love you too, grandma,” he says, taking a small inhale of the floral perfume against the crook of her neck.

Back in his dorm, Art sat down on his bed and opened her gift to him. Inside of the paper bag was a small night light, wrapped in pale blue tissue paper.

♡ ♡ ♡

The wall was a reliable, dependable partner, even if not dynamic. The wall never moves. It would always return her serve, directly back into her racket, sending electric shock through her homemade absorber.

Playing the wall in her family’s rundown Queens backyard, Tashi found out that she was a good player. Playing with other girls on the tennis team she couldn’t afford to be on after school, Tashi found out that she was a great player. Playing against random adults at the local YMCA knock off, Tashi found out that she was a fucking star.

Tashi dragged the toes of her tattered, worn white Reeboks along the subway floor, watching the scuffed rubber gum of the shoes rub against worn sheet ground. Her backpack rested in the aisle seat next to her and she leaned back in the window seat to look at various apartment buildings, bodegas, and cardboard signs as they passed by below. Her daily venture took her from school to the youth center, tennis racket and ball in her backpack until her mom could stop by on her way home from work and pick her up to take her home. 

Tashi would stay at school each day until the adults told her to go home at 4:30 (sometimes 4:45, if she was lucky) because the tennis coaches couldn’t babysit her, not for free, she had to be on the team if she was going to stick around after school. The coaches put up with her for an extra hour each day, but only because she truly dominated the courts, which helped their actual students get better, but each day, like clockwork, they would tell her to leave, at which point, she would ride the subway to the youth center. 

Sometimes at the center, she could find adults to play with. She had her favorite recurring characters. Joe was an older man who reminded her a bit of an uncle, too old to be like her dad, too young to be like her grandfather, who worked there and was there four days a week. Usually he could play with her for an hour at least, but on days when Joe was off or busy, she would have to find other partners or play with the center’s back wall. Rita was another good choice, but she wasn't very good at tennis. She was a bit too old to move very quickly and she couldn’t see fuck all without her giant horn-rimmed glasses, but she was a very nice woman, who Tashi really liked. 

The subway came to a screeching halt at Tashi’s daily stop and she evacuated from the automatic sliding door, beginning her three block walk to the center. It was a Thursday, so Joe’s day off, so instead of even going inside and trying her luck, Tashi went around back and began throwing various serves to her best, most dependable partner, the brick back wall of the center. The crack of the tennis ball smacking against the wall was only interrupted by the sharp exhales and her occasional shouts as adrenaline began to snake through her veins, shining pale green under her glistening brown skin, sparkling with sweat. She bit the soft, tender flesh inside of her lips, drawing crimson, salty drops of blood against her tongue. 

It was seven o’clock before her mother’s 1995 deep green Toyota Camry pulled up against the curb. Tashi was ready for her—seven o’clock was the typical time her mother would be by, with both Tashi’s brothers in the car already. She was the last stop on her mother’s way home, which Tashi appreciated. Playing tennis was essentially what kept Tashi alive, and with each day she got better, and that made her chances of becoming a professional and carrying her family to the place they deserved to be climbed higher and higher. At seven each evening, she was sitting on the curb, her right knee throbbing, legs drawn up against her chest, flyaways frizzing at her hairline, the rest of her hair slicked back with equal parts gel and sweat. 

Her mother’s eyes were heavy, like she was half asleep already, behind the wheel. Tashi’s brothers, 10 and 6, already waited in the backseat, also looking half asleep. Tashi’s energy overwhelmed the station wagon, so she nipped back the instinct to immediately start talking tennis. She would need to save that for her father, who despite having no energy for anything else, always wanted to talk sports. Josiah’s small hand reached out from the backseat to squeeze hers and she gave him the customary greeting, twining their fingers together. More than anything—more even than her exhausted mom with bruise colored bags under her eyes falling asleep in her work scrubs for three hours a night, more than her dad, focused on the athletic direction of one of the poorest high schools in the state with a win record of zero, and Malachi, aged ten and already half-grown, Tashi practiced tennis because she wanted a better home for Josiah. She wanted Josiah to have opportunities that she and Malachi would never get to have. She wanted Josiah to have his own bedroom and to eat home cooked meals that weren’t just Spaghetti-Os prepared via microwave. Tashi practiced so she could give that to him. If she was good enough, she could ease the burden of their family, and she could reinvent Josiah’s entire life. It was the reason she was able to power through the ache in her right knee, the reason she was able to power through the pain in her lungs and the blisters on her palms and the arthritic aches in her wrists. 

“How was your day, baby?” Tashi’s dad asked her, placing a quick kiss to the top of her hair, damp from her post-dinner shower. She placed her 7th grade math homework pages back down onto her pale pink bedspread to look up at him. 

“Same as usual,” she said. “Pretty good.”

An unspoken thread hung between them. Tashi desperately wanted to join the school tennis team and she understood that the reason she couldn’t was because of financial strain and a lack of time from her parents. She had stopped asking months ago, but she knew her father heard it every day when she looked at him. It broke his heart not to be able to give her the one thing she ached so painfully for, and it ached even more that he knew that she wanted it not for herself, but for her family. She wanted to be something, sure, but she also wanted her family to be something too. More than anything.

Her dad sat on her bed next to her, shifting her homework out of his way. 

“I found something for you,” he said, handing her a small pamphlet. 

It advertised a local tennis tournament, in Queens, about a month away. Most tournaments for girls her age didn’t boast cash prizes or anything like that, but the first thing she noticed was different age brackets from 11 to 17 and a cash prize of $250 for the winner in each bracket, plenty for her to be able to pay the fee for the school tennis team. Tashi’s stomach swelled upwards like she was on the ferris wheel at the local carnival; that place at the tippy top of the world where her stomach went to her throat and she felt almost like she could step out of the seat and walk into the stars. It felt like touching the sky, it felt like defying every single gravitational limit, it felt like soaring, being pushed up instead of pulled down, not weightless but her weight supported by the sparkling silver staircase of stars she could use to crawl up to heaven. 

She stared at the pamphlet silently for a few moments before emitting a high-pitched squeal she’d never heard herself make before.

Tashi’s win was practically promised to her before she even stepped onto the court. She wasn’t just the best player in her neighborhood or in her city, but maybe in the entire state of New York. Plus, she’d been sleeping with the pamphlet under her pillow for three and a half weeks, thinking, dreaming, doing nothing but tennis. It wasn’t surprising to anyone who knew her that she won. Joe came to watch, screaming at each hit she made, at each feral growl that emanated from between her clenched teeth. When she hit the final winning point, Tashi screamed like a banshee, then couldn’t stop sobbing as she accepted the award check. They were her adrenaline tears, fatter and saltier than sadness tears, the kind that are impossible to really fight. They just run their course.

Rita from the youth center called her at home that night, congratulating her as she iced her right knee, which was throbbing like it had a headache. Still, Tashi couldn’t help but grin from ear to ear, looking at the prize check where she had it held carefully, uncreased, between her hands as her mother held a bag of frozen peas to her kneecap to soothe the internal irritation.

It was only just the beginning of Tashi’s life—and she could not wait to be something.

♡ ♡ ♡

Step One: Wake up. 

Fox slowly uncurled at the sound of her alarm clocks, two of them, chiming at the same time. Despite very rarely being late, she had developed a truism that she was entirely unable to wake up with just one alarm, so she had two, one across her room on the bookshelf that she would have to get up to shut off, something she always wanted to do immediately. The shrill screams of her alarm sent goosebumps up the back of her neck and she got up as soon as it began, hands clasped over her ears, jolting out of bed to get rid of the nails on a chalkboard to reinstate silent peace. She’d then check the times on each clock. 6:30 on the pink Hello Kitty bookshelf alarm clock. 6:30 on the faux brass twin bell bedside alarm clock. 6:31 on the Kit-Cat Klock on the wall, wagging its tail and dashing its eyes back and forth as the second hand ticked past. 

Step Two: Get dressed. 

Fox fumbled with the buttons on the top of her cotton pajama set, having to take a few extra seconds for direct focus on undoing the buttons. Nimble, quick movements with her hands had always been borderline impossible for her, so she ended up spending a frustrating amount of her time on clothing buttons. Sometimes zippers, sometimes locks and door handles, but buttons were always the worst offenders because of the care it took to guide a button through a buttonhole. It was why the ladies at church had ultimately given up on her sewing lessons after nearly four years—she just wasn’t built for hand-eye coordination. She never had been. Fox’s mom told her not to mind the old ladies at church who said that her fumbling, uneven hand stitches made her poor wife material. The first time she’d heard them say it, she had been confused: she was nobody’s wife, she was only just now in the seventh grade. The second time she had heard it, she’d cried. Fox understood why they said it that time; she understood that they meant that she would ultimately grow up to be worthless, something soothed by spending time with her father afterward, where he reminded her that anyone of quality would know that she had inherent value as a human being. Every time they said it after that rolled off of her. She wasn’t anyone’s wife, and she wouldn’t really want to marry anyone who judged her quality off of her embroidery skills, or her lack thereof. 

Fox’s school had a loose dress code. Acceptable clothing items included: dark wash jeans, knee length (or longer) skirts in denim, khaki, black or plaid, dark trousers (patterns were immaterial—that is to say, you could wear whatever pattern desired on your trousers), khakis (gross), polos, t-shirts, sweaters, sweatshirts in either white or blue. Fox didn’t like picking clothes out, so she stuck with the same pattern each day: white polo, knit blue sweater on top, and jeans. She pulled her socks up high so they wouldn’t leave uncomfortable creases in her ankles. Fox always double knotted her white Keds, perpetually smudged with dirt from walking home and pencil marks from doodling. 

“You’re wearing that? The high today is 90.”

Step Three: Eat breakfast and talk to mom.

“I always wear a sweater. It’s cold in the school. Except when I have P.E., but I have to change for that anyways,” Fox informed her mother, as she did most days, who looked at her with furrowed brows. 

“Well, alright, if you’re so sure.”

“I am.” 

Fox poured exactly one spoonful of brown sugar into her plain oatmeal, stirring and mixing it into the damp oats. Oatmeal was never particularly appetizing. Fox used to pretend she was a horse, eating barnyard oats, just to get through it, though now she had been eating it each morning for years. But on this day, when she took a bite, it felt cold, slimy and heavy in her mouth, coating each centimeter of her tongue as it slid toward her throat. Her stomach immediately convulsed and she heaved, snatching up a napkin and spitting the mouthful into it. 

“What? What’s wrong with it?”

Fox shook her head. It was the same as it always was, but the texture was just wrong today and even looking back at the beige slop had her stomach swirling and twisting with nausea. 

“I don’t know. I can’t today.”

Her mom took a deep inhale through her nose, closing her eyes as she did so. Fox was aware that she could be exhausting, but it wasn’t like her mom ever said it out loud. She could just see it reflected in the same grayish-olive eyes that she had, a sense of exasperation that may as well have been its own new color. Speaking of-

“Five straight seconds of eye contact.”

Fox raised her eyes to meet her mother’s. It’s not like she couldn’t look at people’s eyes, she just didn’t tend to hold eye contact for very long (blinking, glancing away, looking at her hands), so she and her mother had a daily five second staring contest. One. Olive-gray. Two. Dark eye lashes. Three. One pupil slightly larger than the other. Four. Yellow in the center. Just like her own. Blueish on the outside edge. Just like her own. Five. Blink. Finally. 

“Okay?”

“Okay,” her mom replied. 

Fox felt sorry for tiring her mother out, but to be fair, the staring contest wasn’t her idea, it was her mom’s. Everything else that exhausted her probably was Fox’s fault, though. 

Step Four: Makeup.

Fox went back into her bedroom, pulling out her makeup tin. It was a little tin box that contained all of her little makeup things: powder foundation that was perhaps one shade too light, glitter lip gloss, and the piece de resistance, black liquid eyeliner. The lid had her mirror glued to it and onto that, she had taped a cutout photo of Veronica Bennett to look at each day for inspiration. Veronica sat in her box in picturesque gray and black ink, black cat eyes staring back and beehive hairdo sitting pretty on her head, bangs nearly falling into her eyes. When she’d found the picture of her in one of her mother’s discarded magazines, Fox had practically fallen in love, especially with the dark cat eyes.

Fox first wiped the powder foundation all across her face, over her nose, cheeks, eyelids and eyebrows. Her brows were thick and a tad unruly, so Fox had taken to putting makeup over them since her mother wouldn’t let her pluck them yet. Next, the glitter on her lips—her favorite thing about it was that it tasted like pineapple coconut; flavored lipgloss was all the rage. And the eyeliner, which she did, sitting in a hunched position on her bed, her face as close to the mirror as she could get. If she was too far away, her face was blurry, which was no good at all. 

She had just finished the first eye, inner corner extending toward her nose, wing out towards her eyebrow, when her mom came in. 

“Absolutely not. Take it off.”

“But-”

“I said, take it off.”

With a sigh, Fox took her nearby makeup wipes to get rid of the evidence of her hard work. It was a daily occurrence. She and her mom never really argued about it, but she tried every day because maybe one day, her mom would let her finish. She’d see how pretty it was and she would let her go to school that way. Then people would pay attention to her, not as the weird girl to ask out as a joke or the smart girl to copy off of, but as something else entirely. The black smudged makeup wipe tumbled into the trashcan next to her bed, thumping softly on top of a pile of now dried makeup wipes, each smeared with heavy black ink. 

Step Five: Take the bus.

When walking past the mailbox on her way to the sidewalk, Fox stopped to pop open the lid, stooping to look inside. She found it entirely empty. She knew it would be, but she found it difficult not to check each time she passed by it. A month ago, Fox had mailed a set of three novellas to a publishing company for a writing contest. The winner would have their story published and sold in bookstores. Fox’s truest passion was writing stories, but she was also trying to build up funds for college. It seemed far away, but it really was only 6 years until she would graduate and leave her home behind.

She arrived at the bus stop two blocks away at exactly 7:13 am, the same time she did every school day. During the six minutes between her arrival at the bus stop and the bus pulling up, Fox pulled her tiny lined notepad and gel pen from her jean pocket, flipping it open to the nearest blank page. 

Hermione Granger was an enigma to all who knew her. To none moreso than Ron Weasley and Harry Potter, her two closest friends in the world, who still knew so little about her. The things that they—and boys as a whole—noticed about her tended to be at the surface-level. Her buck teeth, her wild, frizzy curls, her baggy robes, the way she wore her wand tucked behind her ear. They also knew and understood that she was brilliant. But they didn’t know her. In fact, they knew so little that they didn’t even realize how much about her there was left to discover. She was not the kind of girl to set someone’s heart aflutter, at least not now. At least, she shouldn’t have been. 

But lately, Ron had started to feel seasick around her, something he could not justify to himself. He convinced himself that it was some sort of weird illness that would go away sometime soon. Perhaps with exposure therapy. But exposure to the source of the virus proved to be an ineffective solution and the seasickness only became more prolonged as he tried to address the issue inherent-

When the bus arrived, it did so with a loud sigh, like a neglected shelter dog and Fox immediately flipped her notepad shut and boarded, taking her usual right side window seat three rows behind the bus driver, resting her cheek against the cold window, curling against the side of the bus, pulling her knees up onto the leather seat. The sounds of other students faded into a dull roar around her as the bus left the stop with a loud, high pitched squeal. 

Step Six: Class. 

Most of Fox’s classes were typically monotonous in a way that was comforting for her. It was boring but predictable; Fox liked following a script so she knew what would come next. And her classes could do that. All, in fact, with one exception: gym class. She had forgotten that the coach was beginning the ‘tennis unit,’ something that she was beginning to regret almost as soon as the racket touched her palm. Had she remembered, she would have begged her dad to let her stay home—she was her dad’s favorite, and she might have been able to persuade him to take her with him to work. This would not have worked on her mother, so she would have had to try before her dad left for work anyway. Even if she’d remembered during breakfast, it would have been too late. 

Fox swung desperately at each tennis ball, making contact with none of them. The two girls on the other side of the net shared a high five. The one on the left stuck her tongue out at Fox’s partner, who had buried her face in her hands. The other two girls were her partner’s best friends, who were clearly delighting in the assigned partnerships and in their friend’s misfortune. The one on the right had laughed out loud when Fox had been paired with the third in their triumvirate. 

Cory (her partner) was not Fox’s friend, that had always been clear. She didn’t even like her—didn’t even tolerate her. Cory was out of her friendship league. She was out of Fox’s every league. She glowed in the hallway, turning everyone’s head. Boys, girls, it didn’t matter. She wore shimmery blue eyeshadow, low-rise jeans with her g-string floss visible where it looked over her hips, and had butterfly clips that matched her baby tees that she never got dress coded for somehow. She crimped sections of her hair. Once she even came to school with the crimps bedazzled. Cory was the epitome of the mean girl middle schooler in the year 2000. If you flipped open a Teen Vogue, she would be on every page.

Fox could tell that Cory actually couldn’t stand her. Obviously. Despite what everyone else seemed to think, Fox wasn’t stupid. And when Coach had been assigning partners, Cory pretended first not to have heard, then not to know who she was, then she tried begging to be assigned with anyone else, literally anyone but Fox, which stung her heart and her eyes. 

“Felicity is your partner, Cory. You’re gonna just have to get over it,” he said, not even looking at her. Coach was the only teacher who wasn’t starstruck by her, which pissed her off to no end.

Cory and her friends were fairly competitive, so Fox couldn’t fully fault her because she knew that whoever’s team she was on was going to be the losing team. 

She hit one tennis ball for the entire 50 minute class period. She swung at every ball that came her way, but she was a terrible judge of distance and she never could get her hands to do exactly what she wanted them to do. So she hit one and only one. One out of at least fifty. Probably even more than that. Fox would have counted, but she was distracted by the prickling hatred of her doubles partner. 

When Coach allowed them to hit the locker rooms to change out of their gym clothes, Cory shoulder checked her, nearly sending Fox to the ground because of Cory’s major height advantage. Fox took her time walking back to the locker room, looking at her feet the whole way, blinking back hot tears. 

Fox wished she had remembered the tennis unit. She wished it more than anything. She wished that Cory hadn’t been her partner. They both probably would have been much happier that way. She was a little grateful that she hadn’t worn the eyeliner to school that day. When she furiously rubbed her eyes to send the tears away, there was nothing there to smear. 

“God, that was terrible to watch.”

“I know. I hope we change partners tomorrow,” Cory said.

Me too.

Step Seven: Check mailbox again.

Fox opened the mailbox door for a second time that day, this time rifling through letters left in the box before locating the one she had been waiting for so anxiously. Her stomach turned with anxiety but she tore it open anyway, carrying it and all of the other letters into the house. Her mom is the one who read the letter for her as Fox chewed her nails down to the quick, anxiously awaiting rejection. 
 
Dear Felicity,
We are pleased to inform you that your novella collection has been selected as a finalist for official publication. We received hundreds of amazing submissions and yours stood out among the best of them. We believe that your writing abilities are beyond what your age would suggest and are excited to continue working with you. 
We will be in touch with your parent/guardian to discuss necessary next steps to move forward in the publication process. 
We look forward to bringing your novellas to life in a collaborative effort.
Sincerely, 
Roselight Publishing. 

Chapter Text

♡ ♡ ♡

[thatlonestarguy is ONLINE]

-- thatlonestarguy began messaging f0xxy_fangzz at 2:16 am --
———————————————————————————————————————
thatlonestarguy: Felicity

thatlonestarguy: I’ve been thinking 

thatlonestarguy: I don’t think you should go on the trip. It’s just… wrong for a girl like you to be by yourself in NYC for so long. Why can’t you just come visit me?

thatlonestarguy: It’s weird that your parents were cool with letting you go all the way to New York but not one state over?

thatlonestarguy: They don’t even know me and they don’t like me 

[f0xxy_fangzz is ONLINE]

f0xxy_fangzz: we’ve already talked about this…

f0xxy_fangzz: my flight is tomorrow 

f0xxy_fangzz: actually l8er today now cuz its 2 am here 

f0xxy_fangzz: itz my senior trip… like… i wanna go on it anyways

thatlonestarguy: I just don’t know why you can go to NYC but not TX

f0xxy_fangzz: bcuz itz my senior trip. im also not going alone cj will b there and b my roommate pls dont b like this 

thatlonestarguy: Yeah, okay, I’m sure CJ will actually bother to keep an eye on you.

thatlonestarguy: Whatever. Make sure you don’t forget about your boyfriend. 

[thatlonestarguy is OFFLINE.]

 Fox closed her laptop and rubbed at her eyes, sniffling softly. It wasn’t like it was surprising, he’d been mad at her for deciding to go on the trip since April, when she told him she was going. It wasn’t really fair of him to be so irritable about the trip and talk about it so much; she’d been fundraising to go on the trip since before she even met him. Fox had explained this to him several times, but it only made him angrier, so she had ultimately resigned herself to hoping that he would have gotten over it by the day she was leaving. She had been sitting cross-legged on her desk chair with the same curled-in posture as a malformed popcorn shrimp for the better part of three hours. Her right kneecap pinched as she unfolded her legs off of the chair to take herself back to bed and she paused to stretch it out like trying to uncrease a folded sheet of paper, unable to undo the subtly throbbing tension shooting from her knee up the back of her leg through her dimples of venus. She halted mid languid movement at the sound of her Razr buzzing on her bedside table, next to her half-finished, now flat can of Monster energy, and despite the sense of stomach-aching dread that opened a pit in her large intestine, she couldn’t help but to read the message anyway. 

caleb <3 (mobile, 2:27 a.m.): I’m not happy with it. I guess it’s your choice. Be safe. Don’t forget about me. 

fox (mobile, 2:29 a.m.): i know. srry ur so upset. i love u so bad <3 ur my best friend i cant stand when ur mad at me

caleb <3 (mobile, 2:33 a.m.): I know. 

caleb <3 (mobile, 2:40 a.m.): I love you too. 

fox (mobile, 2:40 a.m.): :3

caleb <3 (mobile, 2:43 a.m.): At least it’s only a week. Then I’ll get to see you at Stanford. 

fox (mobile, 2:44 a.m.): im excited to see u in prson 4 the first time 

fox (mobile, 2:44 a.m.): ok i gotta go back 2 sleep i love u 

♡ ♡ ♡

Now Playing:
"Hole - Violet"
00:11 ━●─────────── 03:24
ㅤ ㅤ◁ㅤ ❚❚ ㅤ▷ ㅤㅤ↻ 

 Fox shifted in her airplane seat, resting her cheek against the cool, firm side of the plane, gazing out the window at their resting place pre-takeoff. She tucked her knees up toward her chest, curling into the window crevice, listening to a combination of the smoky timbre of Courtney Love through the feeble, hair-thin wires of the earbuds connected to her MP3 player and the deep staticky purr of the airplane. Next to her was CJ, her head reclined back and her eyes closed as she pretended to sleep in hopes that she would blink and wake up in Manhattan (despite the layover). It was past noon, but the window from eleven p.m. to three a.m. that Fox spent awake extinguishing Caleb before his smoldering irritation erupted into flames of rage were weighing heavily on her. Her shoulders sagged heavily and her eyelids fluttered shut, darkness swirling at the edges of her vision. But she liked to watch take-off and touch-down, so she forced them open again, blinking rapidly.
 

CJ had no such trouble. She was already practically dead asleep, face solemn and beautiful, eye makeup unsmudged and arms crossed over her chest. She looked like a dad asleep on the couch if the dad was a girl who was pretty enough to be a Victoria’s Secret model. Fox’s fingers brushed against the outer corners of her eyes subconsciously, collecting tiny fingerprints of dampness. When she wiped her fingers off on her own black sweatshirt, Fox imagined being fingerprinted in saline, dipping her hands in a ramekin of tears and tapping her fingers onto FD-258 cardstock. The prints would smudge orangey brown from foundation and gray black with eyeliner, like Tammy Faye Bakker in watercolor. Or maybe Alice Cooper. Or someone else famous for wearing lots of makeup. 

 The plane lurched to a start and Fox curled her face back into the window’s crevice, watching as it made its way down the runway. Like Gisele Bündchen? No, more like Adriana Lima. Fox obsessively watched the Victoria’s Secret fashion shows. She started watching them in middle school when she decided that actually she wanted to be pretty now, and she’d never been able to curb the obsession with learning to walk the way the models did, like knobby kneed fawns with the elegance of an extraterrestrial empress. She liked the strange a little too much to try to look much like them, ignoring the subtle smokey eyes and sleek straightened hair that looked more like sheets of shiny metal than like hair and opting instead for bleached raccoon tails and a shaggy scene fringe to pair with her heavy eyeliner. She wanted so badly to have her cake and eat it too, but she settled for thinking of their names and trying to channel them as she walked about. Fox already had a natural clumsiness and oddness about her, so she didn’t understand why hers couldn’t be sexy and theirs could, anyway. 

As the airport faded from view and the stucco adobe houses smudged into tiny orange spots on the faraway desert ground, Fox settled in for a long trip. She couldn’t get texts now, not in the air, so while she waited, she read through her last texts with Caleb. 

caleb <3 (mobile, 12:08 p.m.): Be safe. Tell CJ I said hello. Call me when you land in Chicago. 

fox (mobile, 12:11 p.m.): i will but i think our layover is less than an hour. i’ll call u if theres time. 

caleb <3 (mobile, 12:14 p.m.): Make time.

Make time. She would, even if only to make him shut up for a moment. CJ let out a heavy sigh in her sleep. She would be playing at the Juniors U.S. Open during the week of their senior trip. It sort of worked out that way, not that Fox would complain about that, because CJ never could have made the trip otherwise. She was her closest friend, a true confidant and protector. They were even going to Stanford together in a few weeks. Fox didn’t really get tennis, but she was always excited to see CJ in her element, eyes lit up and body moving in a way that Fox could never even dream of imitating. It was like her sinewy muscles were made of liquid, the way they moved so effortlessly, like a breath of fresh air on a summer day. Fox stayed on the sidelines, preferring not to embarrass herself by trying to move too quickly or with too much precision. 

 CJ didn’t think she was going to win—she kept talking about this Tashi girl who was a shoo-in for the Open. CJ planned on just playing doubles, not like this Tashi girl, who she had met once before at some tournament, and when CJ talked about getting to see her play again, something far away happened to her face. It softened, those harsh, sexy angles melting into something almost delicate. She looked like a different person.

 “Hopefully I’ll be done with doubles and we’ll have time to see Tashi play. When she’s out there, it’s like nobody else exists. I swear to God, her feet don’t even touch the ground, it’s fucking insane. She floats.”

  Fox didn’t doubt it. So many of the tennis girls CJ knew seemed to hover an inch above the ground. If she was as amazing as CJ said—and how could she not be, if just thinking about it did that to CJ’s face—watching her must be an otherworldly experience. She wasn’t sure if she understood exactly what was going on within CJ, but she wasn’t sure that she was supposed to either. 

 Fox jolted awake as the plane thumped against the runway in Chicago. She hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but she hadn’t slept much at all the night before. Or at all that week. Somehow, each of Caleb's crises managed to take place between the hours of ten o’clock and midnight and each took more than an hour to soothe, and even more surprisingly, he managed to have a crisis most nights/mornings/whatever that time would technically be categorized as. As soon as the plane touched the ground, her Razr buzzed. CJ, awake and sleek looking, beautiful and stylish even after a nap, raised a thin eyebrow at the buzzing of Fox’s phone. 

 “Let me guess,” she said.

 “Don’t start, please,” Fox said. 

 “He knows you’re on a plane. What does he expect? You’re gonna answer somehow? Is he stupid?”

 “CJ-”

 “C’mon, Foxy, you know-”

 “Stop. Please.” 

 CJ sighed with much labor, but she mimed locking her mouth with an imaginary key. 

caleb <3 (mobile, 3:55 p.m.): Did you land? 

caleb <3 (mobile, 3:55 p.m.): Call me.

caleb <3 (mobile, 3:55 p.m.): ASAP.

caleb <3 (mobile, calling…)

 “Hi, babe, we just landed,” Fox said as she flipped open her phone and held it to her ear.

A hefty sigh. “Don’t call me that. It sounds stupid.” 

“Sorry, Cal,” she said softly, borderline whispering, anything she could do to escape the steely blue judgment of CJ’s eyes, lit up with bold, unabashed curiosity. 

“I’ve called you like two times. How come you didn’t pick up?”

Fox bit back her initial response, which was to point out that two times is not so many, but instead she sighed her next sentence, trying to appease, “We literally just landed. Like right now. I couldn’t have possibly called you a second sooner.” 

“Don’t make excuses, Felicity.”

“I didn’t mean to upset you. It’s really not a big deal, it was just a few seconds,” she said. 

“Not a big deal? I’m just not a priority for you?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m just tired. I didn’t sleep well last night.”

“You’re always tired.”

Because of you. Fox wanted to scream, except it was too crowded on the plane still and even if she had been alone, her voice didn’t really know how to do a scream sound. 

“You never make time for me,” Caleb said, his voice softening into a needy whine. “It’s like I’m not important to you.”

“I’m talking to you now. Doesn’t that count for anything?” Fox said as she rushed into the aisle. She and CJ were at the very back of the plane and needed to move quickly, since they’d already spent about 7 minutes of their measly 47-minute layover.

He sighed but didn’t say any words.

“I’m sorry, I’ll call you more often.”

“Good.”

“Good. I love you.”

“I know.”

The line went dead.

♡ ♡ ♡

 Patrick used to miss his mom a lot. Like, a lot. All the time. His mom wasn’t really good at the whole hanging around and being a mom thing, and after Debbie came into the picture, he rarely saw her, even for the holidays. She had never kept up with her weekends very well, even when Patrick was little. Plus, he was only six when his mom pretty much stopped showing up at all, right after Debbie got pregnant with his baby (half) sister. One night, Debbie, not so pregnant that she was inhibited in movement but pregnant enough for her belly to protrude significantly and cause her discomfort, lounged on the couch, watching the first season of the X-Files. It had felt later than it actually was; the X-Files played at 9:00, but the world had felt so still, so stifling. The street was quiet, his dad was silent in his office, even Abby who snored wasn’t snoring. 

Patrick crept quietly from his bedroom, toting his stuffed lion, its mane flattened on the back and the seams already worn from cuddles, by its arm, careful not to drag it as he tiptoed past his dad’s office, door half open to Robert, sitting at his desk in the dim light, face looking more tired than he’d ever seen it before. It would only become more so as the years went by. The floor right in front of the office creaked, but his dad didn’t seem to notice. He just kept doing business dad business things. 

Patrick’s chest felt tight and small. He hadn’t missed his mom in a long time, not like this. But she wasn’t there for his birthday three weeks ago, and something about it had stuck with him. He missed her. He wanted his mom. Instead, he found Debbie, who sat up just a little bit from her reclined position, where she had been watching the red haired woman and the handsome man doing detective work, or whatever the show was about. Patrick didn’t know, because Debbie always said he wasn’t allowed to watch it on account of it being too scary.  

“Patch, what are you still doing up?” she asked, but it wasn’t scolding. She held open her arms and he climbed up onto the couch with her, snuggling his face against her neck, which smelled warm like sweat and sweet like milk. She was a bit harder to hug right now, cause her belly got in his way, but that was okay, Patrick thought. She was very nice to hug anyways. 

Debbie scratched her nails through Patrick’s wild curls. “What happened? Did you have a bad dream?”

Patrick shook his head, blinking rapid butterfly kisses against her throat, wrapping his arms around her as tightly as he could manage. 

“I miss my mommy,” Patrick mumbled into her skin. 

“Oh. I know you do, baby. I’m sorry,” she said, pressing her lips against the top of his head. 

“She didn’t come see me for my birthday,” Patrick said, his throat heavy. 

“I know. But you know who did see you for your birthday? This guy,” she said, taking the lion from his hands and waving its arms at him. Patrick smiled a little, even though his chest hurt really bad. The squeezing at his heart made tears drip out of his eyes, even though he didn’t want them to.

“And I was there and so was your sister and your dad and your friends from school and even the baby was there.”

Patrick protested. The baby wasn’t there for his birthday. She was still in Debbie’s stomach. She was literally in there right now. 

“Yes, she was, she just came with me,” Debbie said, smiling.

“That doesn’t count.”

“Why not?”

Patrick didn’t have a counter argument for that.

Debbie cuddling him made him feel better. Less scared, less alone, less like he missed his mom and more like she was already there with him. 

Twelve years later, Patrick almost never had flare ups where he missed his “real mom.” But on that day he did. A lot. It felt like that night with Debbie and the X-Files, where the person he wanted most in the world to see him never would. It made him feel a little guilty—of all people in the world, he’d most want Debbie to see him in all actuality, but there had been a gnawing insistence in the back of his mind that he could make his mom love him by doing bigger things to be seen by her. The truth was, nothing on earth would make her a good mom. That ship had long since sailed. 

Art’s head lolled onto Patrick’s shoulder, open mouthed, drool collecting at the corner of his mouth. Art’s whole thing was that he fell dead asleep on planes. Like every time. For car rides and bus rides and even the one train ride they had been on, he stayed awake, but it was like being in the air was valium for him or something. Patrick didn’t really mind it, even if his arm was starting to pinprick from Art’s whole body weight smooshed against him. It would be hard to mind, he thought, when Art looked so peaceful and when Art’s entire presence and weight was soothing anyway. Patrick could barely fall asleep without him any more. Even on nights when their beds weren’t pushed together, which were becoming more and more infrequent, it was hard to sleep and Art was still in the fucking room. 

Art’s breath snuffled against Patrick’s neck, which did tickle, but it was a good kind of tickle. He didn’t mind if it was Art. He would never mind if it was Art. It was difficult not to scratch through Art’s fluffy pinkish-blonde curls, just to touch them. But there were too many people, and not just like the guys from Mark Rebellato who had spent the past six years watching Patrick and Art be far more affectionate than could be explained by a close friendship, or the girls from Mark Rebellato, who seemed intrigued by the Art-Patrick dream team dynamic, but strangers. Patrick never minded the looks  so much, but Art had always become extremely flustered and uncomfortable as soon as he noticed. 

Art always woke up in the cutest way, crinkling his nose, furrowing his eyebrows and stretching like a sleepy dog and this day was no exception, with Art only beginning to stir as the plane began its descent. It was like Art’s body had a sleep mode that got triggered by takeoff and he would reset on touch down. He also woke up sweet, even if a little grouchy. Art did his typical little puppy dog stretch, then blinked slowly and pleasantly at Patrick like he hadn’t cut off Patrick’s circulation for the past hour and a half. 

Patrick wiggled his fingers with a wince. Art blinked slowly.

“Sorry,” Art said, not sounding particularly sorry. 

“Dude, your head is so heavy,” Patrick complained, not meaning it. “And you snore.”

Art poked at Patrick’s arm and inspected his hand and fingers closely, fanning the fingers out and holding the palm up to look at, frowning a little as he squinted. 

“Unfortunately, I think we’ll have to amputate,” Art said, somber. Patrick rolled his eyes, but couldn’t help the grin that came to his face afterward. 

“Shut up, man,” Patrick said, not meaning it. Art grinned back at him in that Art way he always did, like he knew what Patrick was thinking.

“Make me.”

On the airport shuttle a few minutes later, Patrick and Art stood practically on top of each other’s toes as they both clung to the bars hanging above their heads, trying not to fall on top of each other as the shuttle jerked around. Between Terminal 8 and Terminal 4, nothing that interesting happened at all, other than Art placing his duffel bag on his foot as an anchor and Patrick tapping his fingers along the cold bar above his head. At Terminal 4, the doors opened and a girl boarded like she was running a marathon. Patrick had seen emo chicks before, but there weren’t any at Mark Rebellato. Most of the girls there were Hollister polo wearers with light mascara and butterfly clips, which was fine, Patrick didn’t mind the Holister polos, but novelty always appealed to him. 

She glanced around hurriedly, looking for a spot and not finding a good one until her gaze landed over where he and Art were. She hustled in, awkward, clunky and uncomfortable. She was cute. Like really cute. Not like the girls at Mark Rebellato, not a glossy tennis advertisement, but a messy kind of cute. Her hair swept in front of her face, straight and silky looking but frizzy at the ends, bleach stripes next to her face, her jacket slipping off of one shoulder, a black eyeshadow smudge on her cheek, and one shoe untied—messy cute. She hurried over, clinging to her carryon and grabbing at the hang-down bar, stretching up to grab onto it. She was right next to him, so close she was almost touching him, so close he could smell her perfume, spicy like cinnamon. 

The AirTrain jerked suddenly to a start, while she was still bracing herself, sending her full force into Patrick. She stumbled hard, full-bodied and warm, directly into his chest, his arms automatically reaching out, one touching her elbow, one catching the small of her back, catching her to keep her from ricocheting to the floor. 

“Whoa, gotcha,” Patrick said almost inaudibly. 

“Sorry,” she said softly, looking up but not fully looking at him.

“No harm done,” he said.

She re-steadied herself, bracing herself better for the next stop. The moment hung between them, but she didn’t speak again. Even still, Patrick’s heart began to pick up its tempo, which was weird because it was after the interesting thing had happened. His heart hadn’t kicked in until she was no longer pressed against him, body to body.

She took up space next to him like she was afraid to, like she wasn’t used to taking up space so unapologetically. Patrick couldn’t keep from glancing at her face as she ignored him, staring at the floor. As the train jerked again and she stumbled one half step, barely even swaying from her post, she mumbled an apology to no one. Her carryon tapped Patrick’s leg. 

Patrick looked up and met Art’s eyes, already watching him. Art smiled, pleasantly, but with something behind it; he’d been watching. Sometimes Patrick hated that he knew what Art was thinking so much of the time. Patrick responded with a soft smile of his own, the one that said Leave it. Art left it. Sometimes Patrick loved that Art knew what he was thinking so much of the time. Not that Art was rude in front of girls, he had way more tact than Patrick did a lot of the time, but Patrick was grateful all the same. It wasn’t like he was gonna see this girl ever again, but he did want to have her walk away thinking about the nice, hot stranger who caught her on the shuttle. It would be hard to do that with Art teasing him. 

At Terminal 1, Patrick held back for a moment to allow the girl to leave before him. Art raised one eyebrow at him. I’ve never seen you do that. Patrick rolled his eyes. Yes, you have, put that thing away. Again, like reading his mind, Art’s eyebrow dropped back to its rightful position. 

Patrick wasn’t always a great gentleman, okay? He just wasn’t. He wasn’t mean to girls or anything, but he wasn’t committed to them and therefore, didn’t put in the effort to sweep them off of their feet. Even the girlfriends he’d had, well, Art was his constant, so honestly, he was more of a gentleman for Art than anything. He held doors for him, carried his things when they were too heavy, and helped him stretch when he was sore. So it wasn’t that Art had never seen Patrick do that before, it was that he rarely saw Patrick do that for anyone but him. 

The girl breathed out a “Thank you,” and scurried on her way, getting off the shuttle the same way she got on, like she was mid-marathon. 

Art and Patrick followed her off the shuttle, then immediately separated from her in the carousel, slipping into anonymity in an impersonal crowd, turning the opposite direction to their baggage claim and not glancing back.

♡ ♡ ♡

Patrick wasn’t a coffee drinker. He was a “crack open a RockStar the second he woke up kinda guy.” Art was a coffee drinker. Black, just for the energy it gave him, hot for the soothing effect and warming his perpetually cold fingertips, then furiously brushing his teeth and chomping furiously on his Extra Polar Ice gum to undo his coffee breath, just in case someone cute talked to him. That and spitting the gum out into Patrick’s hand. It was a well-constructed ritual, crafted over the course of six years. It was their ritual. 

Art was always sleepy until he had a cup of coffee. He couldn’t even blame jet lag this time, North Carolina and New York were in the same time zone. Instead he blamed Patrick for his caffeine addiction. Art complained about it constantly: Patrick was the one who introduced him to caffeine and now Art was hooked. Patrick and his 5am Rockstars and Art’s inability to take being left out had met their match in each other.

Only, he lied about it, though. It was Art’s grandmother who brewed him coffee the first time, not letting him drink it when he was too little, but she was an aficionado, and she loved coffee. She had an expansive collection, back when she had lived in her own house. Now her collection had been reduced dramatically by her nursing home—she simply lacked the cupboard space, as well as the faculties to brew the coffee herself anymore.

She always used to pour milk in his, but she took hers without any. She had given him a cup for the first time when he was eleven, only to be scolded by his mother. 

“Mom, you can’t just give him coffee, he’s barely even had caffeine!”

“Look at him. He’s fine.”

“Mom.”

“Michelle.”

“Don’t give him any more until he’s older.”

“Alright.” Art’s grandmother had winked at him after his mom’s back was turned.

They began having breakfast together over the summers he was home from Mark Rebellato, and by the time he was fifteen, he was hooked. The smell reminded him of home. His grandmother’s condo had always been more of a home than his; his parents were so rarely home or engaged and at his grandmother’s, he got all the attention he needed. All that he wanted. So he would go over in the mornings, even when he wasn’t sleeping over, just to have breakfast with her before he hit the courts.

And now, Art always took his coffee black because the bitter taste woke him up quicker, even though he would probably prefer it with sugar or creamer. He also knew that it was the only thing Patrick wouldn’t try to take some of because he hated it. Patrick only wanted battery acid masquerading as a beverage, so he was uninterested in Art’s acrid morning routine, but what he was interested in was upholding Art’s rituals, if even just for his own peace. Art would get anxious and extremely unhappy, panicked and upset, if his routines were disturbed too much. He wasn’t sure if it was because Patrick cared about Art’s well being or if it was just so that Art wouldn’t be bitchy. Probably both.

Either way, there they were, athletic gear already on, on their way to the warm ups, stopped in a small coffee shop on the way from the Flushing motel to the subway. 7:30. They had to be at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in 15 minutes. The shop was fairly crowded, jam packed like sardines in a can. Art shuffled little half steps up to the counter, the left hand side register. 

An incredibly bored looking barista with purple hair and a lip piercing greeted him with a nod and a dull affect, Sharpie marker already in cap off in one hand and the other hovered over the styrofoam cups to her right. Art hated to imagine the rest of her shift if the shop had only been open for an hour and she was already so…blasé.

“What can I getcha?”

“Medium hot Americano. Black.”

“Medium iced hazelnut latte with oat milk? Two sugars? Um, please.”

Art turned his face a little to the right, and there she was. The same girl from the AirTrain last night, her long bangs sweeping down to cover her face, a different zipped jacket slipping down her shoulder the exact same way and her headphones around her neck. She spoke to the barista like she was afraid to be heard, but like she knew she had to be to get the things she wanted. Even though she was so close to him, he could barely hear her, though some of that could be attributed to the crowd in the shop. Art’s type was usually pretty different: tall, thin tennis girls who wore minimal makeup, but he couldn’t help but memorize the soft slip of her shoulder from beneath her jacket. Maybe they were his type because that’s the kind of girl that went to Mark Rebellato, so perhaps his data had been skewed. 

“That’ll be 4.25. Can I get a name for your order?” Art’s ears pricked, but he was startled out of his mystified stupor by his barista, no longer bored and now vaguely irritated.

“Sir? Your name?” 

“Oh. Oh! I’m sorry, have you asked a couple times? It’s Art.” 

“‘Kay. $2.25.”

Art fumbled in his pocket for his change and handed it over quickly, not wanting to irritate this person any more than he already had. The girl to his right was already gone, anyhow. He practically chucked the change into the barista’s hand and scrambled back to Patrick, ears burning a little bit. Patrick was grinning wickedly, like the cat who caught the canary. 

“Huh. Speechless?”

“Shut up.”

“Oh, please. You had a lot to say to me-”

“Patrick.”

“Okay, okay, okay, I’ll leave it.”

A pause. Art leaned the back of his head against the wall that they had claimed as their standing room only. His hair brushed against a poster for an underground indie basement show. 

“That was the same girl, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Cute, huh?”

“Patrick.”

 “Fuck, fine. Touchy today, huh?”

Art almost missed his order being called, and when he made his way to the counter, two medium styrofoam cups greeted him, lids on. No writing on either of them. 

 “Americano?” he asked. The same bored employee pointed without looking to the cup on the left, which he grabbed. As he turned, he raised it to his lips and took a cautious sip.

An assault to the senses. He tasted it in his nose before he did on his tongue, the flavor slipping up into his sinuses as it entered his mouth. Cold, sweet, heavily flavored, strong, sugary smelling—the wrong coffee. He turned back, only to see the same girl as before holding the second cup, her nose crinkled up in disgust. 

“Hey,” Art said. “I think I might have your coffee.”

She nodded. “Yeah, I think I have yours. Burned my tongue.”

They exchanged cups wordlessly, the girl wiping the opening of the cup free from her DNA. She couldn’t fully get rid of the nude lipstick smudges left behind, though, which he didn’t really mind. Art cleaned off the opening of the cup he held with care, then they switched. Art had a moment where he wanted to tell her that they indirectly kissed by sharing their drinks, but he thought better of it and instead, what he said was:

“Enjoy your sugar water.”

She laughed once, quietly. Not really a laugh technically, just a soft breathy exhale through her nose, but he counted it the same.

“Yeah. Enjoy your bean juice.” She walked away, quickly exiting the shop. Art took a long sip from his coffee, forgetting that she had just told him that it had burned her mouth and scalded his own, from the roof to the tongue.

“Ah, fuck,” he hissed. 

“Hey, Art, we gotta go catch the train. Let’s go.”

“Yeah, coming.”

The bell on the front door chimed as they exited, hustling down the street. They couldn’t be late for drills and they had decided to make their own coffee stop, so they had to hurry to catch up. If they were late for drills, Coach Martinez would run them ragged, and besides, they really needed the practice for the Boys’ Doubles, coming up only in two days. 

As they settled into chairs directly next to each other on the train despite the space they could have taken up, Patrick leaned over.

“So, what’s her name?”

“Who?”

“The cute emo chick.”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“What? You talked to her for like a minute.”

“It was like thirty seconds.”

“Whatever.”

“Yeah, I didn’t ask her name. It’s not like we’re gonna see her again.”

“That’s what I thought yesterday.”

“Yeah, well… wait, you’re still with Gracie, what the hell?”

“Gracie and I aren’t… well, I mean…we have sex, but she’s not my girlfriend.”

“Dude.”

“Dude yourself.”

“Gracie’s nice.”

“Eh.”

“What do you mean, eh?”

“She’s no Art Donaldson,” Patrick grinned.

“Oh, fuck off-”

“No, baby, I promise, you’re my one and only,” Patrick pouted his lips dramatically, batting his eyelashes. He leaned in, making kissing sounds, his lips only centimeters away from making contact with his cheek. Art pushed his face away without malice, laughing.

“I’m not jealous. I know I’m your favorite. I’m just saying, is it fair to look at other girls so much when you’re with Gracie?”

“Gracie and I are fucking.”

“Jesus, Patrick, lower your voice-” Art said, aghast, like they weren’t completely alone in the subway car.

“It’s nothing more than that.”

“Yeah, okay,” Art said. That maybe was how Patrick felt about it, but probably wasn’t what Gracie felt about the whole thing. Girls always seemed to like Patrick more than he actually liked them. Gracie was no different.

Despite not investing a lot in them, Patrick had never seemed to have trouble getting girls to swarm to him. He always had a girl on his arm, even with how obnoxious and rough around the edges he could be. There was something about him that stunned everyone he met and charmed them. It was kind of amazing. Patrick pulled all kinds of girls too, especially the nice ones, who for some reason really liked him.

To be honest, though, Gracie wasn’t actually that nice. She kind of sucked to be honest. Not just at tennis, that too, but in general. She was kind of snobby and annoying and who the fuck goes by Gracie anyway, just go by Grace, plus she was always taking Patrick’s time and touching him all over and one time, he even fell asleep on her bed with her and missed out on his and Art’s nightly routine! Art couldn’t sleep all night and was so tired on the court the next day he almost walked directly into the net. And he lost his match to fucking Benjamin Chen. Benjamin Chen! The guy who once was convinced he had uterine cancer! Fucking Benjamin Chen. 

Stupid Gracie. Stupid Patrick. Stupid fucking Benjamin Chen.

Patrick ruffled his hair and Art leaned into it subconsciously.

“C’mon, big guy, this is our stop.”

“What time is it? Are we gonna be late?”

“Nah, we won’t be late, we’re fine.”

They were late. Art could barely find it in himself to care. He got to have his coffee and talk to his Patrick and he got to meet a cute girl. Meet was probably a strong word, but that was what he was labeling it as regardless. The confidence melted into iron pooled in his gut as soon as they arrived on the court and Coach Martinez greeted them with a steely look. 

“And where have you two been?

 Patrick opened his mouth and Art’s heart dropped, turning around to try to stop him, ‘cos he knew that Coach Martniez would not accept “there was a cute emo chick at the coffee shop this morning” as a reasonable defense to wasting time. Art was too late. 

“Sorry, Coach. My fault. We got turned around because I read the map wrong and then we got on the wrong subway and by the time we got on the right one, we were already late.”

Art blinked at him in surprise. Coach blinked at him in disbelief. 

“Yeah, okay, whatever. You think the French kids were late? The Romanians? The other Rebellatos? You want to play doubles? Show up on time.” 

Coach Martinez walked away, frustratedly grumbling about it—Art and Patrick was their best doubles team by far and were contenders for the Juniors Double win, but they were so difficult to reign in. Martinez was a fundamentally different guy now than he was six years ago, leading Art’s campus tour in flip flops, now with white hairs creeping up his sideburns, and a permanent crease in his eyebrow. No small part of that was due to having to keep track of MRTA’s most notorious dynamic duo. 

“What was that?” Art asked.

“Lying. Obviously.”

The moment passed and Art and Patrick began their pre-practice stretches, the girl from the coffee shop out of their mind for the time being. 

♡ ♡ ♡

 The party on Long Island wasn’t the rager that CJ had acted like it was going to be, and Fox was actually super okay with that. It was a party at Tashi Duncan’s massive fucking estate to celebrate her win, which was overwhelming, but it wasn’t the seedy club rager CJ had implied. The liar. 

 Tashi glowed on the backyard dance floor, and CJ couldn’t seem to tear her eyes away from her. Her royal blue dress hugged her all over her body, lithe, lean and long, and so insanely beautiful. Fox understood what CJ was saying about her before. She didn’t walk. She really did float above the ground, her feet never seeming to actually connect with the ground as she moved. She could even pull off a fluid, languid, slow dance to Nelly’s Hot in Herre, which Fox had never seen anyone else be able to do before. Nobody else in the world seemed to exist, her shiny, sleek hair flowing all around her and her body bending and flowing, the world blurring into a soft throb around her. 

 Fox shuffled her glass bottle of blood orange San Pellegrino around on the table that she and CJ had claimed when they first arrived to the party. CJ had long since abandoned the table, but Fox didn’t like the dance floor or new places, so she had decided to stay put. They would leave eventually, and they could go back to their motel room and she could go to bed instead of whatever this was. 

 CJ had introduced her to Tashi, which was sort of like meeting Aphrodite in the flesh. A girl like Tashi had every right to be beautiful and cruel. It would be easy.

 “Congratulations, Tashi,” CJ said, the two of them sharing an embrace with a practiced casualty of two people who knew each other with a fondness. “This is my best friend, Fox. She’s going to Stanford too.”

 “Congratulations, Tashi,” Fox said, looking up to make eye contact. Whatever was happening with CJ, Fox could not be the one to ruin it by doing too many Fox things. Tashi’s eyes were a striking amber brown that pierced down to the soul, but not in a cold way. Being looked at by her felt nice. It was easy to understand the way she captivated the people around her so effortlessly.

Fox tapped the now empty glass bottle across the table, glancing over to watch CJ and Tashi dancing, fingers intertwined, Tashi’s other friends surrounding them. Her Razr buzzed in her pocket and as a reflex, she pulled it out and looked at the screen. 

caleb <3 (mobile, 8:47 p.m.): Call me.

fox (mobile, 8:47 p.m.): im busy

caleb <3 (mobile, 8:47 p.m.): Please.

caleb <3 (mobile, 8:48 p.m.): I messed up. 

 Fox’s stomach lurched and dropped into freefall, like an elevator with a cut cable, landing somewhere in the heel of her left foot. Her body immediately felt cold, but damp at the same time, and her tongue went heavy and dry. If Caleb thought it was a mistake… well, Caleb didn’t perceive many things to be mistakes. That is, when they were committed by him. Basically everything Fox did was a mistake, but he tended to be less authoritarian when it came to himself. He liked showing himself a mercy he rarely afforded to others, if only to coddle his own egocentric sensibilities. 

fox (mobile, 8:48 p.m.): what did u do 

caleb <3 (mobile, 8:48 p.m.): Call me. Please. 

 Fox took the phone with her, wandering off onto the acre of land close to the beach. A cushioned bench under a lamplight nearby seemed too cozy for whatever information she was about to hear through sniveling and whining, so she sat down in the grass opposite, her back resting against a tree. She ran a hand behind her over the rough bark, scraping the palms of her hands as she pressed the green cell button. 

 “Felicity,” Caleb said, voice a bit strained and thin, performatively excited to speak to her.

 “Caleb.” 

 “So…what are you up to?”

 “I’m waiting for my boyfriend to explain what he did that was so bad he had to tell me over the phone,” Fox snipped. She was so tired of him, so tired of the emotional games, so tired of having a churning storm cloud in her tummy. 

 “You remember Hannah?” Hannah, Hannah, Hannah. No, an unfamiliar name. She knew Sarah, the girl Caleb had been convinced he would marry even when he started dating her, she knew Trinity, the girl he’d been seeing before he met her, Megan, Clara, and Rachel who were all sexy girls he knew, and Sara with no h who he had a crush on from Kindergarten until now.

 “No.”

 “Shit, Felicity…” He didn’t swear much. It must be serious. 

 Obviously Fox already knew what he’d done, at least, she knew the general idea. It wouldn’t have taken a fucking genius to figure it out. She just didn’t know what exactly he had done. Was it love? Sex? Love and sex? Which one would be worse? Obviously the worst one would be both, but would it be worse if it was purely emotional or physical? She couldn’t decide, but she knew her stomach hurt. 

 “Well, I’ve been taking her out. She goes to church, and I’ve been dating her, you know, casually. Just like to the movies and out to ice cream and that kind of stuff.”

 Fox inhaled sharply without meaning to. Tears had already begun dripping out of her eyes, slowly down her cheeks, completely soundless.

 “Well, we…” Caleb’s voice trailed off. When he got the nerve to continue, his voice held the closest semblance to guilt that he could manage. 

 “She gave me a handjob. After the movies. In my car. And now… now she’s telling people that I’m her boyfriend.”

 What Fox should have said was: go fuck yourself. Or: what do you expect me to do about it? Or: fix your own problems, you pathetic manchild. Or: of course she thinks she’s your girlfriend, you’ve been taking her out on dates and had a form of sex with her. Fox could have and should have said any of those things. But when she opened her mouth, no sound came out. 

 “Felicity, please. Help me fix it.”

 A squeak passed between her lips. A choke, really. Almost a yip. 

 “Please.”

 “Do you love her?” The voice didn’t sound like her own. It sounded far away and echoey, hollow and small. 

“Fuck, no, I don’t love her-”

“Then why?”

“Flo, it’s my problem. You know that. My sex addiction. I…I make bad choices. I can’t always help it.” A sniffle on the other end of the line. Caleb never had a shortage of tears.

“Caleb, I’m gonna need you to be able to help it,” she said, voice quivering. 

“I can’t. Please. Fix it.”

“How?” she whispered. “What do you want me to do?”

“I’ll send you her number.”

“You want me to cosplay a fucking crazy girlfriend?” It was degrading, Fox would never want to confront the other woman, especially if the other woman didn’t know about her in the first place. It wasn’t Hannah’s fault, she shouldn’t have to hurt.

“Yeah. You can make her leave me alone.” 

You’re a coward. Fox wasn’t sure if her brain was saying it to Caleb or herself. Both seemed equally true. Caleb couldn’t face a girl he’d been dating to tell her he didn’t want to be with her and Fox couldn’t find the strength to tell Caleb no. Her ribs constricted, as though her lungs were filling with glue from the trap that had stuck her where she could never escape. 

“Why’d you do it?” Fox asked again. 

“Felicity. I have a sex addiction. You know that. Don’t… don’t do this thing where you try to humiliate me for something out of my control.”

“But why were you taking her on dates then?” 

A pregnant pause. 

“Look, I didn’t want to say this to you, ‘cause I didn’t want to hurt your feelings. You know how you get. You’re so sensitive. It’s just…I don’t think I love you, really.” Fox leaned her head back against the bark of the tree behind her, gazing up at an ink-black sky, little pinpricks of light blurring overhead. 

“I’m trying to. I wish I could.” A sob. From him. Not her, Fox didn’t have enough air in her lungs to even create the sound. 

“Are you breaking up with me?” Again, it didn’t sound even a bit like her, but Caleb didn’t seem that put off by it. Maybe he couldn’t tell that he was ripping her apart, piece by piece. 

“No, no, no, baby. We’re still together. You just…you need to know that I’m going to look for that feeling until I find it.”

“Well, maybe I don’t want to be with you then.” The words surprised even her. 

“Don’t be like that. You know you’re lucky to have me. You’re broken. There’s nothing left about you. And don’t even get me started on how you look.” 

This time, the sob left her body. It was sharp and high and painful sounding. It was painful feeling too, like being ripped from the floor of the ocean back into the depressurized upper ocean. 

“I’ll send you her number. I love you.”

It didn’t make any sense. 

“I thought you said-” And the dial tone.

She snapped her phone closed. As she sat up a little, head swimming, she looked at the couch a few feet away, and there were a pair of boys there. She squinted at them. One of them, the blonde in a pink shirt, was scooping spinach dip out of a plastic cup with a chip. The other, dark haired, in a blue polo, lounged there like he owned the place, feet atop the table next to the couch. She could barely see, blinking fiercely before she recognized them. It was the two guys she’d seen around this week. The guy from the train and the guy from the coffeeshop. Two cute guys, guys with bright, nice eyes. 

 The dark haired one had been warm and had steadied her when she tripped. He didn’t act like it was the end of the world that she bumped him the way a lot of guys would. He hadn’t even budged when she bumped into him. The blonde had an exceptionally kind face. He looked a bit like a mouse, but in a nice way. Like he was a mouse from a fairy tale that got turned into a prince. He’d wiped off her drink gently and kindly and placed it in her hands like she was delicate. Like he should be careful. It was stupid. She didn’t know them. They didn’t know her. If they did…well, Caleb said it best. She was lucky to have him after all. 

Tashi came down the hill gracefully and elegantly, looking sleek and beautiful, and stopping in front of them, immediately captivating both of their attentions and affections. Fox sighed and dropped her head back, thumping it into the bumps of the bark. Yeah, no. There was never any other choice when that is the comparison. There wasn’t any choice when there was Hannah. Fox hadn’t even seen her and she knew that. Maybe Hannah could float too. Fox couldn’t float. 

She lost track of how long she sat under the tree, staring at nothing. She was half asleep but fully conscious when CJ came stumbling down after her, slamming down onto her knees in front of her. CJ looked upset too, a smudge of mascara under her grayish blue eyes, her blonde hair frizzed out a tad bit, sticking out in static strands around her face.

“I couldn’t find you, you scared me! You can’t just disappear like that—holy shit,” CJ said, as if actually seeing Fox in front of her for the first time. 

“What happened to you?”

 ♡ ♡ ♡

 Freshman orientation week was draining. At least Art’s roommate was nice. A little scrawny guy from Illinois or something—Patrick hadn’t actually been paying attention when he met him. He’d been sprawled on Art’s twin XL like he owned the place, fiddling with the Rubix cube he insisted he knew how to solve without ever having proven his ability to do so. He had taken it in stride that when he had signed up for one roommate, he’d basically gotten two since Patrick was always hanging around. 

 And Patrick hung around like a shadow, following Art everywhere, even as people pointed out that he didn’t actually go here. It had been two and a half days and Patrick’s welcome was wearing pretty thin, though not as thin as some of the actual residents. Case and point, Art’s across the hallway neighbors, who walked around like they owned the place. They met in the hall circle in the common area, where Art’s RA had held a floor meeting for all the guys on the wing.

The RA was Paul Jackson, short and stocky, with a much thicker beard than his age should suggest. He was a former wrestler who had ended up benched after a severe shoulder injury, and now spent his time cleaning up after confused freshmen and keeping them from beating the shit out of each other. And everyone called him Jackson—he didn’t even respond to Paul. Jackson was from Portland, Oregon, and he looked like it too. He was nice, gentle even. He didn’t seem like he had a mean bone in his body. 

All the guys from Floor 3 B wing were sitting in a circle on the floor. Patrick lounged behind Art on the ratty, threadbare, common room couch, legs dangling over one arm and his head resting on the other. 

“Say your name, major, and where you’re from. We don’t need any of the frills. Just the basics,” Jackson said, in a calm but gruff voice. 

“Ian Morehouse, just outside of Chicago, Mathematical and Computational Science.” Ian had to elbow Art to get his attention because he had zoned so far out. Patrick knew Art too well—when Patrick asked him if he was gonna make any new friends, Art had said “I’ve already met all the people I care to.”—naturally, Art wasn’t particularly interested in the guys on his floor. Mostly he was just interested in Patrick and maybe a little bit Ian. 

“Art Donaldson. I’m from Connecticut. I’m majoring in Human Biology, but I’m mostly just here to play tennis.” A slight scoff from someone across the circle, but Patrick didn’t care to check who. If it got worse, he’d kick whoever did it’s ass, but he didn’t think it would come to that. Art wasn’t particularly threatening, but he was tall and muscular and had been working out almost every single day of his life since he was 12, so most dudes who wanted to mess with him would quickly get wise and Patrick wouldn’t have to get involved at all. 

Patrick’s ears didn’t prick again until he heard a thin, reedy voice across the circle. Normally it wouldn’t catch his attention, but there was a certain quality to it that set his stomach turning immediately. 

“Caleb Andrews. From Texas. Everything’s bigger there,” he laughed and someone else did, but nobody else seemed to even do the polite nose exhale. Patrick sat up a little to look at him. His nose was broad and knobby and slightly too short for his face, and his thin cheeks make him look a bit older than he actually was. Despite the naturally weak air he carried, his eyes were clever and a downturned muddy brownish-green. His hair was slightly unkempt and just a little unclean, like he hadn’t washed all the product out of it. It was dark blond and in desperate need to be allowed to grow out. His cheeks were unshaven, and pale blond wisps of stubble poked out of his pores sporadically. Patrick found himself a bit reminded of a goat or of Norville Rogers from Scooby-Doo. He immediately disliked him.

“I’m majoring in Music. Specifically Music Composition,” he said with a smarmy grin. And next to Caleb: 

“Tanner Bella-Fuhrmann, also Texas, Management Science and Engineering.” The dude next to him was a frat type and something about the pair of them looked like an alternate universe version of he and Art, like if they fucking sucked. Patrick wasn’t sure exactly what it was about them but he actually hated them both. Screw dislike, he hated them. 

Only later, as the stupid kumbaya circle ascended the stairs and he watched as they disappeared, did he realize that their dorm was directly across from Art’s. 

“What fucking losers,” Patrick said immediately as Art and Ian’s door clicked shut. 

“Who?” Ian asked, absently.

“The guys across from you,” Patrick insisted.

Art laughed. 

“I mean, they seem annoying, but do you really think they’re awful?” Patrick was shocked. Art hated most people. He didn’t seem like he would, the golden retriever boy next door type, but he was secretly really bitchy and scathing. 

“Something about that Caleb dude was really off putting. ‘Everything’s bigger in Texas?’ Please, he acted like we’re supposed to be afraid of his cock.”
Art snorted. 

“I mean, you’re right, he’s fucking insufferable, but I had better make peace if I’m gonna live next to him for an entire year, you know? I can dislike him from afar, but seething over a dude who’s annoying won’t really do me any good.” 

“Yeah, okay. You want to go to the dining hall and get dinner?”

They had invited Ian, but he had said he wasn’t interested. Something about meeting his brother instead. Patrick settled next to Art at the bar by the window, a place which had become their spot basically overnight. Patrick watched Art’s profile as he ate his dinner. Something about watching Art eat was fascinating. Art was always pretty, but the human things always got Patrick the most. The sunlight in his eyelashes turning them especially blonde didn’t hurt. Patrick reached over and took the fork out of Art’s hand, helping himself to a bite of his chicken alfredo. Art didn’t even protest. 

“How was that with that girl the other night?” Patrick turned his head just slightly to see Caleb and Tanner walking over and setting themselves at the table directly behind Art and him. His skin crawled. He didn’t like having his back to them. 

“Which one?” The whiny voice felt like a cheese grater to Patrick’s eardrums. 

“Dude, how many dates do you have?” Tanner asked, sounding slightly incredulous. 

“I mean, I’ve had six already.”

“We’ve been here for two days, man, I just don’t know how you do it. You’re like a bitch magnet. I just get my own.”

“Your own bitch?”

“Yeah, but don’t tell her I called her that, she’ll go fucking crazy. Nag, nag, nag. You know how Kayla is.”

“Yeah, but at least she’s hot. You’re not getting nagged by a dog.”

“Weren’t the girls you went out with hot too?”

“Eh. Some of them.”

“You hook up with any of them?”

“Yeah, of course, what do you think. Nothing that counts, though. I’m still all good.”

Patrick blinked. What the fuck could he possibly mean by that? Art stared directly at Patrick, eyebrows practically up at his hairline, mouth open slightly. 

“Jesus,” he mouthed. Patrick nodded, on the verge of giggling. Guys like that were so funny, acting like they sounded cool but just sounding like virgins having a pissing contest. 

Art agreed with him as they walked back to the dorms.

“No, that guy’s an asshole. You’re right.”

“Ooh, baby, say that again,” Patrick purred. Art pushed him. 

“Seriously, though. Imagine looking like that and saying any girl isn’t hot,” Art snorted. 

“It’s what I was saying, like something from inside makes him look like a moron, like he should be so lucky to go out with anyone.”

“Six? That’s so crazy. Why would you even want to go out with six different girls in two days?”

Patrick shrugged.

“I’m a bit of a manwhore but that’s too much for me, even.”

“And you don’t talk about them like that.”

Even at Patrick’s worst, he wasn’t cruel about the girlfriends he had or the casual hookups he had. Even if sometimes he overshared with Art, it was mostly for the benefit of watching Art’s cool porcelain skin go pink and for watching his pupils dilate and hearing his breath go quick and shallow. Watching Art go like that was the greatest thing in the world. Horny Art was God’s most perfect creation.
Back at the common area, a freshman party had started up. The lights were off, some 2005 rap beat played over a pretty weak speaker, and it was decently crowded with people. Art and Patrick hadn’t been interested in attending the party, but now…

“Dude, let’s get some punch.”

Art rolled his eyes but followed. 

Patrick didn’t know what he was expecting. It was just Hawaiian punch. He should have realized it wouldn’t be spiked, but he still found himself disappointed by the lack of vodka aftertaste. 

“Damn,” he said. Art laughed.

“Dude, it’s a freshman party being hosted by the dorm building, there was no chance there would be alcohol in there.”

“Okay, Arthur, I guess I just hoped that someone cool had spiked it already.”

“Don’t call me Arthur-”

“Okay, sorry, baby,” Patrick pouted his lips out.

“I’m serious, it’s not my name-”

Out of the corner of his eye, Patrick spotted something. Someone. 

“Shut up.”

“Hey-”

“No, seriously, shut up. Turn around, but not too fast.”

Ignoring his instruction, Art abruptly swiveled on his heel.

“What am I looking for?”

“Literally right in front of you.”

“I don’t see-oh, shit. Is that…?”

Patrick nodded even though Art couldn’t see him. He was like 98% sure that the girl they were now both staring at, the girl pressed into the lobby corner, the girl glancing around at the party both like it disinterested her and scared her at once, was the same girl from New York. The same girl from the airport, the same girl from the coffee shop, and the same girl that they had seen crying at the party on Long Island that both of them hadn’t been sure what to do about, so they hadn’t done anything. Holy shit.

 “Holy shit,” Art echoed, like he could read Patrick’s mind. 

“No way that isn’t her.”

“Unless she has an identical twin.”

“Doubt it.”

Together, they moved toward her, stopping directly in front of her. She had to look up at both of them, which she did with a slightly furrowed brow.

 “It’s you,” Art said, like a psycho. 

“What?” she asked, alarmed.

“Shit, sorry, I recognize you from the coffee shop in New York. You were the girl with the sugar water.” For a moment, Patrick’s heart sank. Maybe this was some random girl, maybe he misjudged, but then she smiled. 

“Oh. You’re the guy who had the bean juice. Small world. Can’t believe you recognized me.”

“I’d recognize you anywhere,” Art said, sounding like a lovestruck zombie. And also like an idiot. She giggled like she’s confused by him, then Patrick seized his moment.

“What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”

“Who said I’m a nice girl?”

“You are,” Patrick decided. “I can tell.”

“Does that line ever actually work?”

“No,” Art piped up, deciding he was done being stupid and now was attempting to sabotage Patrick. 

“We met before too. We were on the airport shuttle together,” Patrick said stupidly. He wanted to feel included in the connection she and Art had shared, especially because the pick up line seemed to fumble.

“Yeah, no, I remember. Thanks for catching me when I fell.”

Patrick was pleased.

“Really, what brings you here? Do you live in Crothers Hall?” Art asked eagerly, all nuance thrown out the window. She didn’t really seem to notice.

“No. My boyfriend lives here. He was supposed to meet me here, but he hasn’t shown.”

“Oh, who’s your boyfriend?”

“Um, his name is Caleb? Andrews?”

Patrick couldn’t help the strangled sound he let out when she said that, even if it made her look at him like he’d sprouted a second head.

“What?”

“Oh, we just…know him is all. Not well, we just met him. We can show you to his dorm if you want,” Art said, recovering seamlessly as if he hadn’t experienced all of the stages of grief at once. 

“Oh, that would be really nice, thank you,” she said. 

“I’m Art, by the way.”

“Patrick,” Patrick blurted out. 

She laughed again, a sound like bells. 

“Nice to meet you both. I’m Fox.”

As they guided her up the stairs, Art said the only thing that Patrick had been thinking, except he said it nicer than Patrick would have.

“Sorry about earlier. We didn’t realize that Caleb had a girlfriend.”

She shyly tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Patrick watched her fingers glide through her hair and noticed a small mole on the tip of her ear. Adorable.

“Yeah, I know. He doesn’t… talk about me much,” she said softly. 

“Who wouldn’t wanna show you off?” Art asked with a glow in his voice. It seemed to catch her off guard a little, but she didn’t protest. 

As she disappeared into Caleb and Tanner’s dorm, Art and Patrick shared a glance. And like usual, each knew exactly what the other was thinking.