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Patrick’s phone was busted. He and Art had been playing tennis on the backyard court, and Lily had been shouting at them from the sidelines, egging them on, demanding more exciting entertainment—Hit harder Daddy! Jump higher, Patrick! She was just like her mother.
It had been Patrick’s serve, and in an effort to appease Princess Lily, he’d served like a regular schmuck, high and flawless. It annoyed Art when Patrick served that way, because he refused to serve that way, the “correct way,” all the time. In retaliation Art sliced the ball back at him hard. Patrick had to dive for it, and, much to Lily’s delight, he’d tripped.
“Why did you have your phone in your pocket?” Tashi asked, staring him down from across the kitchen island, his smashed phone lying on the counter between them.
Patrick shrugged. “I forgot. We were just screwing around.” Tashi would’ve been there if they’d been practicing for real, and their phones would’ve been left inside. Tashi wasn’t technically Patrick’s coach and Art was retiring, but you’d never know it. Watching how she treated them you’d think they were fresh-faced juniors she was grooming for the big time. She was incapable of giving less than her best, even to them, in the places they were right now.
“Well, that’s just great Patrick,” Tashi said, “I told my mom she didn’t have to come today because you insisted you could watch Lily while we went to the shoot.”
“I can still watch her,” Patrick said.
Tashi’s brows shot up. “Without any way for me to reach you?”
Hmm. Patrick tapped his fingers on the countertop. “See this is why I said Lily should have her own phone—”
Tashi raised her palms. “Don’t start.”
"Or we should have a landline. Remember how fun landlines were?”
“My mom can’t watch her Patrick,” Tashi snapped. “I scheduled a hair appointment for her this afternoon because you’re supposed to watch Lily. She’s looking forward to it.”
Patrick grimaced, looking down at his hands on the counter. He couldn’t keep screwing up like this. Everything was still too fragile. They were all on edge. Art was wavering on his retirement timeline and Patrick wasn’t sure how many seasons he had left in him. Neither of them knew what they’d do after tennis. Tashi had the most clear path forward, she could easily keep coaching, but Art was keeping her in limbo. Everything was changing, slowly and awkwardly. Patrick didn’t even really live here. Half his stuff was still in the city, a quarter of it was at his parent's place, and none of it was in Art and Tashi’s bedroom. He’d chucked everything into the guest room next door.
Tashi sighed. “I guess we just have to take Lily with us.”
“She hates sitting around on sets,” Patrick protested.
“We don’t have a choice,” Tashi said, grabbing her purse toward her and pulling out her work phone. “I’ll call ahead and see if they can put some of her favorite snacks in the green room.”
“Hey,” Patrick said, an idea sparking. “Why don’t you just leave me your personal phone?”
Tashi stared at him.
He thought it was a good suggestion, but naturally, for Tashi, it was a big ask. She carried an armory of electronic devices with her everywhere—MacBook, AirPods, Bose noise-canceling headphones, personal phone, work phone, and Lily’s iPad. Everything had its own custom leather carrying case embossed with TD. (Patrick joked that she was a leather fetishist with a Napoleonic ego. He could never tell if that offended or flattered her.) Every glossy piece of Apple tech was critical to her role as International Business Woman and Queen of Tennis and the World. Sacrificing such a precious object to Patrick, of all people, was unthinkable. At least in Tashi’s mind.
“Come on,” he prodded. “It's only for a few hours, anyone that really needs to contact you knows both numbers. And I can take messages.”
Tashi looked at him with narrowed eyes. Slowly, she reached into her bag and pulled out her personal phone, differentiated from her work phone by its case in a paler shade of brown leather.
"Don’t answer it. Or respond to any texts,” she said, passing it to him.
“Fine,” he said, taking the phone.
“The password is Lily’s birthday,” she said. “It’s—“
“I know,” Patrick snapped. He usually didn’t care when Tashi assumed he knew nothing, but that stung.
Her face softened. “Okay,” she said softly. “I’ll ask Kim to overnight you a new phone.”
Patrick waved his hand. “I already got one off Amazon.”
Tashi wrinkled her nose. “Amazon? You didn’t buy a used one, did you? Because—“
“I got it, Tashi,” Patrick said brusquely. “I can buy myself a new phone.”
Patrick didn't consider himself a prideful person. He had no problem staying at Chez Donaldson rent-free, wearing Art’s much nicer clothes when they went somewhere fancy, or driving around one of their several cars after his SUV finally kicked the bucket. But sometimes Tashi triggered some half-dormant pride mechanism in his body. Patrick could buy a fucking phone.
Tashi glared at him, miffed at being cut off. But apparently, she wasn’t in the mood for a fight, because she turned away abruptly.
“Art?” she called.
“One sec,” he called back, voice floating down the stairs.
“We have to leave in two minutes!” Tashi looped her bag over her shoulder and walked around the island. “Lily?”
After a moment, Lily came bounding into the kitchen. Tashi reached into her bag and handed Lily her iPad.
“Be good and listen to Patrick,” she said, bending over to kiss Lily’s forehead. “He knows how much screen time you get, so when he says stop you stop. Don't go trying to trick him.”
Lily huffed good-naturedly. “Fine,” she said, scampering off to enjoy her precious thirty minutes of K-pop music videos.
Art’s rapid footsteps sounded on the stairs. “Ready,” he said, sweeping into the kitchen.
Tashi straightened, turning to Patrick. “Call me if you need anything.”
“I will,” Patrick said.
Art grabbed a bottle of water out of the fridge. He looked extremely fresh-faced and All-American after his shower. Tashi wasn’t wearing any makeup, her hair was pinned back, and she had on jeans and a button-up, but she still looked like Tashi, so perfect. They’d kill this photo shoot. They always did.
“See you later then,” Tashi said, leaning forward to press a kiss to Patrick’s cheek. “Hopefully it won’t be more than six hours.”
Patrick’s eyes shut briefly as he smelled her sharp floral perfume. He rested his hands on her waist for a fleeting moment, felt her warm skin through the thin fabric of her blouse, and then she was gone, walking to the front door. Art squeezed Patrick’s shoulder as he hurried after her. He smelled like soap and freshly cut grass.
The bed upstairs smelled like both of them. Patrick couldn’t tell if it smelled like him too.
After Lily’s screen time, they went back out to the tennis court to play catch. Lily preferred to handle the ball with her hands and loved it when Patrick threw it in unexpected ways, giggling as she zigzagged back and forth to catch it. Patrick thought she’d make a great soccer goalie. Art had his money on rugby. Tashi refused to speculate.
The hot sun tired Lily out. She fell asleep on the couch while Patrick went to get them snacks. He sat down beside her and munched on peanut butter apple slices, pulling his phone out of his pocket to start an old-fashioned mindless Instagram scroll, forgetting he had Tashi’s phone. She didn’t have social media on her personal phone, she considered it work.
He should go upstairs and grab his headphones and laptop, watch some TV, or maybe check his email. Patrick stood up, smiling when he saw the little ball Lily had curled herself into. He pulled up the camera on Tashi’s phone and snapped a picture to send to Art.
When he hit the photo icon in the text thread, next to the pictures of Lily, Patrick saw several photos of X-rays.
He stilled. X-rays? They must be Art’s. He had just gone to the doctor for a general physical at Tashi’s insistence. But why had they taken X-rays? His shoulder was doing fine, and that was a muscle injury anyway.
Patrick sent Art the picture of Lily and exited to the home screen. His finger hovered over the photo app’s icon. He shouldn't probably shouldn't open it. But if Tashi had anything in there she didn’t want him to see she wouldn’t have given him her phone, and it wasn't like she’d be worried about him seeing her nudes.
He opened photos. There were only a few of the x-rays, and now that Patrick was looking at them closely, they weren’t recent, though the pictures were new. The X-rays were two years old, there was a tiny date printed in the corner. They were of Art’s knee. When had he hurt his knee?
Patrick scrolled up a bit. Tashi’s camera roll was mostly pictures of family—Lily, her brother's kids, her parents on the vacation she’d sent them on for their anniversary. There was a picture of landscaping she loved that she’d taken to show the gardener, a dress she’d considered buying a few weeks back, Art standing at the grill wearing his stupid “Kiss Me I’m Irish” apron, Patrick with his face vandalized by makeup after he’d made the mistake of falling asleep where Lily and Art could reach him.
And then, a full row of pictures of a cut on Art’s finger.
Patrick remembered that cut, Art had gotten it while cooking dinner. He'd sliced into the webbing between his middle and forefinger. It had hurt him to hold a racket for a week.
Patrick hadn’t seen Tashi taking these pictures. They were from every angle, in bright lighting, far away and close up. The inflamed gash glowed red against Art’s pale skin.
On impulse, Patrick scrolled down to the albums. She had an album for Lily, for family, for her outfits, for vacations, and there, an album simply titled “Art.”
Patrick tapped the album open. There were hundreds of pictures inside, and most were of Art, but they weren’t the normal pictures a wife took of her husband. They were clinical, detailed shots. They belonged in a medical file. Art’s shoulder after his injury and the surgical site in various stages of healing. A bruise on Art’s shin. A cut under his left eye. A half-torn toenail. A rash on the back of his neck. A red and swollen knee. The cut on his hand. Then there were snapshots of various MRIs on pixelated screens, more X-rays, and screenshots of test results Patrick couldn’t make sense of.
Patrick closed out of the photos app and locked Tashi’s phone.
It would be so easy to make fun of her for this. Of both of them. Ken doll Art and his very good owner Tashi. They would hate that, which meant that Patrick would enjoy it, of course.
Patrick tossed a blanket over Lily’s tiny slumbering body. His stomach hurt.
Art and Tashi came back from the photo shoot slathered in makeup.
“Both of you kiss me,” Patrick said, “I wanna be covered in lipstick prints like a Looney Toon.”
“I’m not wearing lipstick,” Art said, collapsing next to Patrick on the bed. “I think it’s tinted lip balm.”
“As long as it leaves a mark. Tashi come here. I wanna take a picture.”
Tashi snorted. She was sitting at her vanity, already taking her makeup off.
“No, stop,” Patrick protested. “I don’t wanna take a picture of you, I wanna take a picture of the lipstick kisses on my face. I’m not even gonna post it!”
Tashi didn’t bother to turn around. “You can shower first, Art.”
“Okay,” Art said, rocking to his feet. He leaned over and grabbed Patrick’s face, kissing his cheek with a loud smack before walking into the bathroom.
“Thank you!” Patrick said. “See how easy that was?” he said to Tashi. She ignored him.
Patrick stood up and sat on the foot of the bed behind Tashi. He watched as she removed the heavy makeup from her eyes, removing the tiny false hairs from her eyelashes, carefully rubbing thick white cream on her sooty eyelids, and then gently wiping it away. She looked so young and soft without makeup. Deceptively soft.
Sometimes, when they were fucking, and the focus was on Tashi, she would get this look of complete overwhelm, like she couldn’t handle what the two of them were doing to her. She’d lose control of her body in a way she never did otherwise, quivering, breath ragged, eyes lost. Patrick loved her like that, loved cradling her head in his hands, smoothing his hands down her flanks, whispering reassurances. We got you baby. We got you.
Patrick wouldn’t say anything about the “Art” album. It would just piss her off, and Patrick had already done that once today. He should be on his best behavior, doing his damndest to be sure this thing they had going worked. It had to work.
The shower turned on. Patrick could hear Art humming very faintly. He’d always hummed in the shower.
Tashi’s eye makeup was nearly gone. She brought the cloth to her lips and wiped the lipstick away.
Patrick looked at himself in the mirror over Tashi’s head. Art’s kiss hadn’t left a mark on his cheek.
“Is everything okay with Art’s knee?” Patrick blurted out.
Well, shit.
Tashi paused, frowning at him in the mirror. “What do you mean?”
Well, he was in it now. “I uh…I was sending Art a cute picture of Lily today. From your phone. And I saw x-rays of what I’m assuming is Art’s knee.”
“Oh, that. Yeah, everything is fine,” she said, resuming the makeup removal process. “Those x-rays are old.”
Patrick nodded. He should drop it now.
Instead, he asked, “Why’d you just take pictures of them then?”
Tashi shot him a glance in the mirror. “We were at the doctor and I saw them in his file. I just wanted to have them on hand. Why?”
“On hand for your album of Art’s medical traumas?”
Tashi stilled.
Patrick was a fucking idiot.
Slowly, Tashi turned around on her vanity stool. She folded her hands in her lap.
“You went looking through my phone?” she asked, voice level and calm. Damn, she was already pissed as fuck.
“Not really,” Patrick said.
“Not really,” Tashi repeated. “So you fell on my phone and somehow opened the albums.”
“You left me your phone,” Patrick said, “I was just looking around.”
“You were just looking around,” Tashi repeated. She loved to repeat him so he could hear how stupid he sounded. “And what exactly did you expect to find when you were just looking around?”
“Nothing.”
“Evidence of embezzlement, maybe? Extortion? Murder? Maybe you suspected I was fucking a third white man, although when would I even have the time?”
She was gearing up for a good long rant. Patrick raised his hands in surrender. “Look I’m sorry. I just saw the X-rays and I got curious. Then I saw that whole album and I…”
He what?
“You what?” Tashi demanded. “I’m his coach. And his wife. Why wouldn’t I keep track of his injuries? It’s important.”
“I know,” Patrick said. He did know. For a normal person, it would seem intense. For Tashi, it made total sense. It disturbed Patrick how much sense it made. That he expected nothing less from her.
“So what then?” Tashi spread her palms. “Why are you acting like I’m a freak?”
“I’m not, I just—“ Patrick shoved his hands through his hair. “Just forget it.”
“No,” Tashi stood up, “No I won’t just forget it, 'cause clearly you meant something by it.”
“No, no it’s—“
“No, you did, I heard it. ‘Album of Art’s medical traumas.’ What the fuck, Patrick? What do you think this is? Do you think I collect images of my husband in pain for fun?”
“No! Jesus.”
Tashi stepped closer, looming over him. “Then what is it? Huh? Why do you always assume the worst?”
“I assume the worst?” Patrick was baffled. “Me?”
“Yes, you!” Tashi yelled. “You thought I hated him—”
“Tashi—”
“And now you think I what?” Tashi threw out her arms. “Micromanage his health care?”
“You definitely do,” Patrick said because he couldn’t help himself. “But that’s not—I don’t have a problem with—”
“Then what do you have a problem with?” Tashi asked.
“I don’t know!” Patrick shot to his feet. “You take a million fucking pictures of his every booboo! You have for years. And Art lets you!”
“So what? ”
“I don’t know!” Partick repeated. “You fucking live under his skin! It's a fucking lot, alright? And I'm just on the outside of that, observing, and it's a lot! That's all!”
Jesus fucking Christ.
Patrick's gaze dropped to the floor. Tashi was quiet. He didn’t look at her. He sat on the bed and rested his elbows on his knees. His insides felt scalded.
Life had been so unsteady for so long. Patrick liked living without anything to lose.
Tashi was so under Art's skin he probably wouldn't be able to function without her there.
When Tashi spoke her voice was tight with frustration. “You don’t get to act like you’re just a long-term houseguest and then get mad when I don’t treat you like my husband.”
Patrick’s head snapped up. “I don’t expect that,” he sputtered. “I’m not your husband.” He wasn’t Art’s either. He wasn’t anything in particular to either of them.
Patrick was surprised by the intensity of the fury that lit Tashi’s face.
“Yeah? Then what the fuck are you then?” Tashi spat.
How was she mad at him for stating the obvious? Patrick threw out his arms. “You tell me.”
“I tell you?” The fury in her eyes blazed hotter. “I tell you.”
“Yeah, you tell me!”
“You don’t let me tell you shit Patrick!” Tashi yelled. “And you know what, why would you?” she laughed caustically. “I’m just the bitch you fuck with your bro!”
Patrick’s reared back. “What the fuck, Tashi?”
“You act like this is some casual shit!” Tashi threw up her hands. “Like you’re just here to hang out and fuck!”
“How am I supposed to act?” Patrick asked, standing up again. “I have no idea what the fuck is going on or what any of this means!”
“You don’t know what it means?” Tashi’s eyes widened. “You're living in our house! We let you around our daughter!”
“So I’m fun Uncle Patrick? So you two are swingers? So what?” Patrick yelled. “You two are fucking married! You’ve been married for eight years!”
“And what do you expect us to do about that?” Tashi yelled back.
Patrick laughed, a harsh, involuntary sound. The absurdity of the situation hit him. What did he expect them to do? Divorce each other and play rock paper scissors to see who married him? What the fuck was he doing here?
Tashi looked deeply offended at being laughed at, which made Patrick laugh harder.
“This is fucking stupid,” he wheezed. “Jesus Christ. Art is right. I need to grow up. Settle down with a nice normal single girl and—”
“Shut the fuck up,” Tashi said, face twisting.
Patrick laughed again. “What? Maybe that way we could do swinging properly, 'cause I think you need four people minimum.”
“Everything is a fucking joke to you,” she said, turning away from him, the line of her spine rigid.
“You can’t actually be pissed,” Patrick said, laughter slowing. “You’re the married one here you fucking hypocrite.”
“That’s not the—” Tashi inhaled sharply. “You know what, fine. I already said I’m not gonna beg you.”
“Beg? For what?” Patrick asked. “You’ve never begged for anything in your life, Duncan.”
Tashi didn’t answer. She refused to look at him.
Patrick had never seen Tashi cry before. She wasn’t crying now, but something was making her eyes shine bright. Hurt maybe. Maybe not.
He could ask. Did I hurt your feelings? Even thinking it felt absurd.
The shower turned off. Tashi walked to the bathroom and disappeared behind the door.
Patrick’s stomach was in a knot. He really was too old for this.
What did he want? An album called “Patrick” on Tashi’s phone, where she kept all his wounds?
The bathroom door was slightly open. He could hear them murmuring softly to each other. Had Art heard the yelling? Was Tashi explaining?
Slowly, Patrick moved so he could see through the door's gap.
Tashi was rubbing lotion into Art’s face, her fingers quick and smooth on his skin. Art was standing still, eyes closed, hands hanging at his sides, letting himself be tended.