#The New Rochelles | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

pparacxosm · 3 months ago

Text

blue-eyed son

(homeless era!patrick zweig x jaded businesswoman!reader; tw themes of poverty; tw strangely intimate vaguely unnerving eating scene; maybe i got carried away with characterising the motel receptionist; but it was necessary; tw corporate ennui; tw scathing outlook on new rochelle; i’ve never even been to new rochelle; there is a real prompt from the NYT mini crossword in here, and the answer was ‘aches’ but ‘zweig’ is also five letters; also maybe i got carried away with reworking the dialogue from the motel scene; but i maintained the essence of tragedy; in fact i enhanced it; tw enhanced essence of tragedy)

‘Not too shabby…’

The blue light miasma permeating from the screen of your brickheavy, moltenhot company laptop casts taunting shadows across your visage as you stare at the subject line of the email from your boss. You drag your finger across the mousepad and click.

Just got off the phone with Mr Smith from Kanonda Corp., and they had some great things to say about our chat today. Kudos to you for handling that. Just a quick reminder, though, that your numbers aren't quite up to par this month, so let's work on ramping those up. Keep it up!

Cheers!

You find three things hilarious about this email: 1) the use of the words our chat when you’re pretty sure you endured those three hours of Mr Smith’s overt attempts to incite a clunky game of footsie under the wobbly table in the shitty steakhouse in bumfuck New Rochelle completely solo, 2) the notion that adding an exclamation mark to the phrase ‘keep it up’ makes it read more like an encouraging pat on the back than a barked order, and 3) the use of the words your numbers when there’s about five other assholes on your team who aren’t in bumfuck New Rochelle, whose combined time spent sitting on their asses in the office, if harvested as energy, would be large enough to power up a small town for all four days of this wretched business trip.

Actually, the “kudos to you” is also pretty funny. Your boss, the comedian.

You shut the lid of the computer, drawing your knees to your chest and ignoring how the sharp lump of an errant spring in the old mattress is digging straight up your ass. You’re nursing a lukewarm can of Coors you’d snagged from this motel's halfway functional vending machine. You’re trying to ignore the noise from the room next door, where some douchebag is doing his best impression of a broken washing machine in bed.

New Rochelle sucks. New Rochelle sucks dick. The weather sucks dick. The food sucks dick. Your job sucks dick. Sunny Skies Motel sucks dick. And you’re considering redownloading Hinge, and setting your radius to ten miles and your standards to hellishly low, just so that maybe you can suck a dick, too, because you’d hate to feel left out.

The company you work for so graciously comps the room in the seedy motel. Real nice. The room reeks of piss and potpourri, old cigarettes and beer, and looks like a relic from the 70s. As in, peeling, avocado-green wall, visibly stained motheaten carpets that are an alarming shade of brown, and an ancient CRT TV whose only available channels are reruns of sitcoms from the 90s. Everything about this place wails ‘temporary,’ but, to you, there’s the stark, resigned misery of a lifetime sentence. The room is like your life, in a way: suffocating and stagnant, with no change in sight.

It's the kind of motel that no one would ever choose to stay at if they had a choice, or, perhaps, a modicum of selfrespect. But you, poor you, eyes going misty as you look out the window facing an alleyway, are beginning to contend with the fact that you have neither of those things.

You’re lying supine on the bed, arms spread out like a crucifix effigy, and your back is learning every lump and valley of the shitty mattress. You’ve downed your beer, and it’s sloshing about in your belly, and there’s a dampness gathering beneath the underwire of your bra.

You cast a glower to the thermostat, an old model with yellowed plastic and faded lettering. You note the temperature display.

“65, my ass.”

And who are you talking to? The roaches? They’re probably waiting for you to die of heatstroke so they can dine on your miserable, sweatstrewn flesh. The vent shudders droningly, spewing tepid air like bad breath, and you do consider just lying there. Sweating out your bitterness. But no. You need your bitterness. Your bitterness has always served you.

Like this, bitterly, you peel yourself off the bed, swinging your legs over the side.

You slip your tights-swathed toes into the firm leather of your kitten heels, tugging the hem of your skirt down your thighs, but choosing not to bother with the rolled cuffs or the top four unbound buttons of your button down, the dampness where the fabric clings to your back and armpits growing cool as you step out into the nighttime.

You’re twentyeight, which is seventyfive in corporate years.

You’re a wonder with a spreadsheet, and you work hard, and you’re reliable, but these are the sorts of things that only get you so far.

So they send you to New Rochelle. Fine. Here’s their thinly veiled, lastditch attempt to motivate you, or something.

And everyone’s probably sipping on fancy espresso in their cushy corner offices or having lunch in some upscale bistro back home. And you’re in sucksdick New Rochelle, wondering how many different ways a woman can feel disconnected and uninspired.

The Sunny Skies motel lobby is a hollow shell. It is lively as a morgue. The vending machine flickers with the weary lament of someone who is sick of dying. Not pained, or begging mercy. Just over it. Someone who wants to get the dying part of being dead over with.

There’s another roomtemp Coors can in there singing you siren songs, but you’re trying not to be tempted.

You’re stood in front of one of the twin front desks, tapping your manicured nail against the countertop.

You’re staring at a small sign behind the front desk, and trying to ignore the strange sort of aura of decay that seems to hang in the air. Sunny Skies knows her days are numbered, and it shows. Your eyes flick up to look at the clock as you hear footsteps approaching.

Enter Sally. Dear Sally. Sally and her jet black pixie cut and cold shoulder blouses and perennial disinterest. You identify with Sally on a deep, primordial level, because Sally has that soul-sucking look that only comes with years of forcing enthusiasm when you don’t feel any, and you can only hope to one day wield with as much grace that distinct emanating air of exhaustion. Sally is your hero.

“Can I help you?” she asks flatly, casting you a bored, fleeting glance over her narrow pink rectangle rimmed spectacles.

God, it’s artistry.

“I think the air conditioning in my room is broken?” you say. You pull out your phone and flip open the cover, retrieving your key card, because you have one of those flip phone cases. “I need someone to come take a look at it. The last repair guy said he’d pass the message along and no one’s come by yet.”

Sally takes the card and looks up at you sceptically.

“Are you sure it’s broken? Sometimes the thermostat just needs to be reset.”

You bristle a bit at the implication that you don’t know how to work a thermostat. You respect Sally like a soldier respects a war general. Which is to say, do you particularly like the woman? Fuck no.

“Yes, I’m sure,” you say firmly. “I tried resetting it myself like the last guy told me to, but it’s still not working.”

Sally sighs and jots something down on a piece of paper.

“Alright, I’ll send someone up to take a look at it,” she says. “Is that all you need?”

You want to say no, that that’s definitely not all you need, that you need to go home to your quiet, cozy, doesn’t-smell-like-musty-carpets apartment, to lay on your comfortable bed and eat a warm meal.

You just nod curtly.

“Yes, that’s everything. Thank you.”

Sally turns away to pick up a phone receiver, but freezes for a moment, her head tilted in an odd direction. You follow her gaze, your eyes landing on a figure at the far end of the lobby.

The first thing you notice is that he is a total mess. His hair is sticking up in different directions, like a child’s hair after a windy day, and his clothes are rumpled and chaotic, as if he’s just woken up.

You’re trying to determine if he’s extremely tall, or if it just looks that way because you can see his entire two legs with how short those shorts are.

You’re trying, too, to determine why he strikes you as being somewhat out of place here.

You suppose harsh fluorescent lights can sort of warp a person. But there is something almost striking about him. His face is sharp and angular, all hollowedout cheekbones and fierce, saxe blue eyes that house the sort of selfloathing hunger you only see in Eastern European gay porn. And they are staring directly at you.

He approaches the counter, and comes to stop at an odd place, almost slightly behind you. And you can feel a splendid heat radiating from his body, and you shift uncomfortably to put some distance between you.

Sally, from behind the desk, has been watching the man with a wary sort of glare, but she looks at him now with the same flat, exhausted expression she had used with you. No bullshit Sally. Unaligned and unimpressed.

“How can I help you?” she asks, monotone all the same.

This guy looks at her for a moment, still staring directly at you out of the corner of his eye, but then shifts his gaze to Sally completely.

“I need a room for the night,” he says. His voice is slightly hoarse, as if unused for a while.

Sally is already unconvinced.

“Do you have a credit card?” she asks, her fingers hovering over the chunky computer keys.

The man digs around in the pocket of his athletic shorts and pulls out a wallet whose leather has long ago seen the best of its days. He rummages around in it for a moment before pulling out a credit card and handing it over.

Sally holds the card between two fingers and begins to type something, eyes narrowed at the monitor. She looks at a screen for a moment, then looks back at the man.

“This card is declined,” she says matter-of-factly.

The man’s forehead creases up, a look of the defeated suffusing across his face.

“What? No, that can’t be right,” he says, but he sounds like he thinks it probably can be right. “Can you try again?”

Sally sighs, but, for her part, types the number in again.

Then she waits.

And a moment later, she turns the computer monitor to show him the word DECLINED on the screen in angry crimson.

His expression swims somewhere toward frustration and he leans forward, his voice taking on a hint of desperation.

“There has to be a mistake, that’s my only card.”

Sally looks at him with an air of very mild irritation colouring her general apathy.

“Sir,” says Sally, “I can see the balance on the card. It’s declined. You don’t have any other cards?”

The man’s face shifts again—his face is really very expressive—now bordering on despair.

“No, no other cards,” he says. “Is there anything I can do? I really need a bed for tonight, I’ve been driving all day, I’m exhausted…”

And—what, is he gonna seduce Sally? The thought alone is so funny (not him seducing Sally, really, but rather Sally being seduced by him, or maybe just him trying and failing) and you pull out your phone to keep from laughing, or, at least, then you can blame Twitter, or something.

Sally holds up a hand to stop him, her bangles jingling.

“Listen, sir. We don’t give rooms out for free,” she says, tone all no-nonsense. “If you want a bed for the night, you need to have a valid form of payment. Do you have cash?”

Now this man’s head is bowed, and he is visibly deflated. He looks up to meet Sally’s gaze, sadness and helplessness doing a miserable pas de deux behind his eyes.

“No, no cash either,” he says quietly. “I don’t have anything. I just need somewhere to sleep tonight. Just one night. Please.”

And, at that—at that, if my fleeting glance serves me correct, Sally’s expression softens a little. I think Sally probably watches a lot of AGT. She clearly has a soft spot for a pathetic story, but her job is, of course, to keep the motel from going under. And Sally has no golden buzzer here.

“Sir,” she says firmly, “I have bills to pay too. If I just gave away rooms without payment, we’d be a homeless shelter, not a business.”

Fuck, that’s funny, too. In a way. You’re actually not so tempted to laugh anymore, because this is all becoming a bit painful to witness.

The man lets out an exasperated sigh.

“Can I pay in the morning, then?” he asks, and you can’t see from here, but his hands may be clasped together, because he certainly sounds like he’s pleading. “I’ll have cash by then, I swear. I’ll sign something, give you my driver’s license, anything. I just need a place to stay. Please.”

Sally leans forward on the counter, her tone growing a little terse. Whatever softness she’d started feeling now seems so far gone it may as well have never existed at all.

“Sir, I can’t do that either. If we let someone stay in a room without upfront payment, and you just disappear, then we’re out of a room and out of money. I’m really sorry, but we don’t make exceptions.”

And, to her credit, she does sound sorry, but she’s certainly not budging.

The man is definitely practically begging now.

“I won’t disappear!” he stresses, “I swear, I— Listen, I’m a tennis player. The tournament down the road. I just need a place to stay so I can rest before my match tomorrow. If I win, I get seven thousand dollars. I just need a bed for the night, that’s all. Please, you have to help me.”

Yeah, no, this is really painful. Like, uncomfortably so. You have the cruel thought of just turning around and leaving, and going back to your hot room, to go about your own—now considerably lesser seeming—wallowing, but an even crueler part of you regards this whole thing as a slow motion train wreck.

And, in your defense, you’re only halfway eavesdropping, because you’ve now struck up a passive aggressive argument with a coworker over a Microsoft Teams chat.

Sally raises a brow.

“A tennis player?” she asks dubiously, eyeing his disheveled appearance.

The man nods urgently.

“Yes, yes, I am! My name is Zweig, Patrick Zweig. You can look it up. I just need a bed, please, just one night. I’ll sign whatever you want, give you anything, just please.”

Sally now looks really unimpressed by his plea, her face betraying a hint of disdain.

“Yeah, sure,” she says, her voice laden with sarcasm. “You’re a tennis player. And I’m Beyoncé.”

And it’s funny again. Fucking Sally. You should try and ask her for a drink before you leave. She’ll say no, but you should ask.

The man’s face contorts in abject sorrow and impatience.

“Please, ma’am, if you just look me up—” he begins, but Sally cuts him off before he can continue.

“Sir, do you think I just have time to look up every person who comes in here claiming to be somebody?” she asks, her face growing increasingly pinched with annoyance.

It is then that Sally turns to face you, whose fingers are now really tapping away at your screen, because your coworker’s a bitch, but then,

“Ma’am, do you know who this man is?” Sally asks, gesturing a rednailed hand toward him as though presenting a case on Deal or No Deal.

And fuck if you hadn’t halfway tuned out of the conversation, because you’re suddenly being put on the spot.

You look over at the man, who is fidgeting and biting his chapped upper lip, and his wide blue gaze is a mural of anxious anticipation and pleading hope, and—okay.

So you hadn’t really been paying attention. But you now feel a palpable twinge of something resembling sympathy.

This guy’s face is so earnest and desperate, like an abandoned, infant monkey, or something equally as devastating, and there is something about… whatever he’s got going on that really compels you to give him the help he is so desperately seeking.

But that’s the thing. You were so busy insisting to Deirdre over Teams that saying you’re so articulate is, in fact, a microaggression, that fuck. You really don’t know who this man is.

But he’s looking at you, so desperate and pathetic, and his bottom lip may as well be jutted out and quivering, yet there is something—something—about him that intrigues you. In a stupid way. The way a kid may be intrigued by the mushrooms that have appeared between the wet grass after it’s rained.

So—okay—you give it a think. Because you do think he said it, his name, at some point. Your eyes flick over him. Your phone is still raised up to your face.

“… Peter Zeppelin?” you shrug, raising a brow.

And the guy’s eyes widen comically, and his face falls like the London Bridge, and Sally gives an amused sort of scoff. That seems to be the final nail in the coffin for her, and she holds up her hands in a resigned sort of there you go motion, going to turn back to the computer. And Peter Zeppelin—who is not Peter Zeppelin apparently—all but throws himself over the counter, and now you do see his hands clasp together, with all the desperation of Jesus in Gethsemane.

“No, no, no, come on, come on, that was close!” he says desperately, “Patrick Zweig, that was close, come on!”

But Sally seems done entertaining him, and the poor guy’s face twists with a dozen different alloys of disappointment and frustration and acceptance as he sees the conversation is over, and the gavel has been banged.

But despite his disappointment—and there are veritable oceans of disappointment he’s working with here—there is a hint of something else in his expression, something almost like amusement.

He shoots you a sidelong glance, as if trying to understand you. And you cannot help but notice the way his eyes linger, but you quickly look away, feeling a scattering prickle of guilt cascade over you, and you almost shiver. And why should you feel guilty, if you were only honest? You can’t be sure. Because you feel it all the same.

He lets out a sigh and gathers his things, wounded by the harsh blow of reality straight to his heart, it would seem. This was surely among the saddest interactions of his life.

But, as he turns to leave, he shoots another glance over his shoulder, his gaze once again finding you with magnetic haste.

It is a strange look he wears. A mixture of disappointment, curiosity, and something almost like… interest. You drop your arms, your phone hanging at your side, because that’s enough for you to feel a jolt of something. Something. Something you quite literally try to shake off as soon as he has departed, like a crestfallen cartoon character with all his belongings in a bandana on a stick over his shoulder. But his image seems to linger in your mind. His plaintive eyes and disheveled mien causing an odd sort of sensation to rise up in your stomach. You think it may be nausea.

Or the guilt is really having its way with you.

And the door swings shut behind him with a loud thunk, and you’re feeling a pang of regret, even. And fucking Sally, of all people, is giving you an odd look, as if to say you couldn’t have helped that poor man out a little more?

And you want to say hey, you mythic shrew, I don’t even know him, which is true, because you don’t.

And even if you had, would that have made Sally drop to her knees and throw him a room key? Who are you, arbiter of fame? You want to ask her. If you were less of a masochist, you probably would ask her. But the guilt makes a funny little home in your tummy, and you start to think it’s what you deserve.

You think, at some point, you were generous. In some tender, faraway time in your life, you housed a massive soft spot for anyone who needed help, you couldn’t help it. You’d grown up in a household with a Methodist and a Social Worker, and compassion and kindness were espoused with breakfast in the mornings. And now that you’re working in a cutthroat office full of bloodthirsty Type-A’s, you’ve been made hard as granite. Great.

You’re walking through the parking lot towards your room, and you spot a beat up Honda, its park job beyond redemption.

And who should you see slumped in the backseat, looking utterly dejected, but Peter fucking Zeppelin. He is staring at something on his phone, the glow illuminating his face in the darkness. And you’re holding another Coors from the vending machine like a world class capitalist shit stain.

Seeing him like that, so defeated and alone, makes the spot of guilt you’re nursing in your belly stand up and do a little jig.

And is it your fault? No. Kind of? Either way, you feel the tug of responsibility, and an unfamiliar need to make amends.

You reach your room. You unlock the door with your keycard. You do not walk in. You linger, of course, staring across the parking lot at the man sitting in his car. He hasn’t moved, still slumped down, head bowed over his phone. Your guilt seems to metamorphose into something more discomfiting, and its jig becomes a stomp.

Why refuse to help him?

It is so unlike you, that coldness.

You stand there for what tires you like an eternity, more than a little torn. But, ultimately, the image of his big blue pleading eyes, and the way they had laved you in abject despair, wins out. You’ll see them in your nightmares if you don’t do something. You can’t leave him like this, alone and dejected in his car. You certainly want to. You’d love to go back into your too warm room and drink your too warm beer and hope for Sally to have a come to Jesus moment. But you really can’t.

With a weary, longsuffering sigh, you gather your courage and make your way across the parking lot towards the car, your heels clicking against the tar.

You knock the knuckle of your index against the window, “Oi! Zeppelin!”

And the man’s head jerks up.

He looks… surprised to see you standing there. But there’s a gleam of expectation in his eyes.

The door is locked when he first goes to open it, which—good. At least he has a sense of selfpreservation. And then he unlocks it and takes off his grey track jacket and scrambles out of the car with a disoriented sort of grace, stepping out and straightening up to his full height.

So, yes, he actually is very tall. Much taller than you’d realised, actually, and you have to crane your neck to look at him. The light from the motel sign illuminates his face, accentuating his pallor and the tired lines around his eyes.

He is standing very close, this homeless stranger, and it suddenly occurs to you not to let your softness get the better of you. You look him up and down.

You wait for him to speak.

You want to see how he’ll react. And a furtive little part of you hopes that he’ll be a little angry, a little annoyed, at your still getting his name wrong. Because then you get to keep your guard up and maintain your distance, because even Mother Theresa knew the implications of standing alone with a large man in the middle of a motel parking lot in bumfuck New Rochelle.

His eyes, weary, harden just a fraction, the dim apparition of a frown tugging at the corners of his mouth.

“It’s Zweig,” he corrects, his voice frayed at its edges but firm. “Patrick.”

He isn’t quite angry, but there’s a glimmer of irritation there, just enough to give you the satisfaction you hadn’t realised you’d been craving, and a strange sense of triumph tingles through you.

Oh, how much easier to be cold and standoffish when you have something to work with.

“Right, right, sorry about that,” you say, your voice dancing almost imperceptibly with sarcasm.

You cross your arms, raising an eyebrow at him, as though… assessing.

And then Peter—not Peter, Patrick—looks at you for a moment, his weary eyes registering your defensive stance and your rigid gaze.

He seems to recognise something. Something. A need to maintain something. To push him away and make a run for it before it’s too late. And yet, he doesn’t quite seem offended. Or even irritated, anymore. More amused, really, as he gives you a slow, crooked smile.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says, the corners of his eyes crinkling in an odd, charming, almost absolute sort of way. Like he’s smiling, and that’s all he could be doing. Even as the smile itself has all sorts of nuanced implications. “I’ve heard worse,” he says.

The way he is looking at you, that easy grin, makes the guilt in your tummy flutter and still and wait. It does feel like he is seeing something, and, of course, that isn’t nice.

You feel a growing unease at his active refusal to react the way you expect him to, and maybe want him to. You work in white collar. There’s nothing easier to delineate than an angry guy. A guy frustrated by your callousness. But this guy seems almost entertained by your standoffishness. It is unsettling. Maybe strangely captivating. But mostly unsettling.

“You look exhausted,” you say, and you make sure any detectable concern is ostensibly feigned.

“Yeah, thanks for noticing.”

Simple. Dry. A note of humour.

He reaches up and runs a hand through his messy hair, the movement drawing your eye to his long, lean arm, the way it strains against the fabric of his helplessly rumpled T-shirt.

So you start feeling irritated again. Uneasy, unsettled, annoyed, these are easy things to start feeling, and you start feeling them. But not for this guy himself. Not necessarily. No, more by the way he is making you feel. And you think, fuck, has it been so long since I’ve had a beer that I can’t hold it down? And maybe that’s it. Or, maybe, you can’t help but find him marginally attractive. The fabric of his shirt, worn to gossamer, brushing over and revealing a glimpse of a toned, hirsute chest. His athletic shorts, which seem laughably short now, or maybe his legs seem laughably long. And strong. Maybe he should run for money, that’s a thing, right?

So anyway, you’re unsettled. And you find yourself growing even colder in response.

“No, you look really exhausted. Like medically. You look like you’re about to pass out. You look like you just crawled out from under a freeway overpass,” you say, and the words come out a tad sharper than intended, which was already quite sharp anyway. “Are you sure you’re not just some bum pretending to be a worldclass tennis player?”

This time, his smile turns into a fullblown toothy smirk.

“Oh, I’m a bum alright,” he says, leaning against the side of his car as he regards you with that flaying sort of intensity. “A real loser, actually. The kind of guy who ends up sleeping in his car in a motel parking lot because he’s too broke to even get a room for the night.”

The guilt in your tummy—remember that guilt?—yeah, well, it feels uncertain if it should even be there any more. If it shouldn’t be replaced with something more commensurate with the dense thump of your heart. But you don’t want to let him see how much his self-deprecating attitude has affected you. And you don’t want to let yourself see his reaction, if you were to give into a very strange sudden compulsion to tell him he isn’t a loser.

Instead, you roll your eyes.

“You’re really laying it on thick, aren’t you?” you say, a wry hoist of your brows. You press your face against his car window, cupping your hands around your eyes so you can see in through the tint. “Where’s your guitar? Are you gonna start singing an acoustic version of ‘Hallelujah’ and begging for change?”

He chuckles at this, eyes lingering on the little patch of fog left by your mouth on the glass. “Ah, did you miss it?” he says, feigning sympathy, but his smile is still so wide, “I was strumming like a beast over on that street corner earlier. Gave my strings to this other homeless guy, though, in the end, figured he needed it more than me. Not ‘Hallelujah’, though. Dylan’s what really gets peoples’ hands in their pockets.”

“Righ… t.” You hesitate. You hesitate, because—well—he’s singing.

Yeah, no, he’s definitely singing. He’s closing his eyes and leaning against his car and singing Bob Dylan.

“Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son? I’ve stumbled on the side of ten thousand graveyards.”

And—okay—those are the wrong lyrics, but the song choice certainly feels relevant to his current situation.

“It’s a hard—” He’s still singing. “—it’s a hard, it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna—”

“O-kay,” you say, and he opens his eyes and for all their fatigue they are glimmering with mirth.

You try to remain expressionless, but his undeniable charm and abiding levity considering his obvious predicament make it difficult for you to justify being mean.

“You seem awfully comfortable with your circumstances,” you observe, a vein of scepticism threaded through your voice. “Most people would be freaking out right now, you know.”

He shrugs, hands in his pockets now, and makes an ambivalent sort of noise. “Well, what good would that do?” he says. “Won’t magically make the cash appear in my account.”

He pulls a hand from his pocket, the nylon rustling, and runs it through his hair again. You find yourself watching the movement, watching his hands now, which you think look oddly large. You’re unsettled again. Or maybe you’ve been unsettled the whole time, and you’re just still unsettled.

“So, you’re just gonna sit there in your car all night and hope a miracle happens?” you ask, a strange tremor in your voice that even you cannot presently put a name to. “You don’t have any… I don't know, friends you can call? Or parents you can beg money off of?”

And his expression seems to go dour at that, a noticeable trickle of humour draining from his eyes. “Parents are out,” he says bluntly. Pauses. Gives a humourless laugh.

Doesn’t mention friends, you note. But then you’ve never had many either.

Your guilt seems to settle again, deciding it is needed, and it is accompanied by whatever had had your voice tremoring seconds ago. You cannot help it. This is fucking sad. The way his selfdeprecating remarks have suddenly turned into selfdeprecating revelations. It’s fucking sad. And you don’t realise you’re staring into the middle distance all sadly until he’s ducking down into your field of vision, eyes searching your face, vaguely bemused, but sort of disgruntled.

“You feel sorry for me,” he says—says, not asks.

And then he straightens, and you think he’s gotten taller.

“Well, you’ve got no friends, no family, no money, and nowhere to go,” you say, trying to keep your voice neutral, despite the fact that, yes, you find you are feeling quite sorry for him. “It sounds like you’re in a pretty shitty situation, Patrick.”

And where he could probably break down into tears—and maybe he should; you’re willing to give him your lukewarm beer and rub his shoulder a bit—a glimmer finds his eye. A fissure in his nonchalance. A look of surprise, and what almost seems like hope. He doesn’t even try to disguise it, and his smile is coming back, with the ease of something never departed.

“Hey! Look who remembered my name,” he says, and his voice has suddenly gone weird and tender, and the change sort of makes you shudder.

“Ah, shit, did I?” you say, looking down, rolling the beer can in your palm and letting it flick off your fingers and land in the other hand. You toss it back and forth like that a few times, and you’re trying to be… not too much of anything. You try to be Sally, unaligned and unimpressed.

It's hard, though, with the way he smiles like he knows something you don't. Like he's in on some kind of secret. You’ve always had a weird suspicion that everyone is keeping something from you. No one could surprise you, as a child.

Patrick—fuck, there you go—has the impish simper on his lips of a cat who’s just seized and maimed the canary.

“You did,” he confirms, voice still strange and heavy, like it’s laden with something.

You try to keep your gaze focused on the can—left, right, left, right—and the metal makes a little tck noise each time it hits your palm, the liquid inside sort of singing as it moves. But your eyes meander up to his legs, where a small patch of bright red road rash is visible on his knee. The guilt in your belly is up and dancing again, but it seems to have invited a whole bevy of other emotions alongside it. Stupid stuff, like sympathy, and shyness, and lots of other somethings of various discomfort.

And then you say, “Well, don’t get used to it,” and the can slips from your palm and onto the ground.

“Okay,” he says, stopping the can from rolling away with his foot.

And then he’s bending down to pick it up, and then he’s freezing, crouched down, like his whole body is wincing, and he makes a noise, like a guilty sort of noise, and he looks up at you, and says,

“Fuck,”

And stands up and sighs, shakes his head like he’s made a mistake, and shrugs his shoulders and says, “I’m used to it,” with a rueful sort of smile.

“Oh, are you?” You hold your hand out for the can, but he doesn’t give it to you.

He makes a tsking sort of noise, his elbow raising to rest on the top of the car, “I think I am,” he says, like it pains him, “I think you’re just gonna have to keep remembering my name.”

“Well, I won’t.”

“But you did.” He parrots your intonation.

Everything suddenly seems very loud. The sound of crickets chirping, the buzzing of the neon signs, the nylon swipe of his tiny shorts as he moves. He keeps moving.

“Because I feel sorry for you,” you say, and things seem quiet at that, as if for that, “You’re right, I feel sorry for you.”

He sort of kisses his teeth, nodding slowly and glancing off to the side in thought. And when he looks at you again, it’s with a gleam of vulnerability, like he’s conveying a silent message that you cannot quite decipher.

It is disconcerting.

His vulnerability is like a gaping black hole, something that will suck you into oblivion. You don’t really know what to do with your hands now. You wipe your palm off down the side of your pencil skirt.

“You’re not gonna spend the night in your car, are you?” you ask, like, maybe, if you ask, he’ll come up with a new plan of action.

But no. No plans. Only questions. He suspects you have a plan.

“Why?” he asks, “Are you offering me a place to crash?”

His smirk is returning, though it doesn’t reach his eyes. He is clearly a seasoned scholar in deflection, but he bears the cross quite poorly, and his words send a shiver down your stilldamp spine.

Sunny Skies is the kind of place you'd expect a scene out of a thriller to take place.

You can picture the headline now: Woman found murdered in cheap motel room, career dead in the water long before.

You hesitate for a moment, torn between your better instincts and your uncanny appetite to help this man.

You know what you should do; you should tell him no, leave him with the beer, and walk away. Keep yourself safe from getting involved in his mess of a life, and potentially being found days from now with a racket jutting out your abdomen, long since festered in a pool of your own blood because the damn air conditioning still won’t be fixed. Fuck, Deirdre would love that.

But the way he’s looking at you, that deep dark supernova vulnerability you’d spied in his eyes just moments ago, it makes you hesitate.

“I…” you start to speak, then stop, sighing as you fiddle with your nails. “I'm gonna ask you something.”

Patrick's smirk falters slightly. He seems to sense that something significant is about to happen, and he tenses, as though bracing himself for an impact.

“Shoot,” he says, a thinly veiled wariness in his tone.

“Why the tennis?” you ask, your eyes on his, flickering, searching, like a bloodhound. “Why are you still doing something that’s clearly not working out for you? Why not give up and do something different? Something that pays, for one.”

And, now, you really do steel yourself for anger, but, to your surprise, anger doesn’t come. Nor do defensiveness or hostility.

Instead, he’s letting out a cynical, protracted sort of pfft noise. “You think I haven’t asked myself that a million times?” he says, his voice cloistered in irony. “There’s only tennis. Since forever. Maybe I fucked up with that, but that’s what I did, and now it’s all there is. I’m not exactly standing before you with too many marketable skills. I can run, I can hit a ball, not much else.”

And you’re frowning at that, at the resignation in his voice. You want to say something, some platitude about not giving up, about trying harder, but you know he won’t appreciate it. Instead, you ask another question.

You ask, “If you had a choice, what would you do instead?”

Again, Patrick surprises you. He doesn’t scoff or obfuscate. He actually just thinks about it for a moment, his whole face turning introspective.

“I don’t know,” he says eventually, his voice low. “I guess I never really thought about what else I might be good at.” He runs a hand through his hair again, letting out a soft sigh. “It’s hard to imagine another life when this is the only one you’ve ever known.”

And that just makes you frown harder. You really want to say something now. But you don’t. Because you can’t. Because what would it be?

He’s an almost-has-been who’s fallen from the top of the ladder and is now scraping the bottom.

He'd once had it all, and now he has nothing.

How do you comfort someone like that?

You look at him for a moment, his lingering charm swirling like a wandering bee around you, pulling on your senses. You think about Ted Bundy, and how he lured women to demise by strumming their heartstrings like Bob Dylan. But then you suppose that any man trying to victimise a woman is not first going to try their luck on Sally, so. Well. You make a decision.

You make a decision, and take a deep breath, looking him straight in the eye. “I have a deal for you.”

He chuckles at that, his eyes dragging downward, a slow descent. He looks at your dishevelled working girl get up, and you realise, with a passing breeze that wafts the acrid, musky, but vaguely not unpleasant scent of him toward you, that your shirt is still half open, and your cleavage has been on exhibition this whole time, but you’re only realising now, because he’s only looking now, and he wasn’t looking before, and he says,

“I’m sure you do,” and he says, “You got a contract for me to sign?”

“My room has a queen and a sofa pull out couch,” you say, not-so-furtively, furtively creeping your fingers up to pull your shirt closed, “You can stay tonight—“

“I can’t let you sleep on a sofa pullout couch in your own room,” he says, and he’s able to feign absolute concern for but a moment before his smile is back again.

“—you can stay tonight,” you repeat, “on the couch, on one condition.”

He crosses his arms, the beer can slipping beneath his armpit, and you don’t even want it anymore, not the least because it’s now probably undrinkably warm.

“Let’s hear it,” he says.

You pause before responding, to make sure you haven’t been briefly possessed and given the suggestion by passing poltergeist, that it’s actually what you want. Maybe you’re tired, or charitable, or maybe it’s just whatever strange, striking quality he seems to have, but you say, “I’ll let you stay in my room if you let me come to your match tomorrow.”

And now you have managed to shock him. He’d been expecting some sort of request for a favour, or payment, but certainly not that.

“You…” his eyes are searching yours for sincerity, “… want to watch me play?” he asks.

“I’ve never seen a tennis match before,” you admit, and, for a fleeting, ludicrous moment, you feel a flush of embarrassment at your confession. “It might be interesting. And…” you steel herself, not sure you’re going to go through with sharing the next bit, “I’ve had a really shitty time here. My meetings here were… horrific. I could use some entertainment.”

He lets out a soft laugh at that, though maybe it’s a scoff. “You want me to entertain you?” he says, and his cadence is jesting, but there is something else there too, something in his eyes that makes your heart start thumping densely again. “You realise tennis can be pretty boring unless you know the sport, right?”

You shrug, affecting an air of nonchalance. “Hey, I’m willing to give it a shot. I have one day left in New Rochelle, and a day at the courts is a lot better than another day stuck in a meeting from hell. At least with you I’ll be watching someone actually do something, instead of pretending to care about some idiot’s idea for a corporate wellness retreat.”

Patrick’s eyes house a genuine amusement, his smile wide. “Corporate wellness retreat,” he says slowly, raising an eyebrow. “You in finance?”

“Worse. Way worse. Marketing,” you admit, like this is the most harrowing thing you can say. “But it’s all the same, really. It’s mostly idiots with big egos in boardrooms trying to outbullshit each other.”

“So you’d rather watch idiots with big egos trying to outbullshit each other on a court,” he nods solemnly, but, in a way, he’s issuing a warning. A beat, then he asks, “You always this sour?”

And you bristle for a moment, your pride affronted at his words. But you quickly relax as the irony of your current situation occurs to you—you’re letting a practically homeless tennis player stay in your hotel room, and you’re letting him joke at your expense.

And you suppose, not for the first time, that you deserve it, to some extent.

“Oh, no, usually I’m a blast,” you say wryly, and then, smiling vaguely with an odd sense of honesty, “But it’s been a long three days, and I’m not exactly in the best mood.”

He spends a moment studying you, taking a thoughtful breath. “You work too hard,” he says, as though coming to a profound conclusion.

“And you don’t work at all,” you reply, “Maybe we should swap problems for a day.”

“You got a house? I’m in.”

“An apartment, yeah,” you say, your voice lilting as though genuinely considering the prospect, “But I don’t have a car. Maybe we should just merge and form a symbiotic, corporate drone/middling athlete hybrid life.”

And there’s a pause there, and everything sounds loud again. The vague nyoom of each passing car rattling your teeth, because, in a way, what you’re suggesting is intimacy. And it’s beginning to occur to you that, though perhaps in different ways, you and Peter Zeppelin are two unspeakably lonely people. And to suggest such a thing as beastly as to share what’s tender, well… it feels a little unkind. A gentle brush against an open wound hurts the same way a slap does.

Patrick takes a moment.

Then, sucking in a contrite bit of air through his teeth, he shakes his head, “I couldn’t wear a suit.”

“You could wear a suit,” you respond, shaking your head, rolling your eyes like he’s being silly, like that’s a silly thing to say. But now you’re picturing him in a suit which certainly feels like an untimely gust of air against that very same wound.

“I couldn’t,” he insists, shaking his head like he’s resigned, “I couldn’t, I’d look ridiculous in a suit.”

“You’d look great in a suit.”

“So, it’s a deal then? I get a bed to fall into tonight, and you get a ticket to the Patrick Zweig extravaganza tomorrow?”

You laugh at that, a sharp, amused ha, because that’s certainly some audacity he’s got on him.

“Slow down there, cowboy,” you say, and you’re smiling. “You get a sofa pull out couch to fall into.”

Patrick’s face swims with feigned despair at your words, a mock-offended noise leaving his mouth. “I thought this was a mutually beneficial arrangement,” he says, a picture of exaggerated disappointment. “I scratch your back, you scratch mine.”

You sputter a laugh. “I’m letting you stay in my room,” you remind him. “Free of charge, might I add. I think I’m scratching your back plenty.”

His eyes widen. He gives a dramatic sigh. He says wow like he just can’t believe it. He pretends to sulk. But the twinkle in his eyes ruthlessly betrays his amusement. “Okay,” he nods, like he’s doing something very big of himself, “Okay. I’ll take the couch. I’ll be good. It’s just a shame such a beautiful woman will be sleeping all alone in a massive bed.”

Something hot definitely flares deep in your gut, burning away all the guilt and concern and embarrassment and whatever else. There is something to being called beautiful by a man who looks like… well, like him. You’re not above admitting that he is becoming increasingly more handsome with passing time, like his face is blooming and ebbing and flowing before you. And that weird, vaguely unshowered musk is making your nostrils flare with something primordial.

“You’ll survive,” you say dryly, though your heart is back to thumping like a heavy fist.

The sound of the shower running is a vague cloud of pitterpattering, an ambient thrum, and you can hear the water rushing through the pipes behind the wall like a faraway steam engine.

You’re sat against the headboard, your nuclear reactor of a work laptop balanced on your knees, the fan whirring, the bottom permeating your skin with a volcanic heat and probably giving you radiation poisoning. You’re typing like a court stenographer, a sharp, erratic clacking of your nails against the keys, accompanied by the muted rush of waterflow from the next room over. You’re traversing the minefield of your emails. The light of the computer screen casts a pale, eldritch glow on your features, your brows creasing in irritation as you quickly scan and delete all your accumulated unreads.

You’re still in your tights, skirt, and button down, but now you’ve untucked the button down as well. You’re still sweating. The room is still a tepid rat hole. And it’s washed in the warm dingy glow of the beside lamp.

The only other light in the room comes from the ensuite bathroom, the door slightly ajar, leaking out a bright white beam that illuminates the swooping, swirling streams of mist that flow out.

You think the water pressure here’s a bit aggressive, but Patrick nearly sheds a tear when the sharp stream of hot water thrashes against the aches and knots in his muscles.

His whole body is sore. He sometimes feels like an earthbound corpse. It isn’t just the hours spent in his car, but it’s also the ardour of the matches, the unheard of notion of a good meal. The stress and toil of his lifestyle has taken its due toll on his flesh and bones, and here, in the shower, haloed by the thick fog of water vapour, he allows himself a moment of vulnerability.

The water sluices through his hair, emulsifying with the soap and sweat, creating a slick, frothy, chalky-floral scented trail down his face, chest, and arms. He lathers himself everywhere with the little motel bar soap until it is the size of a coin.

He braces himself against the shower wall for a moment, jaw slack and breathing laboured, letting the water batter his shoulders, feeling the muscles there tighten and loosen simultaneously under the hot, cascading stream. The steam and the heat seem to soothe something inside of him, and, for the briefest moment, he feels something approaching peace.

So Patrick is having his spiritual awakening in the shower, and you’re at the mercy of your emails. Deleting messages from your boss about the meeting notes and potential follow ups.

And Patrick spends the first ten minutes in there making unholy sorts of noises, like his skin is being torn off, which is a little disconcerting, but you figure he’s not had a nice long shower in a while, so you leave him be. And the next five minutes are just heavy breathing. And then he starts singing.

“It’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall!”

Which would be fine, but your irritation’s mounting; each new communication in your inbox serves as a needling reminder of the tragic, tedious day you’ve just had. The tragic, tedious life you've been living.

You rub your temples, and Patrick’s singing the guitar refrain of the song, and you’re trying to ease your burgeoning headache, but it’s proving stubborn. The more you read, the more you just want to thwack something. Or scream. Or both.

And so it is bad timing when Patrick emerges from the bathroom.

You’d been expecting an awkward moment. He seems the type to wear his towels irredeemably low on his waist and you weren’t particularly keen on knowing the intimate distribution of all his body hair.

But Patrick walks out in something else.

Patrick walks out in a baby blue Hello Kitty robe.

Patrick walks out in your baby blue Hello Kitty robe.

And you’re pretty sure your blood turns molten.

Your eyes widen like saucers, and your lips part softly. It is certainly both the most absurd and, perhaps, endearing thing you’ve ever seen, and you feel almost strange and lightheaded at the sight. You’d been imagining all sorts of stilted scenarios in your head, but this… this is beyond any of those.

“What… the hell are you wearing?” you manage to sputter, your chest kindling with both embarrassment and amusement.

Patrick glances down at the robe.

You’ve had it since you were nineteen, is the thing, and it only just fits you now, so, naturally, it looks absolutely comical on him. The sleeves come up to his midforearm. The hem is immodest, to say the least, rivalling his shorts in that regard. And the plush belt only just about encircles his waist, but he had the decency to tie a tiny knot at the front.

He looks back up at you. He seems remarkably nonchalant.

“Ah, this?” he says. “I thought it was, like, a complimentary thing. Y’know, like the little shampoo bottles?”

And he has the nerve to add a little shrug for effect, though, when you look closer, you can see the corners of his mouth are twitching slightly with suppressed laughter.

You don’t know whether to laugh or cry. A possessive part of you—well, the possessive part of you—wants to incinerate the robe with him in it, because he’s definitely naked under there. You can see the damp hair on his chest peeking out from the neckline, and water runs in rivulets down his legs, dripping on the carpet, and he’s getting your robe wet.

But the image of him raiding the bathroom, thinking he’d found some sort of freebie, is so strange and amusing.

You raise an eyebrow, trying to keep a straight face.

“You thought the motel—this motel, Sunny Skies motel—gives out Hello Kitty robes as complimentary items?”

Patrick grins in response. He is utterly thrilled with the effect he is having on you.

“Hey, Hello Kitty is a timeless icon,” he says.

And your eye twitches. You feel a little deranged.

“Yeah,” you say, enunciating sharply, eyes still a little wide, and you slowly move the laptop from off your knees, “That’s why I bought the robe.”

“You know, you’re not a very generous hostess,” he says, like he’s been sitting on the grievance for a while.

You release a laugh that is halfway a winded breath, “Oh, really?” because he’s not exactly getting a five star guest review on AirBnB either.

Patrick he tsks and nods slowly like he’s sad to break the news. And he saunters around the poky room, hands hiked high in the pockets of the robe.

He gives an exaggerated onceover, inspecting the room, before his gaze settles on you. You are now cross legged, leaning forward, your laptop immolating in front of you as your fingers fly across the keyboard.

"Can't believe this place actually has a TV," he muses, walking over to the small, ancient box. He glances at the remote, lifts it, and turns the TV on. A bright red screen flashes No Signal.

"Nevermind." He flops down on the edge of the bed next to you. "What’re you doing?”

You suppress an eyeroll, or violent screech, or spontaneous second degree murder at his question.

He knows what you're doing, but he's clearly itching for some sort of attention, a stray pawing at the restaurant door in search of warmth. And you wonder how long it’s been since he’s spent so much time with someone. You're a little hesitant to indulge him, partly because you're still processing your callously stolen garment and all the flesh with which it’s become familiar.

"Email," you say tersely. "Work stuff."

"Oh, right, right," Patrick nods and nods, as though only now realising that you're in the middle of a task.

He peers over your laptop screen, looking at the rows of email threads.

"Looks stressful," he comments.

You spare him a glance. His proximity is a tangible, intrusive thing, and robe gapes open, exposing a damp triangle of his chest and collarbone, his bare feet crossed at the ankles.

“Yeah,” you say, not even bothering to sheathe the irritation in your voice. “It is.”

For his part, he seems unfazed by your tone, or at least not willing to acknowledge it. He continues to peer at the screen, a hint of amusement dancing in his eyes.

And you don’t know why, but you feel a strange, singeing humiliation at his scrutiny. You and your stupid mire of spiritdecimating emails. You feel pathetic enough to belong in a museum. An abstract sculpture portraying modern melancholy.

“Can you not... stare, please?” you croak, then clear your throat, your fingers against the keys growing jerky and feverish, like the sputtering adrenaline of something soon to perish. “I need to finish this.”

“Sure, sure.”

Patrick holds up his hands in surrender.

He looks around the room for a moment, as though contemplating his next move, and when he seizes beside you, like he’s just spotted a motion-activated grenade, it is so noticeable that it actually makes you stop typing and look up. He is facing away from you, is the thing.

There's a moment of silence. You watch his back. It looks like he’s not even breathing. The hum of the laptop fan and the low drone of the TV and the thick, tepid waft of the ventilation system compete with each other.

Slowly, slowly, as though you, too, have spotted the bomb, and you’re bracing yourself for flakspray, you look over his shoulder. And oh. Oh.

You see what has arrested his attention.

On the bedside table is a little black cardboard to-go box, Meyer’s Butcher & Grill printed atop in block lettering.

You blink. You had forgotten about the box completely. A relic of a day you hope will be extracted irrevocably from the flesh of your cerebral matter via some sort of alien abduction or government experiment.

But Patrick—well—he hadn’t been tightly shutting his legs as the polished toe of a hoary businessman conspicuously crept up his shin. He didn’t have to feign interest in golf for three hours while a cracked leather seat scraped the back of his knee.

No, Patrick is looking at that box like it houses nirvana. When he leans forward a bit, you can see how his throat moves involuntarily. He swallows. You see the muscles in his jaw flex with primal intensity.

For a moment, neither of you speak. The moment is heavy with tension, like the air before a storm.

And this seems to be an apt metaphor, because there is suddenly a deep noise, like the sky churning after thunder. And it is coming from his body. And it is such a loud, visceral noise of human urgency that you almost recoil.

A strange mix of shame and pity swell in your throat. The box, as it were, had filled you with such a strange sort of repulsed nostalgia that you really had let it slip your memory. You have no interest in its contents. But this man’s raw response rekindles the abject guilt in your tummy.

Patrick turns to you. He turns to you very slowly. And you can see how his eyes are almost glazed over. He wears the look of a man staring at the Holy Grail. A tentative shock, like he’s been marooned on a deserted island for a dozen years, and has just stumbled upon civilisation.

He opens his mouth. His jaw is slack and leaden. His tongue pools with saliva. And if a string of drool slips past his lip, it’s the least you can do not to mention it.

After a while, he manages thickly, “What… uh. What is that?”

“It’s, uh… steak. From the restaurant.”

He nods. He nods very slowly. As though he’s been rendered physically incapable of saying any more, though his words come suddenly, “Steak?”

“Uh, yeah. Filet mignon, I think. The… fucking… guy ordered it, but…” you feel, in a fleeting moment, a feral sort of fear, like a fawn caught alone by a wolf in the forest. And it’s silly, obviously, but that’s how intense his gaze is right now. You clear your throat, “I mean, I’m not hungry.”

Patrick’s breathing is growing increasingly laboured. His tongue flicks out of his mouth, the wet muscle glistening in the dim light.

A moment passes.

“You can, uh…” you hesitate, a bit transfixed by his carnal hunger, your voice sounding oddly fragile, “You can have it… if you want…”

Patrick's eyes flicker almost imperceptibly at this. And you’re sitting there, and you expect him to just go ahead, and, maybe, in the background of your mind, you feel bad that the meal’s gone cold.

But he’s not eating. No, he’s suddenly become very still, as though waiting. As though trying to discern your sincerity.

"Are you sure… you don’t want it?" he asks.

And there is something about his voice, small and corporeal. It sends a strange, hurtful waft of pity through your chest. It sounds like it’s been scraped over barbed wire. It is raw and vulnerable and painful.

And you have the sense that, even if you did say no—which you wouldn’t—he has the look in his eye of someone who will definitely end up eating that steak, one way or another.

You shake your head, clearing your throat, “No, no, of course not. Take it. Please. It’ll just go to waste.” And your voice is sort of coloured by the notion that you’re on the verge of tears.

For a moment, Patrick's reaction is oddly unreadable. It's as though he can't quite believe his luck. And then, he turns, scrambling for the box as though it may spontaneously disappear now that it’s his.

He tears the lid off and, from here, his face looks cast in strange shadows, a shimmer flickering past his face as the low lamplight catches the foil in the carton.

There is something about the instant greasy, bloody aroma that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. You’ve never liked steak. But he's already reaching inside.

Patrick can’t seem to chew quickly enough. He almost whines softly with each swallow.

It’s an animalic scene of consumption.

You think of hyenas mauling their prey, but he also looks very small, and vulnerable, and certainly odd, because he’s still wearing your robe.

He devours the meat voraciously, and he doesn’t even bother to wipe away the stream of red dribbling down his chin, but he has the decency to hold the box right under his chin so he doesn’t make a mess.

His fingers are covered in blood and mashed potatoes. There’s a little plastic container of chimichurri in the corner of the box, but he seems content ignoring it.

You have a strange sense that this whole ordeal is something you shouldn’t even be watching. And that, when a loud knock sounds at the door, you should be sort of embarrassed, but you don’t know why.

“Maintenance.” The man at the door seems so bored as to be disgusted. He towers over you, and is peering down, arm resting against the doorframe. He is gnashing open mouthed upon a wad of gum.

You are suddenly conscious of your dishevelled appearance, and find yourself scrambling to button your shirt up.

“Um?” you say, skewing your face a bit confusedly as you slip the buttons closed.

You let your sleeves roll down, the rumpled flare of the open cuffs falling over your wrists.

“Air conditioning maintenance,” the man repeats, as though you are a bit dense. You notice, now, he has a friend behind him.

And, “Oh!” you say, “Right, yeah, the air conditioning, the thermostats showing 60, but the air’s still hot.”

He blinks down at you, his head lolling to the side, and he tongues the inside of his cheek. His arms are big as boulders and tattoo strewn.

“You try resetting it?” he says.

Your jaw clenches.

“Yes,” you smile tightly. “It’s still not working.”

He harrumphs and then sort of coughs loudly and then sniffs, “Yeah,” he drawls, “we been getting a lot of complaints.”

“Lotta complaints,” he friend chimes boredly, tugging up the sagging waistband of his comically oversized grease stained jeans. He is idly twirling a screwdriver.

And then the one in front, the larger one, flicks his gaze over you. And then over your shoulder. He seems vaguely disinterested, for his part, in the story behind your blowsy, tousled appearance, and the half naked man tearing into a steak takeout in a Hello Kitty robe behind you. You figure working in a motel begets much stranger sightings, but you cringe to think of the conclusions he may be drawing. A disillusioned businesswoman and her famished prostitute? Does he think the robe gets you going? You shake your head of the embarrassment.

"Ah... ma'am," he utters, shoving his hands into the pockets of his faded overalls. "You and... your friend need to vacate the room for about twenty minutes while we work on the unit."

Outside, Patrick strikes his chest two times and manages a distasteful burp.

A draught sweeps past and the hem of the robe he’s still wearing sways dangerously. You aren’t even wearing your shoes. The soft soles of your feet lay flat against the warm tar through the thin gauze of your tights.

You’re holding the Coors can, still unopened, warm to the touch between your fingers, and Patrick’s got a cigarette he bummed off one of the workers between his lips.

“Nice outfit,” the guy had said—the shorter one, with the baggy jeans and crew cut and scar on his temple.

“Thanks,” Patrick had grinned, unashamed.

“Are you supposed to be smoking?” you ask.

The night is sticky in the mouth, sultry and thin, like a yawn.

The candescent red pearl of the cigarette’s end bobs with Patrick’s each inhale. The smoke curls past his lips like wisps of grey fog, the humid wind carrying them off like fragments of a weary conscience.

Patrick shrugs. Inhales deeply, his eyes trained lazily on the sky above.

You’re far enough from him, now, that when you look at him, he’s a strange tableau all on his own. This boy not yet a man, scantily wrapped in vivid blue, his too long legs and too large feet and too farfetchedness. He stands against the hellscape of Sunny Skies. Sickly yelloworange streetlights casting looming shadows that writhe like living things on the ground.

His lips and fingers still glean with the greased detritus of his cold steak dinner.

“Night before a match?” you ask then, and you find yourself following his gaze heavenward. The sky is effectively starless, but you appreciate the deep shade of indigo. “Doesn’t seem smart.”

“Smart,” he echoes.

He reaches up to pinch the cigarette, takes another drag before tugging it off his lips and flicking some ash off. You watch how the smouldering grey specks float down to the ground before dissolving into nothing.

When you look up at him he is looking at you.

“It’s not Wimbledon,” he says, like he’s breaking the news to you, a meandering coil of smoke swirling from his now halfway smirking mouth, the plume veiling the dim streetlight glow in an almost tender way. His voice is kind of loud, when he’s speaking to you now, because there’s a few feet of parking lot between you, but it’s quiet enough that he could just talk normally, if he wanted. But he doesn’t. He says, loudly, pointing at you with the brilliant orange end of the cigarette, “Helps me relax.”

He shrugs again, brings it to his lips again, and slowly turns around. And you think he’s hiding, but he’s made a full rotation by the time he exhales, the smoke streaming out his lazy smile and billowing all around his face, so you suppose not.

“It’s mostly a mental game,” he says, gesturing with the cig again, bringing it close to his temple in a way that makes your brows knot in slight concern, “Tennis. I could be the most disciplined guy ever—“

The concern in your furrowed brows turns to dubiousness. “Could you?”

“—could cut out drinking, cut out smoking, eat all the green shit, sleep at nine. But if I’m fuckin’ pulling my hair out about stepping onto a court, I’m fucked.”

You think he has a point. You think you remember a therapist, at some point, saying something about compartmentalising. But you don’t really know what that means. You stopped seeing her after three sessions, anyway, so who are you to cast judgement on discipline.

Still, “Where did you say you’re ranked again?”

Patrick chuckles at that, a slight nod as if to say touché. He takes another deep drag, the ember smoldering bright for a moment before the smoke spills past his lips again.

“Two hundred and one,” he says, and he’s ostensibly unwounded by this sentiment.

“Not exactly Federer or Djokovic,” you say, and it seems like he’s strolling towards you now.

“You want a good show tomorrow?” he says, hiking a hand into the waisthigh pocket of the robe.

“Oh, I expect one.”

He pauses, closer now. Cocks his head at the can in your hands.

“You want that?”

You snort, hide it behind your back as though he’s got object impermanence.

“You can have it if I see you win tomorrow.”

Patrick scrunches his nose up at this, like a kid who’s smelled something nasty and doesn’t know how to keep it off his face, but he’s really just considering, and maybe disgruntled at the dissipation of your giving mood. But he tilts his head to the side, raising his brows like he’s conceding.

Then, looking down at the robe.

“You want this?”

You laugh, “Yes?” you say, like it’s obvious.

But he seems surprised, “Still?”

“Yes!”

“I’m naked!”

“I’ll run it through wash twelve times. It’s mine.”

He throws his head back, making a real show at being putout by this. A protracted groan of longsuffering leaves his lips.

And now you’re really laughing. “You can buy your own with your prize money. Warm beer and a new robe, that’s the height of luxury.”

He takes his hand out of the pocket, claps it hard against his chest as if wounded, and his lips shape around the cigarette in a way that’s almost artful. He takes a long, terminal inbreathe. Drops the cig. Crushes it beneath the sole of his foot. Faces away, and all you see is a large, cascading cloud, swishing away from him and out into the night.

“First my beer,” he turns around, “Then my robe. What next? My car keys? You’re gonna take my car keys and hold them hostage until I win.”

You make a face of sort of abject disbelief, though you’re still smiling.

“My beer,” you say, slowly, like you’re speaking a different language, eyes still sort of manic with the shock of his gall, “And my robe.”

The robe in question is now halfway open, but then he seems unconcerned with modesty. The dark hair on his chest looks almost silver beneath the street lights, the faint glimmers of water still clinging to his skin catching aglow.

“That’s a real shame,” he says, and he’s walking towards you, the hand he had slapped in his chest to show you how you’d spurned him now stroking the soft material of the robe with a carelessness that borders on intimacy, “I feel like it brings out my eyes. Don’t you think it brings out my eyes?”

Your gaze flicks from the robe, to his eyes, and back again. He’s standing in front of you now, and he’s sort of towering over you. He has an ease when he moves, like a stray cat or a rogue cowboy. Or something else. You suppose you can’t think of it.

“You can get another blue robe, Patrick.”

He shuts his eyes. He’s savouring your saying his name, or mourning the robe, or both. But probably the latter with how his fingers caress the lapel.

“One that fits, maybe. Definitely one with a higher thread cou… nt.” You hesitate. Because he’s singing again.

“Oh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?” he’s doing something with his face; something like he’s trying to feign a compelling hurt, but he’s smiling too hard. “What’ll you do now, my darling young one?”

You laugh, and he’s close enough to you that when your head falls forward it hits his shoulder, and your nose brushes against a plush outline of Hello Kitty, and he smells like cigarettes and motel soap and—well—you because of the robe.

“I’m going back out before the rain starts a falling! And it’s a hard—”

“Okay,” you say, because he’s getting louder, but you’re still laughing and grinning wildly.

“It’s a hard—sing it with me—it’s a…”

He holds the note. His eyes are still closed. You roll your eyes and you don’t step away from him, and you’re still holding the beer behind your back.

Your voice is low, but, “A hard rain’s gonna fall,” you supply grudgingly—well, you’re still smiling—and he throws his arm around your shoulder and pulls you against him and sings, loudly,

“It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall!”

“Okay,” you say again, pushing away from him, and having to sort of extricate yourself from his hold by slipping beneath his arm. “Very nice, you want some cash?”

“Whatever you can spare,” he says.

And you’re so intrigued by the way he looks at you. He has the sort of face that demands to be catalogued in intimate detail. His eyes crinkle at the corners now, in a way that makes them look almost wolfish.

“I love tennis,” he says, and he says it loudly, because you’re seven feet apart in an empty parking lot, and it makes it seem like he’s declaring something.

An empty Funyuns packet drifts by like a tumbleweed.

“What?”

“I love tennis. That’s why I do it.” He seems resentful, but resigned.

You hesitate, but when you open your mouth to speak again, he beats you to it,

“Doesn’t love me back though,” he’s shaking his head, sporting a huge rueful smile that seems to coruscate in the night, “Doesn’t love me back.” He huffs a sigh. “Story of my life.”

Across the lot, the two maintenance men emerge from your room.

Inside, the air conditioner blows frigid.

You're starting to think everything isn't half bad. You're a good person, letting a homeless man crash on the pull out couch in your dingy motel room, and you leave New Rochelle tomorrow. At this rate, you should extend an olive branch to Deirdre.

You brush your teeth. You change into your pyjamas, the satin of which Patrick is a little disappointed to see a lack of Hello Kitty printed on, but he doesn’t mention it.

He himself is now wearing a T-shirt, and a pair of boxers, and if he quite literally kissed the robe goodbye when he gave it back to you, then you don’t mention it.

And now he’s sprawled on the pull out couch, a thin sheet draped across his lower half. And you’re cross legged on the bed, the duvet gathered around you, and you’re doing your NYT word games because that’s part of your nighttime routine, even though you tell people it’s tea or reading or yoga. This is kind of like reading. You have to think about stuff.

What’s a five letter word that means ‘has a lingering soreness’?

Anyway, so, Patrick is sitting—kind of halfway laying—on the pull out couch. One arm behind his head and the other across his chest. And he’s wearing an expression that’s both intense and a little vacant, like he’s trying to read your mind.

Or like he’s having a silent argument with himself.

Or he’s just tired.

Yes, definitely tired, you think. His eyelids flutter, like they’re desperately trying to stay half open, and he’s sort of drifting in and out of awareness.

He’s quiet for a while, staring wearily into the ceiling like it houses the solutions to all the world’s problems.

And then he closes his eyes fully, and rubs the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.

Your own gaze follows that hand, his right hand—the hand not behind his head—the one that falls from his face back onto his chest, the one that’s rubbing his sternum like he hasn’t had a good sleep in years.

And he can tell that you’re staring. So he clears his throat and opens his eyes, catching yours. And you look away instantly. Maybe a little too quickly. Certainly a little too guiltily.

He smirks. He knows he’s caught you. And you keep your eyes averted, because you know that he knows. But you can feel his stare still on you. And you can sense a kind of curiosity in it.

Earlier when he’d said it—just a shame such a beautiful woman will be sleeping all alone in a massive bed—you’d laughed. You’d laughed it off. And you’d taken a bit of pride in being the sort of strong, independent woman who cannot be charmed into sharing a bed with a stranger.

But that had been then, and now it is—well—now, and the pull out couch, in retrospect, looks firm as stone. And here you are, sitting in this (comparatively, which must be emphasised) comfy bed, and, not for the first time, you feel like a heartless cow.

There are rings around his eyes, dark shadows like bruised flesh. And there’s just this look to him—something weary, but not just in that way that says he hasn’t been taking care of himself. It’s more an aching kind of weariness that’s sunk into the very marrow of his bones.

Patrick is watching you as your eyes flit from the bed, to him, and back to the bed. His eyes follow yours. The way he looks at you is vivid and penetrating. It makes you feel like he’s seeing all of you. But he still looks like he’s struggling to figure something out.

He lets his gaze linger for a moment longer, and then he sits up and leans forward, elbows resting on his knees and hands hanging limply between his legs.

Looking at the way his shoulders are hunched over and the way his neck kind of juts out when he cranes his head forward is kind of reminding you of a pigeon. Or maybe a falcon. No, probably a pigeon. But a handsome, scruffy, feral little pigeon, maybe. And you’re staring at him, trying not to focus too closely on any one part of him.

He rubs the back of his neck, lets his shoulders sag, and looks back at you, and now he has this kind of pleading look on his face.

And you can’t tell if it’s genuine or if he’s faking it to get what he wants, but there’s that veritable exhaustion in his eyes that’s making him look so vulnerable.

And so you say, “Get in the bed, Patrick,” and you say it like he’s been sitting there begging you relentlessly, even though this is the quietest he’s been all night.

He’s surprised. Surprised that you’ve suggested it, but that it was more a statement than a question. And he’s studying you intently again, and he’s trying to figure you out, and you’re trying to figure him out, and there’s a tension in the air that was there before but feels heavier now.

And he looks like he’s about to protest, like he’s going to put up some sort of token fight, but then he nods and says, “Uh, yeah, that’d be great, yeah,” and the relief in his voice is clear.

He scoots off the couch and walks towards you in these slow, silent strides, and when he’s standing in front of you, you look up at him—you forget, whenever he recedes, that he’s quite so tall—and he looks down at you, and there’s something expectant in his gaze, like he’s waiting for you to tell him that you were kidding, and he’s bracing himself for it.

His eyes flickering all over your face, you can see his individual lashes, and the freckle on his lip, the faint lines around his eyes, the way his nose is a little crooked, and you have to really look up at him, and that makes you feel a little small, a little vulnerable, and then he says,

“You’re serious,” like he just doesn’t believe you, like what he really wants to say is you’re shitting me, but he’s too tired not to be polite.

And you shrug. And you nod. Just once. A little nod, but it’s sincere. He can tell it’s sincere.

You do the stupid, twenty-year-old, wall-of-pillows thing. Because you refuse to go top-to-toe when he’s just been outside barefoot.

You peek your head over the pillows, like a child looking over the wall between two neighbouring gardens, and you look down at him. And he looks up at you.

He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly through his nose, but he doesn’t break eye contact.

You’re a little unnerved by how unblinking he is, but you don’t look away either, and you both just sort of linger there silently for a few moments more.

“What time do you need to be there tomorrow?”

And he looks away a second and furrows his brow in thought.

“Eight,” he says, and he looks back up at you, and you can tell that he’s trying to stay awake.

“I’ll wake you up at six,” you tell him, playing with a loose thread on the pillow, and you’re whispering very quietly like you and he are the last two kids up at a sleepover, “Maybe six thirty. I wanna shower first. Then we can go get breakfast, we can get, like—McMuffins or something. Then we’ll go to the country club.”

And he does something like a nod, though it’s a hardly discernible motion, and his blinks are getting longer with every beat. You don’t know if you should say more, so you just wait a moment, and he’s still staring at you. He’s still looking at you like that. His jaw a little bit slack. He looks a little less present each time he blinks, his eyes closing a little longer each time, and his eyelids are drooping.

But he’s got that look like he’s trying to read your mind. And then his brows sort of twitch.

And you give him a suspicious look and whisper, “What?”

But he just lets out a heavy breath of a laugh and gives a little shake of his head. And he’s got a small, amused smile on his face as his eyes fall shut, like he’s thinking, if you only knew.

#challengers #challengers fic #challengers 2024 #patrick zweig #patrick zweig x reader #patrick zweig x you #patrick zweig apologist #‘zweig’ is also five letters #patrick zweig and his dickensian grade poverty #he genuinely had it so grim #in fact i shed a tear #peter zeppelin #sally the motel receptionist #microsoft teams #hello kitty #bumfuck new rochelle #bitchy coworker deirdre #twitter is still canonically twitter because this is 2019

202 notes · View notes

pparacxosm · 3 months ago

Text

wounded in

(blue-eyed son part 2: electric boogaloo !!!! ; (hate to be that gal but you may have to read the first bit for context); homeless era!patrick zweig x jaded businesswoman!reader; nonlinear narrative; tw office job; tw coworkers; tw mcdonald’s; the sound of music stuff is for myself; i fucking love sound of music; and i fucking love cats (the animal not the musical, though that's lovely too) so there’s that; pushing a patrick zweig can’t spell agenda; tw new england maybe; i gave new rochelle a better rap this time; kiss scene kindaaaa ??..? ; tashi coaching patrick after new rochelle is canon to me; tw descriptions of emojis; what if i told you there’s a part 3; then what)

You hold in a bout of laughter when Patrick brings the drinks to the table.

His hair is longer than the last time you saw him, which wasn’t that long ago, in scale. In bones, in feels like a while.

Dear old New Rochelle. Far enough out that the city is a twinkle on the horizon like a cluster of stars, far enough that there are some actual stars above you, now. It’s odd to see him in New England. It’s odd to see him in jeans. But then it’s September.

There are new lines on his face already. He’s aging quicker now, as if to make a point.

Drinks are on me,

Is the first thing Patrick told you, when you walked in in a juniper parka. Scanned the room, picked out his booth.

Is this the part where you tell me you’ve opened a savings account? you said, trying to seem completely blasé about it. It would have been childish to be thrilled by such meagre chivalry at twentyeight. I feel like I should pay, you’re in my city.

Yeah, but you’ve hosted me enough for now.

That’s what you are, half the time. A host to him.

A museum. Thumbing through a rolodex of all the different shades of blue his eyes could go in one humid night.

You pass on more nights out than you accede to. You got a cat. You’re getting LASIK soon. But what it really looks like is that you’re wearing glasses to show that time has passed.

“What’re you smiling about?” Patrick asks, placing the foamy mug of beer in front of you.

You wipe discreetly under your eyes, spreading the mascara smudge. “Just thinking about how my aweinspiring generosity has rescued you from the misery of total squalor.”

Patrick chuckles. “Well, they say to pay it forward.” He sounds pleased as he lifts his own mug with a wink.

You look out the window. There’s a film of dust on it. There’s dust on the faux-chintz curtains too.

You start to wonder if that’s what he really thinks. That this is him going forward.

Patrick picks up the plastic menu. “We ordering sidedishes or do we want a full dinner? What’s good in Wellesley?”

You try to laugh, though the noise has the distinct tender hue of a sob. But you’re sure you feel mostly fine. “What are you doing here?”

“Hm?”

“What are you doing in Wellesley?”

Patrick looks up at you with bright, twinkling eyes. “Challenger in Boston. Thought it’d be a waste not to come see you.”

You clench your jaw to prevent more runny mascara. It’s stupid. You don’t much like waste either. But you’re not going to weep in front of Patrick like a child.

“You hungry?”

You nod, picking up your own menu, hiding your face behind it.

His hand reaches suddenly across the table, trying to touch yours. You pull away, but make it look like you didn’t.

“Bet you had a hard time leaving Tobes for the night,” he says, trying to lift the mood.

“Um yeah. A little. I like to imagine what she gets up to when I’m away.”

“My sister had a cat, when we were young. My sister was, like, seventeen, and I was eight, so pretty big gap.”

Because he has to clarify those sorts of things. Because you don’t know he has a sister. You don’t know anything.

You find it hard to picture him pinned down in any humane way. It’s always his beautiful leg (now sheathed in denim) writhing in a bear trap. Always his papery wings unfurled and pinned against a picture frame like a butterfly. Something metamorphosed. Something capable of a great change, and that must be tortured for it.

“She found the cat in an alleyway. She called it Patrick.”

You lift your eyes. You feel it bubbling in you like magma, the urge to coo. You feel all soft these days. And maybe that’s just open heart season, and the passage of time. But you see a vivid meridian in your life, and it falls right along the night you met this guy. And this back half is all soft, so you sort of want to blame him.

You swallow.

“Well, that’s sweet.”

Patrick lowers the menu. “Nope,” he shakes his head, that huge smirk on his face, like his name is on every ticket of the raffle, like he’s cheating at something. “Let me tell you what she used to do. She used to put the fucker in, like, a blanket, right? And she’d lift it up like a sack, with him inside, and he’d obviously start clawing and making all of these noises—“

He makes the noises. Just starts whipping his head around and making kitten growls, imitating this cat with his name. You get the sense that this is one of those anecdotes that explains a lot about a person.

“—And she’d come into my room, in, like, the middle of the night—this is real psycho shit—and she’d lift my covers and drop the cat. And the shit would fucking claw at me and bite me, just—“

He’s doing the noises again. And now he’s clawing at the air with his hands.

He stops, and the way he closes his mouth around his grin makes his teeth look like they’re trying to escape past his lips. But it looks sort of lovely.

“When the fuck died, Saskia texted me. She was like, oh, he loved you so much, you should’ve said goodbye.” He pauses, widens his eyes, looks at you with the pointed intimacy of sharing in this ludicrousness.

You roll your eyes. But you catch yourself smiling. You like the idea of him being mauled like that, skin deep. You get the sense that life has done to him a lot of that—those growls and scratches. And that sounds a little fucked. But what you like about it is how he seems so unmoved now, by this psycho shit. This flailing animal, this torture device. Pinning him down. He's laughing.

You try to imagine him as a child, but the proportions are all comically bizarre, in your mind’s eye.

“Pork chops,” you say, throwing the menu aside. “I feel like stuffing my face.”

Patrick gets three sausage egg McMuffins on the way to the New Rochelle Country Club—and fries, and a hash, and a soda—and he’s eating the second by the time you pull out of the drivethru.

There is a compelling sense of chaos to how he drives. Like, he’s so bad at driving. Three different people honk at him in a dozenminute window. And you feel content knowing that whatever had had your heart thumping last night has not shrivelled and died with the morningtime. Though now it’s maybe a partial distress for your safety. But you get the sense that, maybe, this is actually the person you are now. The woman who sleeps beside a rugged stranger and buys him breakfast and doesn’t care how he speaks with his mouth open while he’s eating the fries. Doesn’t care about the writhing mire of half chewed potato on his tongue. The way his lips gleam pink with salt.

“I need to listen to really specific music to, like, get in the zone? If you don’t mind?”

He sounds so uncharacteristically shy, for brief a moment. You have to lean forward and look to see he isn’t joking. He isn't.

“Uh— yeah, of course. It’s your car.”

He slides a Sound of Music soundtrack disc into the mouth of the dashboard.

You laugh so hard you fold over.

He’s got one hand on the wheel, and shifts is his seat, peeling the unfamiliarly clean skin of his thighs off the leather before sitting back down. He’s tearing into his third breakfast sandwich with a reckless abandon reserved for death row. He laughs around the bite, glancing, bemused, between you and the road, and, ultimately, spending more time looking at you.

“What?” he laughs around a halfmasticated mouthful. “What?”

There are tears sluicing down your face. You can’t breathe. You think you can, and then you start laughing again, and you can’t.

“How do you solve a problem like Maria?” Patrick hums cheerily as he noshes. It’s a gross and wonderful noise, the food moving between his teeth, circumventing Hammerstein.

You think the large coke is probably no performance enhancer, not only because he all but tumbles out of the car when it’s hardly halfway parked (poorly, you’ll add).

“Fuck, need to piss,” he says frenetically.

When you know the notes to sing…, carols Julie Andrews.

You’re still laughing. Crying. Your tummy fluttering painfully.

Patrick makes you order dessert too, since you’re celebrating.

Celebrating what? you had to ask, though, at the time, you were wearing an impish, knowing, frankly celebratory sort of smile.

Patrick feigned great offense. He said, I’m fucking here, aren’t I?

He wants you to have sundaes together. You spill some ice cream on your skirt. He finds that funny. He’s always got this weasel smile, like he’s constantly ready for amusement. He’s shaved, at some point between now and then. The hairs on his face are sparser. The skin on his face looks milky and organic like a crinite litchifruit.

The frumpy diner was his idea too.

He’s spent some time on the veritable extremes of the economic spectrum—that’s what life tends to be for him; veritable extremes, scratching him meanly—and now he just wants to play at being the average wage earner.

“You really are welcome to stay with me, if you’d like.”

Patrick looks at you like he’d rather shoot himself.

You sort of marvel at his sense of pride, as if it were a rare stone, swallowing light and spewing it out at all angles. The Sociology course you took in uni had a whole two modules on personal pride. It is one of the few emotions that are unique to humans.

Patrick—for his weasel smile and beastly hunger and feline anti—is remarkably proficient in being human. In the real, visceral parts of it. In wielding his emotions like kaleidoscope hues. Dancing freely in confinement.

“When are you leaving?”

“Don’t worry about that. If you have time for breakfast tomorrow, we can—”

“Mm, not tomorrow, I don’t think. But I have no plans this weekend.”

You say it with this weird, bright intonation, like you’re jesting. Which—a lot of things feel like a bit of a joke these days. But he seems to understand you well enough. Delivers a curt, unspurned nod, and even a smile. Not the weasley, chronicling one. The wolfish one that makes his eyes crinkle up.

“Come here then,” he says.

Patrick leans in for a hug. You can’t avoid it. He enfolds you in a fascinatingly soft, burning embrace. He still smells sort of musky and acrid. Like even though he can shower regularly now, he maybe doesn’t as often as he should. But you find a gross comfort that. This pleasantly fetid, human man. His cologne smells like a wine cellar.

He says, “It’s nice to see you again.”

Something churns in your belly. Maybe the pork chops. Maybe the ice cream. This whole fucking day. You accidentally deleted some files and IT spent five hours trying to help you unsheathe them from oblivion. You felt like a failure. And now you’re here and,

“Fuck, you’re still so cool.”

You push away from him with a forceful laugh.

You used to be able to tell your sister all kinds of things. But, lately, you haven’t been able to talk to anyone about anything.

Working so many years for a soulless corporate hive mind has turned you into an expert at short, polite, and meaningless feedback that only varies with inflection.

“Right”, “Sure”, “Got it”, “Whatever you think is best”, “Already on it”.

Half the time you sound illiterate. The other half, you sound like you could have written Prozac Nation.

When your sister asks, how was New Rochelle? she expects you to say something annoyingly vague and ominous in your cool, collected adjunct’s voice, like: Everything is under control.

But, instead, you say, “Do you and Mark still go to mass? I really want to start giving more of myself away.” And you’re wearing this smile that’s utterly sincere.

That’s what spooks your sister.

Of course, you want to tell her more. Because your sister married a Herman Melville character; one of those grizzly, stinky, sacerdotal men who don’t want to work but don’t want to lose either. You know your tale of Linklateresque, serendipitous connection would render her mesmerised and marginally jealous.

But, soft and charitable as you may now be, you keep it all to yourself.

Patrick is still in Massachusetts a fortnight later. You say you’d have loved to come and see him play, but you’re really busy, and he says not to sweat it. Insists really. Maybe even begs. Do not sweat it.

You text him, presumably a day or two afterwards, and ask how it went.

Smahsed it!, he texts, and garlands the (misspelled) notion with eight sunglassfaced emojis. You counted. Dibner? he texts.

Then, a moment later,

*dinner?

You get to see your first New Rochelle sunrise.

You slink out of bed with toothfairy softness, even though Patrick is sleeping the sleep of death—with a deep, miserable snore like a resounding dirge to prove it—beside you. Your pillow wall, in the night, had collapsed like Berlin in 89.

You step outside. You check your phone, first, but you do go outside. You do believe in fresh air in the mornings, even if you don’t have the fortitude for mindfulness and journaling.

The parking lot is a vast open soul. Regretfully resigned and stunningly silent.

The sky looks like a bleeding mouth, but the hard grey edges around it don’t seem to care. The concrete enterprises and litter splay do not want anything to do with this bruise. A tart, sort of sewery smell makes your eyes water.

Cars drive by too fast.

You think, in some faraway capacity, you can hear the soft, rhythmic thunk of tennis balls hitting asphalt. But it’s only your heart.

You hear things. You see things.

You don’t want to sound like some haunted Victorian heiress with a mystical past, but you do.

In the break room, mostly.

So you hadn’t noticed before. Your coworker, Sam, goes fucking wild for tennis. Sam’s slobbering lewd and voracious over tennis. It’s hard to witness. In fact, you feel dirty witnessing this. You should call HR. Sam’s in the break room doing an onanistic oneman scene play about tennis.

Or maybe he just kind of likes it.

And you hadn’t noticed it before.

There’s a lot, for your part, that you were content not noticing around the office.

But now every errant tenniscentric commentary makes your hands feel sore and weightless without the presence of a gun.

“No, you don’t get it, Deirdre, this is like if LeBron played a game at some random Y, and got dunked on by this fuckin’ nobody, and then just… quit the game.” He sounds tumid with bewilderment. “Just fuckin’ dipped!” Sam’s incredulous. “Forever!”

“LeBron…?”

“Fuck, Deirdre, you’re killing me.”

You slot the mouth of your bottle beneath the spout of the water cooler. You close your eyes—zombieleaden, uneven on the tiles; it’s only 10—and listen to the halting trickle, trickle… stream. The plastic goes cold against your palm as the water rises.

“All because of some… fuckin’,” Sam snaps his fingers, “Fuck, I forget the name.”

Peter Zeppelin, your mind supplies dryly.

It is then that Sam chooses to notice you. Points his finger. Wide smile. “Oh-ho, here’s trouble!” says Sam.

Sam and you have had enough one on one conversations for you to list on your one free hand, and you wouldn’t be spoiled for digits. But, all the same,

“Here’s trouble!” Sam announces, “Big shot boss babe, huh? Back from kickin’ rear in New Rochelle. I know you’re glad to be back.”

You don’t say anything. You feign responsiveness, flash a stilted smile. But you don’t say anything. Because what would you say?

Outside the men’s bathroom of the New Rochelle Country Club, you fidget awkwardly, standing against a wall and trying to look inconspicuous. Patrick’s duffel sits at your heels like a staunch hound.

Your gaze meanders around the venue with an idle sense of inquiry.

You’d expected a certain echelon of grandiosity, anyway. And the country club is nice—you feel silly casting any judgement at all—if a little outdated. All glossy woodpanelling and pea green outdoor carpet.

You can see yourself, warped and bleary, upon the polished floor. The bar flourishes a glassy sheen and cloistered amber rows of lavish whiskeys.

Through glass windows, golf splays unfurl, ceaseless viridescence, beset on all sides by sharpcornered hedges.

People mill about with the air of the lookedafter, and polo shirts as white as the maw of God.

Which is nice—it’s all nice—and all, but your chest seems to enwreathe a stark state of dread. You feel the sort of nausea that would rack you as a child. Floating in the curtains at your dance recitals, like an anxious little poltergeist.

When Patrick emerges from the loo, he is whistling. Fluting finely the swooping tune of ‘Sixteen Going on Seventeen’.

“You certainly seem unburdened,” you murmur, gaze shadowing him as he draws near. You know you sound unconvinced. For his part, he looks undeterred.

Slings his bag over his shoulder like it is floatable, even as you know it bears the poundage of half a man’s life.

He grins, flashing a canine.

To you, he has just eaten his weight in greasy, leaden carbcloth, and proceeded to piss for twelve minutes straight.

But Patrick seems imbued by morningshine.

He throws a heavy arm around you, squeezes your shoulder. Says, “Look alive!” Says, “I’ve had a good night’s sleep, a hot shower, the breakfast of champions, and I’m about to get paid!”

You wince a bit at his volume, and also because he seems to be emanating a bit of that morningshine. Not to speak of the heat. Searing from his very bones.

If nothing else you admire his buoyancy. In that way, the warmth—even as the sun blooms above you—is a fascinating comfort.

Like something to be shared.

You say yes to dinner.

You keep having dinner. He keeps taking you out for dinner, and to decent places, too, places you haven’t even been to around here.

You’re sitting across from him. You’re eating, as one does. He’s regarding you with something like awe. Though you wouldn’t know it, because he regards, too, his plate, when the waiter rests it before him, with a sort of comical reverence. Even though you’re pretty sure he’s not starving, anymore.

But hunger’s not always about those sorts of things, you suppose. Maybe he's just still hungry.

He’s winning a lot. Must be, if he’s taking you out all the time, and—hey—maybe you can get him to sign something for Sam. That’d be nice of you.

Patrick watches you eat.

You try not to stare back at him. As long as you keep chewing, you won’t have to ask why he’s still here.

“That’s a nice shirt,” he says after a long silence.

You smile. “Thank you.”

He doesn’t text you for months, many months, after New Rochelle. You’d given him your number, because you wanted to put the ball in his court, and—fuck—here’s hoping you didn’t say that.

But you can’t recall.

It’s been months.

So, when you do get the text, you’re pleased to see it’s aptly contrite.

ypu probably think I’msn idiot, it reads, and it’s late at night and you’re already in bed, stewing over NYT Connections.

You eye the ID. Maybe: Patrick Zweig, but that’s implied—so many implicit little shards—because not a lot of people are so tortured by the prospect of your opinion on them so as to text you at 1 AM. So.

Define idiot, you text back.

dictionary defenition is Patrick Rupert Zweih. There’s prpbably even a lil picture of me next to it.

A few moments.

A bad one.

Ten or eleven emojis of abject terror.

You consider this—not a bad picture of him (though he doesn’t quite strike you as wildly photogenic anyway), just... This Whole Wound—and tap the side of your phonecase in tentative thought.

Your full name is Patrick Rupert Zweig? Tough.

Like ypu didnt already look me up.

You blink. Whoa—okay.

Not a humble idiot, I see, you type.

You don’t know where you get the balls. There’s a sweeping litany of long, gorgeous miles between your bed and New Rochelle, but maybe he can smell you thinking as much because,

Im in MA next week

In the registration room, a man with a binder asks his name, and Patrick sheathes his canine in a way that makes him look conspiratorial and amused. You suppose it’s become an inside joke.

The ATP official seems to gleam with recognition when Patrick does give his name—his real name—and he says, “Oh wow, that is you!”

You can’t see his face from this angle, but you can envisage the way his moue has settled in confusion.

Apparently, the ATP official was a line judge at the Junior US Open back in 06.

You try to think back to what you were doing in 2006. Probably populating your microcosm in The Sims. Trapping little imitations of those who had scorned you in swimming pools to drown.

“You were really something back then, huh?” says the ATP official.

Your eyes flicker to Patrick’s profile. He doesn’t quite know how to respond to that.

The official hands Patrick a packet. There’s a little map of the facility in there, in case he gets lost. His first match is against one Gonzalez, on court seven.

Patrick says, marginally halting, “Hey, so, is there any chance of an advance payment on the prize money.”

The official blinks.

“Because I know I’m guaranteed a minimum of four hundred dollars even if I get knocked out today—“

You frown a bit at that. The official frowns a lot at that.

“Well,” he says, “Generally we don’t give out winnings until a player makes his way through the tournament…”

A beat.

Then,

“You could always just lose today. Then we’d have to cut you a check this evening.”

Patrick hardens to bone. You hope he has another lifeaffirming piss in him. He doesn’t meet your eyes when he turns to leave, but flicks you a glance that seems to ask that you spare him the judgement.

You leave New Rochelle today. Good as the night’s sleep may have been, he knows better than anyone that life’s loveliest things are fleeting.

So—fine—you don’t begrudge him. Instead,

“He seems hopeful,” you say wryly.

“Must’ve been thrown off by my pretty caddie,” he says dismissively. Maybe a little bristled.

The warmup courts, deep blue plane, shimmer in the sunheat.

Patrick takes the asphalt, flicks his racket around by its handgrip as though refamiliarising himself with the palmfeel for the first time in a while. Which—well—doesn’t give you confidence, at risk of contesting Julie Andrews.

He practices his serve. Starts to work the ball up and down the court. Hits a few forehands, a few backhands.

Then,

“He was lying,” he yells to the bleachers.

The bleachers are mostly empty. A few errant loiterers. Bored spectators who have finished their lunch earlier than their friends. What have you.

He’s looking at you, though. With a staggering precision from so far away.

“What?”

“That guy. He was lying. Or… bigging it up. Or whatever. I wasn’t really something, I was just decent.”

He strikes a ball over the net. You can see, from here, the vibration ricochet through the racketstrings with a shudder that has you expecting music to flutter out.

You lean back in your seat, sort of sliding down against the glossy plastic, a tremor of induced electric tickling your bum through your jeans. You cross your arms.

“That’s kind of bullshit,” you call out.

He spares you a glance, sort of doubletakes, and you can see the corner of his mouth tremble with intrigue.

He takes another ball from the basket. Tosses it up. You watch the neon starsphere spin fleetingly in the air before being walloped to oblivion. And what do you know of tennis? But you do think his serve is a thing of beauty. Beauty measured in power and precision, sure (he hits the ball straight and hard and fast and low, just barely clearing the net), but you can also see the way his muscles work beneath his skin. Which—you know.

Patrick walks to the fence that partitions the courts from the stands. He leans over, rests his arms on the palisade, and looks at you.

“This was the whole problem,” he tells you, “Everyone was always telling me how good I was. And it got to my head. And now I’m here.”

It’s a shabby imitation of humility. What it really is, is an attempt to scale down the apogee, so the fall seems less mythic. So the years seem less unkind.

“I didn’t come here to watch you sulk just because some guy was nice to you.”

Patrick grins. His cheeks are flushed with heat, and there are little spots of sweat on the hollows where his skin and bones meet. But he seems to know not to exert himself fully right now.

“You think I’m sulking?”

“I think you seem pretty torn up for a guy who’s going to play a thirty minute match, and walk away a few hundred dollars richer.”

He makes a noise like you’ve wounded him, but he seems elated.

“A few hundred dollars?” he says, raising his brows. “So you’ve lost your faith in me.”

“I have some,” you allow, and you’re not surprised to find that you really do. “Just don’t choke.”

Patrick wears the smile of a newly crowned Miss Universe. He looks touched that you’re being so frank.

“I won’t,” he says, with a sense of finality and what you feel is an incongruous tenderness. “I’m pretty good at dealing with pressure. My parents always used to take me to work with them and tell employees to come to me at random intervals with madeup highstakes scenarios. Like, pretending to have a breakdown, and saying they needed me to help them out and make the final decision. Some of them could cry on command.”

You try and fail to hide a look on your face that divulges how demented you think that anecdote is. But you try to find something neutral to say.

“Well, maybe you’re lucky,” you tell him. “I was horrifically nervous as a child.”

“Not anymore?” he asks, swinging his racket idly, and you get the sense he’s actually very interested in how you will answer.

So it’s hard not to answer him honestly.

“I don’t know,” you say finally, and you look away from his eyes, and instead at the sky. You’re alarmed to find they are precisely the same tincture of aegean. “Mostly not. But if I have to give a presentation or speak up in a meeting, I have to take one of those beta blockers, you know? Propranolol?”

You are stricken, at odd moments, in New Rochelle, in Massachusetts.

You get the sense that he’s trying to be cavalier. But, at the same time, there’s this unmistakable fragility about him. Like it wouldn’t take much to knock him down.

You are stricken by how he’s managed to maintain this cocksure swagger for so long. With such a brittle, aching core.

How easily it all might’ve been shaken by the wrong person, and the wrong word.

You love the smell of your dear kitty’s head right after a bath. The fluff of dandelions and baby bird. You love toweling her, taking her little paws in your hand and prying the toes open.

Toby pretends not to like being fussed over, but she doesn’t put up much of a fight. In fact, most nights, she falls asleep in your arms.

When he pays you the visit, Ms Tobes is breathing evenly in your arms, your thumb caressing the organtender slope of her silky head.

You open the door, and great weeping gales have been jostling your windows all evening. But he is in shorts.

Patrick’s been in New England for nearly a month.

There’s an odd sort of look on his face, and an unlit cigarette behind his ear.

Hands in his pockets, he leans against the door frame, staring down at you. You feel a remarkable heat radiating from the downy flesh of his bare legs.

He doesn’t seem confident, nor does he seem unperturbed. He seems… pensive and maybe even penitent, but he wears it with a fascinating poise. There’s still something wounded and vulnerable about the way of his shoulders, the slant of his mouth. It's the softness that kills you, anyway, you think incoherently.

You peer up at him, dubious, through the briar of your lashes. He looks down at Toby, at the sweep of your finger over her head. You do not know if it is he or Toby who purrs.

When he speaks, he is whispering very softly, though there’s a frayed, low seep of his voice in his throat. It feels revoltingly intimate.

“When Patrick died,” he says, “The cat. I felt so shitty. I had this weird feeling of—like—I don’t know. Shittiness. Because of how Sassy said what she said. You should’ve said goodbye. What am I supposed to do with that, y’know?”

You swallow. The hallway is so vacant and noiseless you can hear the plush shuffle of his running shoes against the carpet. Dutifully beyond the boundary of your home, even though he’s been here quite a few times now.

“Patr—“ you croak.

“I’m not in Massachusetts for a game,” he tells you, shrugging hopelessly and almost smiling. But failing to. Which you register. “There’s no challenger in Boston. There’s just you. In Wellesley. All these… fucking ponds everywhere. Private schools. Bunch of rich little assholes who need a tennis coach, I bet. All these res—fuck. You know,” he shifts, taking the cigarette from his ear and gesturing with it between the two of you, “We’ve been out, like, twenty times, since I’ve been here, and there’s still, like, fifty restaurants we haven’t been to.”

You stare up at him. Your palms, where they cradle Toby, grow damp. The throbbing organ of your heart takes up residence in your throat. There’s a sad sort of clanging from the clock in the hall.

You lift one trembling finger to your lips.

Please, don’t say anything else, you beg with your eyes. Please, not in front of Toby.

Patrick’s eyes glint ruefully. Almost ominously. He seems insulted by your gesture, but he understands. He always understands. He never holds anything against anyone.

“No need for that,” he says very quietly. “I come in peace.”

He moves closer, breaking the enclave where the carpet of the hall meets the vinyl of your floor, until he is inches away.

A head taller, yet shrinking, as if you were seeing him from across a room.

He smells very good today. He smells like spice and bergamot and the laundered fabric of his navy blue halfzip. You sort of miss the musk. Of course you think of New Rochelle. You think of Bob Dylan and Hello Kitty and thermostats. Fucking Sally.

You lift your chin.

“I’m not asking you to—“

Patrick leans forward, his nose touching your nose.

“I’m gonna do the tennis,” he speaks the words into your mouth, voice like gravel melting in the sun.

You part your lips. A part of you hates him, hates how he’s insinuated himself in your life without warning. Another part, however, is asleep and betrays you.

He shushes you, though you’re sure you haven’t said anything. It’s just that you’re crying now. Completely still and silent. Weeping like the dead, because the dead weep, too.

He shakes his head, his nose brushing over yours, says shhh like you’re a cat, and, even then, Toby only stirs between your fingers.

“It’ll be good,” he says, and you’ve heard him sound convincing. You know that right now he sounds… something else. And he’s still shaking his head as he whispers, “It’ll be good, I’ll be good. I have a coach, I’m not done, I love the tennis.”

You look up at him. Lick your lips, which, when you’re so close, also means sort of licking his. Sort of licking into him. You want to say, fuck your tennis and fuck you too, but you also want to fuck him and you want to fuck his tennis, too.

You think of New Rochelle.

Patrick’s hand meanders upward toward Toby, and, if his cigarette was lit, you’d see sweeping coils of smoke floating heavenward.

It isn’t lit, but still.

You catch him quickly. You hold him by the wrist.

His skin is nauseatingly warm.

“You love it?” You sound unimpressed now. Your mouth moves over and around and against his as you speak.

“I do.”

“You love it, you love the tennis?” You’re sort of spitting it at him, and he tastes it.

And he thinks of Patrick the cat, how he lay there and was mauled. Pinned down. He thinks he’d let you draw blood, now, if you really wanted to.

“Tennis doesn’t love you.”

“Do you?”

There is time enough for you to answer. But when a sound is finally made it is only Toby, who mewls.

Patrick smiles. You feel the seam of his lips touch your lower teeth. “Didn’t think so.”

He straightens, his lips swiping your nose on his way up. He gently removes his arm from your grasp, your nails scraping is skin.

You exhale sharply. You feel stung.

Poor Toby, caught between your beating hearts. Patrick steps away. He places the cigarette between his lips, and then you do not stop him from touching Tobes. He strokes her gently.

“You got a lighter?” he asks around the cig.

There are three aflame candles in your home right now. He can smell the vanilla. You shake your head. He smiles again. Toby purrs. Patrick’s fingers touch yours between the heather fur.

You feel a strange ignition in your bones.

The game begins.

Everything is quick and violent.

You don’t know if tennis is actually quick and violent, or if that’s just him.

You are astounded by just how much a man can sweat. You are spellbound by the visceral implication of being drenched in one’s own exertion.

Gonzalez is younger. A little bit more thrilled to be here. And he’s got the kind of easy, quick thoroughness that means he probably practices with a ball machine at home, but not a lot of real experience.

Patrick makes brutal work of him.

There is a certain way his muscles tense through his forearm and the pulse travels up his bicep when he strikes the ball. His shirt rises as he twists to send it flying over the net. There is so much laboured breath and dripping skin.

He has you sit exactly where you sat during warmups.

Between sets, he extends his arm, taut and sweatsoused, and points to you with the scratched edge of his racket, one eye closed like he’s mapping trajectory. And he does sort of have this bloodhungry precision in his gaze, like a marksman.

You feel it in your neck, the ache of your focus, how your eyes water for lack of blinking as you swivel your head side to side. You do not close your mouth once.

He hits the ball again, and then again. Each with an almost startling accuracy. Each with a deep and fleshsatisfying thwack that makes your very ear canals thrum with the sort of pain that has you expecting the warmth of dripping crimson on your shoulders.

But it’s not just the force that strikes you. It’s that precision. That bulletgleam precision.

He seems to know, with a profound, animalic certainty, exactly where to place each shot.

At times, they will land exactly where the last landed.

And by the time his adversary cottons on, he has set his hungry eyes upon another target.

It’s beautiful.

You start to wonder if you have ever—ever—looked so fucking beautiful doing any single thing in your life. This strange and beautiful violence. Refined and delicate violence. He is violent and graceful.

Patrick groans when he hits the ball. Makes a guttural sound, a pained sort of sound, like he loses something of himself with each forceful departure.

The sun beams down, and you see his beautiful legs flex aglow with the beautiful gleam of his abject labour.

You think, fuck—

New Rochelle is beautiful.

“You know, I could have gone pro.”

Sam leans back in his Herman Miller chair. Takes a deep quaff of his coffee before pointing to Deirdre with his mug.

“You played for two years in middle school,” Deirdre deadpans, her gaze unmoving from her monitor as she populates a spreadsheet with who the fuck knows.

“This is huge, D,” says Sam, unhurt, “This is like if Jamal Mashburn started coaching the fuckin’ nobody that demolished LeBron at the Y.”

Deirdre seems to have forgotten this analogy, which, for her part, Sam first made months ago now.

“But also if Mashburn was married to Lebron,” adds Sam.

Your computer screen casts depressing polygons across your glasses. You slide your AirPods in. You don’t want to know where Bob Dylan will appear on your Spotify Wrapped.

I met one man who was wounded in love. I met another man who was wounded in hatred. And it’s a hard, it’s a hard— It’s a hard, it’s a hard—

It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

117 notes · View notes