Chapter Text
I find “this is it” too vulgar to accept
So I wait for a new starting point
As if life will begin there and then.
Do you know what I mean?—excerpt from “While I Wash My Face I Ask Impossible Questions of Myself and Those Who Love Me,” by Charif Shanahan
Fall 2008
There’s an unread text message on her phone.
It wasn’t there when she last checked it, walking into the auditorium in the midday heat. Tashi used to pride herself on being early—beating the sun to an eager rise, keeping a watchful eye as her teammates trickled out of the locker room when she was already halfway through her warmup, settling into the front row of pre-reqs with a taut spine. The performance just isn’t worth the effort anymore. Nobody’s watching her anyway.
With her life snapped in half, Tashi doesn’t rush. She takes a seat near the back.
But some old habits die hard, so Tashi still turns her phone off during lectures. It’s polite and it’s important to give her full focus to what’s in front of her. Or try to. Calculating standard deviations doesn’t take a quarter of her attention, but it’s the principle of the thing. A Stanford education is worth a lot of fucking money.
Anyway. The unread text message. The LED indicator on her Blackberry blinking red. It isn’t a big deal. It could be a notification from her phone carrier about using too many minutes, but that is a strange kind of wishful thinking these days. She calls her parents daily, her study group reminder comes in on Thursday mornings, but people aren’t exactly blowing up her phone. When Tashi’s razor broke last fall she hadn’t bothered to transfer her contacts over. Some things were better off left in the past.
It feels like everyone from her old life agrees.
It hadn’t always. There had been a string of weeks, right after, when it felt like the messages would never stop. An endless barrage of teammates and sponsors and doctors and coaches and relatives ‘keeping in touch’ and ‘checking in’ and ‘wishing her well’. Tashi spent long summer days with her phone locked in a drawer, lying in her childhood bed with curtains drawn, the lights off, listening to it buzz and buzz and buzz. She’d inevitably be forced to rise from the grave, whether it was her mom or her bladder or another appointment with another doctor that promised another miracle, and she’d tackle her replies in a flurry of correspondence.
sorry! been busy. I’m in recovery, no training yet. Tell coach I can’t wait. Yeah, home all summer. ttyl. Voiding the contract is fair. I appreciate it. Thank you for reaching out. I had him last semester, easy A. The athletic scholarship agreement allows me to keep my scholarship regardless of performance and/or ability. Can’t I have PT. CU in August. Have fun. I’m fine. I’m good. Enjoy Paris, it’s beautiful. I see the surgeon again on tuesday. Say hi for me. PT again. Next time. <3.
The texts eventually slowed down to a trickle and then stopped altogether. It had taken them a while to figure out what had been immediately, painfully obvious to Tashi: without tennis, there was no reason to keep in touch.
Except—
( 934)-753-5379 [Sent 3:39 PM]
in town tmmr.
usual spot 1:30?
__________
“You could try texting me back next time.” Patrick flashes her a smile over his diner coffee, his satisfaction as sharp and stark as his teeth. “I wasn’t sure you were coming.”
They’re sprawled out in the usual corner of their usual diner, the blinds are pulled all the way down but splayed open. Slivers of endless Californian sun cut over the cracked brown vinyl of the booth, the sticky linoleum table. Tashi hates that she keeps coming here, seeing him. Hates how Patrick pulls her back in without having to try.
Patrick, kicking a door open, and Tashi, invariably, crawling through.
“I wasn’t, but if I have to eat any more dining hall food I’ll kill myself.” Tashi turns the menu over, scanning the lunch specials. Meatloaf w/ gravy. She flips back to the first page. “And you’re buying. So.”
Tashi’s going to order pecan pancakes and a spinach omelet with extra pepper jack cheese. She’s going to sub out the hashbrowns for a side of French toast. She’s going to take the leftovers back to her dorm and leave without looking back, just like last time. The time before. It’s going to feel satisfying. Eventually.
“I get that. Mark had everyone on this crazy meal plan. I think we ate plain chicken breast and steamed broccoli every day for seven years. It was fucking gross. I mean, Art liked it, but he’s actually insane.” Patrick taps his foot against her calf, playful. “Did I ever tell you that he asked Liliana to make it whenever he stayed with us? It made her cry.”
“You don’t appreciate consistency.” Not like she does. Like she had. Tashi remembers Art arranging his boiled eggs, measuring out his pasta with intent. He had a care to him, a thoughtfulness, that she found hopelessly endearing. Not that she would ever tell him. Tell either of them.
“And you’ve never had Liliana’s latkes.” Patrick flicked the corner of her menu. Tashi hadn’t. She had turned down Patrick’s invitation to spend Hanukkah with his family, made an excuse out of coaching a youth camp at her tennis club back home. Some of us have to earn our money. She remembers telling him, before softening the blow with the impossible offer, Next time. “And, Tashi, we were like, fourteen. Art was just being a martyr. It wasn’t doing him any favors.”
“And what about now?” Art had racked up a handful of wins on the Futures tour before he left school in the Spring. He’s done well for himself over the past couple of months. “Rankings don’t lie.”
“Rankings change all the time.” Patrick flops back into his seat, appraising her. There’s a curiosity in his eyes she doesn’t like. “He’s playing in Morocco next week. Clay.”
Tashi already knew that. She checks the ATP portal just as often as Patrick, if not more, but snapping at him about that would be embarrassing and revealing. Not that what she says next is any better. “Total waste of a plane ticket. He’s going to eat shit.”
“He is.” Patrick pours another creamer into his half-full cup, the coffee inside approaching eggshell. “Are you going to tell him that?”
It’s just like Patrick to avoid all warning signs. To push Tashi further into a rally that neither of them had any chance of winning. “No. No, I’m not.” She hits a return. “Are you?”
“Nah,” Patrick says. He keeps his voice light, “But Art isn’t after my advice.”
Tashi is determined not to go back there. The court, a brace on her knee, the pity, Art’s arms around her—any of it. It’s the past. She’s moving forward with her life, with one notable, hypocritical exception. And that’s only because Patrick can’t seem to leave well enough alone. “Let’s talk about something else. No tennis.”
“Okay.” Patrick eyes her, skeptical. Checking for the trap that isn’t there. “Like what.”
“I don’t know.” Tashi tilts her head, searching for something a normal person would ask, would care about knowing. She offers him a shrug, “Have you seen any good movies lately?”
Patrick’s eyebrows shoot sky high before he’s buckling over, snickering. His shoulders shaking, unreserved and delighted in that boyish way of his. The apples of his cheeks, the tips of his ears, already red from a careless sunburn, glow bright. “Fuck. That was sad. That was really sad. Tashi, for a dollar, can you even name a movie?”
“Fuck you.” Tashi smacks him with her menu, and it sets him off again. They’re still laughing when the waitress comes by for their orders. Diane wags her pen at them with an indulgent smile and a remark about young love that they pretend not to hear for all the usual reasons. And some painful new ones.
Patrick’s halfway through explaining the plot of The House Bunny when the food arrives, and they both let the conversation die out. Tashi steals bacon off his plate. Patrick takes a slice of her French toast, rolling his eyes at her scowl. It's easy between them in a way it never was when they were together. Probably, Tashi thinks, because they’ve silently agreed that this doesn’t mean anything. It’s a practice match, no points gained or lost. It’s an interlude. Something to bury the loneliness. The grief.
Tashi stretches her bad leg under the table, risking enemy territory to elevate her knee. Her foot presses against the back of his bench seat, her calf at his hip. Patrick takes it for the invitation it isn’t (it isn’t) and wraps a confident hand around her ankle. He gives her a quick, reassuring squeeze, right above the bone. Tashi thinks he’ll pull away after, but he leaves his hand there. Warm and sure.
As a kid, Tashi had this bad habit of pressing on her bruises. There was this bit of pain, right when she would dig her thumb in, that was also relief. Her dad caught her once—her face contorted at the sting, right before the sigh. He hadn’t stopped her, Tashi remembers. He just handed over her racket and informed her, straightfaced and kind, Baby, that’s no way to let a wound heal.
In a few hours, Patrick will blow out of town and Tashi will crash land back into her life. She’ll eat her leftovers in her dorm bed. She’ll wake up tomorrow morning. She’ll keep on living, whatever that looks like now, until he pulls her back in again. And again.
And again. And again.