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Tashi had been upfront with them from the start—she wasn’t a homewrecker.
She wasn’t a homewrecker the summer Art and Patrick googly-eyed their way into her life from across the dance floor, looking like they’d been struck right in their rear ends with Cupid’s arrow. Nor was she a homewrecker when she found herself perched at the foot of their hotel bed—beds, plural—wedged in between the two of them, their eager mouths all over her and each other.
And she’ll stand by it to this day—even at Stanford, from eating lunch with Art in the cafeteria to straddling Patrick half-naked in her dorm room whenever he’d visit, touching him over his boxers, whispering in his ear about how smart and good looking and talented Art was, watching his back arch and his brow furrow at those words of praise about his best friend paired with her touch—she wasn’t a homewrecker.
But then she got injured, and could dreams even be called dreams when you’ve spent your entire life knowing—assuming—that you’d always get them? It was all ripped away from her in the blink of an eye, and Art was the one to cradle her head on the tennis court as the worst pain she ever felt in her life throbbed through her knee, and by extension, her soul. And then some time went by, and Patrick was gone and so was tennis, so she didn’t hesitate to kiss Art in the dimly lit Applebee’s parking lot. A few years later, he got down on one knee and slipped his grandmother’s heirloom ring onto her finger, and a few years after that he gave her a beautiful daughter, named after her own mother’s favourite flower.
By that point, there was nothing left for Tashi to do but accept the truth: she was a homewrecker, and she’d wrecked a home that had willingly swung its doors wide open for her.
So when Patrick finds his way back to them for good, no longer a passerby on the outskirts of their marriage and finally made a permanent part of whatever the fuck is going on between them, the weirdest part about it is that it doesn't feel that weird at all.
Not in the ways one would expect when integrating your rival, opponent, best friend, and part lover, part fuck buddy into your relationship, anyway. Tashi knows it. She can tell that Art knows it too, feels it in the way he looks less like he’s being held together by sheer willpower and a piece of string and more like he can afford to breathe; to relax into his body and let go of a dream that was never fully his to begin with. Because what he loses in tennis, he gains in Patrick. The woman of the dreams he’d endlessly chased and the man of his past he longed for. This trio of theirs, forever orbiting one another, now so close that he could reach out and grab hold of both without the fear of one or the other disappearing.
Most mornings, Tashi gets halfway through her skincare routine before one of them wakes up. As disciplined and regimental as Art can be, he also possessed the ability to remain in a coma-like state of sleep for hours on the rare off chance Tashi would allow him to.
But these days, the three of them function like alarm clocks for each other, moving in some fucked up synchronized way only they can comprehend. Someone would rise, and strong arms would loosely circle around her waist, and a pair of eyes would meet hers in the bathroom mirror. Sometimes, the eyes looking at her are the dark blue she used to see on and off over the years; the ones she’d try her hardest to block out. Other times, she stares back at the kind hybrid blue and brown she’s grown so accustomed to. They're lighter now, far less heaviness weighing them down.
Fire and ice. Sure, it always came off a bit dollar store romance novel-y for her taste. But for better or for worse, it had always been the most suitable name for them. The heat and the cool. And she, the stoker of Patrick’s flames and the preserver of Art’s ice.
Looking back on it, Art finds it hilariously embarrassing. “Be happy you didn’t have a shitty elemental nickname,” he says to her one idle evening. Her legs are sprawled across his lap as they watch footage of Patrick’s most recent match on the flatscreen.
“It’s not like she needed one,” Patrick chimes. Her back is burrowed into his chest. “This one was in a league of her own.”
“Duncanator was pushing it,” she mutters under her breath without taking her critical eyes off of Patrick’s backhand.
She isn't looking at him, but she hears the smug smile in Patrick’s voice. “Yeah, okay. You ate that shit up.”
Tashi shuts him up with a sharp pinch to his thigh. Art and Patrick go on about who has the better serve in the most blatantly flirty and sexually charged way two people could possibly talk about tennis serves. She's too focused to pry her attention away from the screen long enough to engage in the conversation, but she feels a revelation clicking in the back of her mind—this is the closest to feeling comfortable, and correct, and like she’s exactly where she’s meant to be, since before the injury.
The biggest great love of her life died long ago. But what she has now is damn close.
Tashi, casually having life-altering realizations with her retired stay-at-home dad of a husband to her right and her ex-boyfriend slash the guy her retired stay-at-home dad of a husband has probably been in love with since childhood to her left. Definitely not a huge thing worth mulling over at all.
Patrick cranes his neck, kissing her upside down. The stubble of his chin scratches her own in a pleasant, stimulating way her body can’t resist leaning into, and Art’s palm caresses the muscles of her calf, skimming past the scar on her knee, gliding along her thigh, dipping underneath the hem of her little ivory night slip. A chain reaction; like dominoes toppling over. When one of them moves, they all move.
Sex can be a lot of different things, shape shifting into whatever they need it to be; need out out of each other—but they’ve been figuring out what they like best. Sometimes, Tashi sits back and lets them take the reins. Art and Patrick will make out and grind naked against each other until neither of them can breathe, or Patrick will pin Art’s hips firmly to the mattress and take his cock into his mouth, drawing trembles and obscene sounds out of him through doe-eyed glances, or Art will fuck Patrick slow and hard from behind, fisting a hand in his unkempt curls to tilt his head back until Patrick’s mouth is open, gaping and gasping and moaning, all while Tashi watches with her fingers on her clit.
Sometimes, it’s the opposite. Her men are all over her, one pair of lips making their way down her taut stomach until they settle between her legs to lap at her cunt with the thirst and desperation of a parched dog, while the other sucks and bites at her collarbone—she’ll dig her manicured nails into the shoulder of whoever’s doing it in case they got any funny ideas about giving hickies to a professional, public-facing woman in her thirties—leaving a trail of searing kisses until a hot wetness envelopes her nipples one at a time. Art and Patrick take their time bringing her to one, sometimes two or three orgasms when it’s like this, because when Tashi decides she’s in the mood to be worshipped, they get on their knees and worship.
And sometimes, it’s just her and one of them, the other watching from the sidelines with lustful eyes. Patrick irritatingly refers to every single chair in all of their hotel bedrooms as “the cuck chair,” to which he’s met with groans or silence. But in the moments he finds himself seated in that chair, stroking himself to Tashi riding Art’s face, whose dick strains in his briefs while his grip on her ass rocks her back and forth, Patrick’s stupid jokes are gone, muscles clenching when he gets a good look at Art’s wet mouth, choking out his lovers’ names as he comes all over his hand and stomach.
Tashi’s spent a lot of time in her life observing Art and Patrick, be it on the court or on a mattress. She’s spent a lot of time observing men battling across a net with their functional and non-fucked up knees in general. The times when watching them drowns her in so much wicked, sickly rage and envy aren’t as intense as they used to be. That doesn’t mean they’ve stopped completely. The feeling creeps back in like a low tide every now and then, consuming the little bits and pieces of herself that aren’t preoccupied with coaching Patrick.
But it helps, knowing that there are two men who observe her right back with more adoration and fondness than any of her fans in the bleachers waving Duncanator flags a decade ago. She’ll never admit it aloud. But it helps.
Out of habit, Patrick still calls her Duncan, just as he calls his best friend—boyfriend? Boyfriend with a wife? His ex's husband? Third in a marriage? All of the above?—by his last name. A “heads up, Duncan” when he aims a protein bar wrapper crumpled into a ball at a trash can, or an “I know you like that, Donaldson” whispered with a satisfied grin into the crook of Art’s neck. In the beginning, Tashi thought it might have bothered Art to hear his wife being called by her maiden name and not his. But he never grimaces or sulks whenever he hears it. With time, he came to learn and understand that Tashi Duncan can’t entirely belong to anyone or anything else besides her passion.
Mr. and Mrs. (and Mr.) Donaldson on paper, for formalities.
On a late night, in the last few minutes before one day turned into the next, Tashi asks Art, “Did you love him?”
She’s nestled on his chest with his arm slung around her while Patrick slumbers next to them like a lanky housecat. “Before you met me?”
She watches her husband’s mouth curl into a cross between a smile and a frown. “Love” is a word seldomly tossed around when it came to their relationship, saved for their wedding vows or special occasions or tucking Lily into bed. Tashi’s never been a fan of the word herself—crowds screaming it in unison felt more natural than a single person directing it squarely at her. She knows Art loves her, and she knows she loves him, and she doesn’t want to do anything to disturb it, invoking the term so much that it becomes meaningless sludge on the tip of her tongue.
“You want an honest answer?” he asks. Tashi nods.
“Don’t know,” Art says. “I think so? As much as I’d let myself love another guy at that age.”
“What, did you like, have issues loving people growing up?” Tashi laughs a little, nudging Art’s toned bicep. “You don’t seem like the type.”
“The type to what?”
“I dunno. The type to hold back from confessing your feelings to someone. You did it with me easily enough.”
“Yeah,” he sighs and presses his mouth to the crown of her head. “But you’re you. Saying that I loved you was always going to be easy.”
Her throat feels like it’s been coated with a layer of warm honey, and she swallows it down like medicine she knows is good for her. “And what about him?”
“He was…Patrick,” Art chuckles. “He was the center of the fucking universe everywhere he went. But we were never apart for longer than, what, maybe a week at a time? Before Stanford. And we did everything together. I mean like, everything. Attached at the hip 24/7, roommates, partners. Really the only person I—I ever wanted to stay friends with my whole life.”
There’s a pause, and Tashi thinks he’s finished talking until he inhales a shaky, quiet breath.
“So naturally, yeah. I guess I did love him.”
She doesn’t need to ask about him loving Patrick or being in love with Patrick. She already knows which one it is.
When Tashi awakes in the morning, the day of Patrick’s next game, she’s surprised to see he’s already up. His head is propped up on an elbow, and he flashes a drowsy smile at her across a sleeping, tousle-haired Art, who doesn’t stir when Patrick plants a soft kiss to his bare shoulder and lets his lips linger on his skin.
Tashi gives a small smile back at him. She grants herself a few extra minutes in bed before swinging her legs over the edge of the bed and padding off to the bathroom to begin her—their—long day ahead.
She wouldn't come to realize it until later in life as months, even years rolled by, but she finds that she isn't much of a homewrecker after all.