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‘Hey! Hey! Your hotel’s that way!’ Patrick yells.
Tashi turns her head. She’s lost.
The tumbling trash of Atlanta swarms around her disoriented figure. First she finds herself arguing with her ex in his busted-up car. Now, she gravitates toward him in blinded, desperate, rage, footsteps audible amid winds of clustered waste.
Tashi Duncan does not beg. Yet minutes ago, for Patrick Zweig, she just did. She needs Art to win.
He has never conceded to her without a fight.
Tashi left the comfort of her family to tread through the chaos of the world that had been unkind to her.
As her loved ones sleep, a tinge of guilt surmounts her actions, but none of it is enough to keep her from doing what she will.
She chose to be seduced by Patrick. Her senses and judgment all halt wherever, whenever he’s there.
As if it were automatic, she feels the strong gusts of wind draw her closer to Patrick.
Her gut twists in anticipation.
‘Are you gonna hit me again? Huh?’ he taunts.
Hatred manifests as she walks up to the man — to spew a mound of spit in his face.
Beat.
An immediate, gutsy sigh escapes her. Years of pent up rage, dissonance, and disgust for Patrick’s character had been channelled in her a swift excretion of disrespect.
She degrades him. The spit implied that he was just as disposable and easily to discard like spit usually was.
You found spit on the streets. In the bedroom. On pussy and dick. On your utensils and plates. Now, it was on his face.
Patrick stands, stunned.
He’s not surprised.
The lids of his eyes narrow as he bores whatever respect left he still has for Tashi.
Beat.
Her overwhelming attraction to his shit-eating persona finds its way to exhaust all her arsenals of reasonable, calculated thoughts.
Beat.
She just challenged him to act. And act, they will.
Beat.
Their accumulated impulses are freed in unison. A searing kiss is placed on the mouth where Tashi once spit, collecting the same liquid on Patrick’s lips — as though a kiss could become a placeholder for forgiveness.
His hands find their way to tangle in her disheveled hair, as do her hands begin to fumble at the string of his worn out shorts.
Beat.
The smell of him is familiar.
He doesn’t smell like they did when they were teenagers making out in her dorm room. He no longer smells like boyish musk and sweat.
Beat.
He smells like grown, adult struggle.
He smells exactly like he did the day she had found out he had been prostituting himself. Not even of grime or dirt, but desperation.
As his lips trail hers, their limbs tangle in all the right places, in clashes of fiery tongue, teeth, and lip.
They both grow desperate inside of the car’s cramped backseat. Their kisses grow hungry, neither wanting to be inferior, neither wanting to slow down or recede to gentle kisses.
A shared passion and insistence to prove the other wrong claws as Patrick hitches her shirt up.
He is met with resistance. Tashi will never back down. He knows this.
The kissing comes to a halt when their need for air overpowers their need for each other. He laughs at her furrowed brows.
She snorts at the way bottom lip juts out.
Beat.
Patrick wants to reclaim dominance. Their entire trope has been one over a fight for control.
Tashi enjoys it like this. The kiss reminds her that no matter how much her ego thrived on Art’s subservience, she liked how much Patrick would always challenge, surprise, and defy her.
The defiance was sexy. It turned them into equals. For the longest time since college, they were each other’s peers again.
Patrick pins her to the side of his car, pressing his boner into her core. He’s been driving with it since the argument heated. He’s not going to confess it to Tashi, but he knows, that she knows.
He now wields so much power over her. He knows that she does have much more to lose. Otherwise, her tongue wouldn’t be down his throat, and his hands wouldn’t be gripping the hem of her thong.
Tashi is aware of her vulnerability, yet remains relentless. As their tongues reciprocate the energy, she devours him in a fervent lock, adamant in her refusal to be disarmed.
She juts her head forward, pushing her now hard nipples into his chest.
He lets go of her hands as she fondles the wet part of his undergarment, her hand trailing ruggedly up toward his chin.
Every part of him is untamed. His penis, his hair, his demeanor.
She’s gotten bored of compliant, tamed, Art Donaldson. Her family is cast in the shadows of her thought as she remains desperate to fuck Patrick, in the name of saving Art.
Her sweet husband. Sweet, but not gullible.
And yet, she cups another man’s face, ever so gently. She places a tender kiss on Patrick’s rough stubble. Art could barely grow his own.
Sometimes, two bull-headed people are meant to constantly challenge each other. Even if it means it would destroy them.
For once single moment, at least they’re stuck destroying each other. As it was. As it should have been. Would have, should have, could have, didn’t.
They don’t belong to each other.