“You know how Liam is,” Shelby cried. “He’s effusive. He loves the world and everyone in it. It means he makes beautiful connections with people. But that has absolutely nothing to do with how much he loves you. You’re different, yes, but that’s a good thing. That’s fascinating to him!”
Lily closed her eyes and focused on her breathing.
“You and Liam are meant to be,” Shelby went on, using an expression that felt rooted in Lily’s matchmaking. “Maybe you’re just tired from the trip?”
Lily let a hiccup escape, then pressed her hand over her mouth, embarrassed. “What if I don’t know what it means to be ‘meant to be’?” What if her matchmaking skills were a farce?
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Shelby said, sounding more like their Grandma Esme than a nineteen-year-old girl. “You’re the smartest and most capable woman I know. Go back out there and show those Hollywood folks how great you are. You hear me?”
Lily filled her lungs to their peak and felt her anxiety dissipate. “You should do this for a living, Shelby,” Lily said. “Pep-talks like this.”
“Ugh, I don’t want to talk about my major right now,” Shelby groaned. “I have to go take a Jell-O shot. Text me later, all right? I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
And just as Shelby had suggested he would, when Lily returned to the dinner table, Liam wrapped his arms around her, kissed her cheek, and whispered in her ear. “I’m so happy you’re here. So, so happy. And the team loves you.”
Lily’s cheeks were hot, and she turned into him and kissed him with her eyes closed. She knew better than most that beingin love was always a risk. But being in love with Liam felt like leaping off a cliff and praying there was a sea below.
Chapter Ten
Autumn 1995
It wasn’t till late September, after Yoko lost Wimbledon, that Yoko was able to move to the United States to train with Coach Reynolds. At Osaka Airport, her eyes welling with tears, she hugged her parents goodbye and boarded a plane over the Pacific to Seattle. Throughout her journey, she sat in first class, nursing a glass of sparkling water and listening to the other passengers’ snore gently. She couldn’t sleep a wink. Her heart felt as though it had left her body, as though she’d left it behind in Osaka—with Akira.
Yoko hadn’t seen Akira since the trip to England. During the days that followed their awkward dinner with his girlfriend, she’d avoided his calls and spent all her time with her parents, going to pubs and museums and nursing her wounds. She hadn’t wanted to put herself in the chaotic and emotional mess of seeing Akira with Himari again. And she’d spun with what Coach Reynolds had told her at the hotel bar: she could be someone great. A truly amazing tennis player. She needed to focus on that.
After Yoko returned to Japan, she’d had multiple serious conversations with her parents about moving to the United States to train with that startling and strange coach she’d met at the hotel bar back in England. Her mother had been adamant that it was a bad idea. “You’ll lose your culture. You’ll lose everything you are,” she’d said. Yoko had assured her that it was impossible. “I’m Japanese. It’s all I know to be.”
When the flight landed in Seattle, Yoko got off and went through customs, where the woman in a dark blue uniform looked at her Japanese passport and her long-term visa, all pre-arranged by a lawyer during the months before her arrival, and said, “I remember you from those tennis championships. My boyfriend always wants you to win.” There was a hint of jealousy in her voice that gave Yoko pause. Yoko had nothing to do with this customs official and her relationship in Seattle. It felt bizarre that millions of people around the world knew who she was and pulled for her (or didn’t) based on arbitrary factors.
The woman put a stamp in Yoko’s passport and sent her on her way.
Yoko flew from Seattle to Boston Airport, where Coach Reynolds and his wife, Kathy, met her at the gate. Coach looked just as he had back in England, except tanner from what he called “long days on the sailboat; you’ll love it, Yoko.” As Yoko dropped into the back seat of their sleek sports car, she inhaled the smell of money and luxury. Although she and her parents now had more money than they ever had (all because of Yoko’s career, the money she’d earned from winning various championships), they didn’t spend it the way the Reynolds seemed to. Maybe they weren’t so sure it would stick around.
After that, they drove to Hyannis Port, where they took a ferry to Nantucket Island. Coach and Kathy led her to the top deck so they could see the island approaching on the horizon. There was a bite to the air, proof that autumn and winterwould be harrowing in ways Yoko had never experienced back in Osaka. She gripped the railing, fixated on the frothing ocean and the beautiful island, and thought, "This is my new home."For now.
Coach and Kathy told her to make herself at home on the island. They expressed that their place was her place and that they wanted her to feel she could always turn to them for advice. Yoko thanked them, stuttering slightly in English. Although she’d taken another English class in Osaka after Wimbledon, she was still shaky with the language.
“You’ll get better,” Coach told her when she expressed her fear. “It’ll happen naturally. Just like your tennis game.”
Coach and Kathy’s home was the biggest Yoko had ever entered. Feeling meek and very small, Yoko followed Kathy through the cathedral-like living room, the tiled kitchen, the backyard with a jewel-lit pool, the pool house that was so much bigger than the apartment where her parents had raised her. Yoko would take the pool house as her own, they explained, so that she could feel she had her own space, her own schedule.
“We don’t want you to feel like you need to ask permission to go anywhere,” Kathy explained, leafing through her purse to find a set of car keys. “There’s a little red Cadillac in the garage. It’s yours if you want it.”
Yoko blushed and pocketed the keys. She knew how to drive a car but hadn’t done so in quite some time. It felt as though every single hour of her life had been devoted to tennis, or family, or learning English, or feeding herself properly. Now, so far from home, all she had was tennis—and whatever she wanted to do with her extra time. What would that be? Who was she when she was off the court and away from Japan?
Did Akira know who she was off the court? She shook the question out of her head and told herself to focus.
Exhausted from her trip around the world, Yoko slept all night and deep into the next morning. When she woke up, there was a note on the kitchen table of the pool house kitchen, explaining that the fridge was stocked with everything she needed for a good breakfast. As per their discussion last night (a discussion she couldn’t fully remember anymore), Yoko’s first training session with Coach was set to begin at two. The tennis court was located on the other side of the mansion: an indoor court that took out all the guesswork with island winds. Yoko felt uneasy having a tennis racket in her hand again. At least then, she’d understand herself in the midst of all this upheaval.
It shouldn’t have surprised her that her brand-new American coach was approximately four times as strict as her Japanese coach. Americans were brutal, animalistic and eager to go to extremes. Japanese people could be like that, too; she’d seen it over and over again with other Japanese coaches. But she sensed that her ex-Japanese coach had known her too well, that he’d softened up on her. She needed the abrasiveness of Coach Reynolds.
Their session started with stretching and sprints. Yoko cranked her legs and sped from one end of the court to the other, sweat bubbling on the back of her neck. She heard herself cry out when the pain became too great. But she pushed it further and faster than ever before. When she finished, Coach Reynolds threw her a tennis ball, and she caught it immediately. Her instincts were whip-fast. He smiled. “Let’s get started,” he said.
Every single day, Yoko had two sessions with Coach Reynolds: one in the morning and one in the mid-afternoon. Three days a week, she met with a strength and conditioning coach at a gym near the Old Historic District of Nantucket Island, where she pumped iron and listened to her Walkman. The other gym members were men who looked at her with a mix of confusion and intrigue. It took more than two weeks forsomeone to ask her if she was Coach Reynolds’s new client. She couldn’t understand at first. It embarrassed her. Why was her English still so terrible? But the truth was, she was so hyper-focused on tennis that her brain couldn’t tackle much else.
Late November, after two months on Nantucket and two months of strenuous practices, Coach Reynolds told her she had the day off. “It’s Thanksgiving,” he explained. “You’re invited to join us in the main house. My son will be home from college. He’s around your age.”
