But Yoko took a breath and told herself to shut up.You haven’t seen each other in years, she reminded herself as she banged the tennis ball against the grassy ground. Of course, he was in love with someone. Of course, someone had fallen in love with him. He was fantastic.And you were married to tennis, remember? It was all you’d ever wanted.
Yoko threw herself back into the game. She felt ferocious and emotionally damaged. She watched herself drive the ball forward and leap to all corners of the court. To her surprise, she won her serve and won the very next game after that, putting them at 2-1 for the first set. Emilia looked volatile. She drank water like someone preparing for a fistfight. For her part, Yoko breathed a sigh of relief. At least she’d shown the audiencethat she was made of something, that she could handle Emilia. But right before she returned to court, she made the mistake of looking up at Akira again. Was that his hand on the strange woman’s knee? Was that love reflected in his eyes?
Yoko felt like she was going to be sick. She went back on the court and let Emilia take the next three games. Yoko was a rag doll, loose and inarticulate with her racket. She could feel her coach's anger. She could feel the crowd's disappointment. But ultimately, Emilia took the first set 6-3—and then wiped the court clean with Yoko in the second set, defeating her 6-2.
But this was Wimbledon, which meant that Yoko couldn’t slink off the court and drown her sorrows in a bowl of ice cream back at the hotel. She had to stand in front of the crowd, thank them for coming to see her, and answer journalists’ questions about her performance, Emilia’s playing, and her plan of attack for the months ahead.
The most embarrassing part of all of this, of course, was not the fact that Yoko had been destroyed so handily by the Polish woman. It was because Yoko couldn’t speak English very well. For years, she’d given everything to tennis and neglected her studies. While many of her ex-peers were excellent English speakers, some of them even living in London and New York, she spoke only Japanese and was trained in Osaka. During the interview, a Japanese translator had to relay what was said, and Yoko spoke directly to the translator, hoping she didn’t seem rude or stupid.
By the end of all that, Yoko found herself face-to-face with her coach—and he was angry. In Japanese, he growled that she’d played worse than he’d seen in years, that he was considering taking her off the circuit and sending her back to Osaka for another few years of nonstop training. Yoko felt sorrow in her throat, hampering her speech. She’d been training with her coach since the age of fourteen. He was like a father to her.
After her coach finished destroying her spirit, he released her to meet up with her parents. Her mother and father were soft-spoken and very shy. They hugged her but couldn’t meet her eye. Yoko wondered if they were as embarrassed as her coach. Maybe they’d wanted to return to Japan as the triumphant parents of the Wimbledon Champion. Perhaps they felt that all the years they’d driven her to tennis practices and tennis scrambles and doctor appointments were wasted.
But not long after that, they confessed how tired they were.
“Let’s go back to the hotel,” her mother urged, sliding her hand down the smooth black shine of Yoko’s hair.
Tears filled Yoko’s eyes. She realized that they weren’t embarrassed by her. They felt terrible because they knew her heart was breaking. She opened her lips to agree with them and was already picturing herself in a cab, racing back to the hotel.
But suddenly, she heard her name, carried on a voice that she would have known anywhere. She turned on her heel to find him, Akira, the only boy she’d ever loved. His eyes weren’t embarrassed or sorrowful or anything but happy to see her. He stretched out his arms, and she ran into them, momentarily forgetting the big loss and the journalists’ questions and how frightened she’d been. Akira still smelled the same, like soap and sandalwood.
“Runner-up champion!” Akira said in English. These were words that Yoko understood. “I’m so proud to know you.”
Yoko blushed and took a step back. It was then that she noticed the woman standing to the left, her hands clasped at her waist. It was the same woman she’d seen in the stands, the woman who’d made him laugh. Akira gestured for the woman to approach, and she did, smiling prettily but stiffly. Yoko guessed she was a model. She looked like she was frozen in one magazine or another.
Akira introduced the woman as his girlfriend, Himari. Yoko shook her hand and said all the right things, asking her about her flight and if she enjoyed the match.
“Center court!” Himari said. And then in English she said, “It’s a dream come true.”
Yoko felt immediately embarrassed. It was clear that Himari knew English much better than Yoko herself did. She wondered how Himari and Akira had met and prayed she would never have to know—unless it was a horrible, pathetic story. Then she would relish it.
“We have to go get a drink,” Akira said. “We have to celebrate!”
Yoko grimaced. “You know that I lost, right?”
Akira waved his hand. “Emilia was the champion today, but you’ll be the champion next time. Mark my words. Everyone will know your name.”
Yoko still wasn’t sure she wanted to go out with Akira and his girlfriend. She glanced over at her parents, who hovered on the fringe, watching. From the look on her mother’s face, she understood that her mother knew all about Yoko’s love for Akira. Her mother sensed Yoko’s discomfort as though it were her own.
“Let’s get going,” her mother said, tilting her head toward the line of cabs near the curb.
But Yoko felt frozen with indecision. Down to her bones, she sensed she couldn’t leave Akira without having a proper conversation, even if his girlfriend sat nearby.
Chapter Five
Present Day
Seeing her things piled up in the guest bedroom at her mother’s place was bizarre. There were her art books, her novels from her literature classes, and her old sheets that she’d stretched over nearly every bed during her tenure at Columbia. There were her pens, her paintbrushes, and her old sweaters, pilled and worn. She had the sense that they wouldn’t fit in the next iteration of her life, that Yoko Reynolds would take one look at them and throw them out.
Lily leaned against the doorway and sipped her tea, reminding herself that nothing about the arrangement of living at home with her mother was permanent. After Liam returned from Los Angeles, they would get a place here on Nantucket. Their lives were going to begin. Yoko could hate her sweaters, but she couldn’t control everything.
From the kitchen, Lily could hear the voices of her mother and her mother’s boyfriend, Ben, a veteran whom Rebecca had fallen in love with during the year-plus since she’d returned toNantucket from Maine. Lily liked Ben. She liked his spirit, his humor, and the way he looked at her mother. She didn’t always like that her mother had “moved on,” or whatever that meant. Lily knew her mother still loved her father, that she always would. Happiness was key, and you couldn’t turn your back on it when it came to find you—even in the direst of circumstances.
Lily went upstairs to find Chad, who was playing a video game on a big monitor in his new bedroom. Shelby was away at university, celebrating a freedom that Lily had forgotten to fully appreciate. Now that she was back on Nantucket, she thought of her college years as vague and explosive dreams.
“How was school?” Lily asked, sitting on Chad’s bed and eating chips from the bag open beside him.
“Huh? Oh. Good.” Chad was distracted by his strategy game, something to do with a man with a bow and arrow and a castle in the distance.
