She nodded. “To get to their level, you need to be good. You have to do it all on your own, though. There’s no teammate to take up the slack. If you have a crap day, you lose. If your opponent has a crap day, you win. If both you and your opponent have a good day, it’s a glorious slugfest where the narrowest margins determine the winner. It’s just … it’s kind of like gladiators.”
I cracked a smile. “Gladiators with tennis racquets?”
She shrugged. “I was a huge fan of watching Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Novak Djokovic play when I was a teenager. The three greatest male players, and they were all on the courts at the same time. They had wildly different ways of playing, and it made me want to adjust how I approached life.” She continued before I could respond. “I know that sounds corny. I acknowledge that. It’s just that when I was a kid, I had big dreams. I always said I couldn’t accomplish those dreams because the number of authors who actually make it, who can claim this as a full-time job, is tiny. I saw it as a competition.”
“But watching tennis somehow changed that for you?” I was intrigued and wanted, more than anything, to understand how she’d shaped her mindset around tennis.
“There were three great male tennis players all dominating at the same time,” she explained. “One of them being great andwinning Wimbledon didn’t mean another one of them couldn’t be great and win the US Open.”
Then it clicked for me. “It rearranged your scarcity mindset.” I understood that better than she realized.
She was rueful. “My mother was not the easiest person to grow up with.” Her voice was soft enough that I had to strain to hear her. “There was never enough of anything when I was a kid. We moved every year because once the landlord of our current place realized my mother was a terrible tenant who was always late with her rent, there would never be another lease. We never had what I would call oodles of food in the cupboards. Every week, my mother would buy a box of cereal, a gallon of milk, a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, and whatever cheap frozen stuff was on five-dollar deals at the grocery store. I always had the bare minimum. I didn’t go hungry. It was enough to survive. But at a certain point, I realized that it wasn’t enough for me.”
Without planning to, I reached over and rubbed her arm. She didn’t respond, so I kept doing it.
“All kids have big dreams, whatever their circumstances might be,” she said. “I was the type of kid who would crush my own dreams, though. It took watching tennis to break me of that mindset. Multiple people can succeed. It’s not just one person. There’s room for other people too.”
“Have you ever seen a professional tennis match?” I asked.
She smiled. “No. Federer and Nadal have both retired. They’re the ones I would have wanted to see.”
“Yeah, but there’s retirement, and there’s retirement.” I wasn’t an expert on tennis, but I was familiar enough with the sport to know a few things, thanks to my father. “All those retired guys get dusted off here and there for exhibition matches. They do it for charity at the Grand Slams.”
“So, you think I should buy a ticket to Wimbledon next year?” she asked with sparkling eyes.
I shook my head. “No, but the US Open isn’t that far away. It’s not even a two-hour plane ride. We could go. My father might even be able to get us tickets to the exhibition—and good tickets—if they sell out fast.”
She looked thrown. “You want to go with me?”
I shrugged. “I like tennis. I don’t think I know as much about it as you do, but I enjoy watching it.”
She cocked her head, and it was impossible to miss the suspicion glittering in her eyes. “Who is your favorite player?”
“Well, when I was little, my favorite player was Andre Agassi. Do you know who that is?”
A wide grin split her face, and she nodded.
“He was considered the bad boy of tennis,” I explained. “He had a blond mullet and wore jean shorts. My mother had a huge crush on him. She would watch matches with me when I was kid.”
“That sounds nice.”
“I don’t remember the specific matches. I just remember spending time with my mother.” I shook my head to dislodge my mother’s face from my memory. It still made me sad. “Anyway, Agassi had a drug problem and fell off the tour for a bit. When he came back, he’d shaved his head—turns out he was going bald and had hair pieces glued in or something anyway—and he was serious about his fitness and game. He became a better player when he was older.”
“And you liked that?” she asked.
“I liked knowing that there were second chances if you screwed up.”
“Oh.” She nodded solemnly. “I get it. Have you ever seen him play?”
“Yeah. My mother took me to the US Open when I was a kid. Unfortunately, I was too young to understand what was going on. I was eight, and he won. I didn’t understand why it was a bigdeal. I did understand that it was important to my mother, so I always cherish that memory.”
She swallowed hard. “That is an amazing memory. Did you ever have a favorite tennis player after him?”
“Not a male tennis player. Agassi was always my favorite male tennis player, although I did enjoy watching the three you mentioned. It’s just…” I searched for the best words to convey what I was feeling.
“Agassi was your bridge to your mother,” Bree said before I could find the right words. “You want to keep that bridge intact forever.”
“Yeah.” She got me. It was somehow miraculous. More than her just being beautiful, she understood me in a way that nobody else could.
