He clears his throat. “My doctor specifically recommended tennis. For my blood pressure.”
It’s clearly BS, but I won’t call him on it. “Well, like I said, I don’t play tennis. But I’m a fairly good runner, if you’d like to try that. Or if you’re looking for a personal trainer, I’d be happy to watch you do calisthenics.”
The corner of his mouth kicks up, and I realize I probably shouldn’t have said that either.
“Or I play in a rec soccer league Thursday nights,” I say quickly. “The season just started and we could use more players, so?—”
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “It has to be tennis. You beat me at tennis, I’ll go to the meeting.”
“You want me to beat you at tennis?”
“Of course I don’t want you to beat me, Alexandra. I don’t want to go to this meeting.”
I chuckle in spite of myself. “You think you can beat me at tennis?”
“I think I’d enjoy trying.”
For a moment I think I might enjoy it too, but then I remember why it’s a bad idea. Tennis has a lot of negative associations for me. Frustration. Inadequacy. Anger. Regret.
“I don’t play tennis,” I say simply.
“But you used to,” he says matter-of-factly. “You used to be great.”
“Not good enough,” I say, and I can’t keep the bitterness from my voice.
He raises an eyebrow. “You were the runner-up at the Wimbledon Juniors.”
“Yep,” I nod. “Unfortunately, I peaked at seventeen.”
No one remembers the player who wins the junior events, and they certainly don’t remember the junior runner-up. It’s the adult tour that counts, and I couldn’t make it there.
“Who told you?” I ask Dr. Malone.
“I recognized you, actually,” he says. “I watch a fair bit of tennis, and I thought you looked familiar. The name threw me off at first, and the glasses.”
“Alexandra’s my real name.” I went by Ally Parker when I played. I also highlighted my hair platinum blonde, tweezed my eyebrows excessively, and wore contacts.
I look a lot different now.
Dr. Malone nods. “But like I said, you looked familiar, so yesterday I, uh, I Googled you. I found someYouTubeclips of you at the Canadian Open a few years ago.”
“Damn.” I can guess which video he watched, one of me crashing out in the second round. It was so bad that I smashed a racket in frustration.
When a superstar smashes a racket, it’s seen as a sign of how badly they want to win. But when the 119th-ranked player in the world smashes her racket in the middle of a blowout loss? It’s pathetic.
“You were spectacular,” he tells me.
I stare at him in disbelief. “I lost 6-0, 6-0. A double bagel.”
“In the second round, yeah. But your first round match was great. You beat that English girl, Jessica?—”
“Jennifer Lyons.” She was ranked eleventh in the world at the time. The highest ranked player I ever beat.
“Right,” he says. “You were on fire. Jennifer Lyons didn’t know what hit her.”
“I had a good match.” That was the thing about my tennis career; every now and then I’d have a good shot, a good set, even the occasional good match. Enough to make me think it was possible, and to convince me to keep going.
I felt like Tantalus, the mythological Greek who disrespected the gods. As punishment, the gods made him stand in a pool of water that disappeared when he tried to take a drink.
