Then he very gently pushed me up against the green wire fence behind me. Other than his hands on my waist and mine on his quite considerable biceps, no part of us was touching, but it was oh so close, and probably looked much more intimate than it was from a different angle (i.e. from behind a bush on the other side of the court).
‘People will see us,’ I hissed.
‘Isn’t that the idea?’ he asked coolly. Why was he so chill about this all of a sudden? ‘Let me know if it gets too much for you, won’t you?’
I wasn’t sure what these feelings I was experiencing actually were, but I couldnottake much more of it.
‘It’s getting too much!’ I shrieked.
He obediently removed his hands and took a step back.
‘Since I am supposed to be teaching you how to play tennis, let’s play a game. Best of three,’ he called over his shoulder, walking back out on court.
I, on the other hand, was rooted to the spot. What had just happened? In less than twenty-four hours he’d gone from barely being able to look at me to pinning me up against fences – I guessed he reallydidwant those sponsorship deals back.
Reluctantly, I took my place on the other side of the net, for the moment totally unable to look Marcus in the eye. Plus I absolutely did not want to play tennis anymore, especially now I knew that there were photographers lurking in the bushes just waiting to snap an unflattering shot of me missing a ball/falling over/repeatedly hitting serves into the net. It didn’t help that my head was spinning from Marcus turning up the heat out of nowhere – by alot. It had been years since anyone other than Charlie had put their hands on me and now, out of the blue,this! Talk about a baptism of fire.
‘Ready when you are,’ I whimpered.
Marcus, who seemed to have lost all sense of humour and had clearly switched into professional mode, showed zero mercy and absolutely thrashed me.
Later that afternoon, I’d settled into my seat in Marcus’s ‘loge’ and was watching him play his second-round match, even though I was still annoyed with him for his behaviour earlier. He hadn’t even apologised for playing at what seemed like full capacity (though he insisted he was trying his best to match my standard of play) and not letting me win a single point! I knew he was competitive but that was just ridiculous. And it was mean of him, especially with the photographers there to capture every mortifying second. I’d decided I needed an Aperol Spritz after that and was now on my second, and I have to say my anger towards him had already dwindled.
Grey clouds covered the sky today and I felt much colder than I had at yesterday’s match. Although I was somewhat regretting wearing a mini dress with bare legs, I was just going to have to suck it up. The press was out in force this afternoon and I’d had to make the difficult decision to choose style over substance. Was this the life of a tennis WAG? Wearing uncomfortable yet chic clothing while shivering courtside for hours at a time? I was sure there were lots of good things about dating a tennis player (Marcus’s abs came to mind again) but I wondered how they were supposed to have careers of their own if they had to live out of hotel rooms for the entirety of the year?
Seizing the few seconds of time I had before play resumed, I quickly messaged the landlord of the local pub I sometimes worked at to ask if he had any shifts for the following week, i.e. as many as was humanly possible. I’d have about six weeks between returning from Monte Carlo and having to travel to Paris to watch Marcus play in his second Grand Slam of the year, Roland-Garros, and I was seriouslygoing to need to make some money alongside pushing on with the article. I hurriedly put my phone away as music blasted out of the sound system and Marcus and Federico Rambetti prepared to play the next game after the changeover break. The score currently stood at one set all, with Rambetti leading by four games to three in the third and final set. Marcus not only had to hold his serve, but he had to break Rambetti’s, too, or there was a chance it would go to a tie break. Patrick and Dean were talking quietly among themselves, clearly worried.
‘He is losing his head. I can see it in his eyes,’ said Patrick, making a disappointed whistling sound through his teeth.
‘If he loses this game, it’s a fucking disaster,’ said a stressed-sounding Dean, rather unhelpfully, I thought.
Perhaps it was naive of me, and this was, of course, only the second full match I’d ever seen him play, but I fully believed Marcus was going to win. I reckoned he probably wanted this more than Rambetti did, for a start, and he had a much better serve. Unfortunately, however, the crowd was mostly Italian and therefore it felt as though Marcus had absolutely no support. Even his team seemed to have given up on him, and whether or not any of this was having an impact on him, I had no idea. I gripped the bottom of my seat, tempted to get up and shout some words of encouragement myself, but like what? And would Marcus appreciate it anyway? If I was really his girlfriend, what would I do? I tried to make eye contact with him, hoping to give him a subtle nod or something, anything to let him know I was watching and that I thought he could do this. As he chugged away on his water bottle, his face redder than I’d ever seen it, his usually voluminous hair plastered to his head with sweat, I felt certain he was looking directly at me. I self-consciously did the fist-pump motion I’d seen several of the other players do every time they won a point. It actually got a bit annoying after a while, and interestingly Marcus never did it, but perhaps it was universal tennis speak forYes! Come on!
The umpire called time and both players took their places. Marcus slipped two balls into the pockets of his shorts, leaving one in his hand, which he bounced on the ground a few times. Then he looked at Rambetti, tossed it into the air and served. It was so fast, I didn’t see where it landed, but Rambetti somehow managed to get it back. Marcus returned the shot to Rambetti’s backhand and came into the net, at which point Rambetti lobbed it over his head, landing it just outside the baseline.Fifteen-Love.
Marcus had now started muttering under his breath to himself, which didn’t seem like a particularly good sign. He took his position to serve, bouncing the ball for what felt like ages this time, finally lobbing it into the air. He hit the ball, but his angle must have been off, and it went way outside the tramlines. Marcus looked at it in disbelief, shaking his head.
‘Let’s go, Marcus!’ shouted Patrick.
Marcus looked severely rattled as he set up his second serve, which I remembered he thought was sub-par. He managed to get it over the net but Rambetti returned it easily and the two of them proceeded to rally, playing shot after shot to the baseline, forehand to forehand. Then Marcus changed it up and sliced it across to Rambetti’s backhand, then Rambetti hit a cunning drop shot. Marcus didn’t make it to the net in time. The Italians went mad, stamping their feet, banging on metal from God knows where and breaking out into a deafening chant using words I couldn’t understand, nor did I want to.Fifteen-All.
Marcus served again, his first going in this time, a shot so powerful that Rambetti didn’t stand a chance of returning it. His fourth ace of the match.Thirty-Fifteen. Come on, Marcus,I whispered under my breath.
Rambetti won the next shot, producing a fluke of a return that Marcus thought was going out but wasn’t.Thirty-All. The crowd were going nuts now, with the Italian flags out in force, a sea of red, green and white. I looked down at my hands, clasped in my lap;this was properly tense. Marcus looked angry at himself, which I assumed might be a precursor to him losing it on court. Unless he could hold it together for long enough to win the point, and then the game, and then the match. If he just kept winning, he wouldn’t need to shout at anyone, would he?
Marcus took his place behind the baseline, his body crouching and then unfurling as he served hard and fast. It went out, a couple of inches outside of the box.
‘Second serve,’ called the umpire.
Marcus served again. It went into the net, not even close. Marcus let out what I could only describe as a primal roar. I watched with increasing horror as he slammed his racquet on to the ground over and over again until it was bent in two and then launched it into his chair at the side of the court, leaving a trail of dust in its wake. The crowd began to boo. I resisted the urge to put my hands over my eyes.
‘Warning – code violation, racquet abuse,’ said the umpire, at which point the volume of the boos increased.
Marcus stormed off court, rummaged in his racquet bag and pulled out another, returning to court with a face like thunder.Thirty-Forty.
The final point of the game was over in seconds – a mediocre serve, a killer return. It was like the fight had gone out of him along with his broken racquet.Game Rambetti.
There was no break between games this time, and with the clock ticking, neither player had time to catch a breath before Rambetti prepared to serve for the match. Five games to three. If Marcus lost this, he was out of the tournament. They’d been playing for one hour and fifty-three minutes so far, during which time the sun had come out and it was considerably hotter than it had been at the beginning of the match. The crowd were sweating, the players were soaked through, their T-shirts clinging to their bodies, and all around us was a haze of flickering white as hand-held paper fans were fluttered in front of too-hot faces.
