“Fine. But I’m still going to kick your ass.”
I sat down on the weathered bench that looked out over the shore, its back pressed against the fence. My favorite spot in the entire world.
She didn’t look at me, aiming her gaze at the rolling waves as she sat down next to me. “Do your parents live far?” I asked.
“Across the street.”
Thatcaught her attention, her mouth open, brows furrowed. “Whoa, that’s...”
“Close?” I finished for her. “Yeah. I know.”
She didn’t miss a beat. “Do they have a leash on you or something?”
It had felt like that. A leash so tight it had started to strangle. But now, this was my house that I had earned from my career, that I had poured blood and sweat into. I had built this, and it wasn’t a cage anymore, it was a home. A home in my most favorite place in the world: despite how controlling they had been, I couldn’t imagine setting up a base anywhere else.
“What’s your family like?” I asked, trying to change the conversation.
A gentle smile grew across her lips. “We are a very big bunch. I’ve got three younger brothers, and lots of aunts and uncles and cousins.I left early, because of tennis, but I miss home a lot. My parents especially—we don’t talk every day, but I can tell they worry, but in a good way. The way that they just love me, would prefer for me to be closer.”
“Do you get home a lot?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Not as much as I’d like. I go back during the offseason, but most of the time I’m just living place to place. Following the tour or going to a training camp. I’m flexible, I’ll go where my coach is.”
“Is your family still in Spain?”
“My parents are, but my brothers are like me, they like to travel. Ivan is in Brazil, Luis in China, and the youngest, Benny, is in Canada, but he’s always on the move. It’s tough, you know? I miss them all the time. We don’t talk a lot, but when we do, it’s at least an hour of my parents making sure I’ve been eating enough.” It was so easy to see the love she had for them on her face; despite the flush of red from our run, she looked the calmest I’d seen her.
“That feels so strange to me,” I admitted, kicking at the sand beneath my trainers. “We’re close in distance, but with my parents, the pressure can be a lot. I wish they were easier to get along with.”
She glanced at me, her expression unreadable. “How does it work? Having your brother as a coach?”
“That’s... different. He’s better than them. He understands me. Before him, I really struggled with the pressure.” I took a deep breath, admitting more than I thought I would to her. “I was diagnosed with depression. I’ve lived with it for years so it’s under control, but the pressure can be really stressful. Mom and Dad used to be so overbearing. But Calvin helps. He’s like a firewall between us now,” I admitted, my voice quieter now. “Since I was a teenager. That kind of pressure... You must know it too.”
Inés didn’t say anything at first; instead her hand found mine, squeezing once as if to acknowledge what I’d told her.
At first, my parents had dismissed me as a typical sixteen-year-oldhaving hormonal tantrums. If a tantrum meant crying constantly in the changing rooms, paralyzed by the fear of failure, unable to cope with the pressure of walking out onto the court, then maybe they were right. If it meant feeling shattered by the slightest judgement from an umpire, unraveling at even the faintest sense of injustice, all in front of a stadium full of people. Lashing out at anyone, even my own team, because the self-doubt was too overwhelming to face.
Then yes, maybe it was a tantrum. But it felt like something much deeper.
“You want this,” they’d tell me. “Behave. Make it happen. Suck it up.”
They thought they were helping. That I was a normal girl with a normal brain and not an imbalance of chemicals dressed up like a professional athlete. But when I really did need helpwith my depression, they were there, and then they were overprotective, trying desperately to undo the harm they had caused.
“I do.” Her gaze softened. “My family, we all share that drive to win in different ways. My brothers are very smart. My mum was an English teacher, made sure we could all speak it perfectly. But her thing was the chess team. It was her passion.”
“I can relate. My mum has the same thing—she was a tennis player,” I said, not thinking twice about it.
Inés’s head tilted. “I didn’t know that.”
“She didn’t have a huge career. She doesn’t like to speak about it, but Dad told me some of the stories.”
“What kind?” she asked.
“Like, she used to have a lot of trouble with the other women. Like bullying in the locker room, having rumors spread about her. When she married my dad she quit, and I think she was happier for it.” I’d never had friends in tennis circles, not with my mom’s history with the sport—Dad wouldn’t allow it. And by the time I could make my own decisions, it was too late. I was an outsider.
She hummed, saying, “My dad was a runner. Long-distance, mostly. He wasn’t professional, but he wasserious. Even after hestopped competing, he’d wake up at five every morning to run. Rain, wind, snow, didn’t matter. He kept going. I think, to him, winning wasn’t always about medals. It was about pushing yourself past the breaking point and seeing what’s on the other side.”
“That’s where you get it from, then? That ‘keep going no matter what’ thing?”
