She regarded me steadily for a few long seconds, then nodded. Shrugged. “Okay.”
“Good. Now, we’re heading to the court soon. How do you feel about getting put through your paces by the world number four?”
WITH ONLY FORTY minutes before Danny called, Miles and I started first. Unlike the day before, we traded service games, but once again played with the sort of speed that precluded deep thought. He didn’t say it was to test if I could back up my success, and somehow that helped. Helped too, perhaps, that Katie’s questions had left a different sort of worry tying knots my stomach.
Whichever it was, I soon loosened up, the confidence of knowing I had done it once making it much easier to do again. Katie had started off calling the score before getting swept up mimicking an over-excited commentator until we were losing as much breath to laughter as tennis. It was nothing like my usual training sessions and yet everything I needed, and when Danny called, I ceded the court with regret.
“Hi, Danny,” I said, leaning in the shade by the fence to answer. “Sorry about yesterday.”
“All good. I’m here for whatever you need, remember?” He shifted his weight, getting comfortable in his office chair. “Though I think you’d better tell me what that is, because something tells me you still haven’t watched those matches I sent.”
“No, I haven’t,” I admitted, attention drifting to Miles, spinning his racquet while he waited for Katie to serve. “I think I want to try the whole . . . not thinking thing we talked about the other day.”
For a moment there was just the sound of the wind shaking the leaves behind me and the bouncing of the tennis ball. Then, “okay.” Danny didn’t sound convinced. “What made you decide that?”
I settled on the ground beside the court, phone propped on my knees. “Well, Miles and I talked about our last match, at Roland Garros. He said he felt like he was playing the old me in that second set.”
Danny just sat and listened as I explained what Miles had said and what we’d tried, while on the court Miles was giving Katie his patented torture treatment – challenging her to run for ridiculous balls and try to wipe him off the court. She was laughing and swearing in equal measure but rising to the occasion, and I suppressed a smile as I waited for Danny to absorb all I’d said.
Eventually, he nodded, resting his chin on his hands. “Is Callahan there?”
“Yeah, he’s here, but he’s torturing Katie, so if you mean can he hear you, then no.”
“Ah, so no risk of being shouted at again?” he said with a wry laugh.
“Probably not.” I glanced up to be sure and found Katie had paused to fix her shoe, leaving Miles watching me. No smile. Noacknowledgement. He just stared the length of the court like he was trying to read me, a moment in time in which we could have been alone in all the world.
Danny cleared his throat. “Well, it’s a turnaround, but if you want to try it then we try it. We’ll keep the same training plan, but instead of building points, let’s focus on your shots. Finesse a few things.”
We talked for a while, discussing the small ways I could make my groundstrokes more punishing, and for the first time in forever, his words didn’t just slide in one ear and out the other like my brain was the proverbial duck’s back.
“So,” he said once we were wrapping up, the noontime sun having disappeared behind thick cloud overhead. “Callahan’s sticking around?”
“He’s in the apartment across the hall,” I explained. “Trying to do without his team and his usual comforts, which . . . might be because I was a dick to him in Paris. Although, only because he was a dick to me first.”
Danny laughed. “You two always were like fire meeting fire. I’m glad it’s working out for you.”
On the court, Katie had called time and was downing water while Miles had dropped onto his back, breathing heavily. “It’s definitely been good,” I said. “He pushes me. Not just in my game, but out of the ruts I’ve dug in my head. The ones so deep I couldn’t even see they were there.”
Not the sort of conversation Danny and I usually had, but he nodded with a gentle hum of agreement. “More than just your body broke when you had that accident.”
Simple words that knocked something into place in my mind – an obvious truth that had somehow been sitting askew until he spoke. “Yeah, I guess so,” I said, touching the corner of my eye.“Every therapist said I just needed to get back on court and leave the pain behind, but . . . I suppose that’s the problem with having a therapist who doesn’t play tennis. They couldn’t see how it affected my game.”
The conversation left me in an odd mood, a sadness clinging despite the feeling of progress. It was a strange sort of sadness, though, like I was grieving not for me now but for me then, like I was finally feeling sorrow shorn of its anger and bitterness.
Perhaps Miles sensed it, for later that evening when we sat sated and sweaty in his bed, he asked the question I should have known was coming. He’d been running his fingers across my chest, seemingly at random, and it wasn’t until he asked, “What happened? If . . . you don’t mind me asking,” that I realised he’d been tracing a pattern with my scars.
“I don’t mind,” I said, though I was glad he was sitting behind me and couldn’t see my face. “Not that it’s a secret. A three-second web search would give you the basic answer.”
“I know the basic answer. I remember when it happened, or at least . . . when I heard about it.” His voice was low. “I was at a challenger in Granby. I’d seen you at Wimbledon only a week or so before. Couldn’t believe it.”
I’d gotten to the third round at Wimbledon that year – the nineteen-year-old tearing his way through the draw. I’d flown home after, my birthday falling between the end of my grass court swing and the beginning of my North American swing. Twenty had felt momentous, like the beginning of something. Instead, it had almost been the end.
“It was two days before my birthday,” I said, gaze unfocussing as I stared back across the years. “I’d been out with a friend. We hadn’t even been drinking. I’ve often wished we had been, because at least then I could have blamedsomething.”
Miles’s fingers slowed their path across my scars.
“I was just walking home,” I went on. “Wasn’t even crossing a road, just walking along the footpath. And then . . .”
