Clean Point

24 Scottie

24

True Blue – boygenius

Salt air and an endless blue ocean, the waves rolling in over the beach, did it get any better than this? It had been over a week since everything went down. Jon’s bruised face had gone through every shade of black, blue and purple, and Dylan had left the training camp the morning after our argument without even so much as a goodbye.

‘I don’t know how you can stand that,’ Nico said, his eyes assessing as I dug my feet into the sand, warm from the afternoon sun, my toes completely buried.

I looked down at his own trainer/sock combination, a grin stretched wide along my face. ‘Good luck getting all the sand out. You’ll still be finding it months from now.’

He shrugged, relaxing into the large ELITE-branded towel we’d put down. ‘I’ll throw them out. Better than putting up with sand,’ he complained, his voice bitter, but when he looked up at me, leaning back on his elbows, his smile was anything but irritated.

‘And if you could hold that position,’ Sarah said, interrupting the moment with her camera held up to her eye line. I watched as his smile faltered. That expected irritation appeared, but he did as she said, holding his position. ‘Perfect. This sunset is giving the best lighting.’

It had been her idea for this beach shoot, trying to collect as much content for ELITE’s upcoming campaign as possible. The entry list for Wimbledon had been announced a few days ago, and with Nico’s and my names mentioned in our own separate singles categories, and together in the mixed double category, both of our social media mentions had shot up.

The internet was abuzz with rumours of us together at the breakdowns of our careers. Apparently, ELITE had been beyond pleased with the influx of attention and had started to kick off their PR campaign featuring us a little earlier, and Jon was more than happy to allow them to shoot extra content while we were available.

With a careful smile, I mouthed, ‘She’ll finish soon.’

A flat look from him argued back. All the while, my eyes danced over his familiar stubble that covered sharp cheekbones.

‘Just hold on. I need to adjust the settings.’ She took a couple of steps back as the camera absorbed her full attention. We relaxed, our bodies freed from the position we’d been frozen in, and slumped into the warm sand.

‘I hate this so much,’ Nico needlessly admitted, his tone grumpy.

‘I know. I don’t love this either.’

‘Did you always have to do this?’

I nodded. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t.’

‘I was good at saying no.’ He stretched lazily backward, his arms pressed up. His T-shirt pulled up at his stomach, revealing tanned skin stretched over hard muscle. My mouth watered at the sight, my body reacting as if I hadn’t already studied the sculpting of his topless body from across the court a hundred times. Now, however, I was beside him, and distracted from a much closer view.

A squawk from an overhead seagull reminded me to stop checking out my doubles partner.

I smiled at him and joked. ‘What happened?’

He squinted against the sunlight as he looked up at me, before raising a hand to cover his face from the direct light despite the cap sitting backward on his head. ‘Jon’s gotten good at being convincing.’ Somehow, I sensed there was more to his words than allowing Sarah to take some photographs.

‘At least Sarah’s good,’ I said, trying to move the subject along to something less likely to cause a physical reaction. ‘I’ve had plenty of embarrassing experiences on shoots.’

‘Like what?’ he asked with a cheeky smile. I let out a breath, trying to pick from the many, many possibilities, before deciding on one that felt harmless.

‘Wardrobe malfunctions, for one. Sometimes, those tennis skirts are hemmed a little too short, even for me. I’d spent the entire shoot trying to keep it from riding up while I leapt around a court after a ball. At least ELITE’s clothing is actually comfortable.’

He laughed, the sound as calming as the rolling waves in the background. ‘I should ask them to send a new hat.’ His gaze moved from my face to the navy cap sitting atop my head, a ponytail threaded through the back. ‘My baseball cap has been going missing for weeks.’ He flicked the cap with his forefingers, moving it up, the hat going loose around my crown.

‘Hey!’ I cried, my free arm flying up to press down on the hat before the wind took it. ‘I don’t have a clue what you’re on about.’

He was about to say something else when one of the cats from the villa came up beside him, nuzzling its small brown head against his arm as it purred for more attention. Nico rolled his eyes at the animal, but relented anyway, his free arm coming round to pet the cat.

‘What happened to hating cats?’ I said as the cat rolled onto its back, exposing its belly to him.

Nico, the weak man a feline reduced him to, complied to the animal’s will and began to rub its belly instead. ‘I do. I’m allergic.’

‘You don’t look allergic,’ I argued, taking in the scene. A man like that was far too attractive to add a pet into the mix. He’d be lethal on a dating app. I almost cringed at the idea.

‘Just wait until my throat begins to close up and my eyes start bulging out of my skull.’

I hummed, unsure. ‘I don’t think that’s going to make Sarah very happy.’ When I started to worry if I should grab an EpiPen, he came clean.

‘It’s okay. I started taking an antihistamine when I saw the cats around the villa.’

‘Is that for your benefit or the cats?’

‘I’m trying to survive them.’

‘Sure. As if I’m supposed to believe that it’s not because those cute little faces have melted your heart.’

‘My heart is still safe in its deep-frozen state.’ His eyes remained fixed on the cat, which let out a wide yawn, exposing large teeth that had never looked so adorable. My eyes flickered to his face, his lips pressed into a loving smile.

Frozen state my ass.

‘Did you have any pets growing up?’

He thought to himself for a moment, pushing his hair out of his face; it had grown a little long without a haircut. Shaking his head, he answered, ‘No. My younger brother had always wanted a hamster though, but the way mom acted, you’d have thought he was asking for a rat.’

‘They are rodents,’ I reasoned, imagining somebody as large as Nico holding the small thing, with its beady little eyes and hands and scurrying feet. A cat made more sense.

‘My parents moved to the US with very little, and after food and rent, it left no time or money for a pet of any kind.’

‘What part of Greece did they move from?’ I asked, enjoying the moment of openness with him. It was a far cry from where we’d started. He’d been a closed book, and I was too wrapped up in my own stuff to even ask. But talking with him, being around him was easy. Even with Sarah taking our photos in the background.

‘The mainland, Athens.’ He smiled. ‘They moved when my brother was young. I wasn’t even born until a few years later, and they didn’t go back for decades, not until I made enough to take us back on holiday. We still have family in the city, so it was good to see my parents reconnecting after so many years away. I always thought about representing Greece to honour them, but I was born in the US. I didn’t want to overcomplicate it. They run a Greek bakery down in Tarpon Springs.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Just northwest of Tampa.’ Nico grinned madly, as if he was lost thinking about it. Then, he shook his fist in the air in a mini celebration. ‘Sponge capital of the world!’

I looked at him as if he had gone slightly insane, but instead I tucked the memory away, enjoying this side of him too much to tease him.

Nico spoke again. ‘It’s been hell not asking Elena to stock up on more baked goods. Loukoumades used to be my favourite; it’s like a dough ball, but soaked in honey.’

‘You should! I’d love to try some.’

‘Jon wouldn’t be happy. He still doesn’t know about the burger.’

I tried not to smile wider at the memory of us scrambling back to the van in the pouring rain, getting back just as the rest of the group joined us, but not enough time so that Jon couldn’t smell the beer on our breath. ‘And he never can. It was bad enough when he found out about the beers.’

He glanced up at me, and for a moment, I wondered if he was thinking about it too. The doorway alcove. The rain having soaked us through to the skin, our bodies pressed together. He cleared his throat, looking back down at the cat. ‘We didn’t have much growing up, but it didn’t matter. I had tennis. I didn’t need anything else.’

‘You started young, right?’ I could see the pictures in my head. A tiny Nico, the racket half the size of him.

‘I was six when I went to my first training camp. I’m not sure I remember doing anything else.’

‘How did you get into it?’

‘What is this? Twenty questions?’

I leaned over, elbowing him, the smile that had curved onto my lips out of my control. ‘Just trying to get to know my mixed partner. Make sure he’s up to scratch.’

‘You mean you didn’t google me beforehand?’ His tone is dripped in sarcasm, but it raised a good question.

I answered his question with one of my own. ‘Did you Google me?’

I hadn’t. Had I considered it? Of course. But I knew from what the internet had to say about me, that the truth about a person could be stretched.

He shook his head. ‘I didn’t feel I had to. Everything I had to know about you, I already either knew, or I’d learn it from you.’

‘But see, if you had Googled me, you could’ve found out about my annulled marriage with a billionaire and secret love child with his father.’

He paused, his eyes assessing as his lips pressed into a thin line. ‘I’m not sure if you’re joking or not.’

I waved him off, relaxing backward as I let my head roll back, closing my eyes to let the sunlight warm my skin. ‘You could read about it. Doesn’t mean it’s true.’

A momentary, easy silence fell between us, and when I cracked an eye to look at Nico, I found his gaze slowly grazing up my body, the length of my neck, the lump in his throat bobbing as he swallowed. His attention snapped to my face when he noticed me watching him. I thought back to that night. A stray raindrop rolling down his cheek, and how his stubble felt under the pad of my finger as I wiped it away. The tension that pulled me close to him in the already cramped alcove, the storm of grey in his eyes. How would it feel to reach out and touch him again? How easy would it be to shatter everything?

‘I was given my first racket when I was four,’ he started, answering my original question. ‘Apparently, I’d been a violent child and Dad thought this would give me an outlet. Turned out I was an angrier child than they’d anticipated and could hit a ball at top speeds by the time I was ten. I became obsessed, wouldn’t miss watching a slam, and dreamed of winning Wimbledon. I turned pro at sixteen and won my first open by eighteen.’

I blinked once, my throat dry. This part, I’d never had to Google. ‘And that was …’

‘That was the US Open,’ he said, with a gentle nod, his eyes still assessing mine. ‘Against Matteo.’

It was fifteen years ago, but that game had changed my life; both of our lives.

I bit my lip as I rolled the admission around, my brain like a ball. ‘I remember that match.’

His eyebrows popped up as his eyes widened. ‘You were there?’

I nodded. ‘In his box.’

‘That’s weird.’ His nose crinkled and my stomach was full of butterflies, the usual sting of the memory erased.

‘It is what it is.’ I shrugged, my toes digging further into the sand as I admitted, ‘I watched that match back a lot.’

‘Really?’ His jaw was slack, a goofy grin curved at the edges of his lips. I nodded, choosing not to mention that the primary reason it was on was because Matteo was obsessed with finding that one incorrect step that led him to lose everything, the missed opportunity that topped the entire tower of cards.

That was the reason it had been played over and over, but I’d watched it over and over for him. The way he played. The way he moved across the court and caught all of Matteo’s tricks, unravelling all of his confidence, and reducing him down like no other player had before.

It was David vs. Goliath, and David had walked away triumphant.

‘It stuck with me. He was always unbeatable, at least as far as I had known him to be. Until you walked onto that court, cocky—’

‘I was not cocky,’ he interrupted with a bemused smile. ‘I was eighteen, going up against the biggest name in tennis. I threw up in a trash can before I went out.’

‘Seriously?’

He cocked an eyebrow. ‘Wouldn’t you?’

I let out a breath, debating for a moment, remembering how he’d strutted out to Centre Court that day. He’d stared Matteo down any opportunity he got, playing mind games even when they weren’t playing. Matteo had complained about it to the umpire, but he’d listened to none of it.

‘Could’ve fooled me.’

A laugh escaped him, his body relaxing. ‘You know what they say. Fake it till you make it.’

‘I guess so.’ I hummed, ‘There was something about how you dismantled his defence that I’d never seen before. You destroyed him in that match.’

He shook me off, his attention turning back to the cat. ‘He was old.’

‘Don’t play dumb. You knew what that match meant. He was almost unbeaten that year, and you … you tore into him. He wasn’t expecting that.’ I watched as his shoulders tensed, his fingers scratching at the cat’s fur as it rolled onto its back.

I wondered, for a moment, what it had been like for him. I didn’t allow myself to think very long on my only win, the memories best left to be forgotten, but I had holed up in hotel rooms for a very long time before I ventured out again. The press was very different, but with Matteo, I’d grown up with that. I was used to it. But for Nico, he’d stepped onto that court, a relative nobody, and walked away a Legend Killer.

‘How fast did everything change after?’

A heavy breath escaped him. ‘I couldn’t walk down the street for the first few weeks. That was scary, everyone suddenly knowing my name. Tabloids trying to dig up every bit of dirt they could after I took down their favourite player. And competitions got harder, but there were a lot more opportunities.’ He paused, the moment stretching out, until with a heavy head hung lower, his voice lower, he admitted, ‘It changed my life.’

I nodded knowingly before speaking again, ‘Changed mine, too.’

‘How so?’

‘His attention wasn’t split anymore.’ I shrugged, before folding in on myself a little, trying my best to match Nico, to share the parts of myself I kept hidden. ‘I was his back-up. I’d been in training since I had developed the basic hand-eye coordination. Then, it was time for little Scottie Rossi to step up. I had just turned fourteen when we went pro.’

His voice was hoarse when he asked, ‘Would you change it?’

‘What?’

He motioned with his hands. ‘Playing tennis? If you could, would you go back and Tonya Harding my ass?’

I smiled at his joke, shaking my head. I didn’t need time to ponder his question. It wasn’t something I didn’t already ask myself in the early hours of the morning on those nights where sleep seemed impossible. ‘Even if you hadn’t beaten him, somebody would’ve. And besides, I was already playing. I just had more time.’

‘So … you wouldn’t change it? If you could?’ I knew what he was saying. Every moment for the last few years. Wimbledon, every mistake that was made, the two years I had.

In a voice that was quieter than I had anticipated, I answered, ‘Would you judge me if I said no? If none of it had happened, I don’t know where I would be. And, I mean …’ I looked around at the beach, the waves washing onto the sand, the sun low in the sky surrounded by hues of orange and pink. I thought about the last few weeks, and as much as there was struggle, I’d not felt more like myself in years.

And then I looked at him, those eyes burning into mine, his sculpted cheekbones, his lips. If any of it changed, would I have met him? Gotten to know him. Would I trade this for an easier ride? Did that even exist?

I looked right at him as I spoke. ‘I don’t regret tennis, just the shitty dad. And besides, it brought me here, right?’

He kept looking at me, those grey eyes unreadable. A smile crept onto his lips, full of comfort and a little relief. ‘Yeah, I guess it did.’

I forgot to breathe, my lungs useless, when he looked at me like that. Like there was nobody else in the world. For a moment, it was made only for the two of us and the curve of his lips. And I knew that wasn’t right, that I shouldn’t think things like that. This was a professional partnership, we both had everything on the line: our careers, our reputation, or at least what was left of mine, and … and an ‘us’ put all of that at risk, no matter how much I wanted it.

But when he opened up to me and told me things that made me feel like I belonged in his world, I couldn’t help but want it all. Every moment he could give me, every smile breaking through that cloud of grumpy grey moodiness. I didn’t know what life would be like without him anymore.

‘Hey guys,’ Sarah’s voice pulled me from my thoughts, dragging my attention reluctantly over to her. She was standing a short distance away, and I realized then that she’d been taking photos all this time. It wasn’t a problem, like the yoga on the beach, instead a testament to how effortlessly I got caught up in Nico Kotas. ‘Can we get rid of the cat? It’s pulling the focus,’ she asked.

I looked up at Nico, who’s attention was on Sarah with furrowed brows, clearly offended on the cat’s behalf at Sarah’s comment. But without any argument, he stopped, lifting his hand from the cat and resting it on the top of his thigh. The cat turned, staring up at him with what I could swear was a similar furrowed brow to Nico’s own, before letting out the loudest, most strangled meow I had ever heard.

I struggled to contain my laughter and found it even harder when I took in his raised eyebrow as he directed his attention back to Sarah, who was now standing with one hand on her hip, waiting to restart her work.

He looked at Sarah and shrugged. ‘I guess she’s determined to be the star of the show.’

My smile broke out, knowing that despite his reluctance, or anything he said, those cats had crept into his heart, and dug out their own piece. And maybe it was near the piece I’d started to claim as mine.