26 Nico
26
hoax – Taylor Swift
I had been feeling good about my knee, experiencing less and less pain after practices and making sure I kept up with my physio’s recommended exercises.
Only to get taken out by a cat.
As I headed back to the villa, four of them had rushed towards me, coming out of their various hiding places amongst the flower beds. But when one large grey monster got under my foot, causing me to misstep, lose my balance, I fell squarely on my newly recovered knee.
I’d limped the rest of the way back, swearing under my breath every time I had to put weight on that leg. Sliding through the kitchen doors, I aimed right for the freezer, digging out one of the trusty ice packs that Elena had left for me there, and attempted to rest up for the remainder of the evening, my anxiety swelling as the pain refused to dissipate.
We were days away from London. If my knee could still hurt this badly from an incident with a pack of rabid cats, was I even strong enough to get through Wimbledon? I had weeks of competition ahead of me, hours of matches to play.
This was my shot. My chance. But was I really ready for it?
It wasn’t until I limped downstairs for dinner that I noticed Scottie was missing. I asked around, trying to find out if anyone had seen her. When the answer was no and a quick trip to her bedroom upstairs also showed that she wasn’t hiding from me there, I reluctantly started the journey over to the beach. It wasn’t far from the villa, but it was far enough that I shouldn’t have risked it on my injured knee. I made my way through the gardens, avoiding any more of the damned cats, when I spotted the floodlights of the tennis courts still on. I pondered for a moment, thinking of the last place I had seen her. She couldn’t still be there, could she?
Yet, there she was. Standing at the baseline, the crack of the ball meeting her racket echoing through the cooled evening air as the ball machine fired at her. Her blonde hair was in a ponytail, falling out from under the cap I’d given her earlier. Seeing her wearing the baseball cap, my name stitched into the back, gave me a low hum of comfort, a continuous murmur in the background of my heart. I remembered the last time I found her here alone. The night she had come clean about everything.
‘What are you still doing here?’ I asked over the noise of the machine. Scottie jumped, snapping out of her zone. A ball pounded into the side of her, and she yelped.
‘Jesus, you scared me,’ she complained, stepping out of the line of fire.
‘It’s been hours, Scottie. Have you rested at all?’ I questioned as she pulled the remote out of the pocket of her pleated skirt, and the machine powered down.
‘I wanted to get it right.’
‘That’s what this is about?’ My brows raised in surprise. Had she come back to work some more on that? ‘That move is simple, easy to correct next time in training. You must’ve been done hours ago.’
‘But then … then I started running drills, and I started to get slow, so I started again and … and I wanted to practise,’ she explained with a slight grimace, her shoulder slumped and out of their usual strong pose.
I shook my head, still unsure of what to make of this. Why hadn’t she come inside? We needed to rest as much as we needed to practise, especially this close to the competition. The last thing we needed was her burning out. I’d seen it before, even experienced it myself, and it made an already gruelling few weeks feel impossible.
‘Come inside. You need to eat dinner.’
‘I’ll get something soon. I need to practise this backhand swing.’
‘Your backhand is fine,’ I stressed.
‘It could be better.’
‘Then we can focus on it tomorrow.’
‘Five more minutes,’ she pressed again, her fingers adjusting oddly around the handle of her racket. The movement caught my attention, her grip all wrong for something so fundamental. Then I noticed the skin looked a little red. Closing the gap between us, I was fully able to read the exhaustion that was written all over her face. Her usually dull gaze with her blue eyes almost washed out.
‘Show me your palm, Scottie.’ I reached out for her left arm, my hand open to her.
Her brows pressed together. ‘Show me your knee. I saw you limping. Is it sore again?’
For a moment, I considered lying, shrugging it off and telling her it was nothing. But if I wanted her to open up, maybe I should do it too. ‘One of those damn cats got in my way. I’ll get an ice pack soon.’
Scottie looked up at me, her face flushed pink, trying unsuccessfully to contain the stress across her face. Slowly, she relented, swapping her racket to her right and lifting her hand to me. I gripped her wrist and softly rotated it, her fingers clenched into a painful fist, but I could already see that her palm was a bright painful shade of red.
‘Can I see … please?’ My hand slipped from her wrist and instead went to her palm, softly rubbing at the outside in a comforting motion. Slowly, her fingers unfolded, and I finally saw the state of her injury.
The palm was red raw, the skin broken and swollen slightly, with small blisters forming on the heel of her thumb, and along her fingers. I could make out the strain in the creases of her palm, the line deep and more pronounced from the constraint flexing and stretching of her fingers.
My heart didn’t break – it shattered. Regret overwhelmed me. I should’ve never left her. I should’ve made sure she came inside and rested. As much as I hated that she’d done this to herself, I hated the fact that I had let her even more.
But the question still scratched at me: why? Why was she still out here? Why had she let herself get hurt like this and then carry on, anyway?
I smothered down my anger, letting it burn away instead. I couldn’t look at her injury without wincing myself, the thought of how much pain she must be in too much.
‘Can I take you inside? Get this cleaned up?’ I still held onto her hand, almost unable to let it go. ‘We’ll need to make sure it doesn’t get infected.’
‘It’s not that bad.’ She pulled her arm out of my grasp, her fingers curling back into a fist, wincing as she did. Her pain was clear for a moment before her mask fell back into place.
I ran my fingers through my hair, pulling as irritation pricked at my skin. ‘This … this isn’t normal, Scottie. I told you, you played well today.’
She shifted her weight from foot to foot, her attention lifting to me as she glanced around the court.. When she answered me, her voice was so small and breakable.
‘I just … I don’t want to risk you losing everything because of my mistakes.’
I let her confession hang in the air for a moment, before dismissing it, my anger shining through. ‘And what about you? Now we have to wait for this to heal before you can play again.’
She looked reluctantly at the ball machine, like she wanted to keep practising, like she still couldn’t leave yet. But there was no way I was letting her stay here like this. I knew I couldn’t trust her not to keep playing.
‘It’ll take five minutes,’ I said, the lie easy to say. ‘Then if it’s okay, you can come back.’
I had zero intentions of letting her return. But I’d take whatever means necessary to get her to stop. Her body was a tool, as much as the racket in her hand. Misuse it, and it could cost her everything. She relented, her body almost caving into my offer as she nodded.
‘I should clean this up.’ She looked around at the court with that last shred of reluctance.
‘Leave it,’ I said. ‘We’ll clean it up later.’ Another lie that Jon would make me pay for tomorrow when he saw the mess. I switched off the floodlights of the court as we left, the stray cats our companions as we headed back down the dark garden path to the villa.
‘Hold still.’ I gripped Scottie’s hand gently, keeping it in place as I tried to stop her from squirming around. She groaned, sending a frown at me, a first aid kit thrown open all over the counter beside us.
‘I’m trying,’ she complained, relenting slightly and resting her arm along the marble counter. I’d been trying to disinfect her wound with some anti-bacterial wipes, the strong smell of stinging alcohol hanging in the air.
‘You’re doing a terrible job of it.’
Her eyes narrowed on me as she replied, ‘It would be easier if you weren’t intentionally trying to hurt me.’
‘If we don’t do this, we have to chop your hand off. You won’t be much use to me with only one.’ My joke distracted her long enough that when I wiped again, she didn’t even flinch.
Instead, her gaze fixed on me as she challenged, ‘One arm is plenty enough to play tennis.’
‘That’s true.’ I smiled. ‘But I’d still beat you.’
She tsked before examining her palm. Somehow, even though disinfected, it looked worse. Blotchy, raw red, bruises appearing on the sensitive skin. I ached at the thought of the pain she’d tried to cover up.
‘Are we going to talk about it?’ I asked, only to be met with a raised eyebrow. ‘Why did you let it get this bad?’
She let out a deep, annoyed breath. ‘It’s not tha—’
‘Yes, it is,’ I said. ‘And if you disagree, then I’m probably due another conversation with Jon about what kind of practice injuries you’re used to.’
She fell silent, and I used the moment to squeeze a small blob of the antiseptic cream onto my finger, laying my hand out again for her. Thankfully, without further argument, she let me gently dab the cream into the worst affected parts until it was all smoothed out and absorbed.
‘I already told you,’ she said under her breath. ‘I … I don’t want to be the reason we fail. I know how important Wimbledon is for you.’
I kept my eyes on her palm, committing it to memory as if I needed to remember the cost of what that worry had done to her. Shaking my head, I tried to reassure her. ‘You won’t be.’
‘What if I am? What if I make another stupid mistake?’ Her voice rang with anxiety, and I swore she turned to look outside again, across the vast garden and over to the court, as if she was already wondering when she would be able to get back out there and start all over again.
‘If you really think one stupid misstep can derail our entire game, we obviously weren’t playing very well to begin with.’
‘I’m scared, Nico,’ she admitted. ‘This … I don’t think anything has ever meant so much to me.’
‘Me neither.’ The words are hushed, but nonetheless true. This last title was my only goal. And with my knee and age, a second shot wasn’t guaranteed. If I failed now, my career could be done. However, as I grew faster and stronger, this admiration for her didn’t simmer out. ‘But we make a good team.’
‘Somehow, that makes it worse.’
I dropped her hand, searching through the kit for the bandages, the cream on her palm making things look a little better. Tomorrow, I’d get Jon or Elena to take a look, make sure I had cleaned it correctly.
Pausing, I held the bandage out to wrap her with, but instead I met her gaze. ‘Scottie, even if we did lose, I would want to keep playing with you.’ I would want to keep you.
She swallowed nervously. ‘I wasn’t sure you’d want to keep playing together.’
I moved her arm closer before running the material over and under her injury, keeping it tight, but not enough to cut off circulation. ‘You know I do like you, right?’
She let out a single laugh, rolling her eyes playfully, ‘I couldn’t tell.’
We stayed like that for a moment, her bandaged palm in mine, her blue eyes meeting my grey, lost in the small contact. She lifted her arm, inspecting the wrap as she stretched her fingers out. She still winced with pain, but the reassurance that the wound was at least well-kept for the evening soothed my worry somewhat, as if somebody had tried to smooth a crumpled piece of paper. Better, but not as it was before.
‘I mean, to start off with, you were annoying.’ I smiled, thinking back to those early days where I was just as bad as she had been. Two arrogant players, unwilling to work with someone else. My own ego had been too inflated to admit I needed her.
‘Dare I remind you about the plane?’ she asked.
I let out a snort of laughter, tilting my head slightly. ‘Dare I remind you about the plane?’ She shrugged her shoulders innocently, her expression clear. I let it go, knowing she was toying with me. There had been moments where we both weren’t our best selves. ‘We’ve been on this journey together. Before you, I wasn’t sure I’d really make it this far. My knee, the pain made it too hard to keep going. I kept pushing myself harder. Wondering why I wasn’t getting any better? But I think Jon knew I needed somebody to distract me, to push me in a different direction.’
‘Or just somebody who would push the right buttons.’ She smiled playfully. I realized for a moment how right she was. She had pushed all the buttons, like a Vegas slot machine, and somehow I’d been the one who won the jackpot.
‘Exactly. We started off fighting each other, but really, you lit the drive in me to keep going,’ I admitted, leaning forward on my stool, the gap between us closing. Those early days, they were rough. We were on opposite sides of every argument. Everything was made as difficult as possible just to annoy the other. But there was something in that, a drive I’d lost in the months living through the physical rehab. It was back.
‘I didn’t think I had this much fight left in me before you.’ The words left me without thought, unsure if she would understand what I was truly trying to say. How much I’d admitted.
‘I’m not sure what that says about our relationship.’
The moment stilled, her words hanging in the air. Did she really not know how I felt? Was it not obvious enough? Somehow, that overwhelmed the dam I had built that was holding back the flood of every too-big emotion I’d had for her. Every truth I’d tucked away.
‘Let me make it clear in case it wasn’t before. No matter what happens in the next few weeks, I’ve only made it this far because of you.’
She leaned back, waving a hand as her nose crinkled in apprehension. ‘You would’ve been fine without me.’
I pushed up from my stool, unable to sit still anymore. My legs, despite their previous pain, ached to stretch and work out the frustration that had built up. I inhaled sharply, looking right at her, and with another burst of courage, I started again.
‘You helped me train harder. Taught me to take a break and eat a burger, and run through Lindos in the pouring rain, to hell with the rules. You saw when I was in pain and helped. Even when I pushed you away.’
Her pink lips pressed into a thin line, her eyebrows creasing together, and I took the opportunity to keep going until she believed what I was saying. Until she understood what I meant.
‘I don’t care if something goes wrong next week. If we lose the first match then, it will suck but I’ll get over it.’ I almost closed my eyes to escape the piercing blue of hers, but I knew that even if I did, their colour would haunt me in my memory. ‘I only care that you’re okay and safe. It hurt to see you driving yourself to this, especially if it’s because you’re afraid for me. That … that broke my goddamn heart, Scottie.’
‘Nico …’ The gentleness her tone held as she said my name almost brought me to my knees, a warning to stop, but my words wouldn’t stop spilling out. I’d reached the limit of what I could reasonably smother down and save for a more convenient day. It might’ve been fine before, but she’d hurt herself for me. I wouldn’t be another person Scottie Sinclair ruined herself for, not when all I wanted was the opposite. When she meant so much.
‘You’re all I think about all day,’ I confessed, as her face fell blank, her pink lips parting. ‘You. I wonder how I could make you smile, how I could show you that you’re worth more than you give yourself credit for, how I could keep you safe. How do I show you how special you are? How your strength is the thing I’m most proud of you for, the thing that leaves me in most awe of you?’ I tried to swallow the lump in my throat, nerves getting the best of me. ‘Then, after everything else, right at the bottom of the list, I think about tennis. You have managed to plant yourself before everything else in my life, and I didn’t even realize you were doing it.’
Her gaze was fixed on mine, a completely unreadable expression spread across her features. As seconds passed like hours, I couldn’t help but wonder if I had made a huge mistake, baring my soul like this. But I had to make her understand how much she meant to me.
How I couldn’t watch her destroy herself.
‘Nico … I …’ she stuttered, her eyes searching my face, ‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘Say you feel it, too.’ I cracked wide open, every part of me exposed and vulnerable. ‘Tell me you think about me, too.’
‘All the time,’ she admitted. ‘Nobody has ever …’ she trailed off, and I couldn’t help but reach out to comfort her. My palm slid along her neck, tracing the line of her jaw. Her eyes closed as she melted into my touch, accepting it. I tilted her head up, her eyes opening to reveal a hungry blue that too easily consumed me whole. Never had I ever felt like this.
‘Tell me, Scottie,’ I begged, my voice breaking. ‘Tell me.’
‘I thought we agreed on no distractions,’ she murmured, a sly smile on her lips. She was toying with me, but I was already too close to my limit.
‘I feel pretty distracted, don’t you?’ I’d been so dumb to say that earlier, but it had been a last-ditch attempt to stop a runaway train that travelled far away from me. A last act of desperation, but instead it had done the opposite, propelling me toward her.
‘I’ve always thought focus was entirely overrated.’ She breathed. ‘Restraint, too.’
‘Scottie.’ Her name was a sin. Touching her was too close to heaven, and I was all too sure of the hell it would bring my life to go without her any longer.
She pulled her pink lip between her teeth and my knees weakened further with the need to finally know how her mouth would feel pressed against mine. Her hand rose to where mine was on her jaw.
‘I want you too, Nico,’ she admitted, the words tattooing themselves into the fabric of my soul. The dull ache in the centre of my chest I’d been carrying for weeks dissipated, replaced with a heart that felt as if it had grown ten sizes too big for my chest.
‘Can I kiss you?’ I asked, needing to know this was for her, what it was for me.
There was no hesitation in her answer. ‘Yes.’