Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
NAOMI
Grace won the toss and elected to receive. It immediately put pressure on my serve, and my racquet felt slippery in my grip, no matter how many times I wiped my hands on my black skirt.
I almost laughed when my first serve went into the net.
When the second one did the same, and the umpire called fifteen–love, I could only nod in a resigned sort of acceptance while I watched Grace walk to the other side of the court.
I expected this. Match conditions were always going to be different, and I was on a court full of fans who were rooting for me.
There had never been more expectation and excitement for a match I was playing, and I was out of the habit of blocking it all out and focusing on what was in front of me.
I tried to lock in on how I’d felt yesterday after Lois had issued her challenge to me, when I managed to achieve that almost zen-like state, but it was harder this time.
The third serve clipped the net, and instead of doing me a solid and landing on Grace’s side of the court, which would’ve given me a second attempt at a first serve, it bounced on my side.
I took a deep breath before trying again. The fourth serve made it across, but I knew the second I hit it, I’d gone too wide, and in less than a minute, I was thirty–love down.
I wiped my hands on my skirt again as I accepted another two balls on my racquet before turning to the advertisement boards and trying to find a memory of when my serve worked well.
Sunday.
Towards the end of my hitting session with Sam, when everything felt loose, and the last bits of my fear had well and truly disappeared.
Wyatt had thrown the ball at me, and I’d bounced it twice, clocked where Sam was standing on the baseline, closer to the T than was smart when playing a lefty, and executed a near-perfect serve out wide.
I hadn’t been thinking about it; my body just did it. Years of muscle memory and reading opponents and knowing how to get a free point when I could had taken over, and the weapon that was my serve returned.
I closed my eyes for a moment as I prepped to serve this time. As I struck the ball and landed, I knew two things: it was going to comfortably make it over the net, and it was going to hit a line. I just wasn’t sure if it was going to be out by millimetres or not.
Thirty–fifteen was called.
Ace.
That was more like it.
In the end, the serve was not my downfall.
It wasn’t consistent by any means. I’d never hit a ball into the net so much in my entire career, but it wasn’t my downfall.
I didn’t capitalise on the opportunities I had. Grace hit as many balls to my backhand as she could, and I couldn’t get the match to swing in my favour. The version of myself that I used to be able to slip into the moment I walked onto court until I left again alluded me.
Deep down, a loss was what I expected from my first match back.
But it didn’t take the sting out of it. Then I spent the whole press conference defending myself as men who had never played a professional sport a day in their life tried to dissect my match, gameplay, and decision to come back at all.
By the time I was done, I felt physically and emotionally exhausted, ready to devour as many carbs as I could find and have an evening to myself.
I was so in my own head that I didn’t notice that Sam was still hanging around.
When he’d appeared earlier, I wasn’t in the right headspace to take in the details. Now that the stress of making a comeback was over, I realised it was interesting that he was here at all when he didn’t need to be, especially not now.
He was wearing shorts again and a hoodie that matched my own, in that it was black, while frowning at his phone. The tension was back in his shoulders.
“Hey,” I said as I approached him, hiking my bag up to arrange it properly on my shoulder.
Sam smiled as he locked his phone and slipped it into his hoodie.
“Hey, how was that?” he asked as he nodded in the vague direction of where I’d been doing press.
I shook my head. “We don’t need to talk about it. The tennis is done for the day, and now we move on.”
“It’s that simple for you?”
“It is now, yeah. There’s really nothing to be gained from your life being nothing but tennis. The sport is great, but at the end of the day, it’s a job. When I walk off site, I’m done. Today has been both great and brutal, and I’ve gotta do it all over again next week.”
“Can I ask you a work-related question then, while we’re still technically on site?”
A snort of a laugh came out of my nose. “Go for it.”
“Do you want to be my hitting partner tomorrow? I had a lot of fun the other day. Plus, you’re a lefty, which is always handy.”
Something I’d noticed the last couple of times I’d interacted with Sam was that it didn’t seem like he had a lot of fun.
On or off the court. I was more than happy to help remind him what it was like, in whatever way I could.
And having a semi-regular hitting partner was always a good thing.
I was already going to give Lois a hand, but I could add him to the list as well.
“Yeah, sure. I can do that.”
His smile was almost blinding. “Amazing. You wanna go get chips then?”
For as long as I could remember, the first thing I ate post-match was the biggest plate of chips I could find, doused in salt. That information was a flyaway sentence in a paragraph of an old newsletter of Alisha’s. I didn’t know what to make of the fact that he knew it.
“That sounds like a perfect idea.”