Chapter 55
Chapter Fifty-Five
NAOMI
Two balloons, a three and a four, were bobbing in the living room. I looked around and noticed I was the first to wake up.
When I’d gone to bed last night, after everyone else, they weren’t there. Yet there they were. Silver and full. A reminder that today was important for two reasons.
I just hoped that the colour of these balloons wasn’t an indicator of the medal I was going to come back with. I wasn’t usually a gold girl, but today, it was all I wanted.
I didn’t know how long I sat there staring at the balloons, bobbing about like they were creating their own breeze, but I was brought out of my daze by a plate of food and a coffee from Wyatt. I took them and thanked him with a nod.
“You would not believe the length of the conversation we had about the colour of those balloons,” he said eventually.
I laughed quietly. “You can’t break tradition.”
“Yeah, why couldn’t your tradition be gold? That would feel like a better omen for today.”
“I don’t have an answer for that.”
Silence fell over us again while I ate and he drank his coffee.
“You can’t hold the fact that he’s playing with a slight injury against him today. I know you. You’ve spent all night thinking of ways to make sure you can hit the ball more than him. You can’t. That’s not how doubles works. Need I remind you that you played a whole Aussie Open with an ab issue?”
“I was young, stupid, and trying to prove that I hadn’t made a massive mistake firing my mum and replacing her with my younger, inexperienced brother. Need I remind you that I went out in the second round?”
“You were twenty-six,” he said pointedly, his eyebrow raised. “And he’s not played the last two weeks with this injury, which you did, either. It really would be just this match. And you can’t hold that against him.”
I put my now-empty plate on the floor. “I know, but I’m still kind of annoyed at him for putting his body at risk like this…for me,” I added.
Wyatt scoffed. “He is also in the running for a gold medal. And this is his first Olympics, too. It’s not completely selfless. But he wanted to do it with you. Since January, this has been the goal. The two of you, in Madrid, winning gold.”
“You believe it, don’t you?”
“You don’t?”
I took a long sip of my coffee and thought about it.
My expectations when I came back to the tour were on the lower side.
I knew I needed to be good enough to make the selection criteria to make Team GB, and that was it.
What I’d actually managed to achieve wasn’t something I’d ever dared to let myself dream about.
I knew what my end goal was. To make this match.
A gold medal match. But some part of me didn’t think I’d be able to pull it off.
Too many things had to go in my favour, and that didn’t seem possible.
But all the things and more had gone in my favour, and now we were here. Sitting in the living room of a place in Madrid, drinking coffee, half staring at some balloons before we went to site so I could go and play in a gold medal match. With my boyfriend.
Why couldn’t one more thing go my way before my tennis career ended?
“I don’t not believe it,” I said eventually.
Wyatt smiled widely. “Good, because come the end of today, I will know two gold medallists, and I will be obnoxious about it for the rest of my life. Lord knows you won’t be obnoxious about it enough.”
“I dunno, Wyatt, if I get the fairytale career ending, I might be pretty cocky about it.”
“As you should be.”
On the drive over, we played musical theatre songs too loud, and I tried not to cry when some of the lyrics hit too close to home. Sam kept his hand in mine throughout.
We went through our warm-up with practised ease, and I had to force myself not to think about everything I was doing for the last time.
I was mostly successful, but I did have to keep wiping under my eyes when stray tears slipped down my face.
Both Wyatt and Sam ignored them, which I was grateful for because if they didn’t, then I’d break down completely, and I didn’t have time for that.
When we’d done all the prep we could, Wyatt left Sam and me to it. I watched Sam tape his fingers one more time in silence, getting lost in the way he wrapped, secured, and bit the tape off.
I was about as ready to play this match as I was ever going to be. The only thing I hadn’t done was put my match braids in.
I pulled my hair out of its loose ponytail and teased my hair into a middle parting like it was second nature. When I started sectioning one half of my hair, my fingers wouldn’t stop shaking.
Sam bit his final bit of tape off and then came around to me.
“Let me,” he said quietly. I nodded before he took one half of my hair and split it into three sections. I let myself get lost in the rhythm of him braiding my hair, handing him a hairband when he reached the end. He repeated it on the other side, and then it was time.