Chapter 7
I’m not sure the barista heard me, so I raise my voice over the hustle of the morning coffee shop the next morning.
“Decaf—you got that part, right?”
She doesn’t even look up as she pulls a shot at the espresso machine.
I stop myself from asking again. And I stop myself from telling her that an energy drink in Tallahassee tried to kill me, and getting my order right is medically necessary. My life and potential anxiety trigger are in your tattooed hands, ma’am. Please handle with care.
Around me is a healthy mix of suits and Midtown tourists.
I walked five blocks out of the way to get here, passing three corporate options on the way.
Whenever I get to a new city, I look for a place just like this one, something with Scandi design, baristas ten times cooler than me, and very good coffee—check, check, and we’re about to find out.
And if I like it, I go back every day. I like the consistency, the routine.
Morning is the one part of my day I can enjoy before the world catches up to me.
The barista pours the shot over water and sets my drink down on the counter. “Austin. Iced Americano. Extra decaf,” she calls out, sarcasm dripping off her tongue piercing.
Okay, maybe I deserved that. But the coffee tastes excellent. I’ll be back tomorrow.
—
Helen’s office is tucked under an older apartment building. I scan through a list of names at the door and buzz her office. And buzz again. No answer.
ur girlfriend is late, I text Robbie before I open my DMs for the tenth time, looking for anything from Diego.
I thought maybe I’d get a Thanks for the hang or something, but it’s been crickets so far.
In his defense, it’s only eight a.m., and I haven’t sent him anything either.
Don’t want to seem too desperate. But he was very much the main character of my dreams last night.
They played out like an extension of our conversation, as if he never even left—me on one side of the bed, him on the other, talking about books and video games and life on the tour.
It felt so real that I expected him to be there when I woke up.
A few minutes pass before a tall woman lugging a New York Public Library tote bag turns the corner. Streaks of gray in her hair catch the morning light as she hurries toward me. “Austin?” she asks, assuming, and extends her hand. “So sorry I’m late. My kids were absolute shits this morning.”
Beneath her fluster is a British accent, and it’s very hard to ignore that she’s absolutely gorgeous, which does nothing to quiet the Robbie-dating rumors I’ve completely made up in my head.
She fiddles with her key in the door. “All right, this way,” she sings, then guides me down the hallway as she takes a gulp from her water bottle.
“Sun’s barely up and it’s already sweltering,” she says, entering her office.
She heads straight to the window, flips on the AC, pulls up the blinds.
Light fills the room—stacks of books on the floor, plants hanging from the ceiling, a box of tissues on the coffee table, more of them in a Costco box in a corner.
“I sit here?” I ask, pointing to a sunken couch.
“You do. You sit there,” she says, wheeling the chair from her desk closer to me and plopping down with a notebook, “and I sit here.” Helen smiles, observing me as I sit, hands clasped tightly in my lap, my back straight. There’s something about her British accent that makes me want to be proper.
“I’m not exactly sure how this goes,” I say, crossing my legs and maintaining my posture like a distinguished gentleman.
“Oh, Austin,” she says warmly, “this goes any way we want it to.”
I nod. Okay, then.
“We could start with you telling me why we’re here,” she says after a moment.
“Oh, I assumed Robbie told you.”
“Well, no, not exactly. He said that you have a lot of pressure on you right now, and you had some sort of accident at practice, and that’s about it.”
“I guess I assumed he caught you up. He has a lot of opinions about all this.”
“I think he wanted to leave the rest up to you.”
“Right.” I look around the room, trying to figure out where to start. A large poster of dancers hangs framed above her desk—bodies in motion, legs and arms pointed and faded from years in the sun, and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago in cursive across the bottom.
“How much do you know about tennis?” I ask. I figure we can start there.
“Nothing, really.”
“Nothing?” I reply—more sharply than intended. But, seriously, How the hell is this supposed to help, Rob? Players have actual sports psychologists on their teams now, and they know everything about tennis. This already seems like a waste of time.
“Actually, I saw one of Robert’s matches at Wimbledon,” Helen continues. “A long time ago, obviously. It was exciting, but I found the scoring quite…odd.”
“Yep, it’s weird,” I say dryly. I swear to god, if I have to explain scoring, we’ll be here all day.
“And you’re out there on the court, all alone on the grass. It seems lonely.”
“This one’s a hard-court tournament, but yeah.”
“Do you feel lonely?”
And here comes the therapy. That transition wasn’t even subtle. I sigh and consider how I should respond. I’m annoyed, but she’s already picked up on something I’m struggling with—but that one’s an easy guess.
“Sometimes.”
“Can you tell me about that?” she asks.
Sure, I could give her some examples. I could tell her about how a guy I beat in a Futures tournament waved to me when I was looking for a table at player dining yesterday. I waved back, but he was just stretching his arm, so I had yet another meal with Robbie.
I could tell her about Jake, and what went down freshman year of high school.
I could tell her I still text my dead dad’s phone number.
I don’t feel lonely. I am lonely.
But that’s too much for a first session, and I don’t want to ruin the rest of my day.
“Well, I didn’t feel lonely last night,” I finally say.
“I think maybe…I made a friend?” Shocking that I take this opportunity to talk about my latest obsession.
“Which is tough to do on the tour. And some of the guys…they aren’t, like, mean or anything—it’s just, I’m not sure they really want to be friends with me. ”
“Because of your sexuality?”
“Okay, so Robbie told you a few things.”
“No, that one’s online.”
“Right,” I reply—and wonder if therapists are allowed to google their clients.
“And please forgive my direct questions. We just don’t have a whole lot of time, and I want to cover some ground here. Is that all right with you?”
“Yeah, sure. I can handle it.”
“Good,” she says. “And I want to assure you that everything we discuss is between us. I’m not just saying that. I’m bound by law.”
“Bound by law. That sounds serious.”
Helen chuckles, and I take it as some kind of win that I can make my therapist laugh. Is that fucked-up? I don’t really care. I have to find a way to make this fun.
She picks her water bottle up from the floor and takes a few sips. “Already so warm out. Dreadful,” she says.
“Yeah, it’s made playing a little difficult.”
“About that—can you tell me what happened yesterday, at practice?”
“Well…” I pause, figuring out how to sum it up.
“I started feeling weird things a few years ago—aches in the front of my face, dizziness, difficulty breathing, things like that. All those usual symptoms came up yesterday. And I’m not stupid—I know it’s anxiety,” I say, my chest tightening even from talking about it, like I’m haunted by an evil anxiety spirit that appears if I mention its name.
“I usually feel it most at night, when I’m alone in a hotel room or something.
And I try to pinpoint what makes it start, but it’s hard to trace.
It comes and goes. It’s hard to predict when I’m gonna feel it, and, I guess, I wish I could figure out what triggers it. ”
I go on to tell her the rest of the story about the anxiety attack. She listens intently, taking notes, occasionally asking questions, and peppering in a few nods and okay, okays. There’s lots of scribbling when I get to the Diego part.
“He has eight abs? Not the normal six?” she asks, looking up from her notebook.
“Yeah, the guy’s not quite human.”
And I get a teeny-tiny jaw drop at the part where he shows up at my room.
“Oh my,” she mumbles to herself. More scribbles.
I laugh. Helen may be all right, and talking to her doesn’t feel that difficult.
My jokes are landing, and she’s hanging on every twist and turn of my story. Am I killing it? Am I nailing therapy?
When I get to the end she says, “Okay,” for the twentieth time, this one with a little more finality.
“Our time is almost up, so let’s talk about some things we can do.
One thing I’d like to address…” She shifts in her chair.
“I don’t want you to be talking to me because of an ultimatum.
I know Robert didn’t explicitly say that, but I don’t know—I think he might’ve implied it?
But you, Austin—you—have to want to be here.
You have to want to make changes. Otherwise this won’t work. Does that make sense?”
I mean, it makes sense in theory, but would I be here if he didn’t insist? Slim chance. I’d be on the court or at the gym or getting an extra hour of sleep. I’d be preparing for the most important tournament of my life. But instead of saying any of that, I respond with a “Yeah, sure.”
“And to get you through this next week—maybe two weeks, if you’re lucky—”
“I like the confidence.”
“—we have to make some adjustments that might feel…uncomfortable.” A car alarm starts to wail outside the window, and she raises her voice slightly.
“The things leading up to an anxiety attack compound over time. There isn’t necessarily a trigger.
But one thing I’m concerned about is…outside noise.
” She swirls her finger in the air. “Now, a lot of that is beyond our control, but a very direct path comes from right there.”
She points down to the phone in my hand. I didn’t even realize I was holding it.
“You sat on the bench at practice, you read a bunch of hateful comments on there—truly, they sound shit—and it all came bubbling up,” she says, flapping her hands.
She’s full of mannerisms. “The connection there seems obvious to me. And I think…” She pauses again, wheels spinning.
“We should limit your usage. While you’re here. To keep your head clear.”
“So, what does that mean exactly? Like, give up my phone?”
She winces in a “yes, maybe?” sort of way.
“Completely?”
“While this is all going on, you could consider it. It’s temporary. And it might be better than just trying to delete a few apps, leaving it in the hands of your self-control.”
I genuinely can’t believe that this is the advice I’m getting. If I was paying for this session, I’d want my money back. “Yeah, that might be difficult. I need my phone.”
“So, then my next question is, for what exactly? And is it worth the consequences?” She taps the armrests of her chair and grabs her water bottle, starts to unscrew the top. “Think about it over the weekend, and we’ll pick up on Monday. Robert has us scheduled for the same time.”
“Okay,” I say, absently. I sit there a moment longer, watching her get up to pour the rest of her water into a planter on the bookshelf.
“And this is the part when I leave, right?”
“Yes, this is that time,” she says with a smile.
“Right,” I say, standing. “Thank you.”
An older man waits on a chair outside her office. He glances up from under his Yankees hat when I open the door. “Morning,” I say with a nod. He doesn’t respond, maybe because I’m not supposed to talk to the other patients. Clients? What’s the word for us?
My phone buzzes as soon as I step outdoors.
A text from Robbie. His message is short, with a period attached to the end. I’ve told him so many times that no one should text with periods. It makes you sound angry, disgruntled—although that’s pretty close to his baseline.
Your draw is out.
Another text immediately follows. Don’t look at it. We’ll talk in the car.
Well, why the fuck did you tell me, then.
But he knows I’ve been refreshing the schedule every two seconds.
We’ve been impatiently waiting for answers, and now my path to winning the tournament, and every potential opponent I’ll face, is only a tap away.
Am I starting Monday or Tuesday? Who am I playing? What court am I playing on?
Ignoring his advice, I open the tournament players’ app. What’s in there that he doesn’t want me to see without him? What could be so bad? I start to scroll to find my first match.
Austin don’t look at it, he texts.
Jesus, okay. I shove my phone into my pocket with an eye roll. I guess I can wait another twenty minutes. Look at me, exercising self-control. And I don’t even need my phone locked away in some hotel safe to do it, Helen. I can handle this all on my own.
I head back toward the subway with an extra bounce in my step, feeling proud that I’ve outsmarted my first therapy session.
Two blocks later, with no sign of the subway, I realize I’m a little lost. And guess what helps me find it.
Google fucking Maps. Because that’s the beauty of modern technology, and there’s no way in hell I’m giving it up.