Chapter 9
“Why do you need to be back so early?” Robbie asks as we wait in line at the meat carving station at player dining.
We had a brief debate about going to his favorite restaurant in Manhattan, but I’m borderline hangry after a full day of training and practice.
Plus, I should be at the hotel with plenty of time to meet Diego.
“I just want to take it easy tonight,” I reply, avoiding any mention of my real plans.
I’m a full-on adult, under no obligation to tell Robbie anything about my life outside of tennis, but sometimes he seems like a chaperone.
If I told him about tonight, I would get eyebrows and questions and “you need to stay focused” judgment, so I keep my mouth shut until it’s time to inhale as much protein as possible to give any of today’s muscle gains a fighting chance to stick around.
—
Later that night, I poke my head out and check the hallway for any sign of Robbie before I head downstairs. I slip through the busy lobby full of racket bags and players arriving for the tournament, now only two days away.
outside! I text Diego, a comfortable ten minutes early, as always.
Almost immediately, he writes back. Already here, he says. Hop in!
A car horn honks across the street and there’s Diego, rolling down the window in the back seat.
I wait for a safe moment to jaywalk across the street—I’d like to survive long enough to know if this is a date.
This isn’t a date, right? It’s just two guys hanging out again.
Just him planning something mysterious for us to do.
Just him picking me up at my hotel in a Mercedes, early.
Just him sliding over as I open the door… and greeting me with another fist bump.
Not a date. Very much not a date.
It’s fine. If I say that I want more friends, I should act like it and not try to make this friendship something it isn’t. But holy hell, he smells amazing.
“How was the day?” he asks as we pull into traffic.
Morning therapy seems like ages ago—not that I have any interest in disclosing the current state of my mental health to him, or anyone.
“Not too bad,” I say. “We hit for a few hours after I saw you at the gym.”
“Conditions were a little better today, not so hot. How’d that go?”
“Better than yesterday,” I say with a snort, acknowledging my incident and quickly moving on. “Robbie booked a hitting partner, some junior guy ranked number one in New York, a high school senior.”
“Did you beat him?”
“Completely dominated.”
“You’re back in action, then.”
It certainly feels that way. I’m swarmed with nerves about almost everything around me, but my day has gone well, all things considered. It helped that I was looking forward to this outing.
“So, where are we going?” I ask after glancing up to see if I can get a clue from the driver’s screen.
“Well, it’s not going exactly how I wanted. I tried to rent out this place—I thought that would be cool—but they couldn’t do it.”
I nod along, pretending not to be impressed by the thought of him trying to “rent out” anything at all.
“Did you tell them who you are?” I ask.
He laughs. “Some kid is having a birthday party.”
“Where we’re going? Now I have to know where it is.”
“It turns out, twelve-year-olds like real-life Mario Kart too.”
“Holy shit—are we driving go-karts?”
“If that sounds good to you,” he says, with a shrug and a smile.
“It sounds great to me. Is it okay with the twelve-year-olds?”
“We probably shouldn’t beat anyone on their birthday, right?”
“I don’t know. Twelve is a big age. Could be time for some difficult life lessons,” I reply. “We did say we were gonna do something New Yorky, though. I’m not sure if this city is known for its go-karting.”
“Oh yeah, that’s the other thing. This place isn’t even in New York. It’s in New Jersey.”
“Jersey!” I don’t know why I shout it like that. I’m pretty sure there’s some snobbery about New Jersey from New Yorkers, and it seemed fun to play along. Our driver chuckles.
“Yeah, there isn’t a single go-kart place in the city. But we can take in the New York sights along the way?” Diego says.
“That’s gonna have to do,” I respond, turning to look out the window. “What do we have?”
“Well, to your right,” he says, deepening his voice for a buttery impression of a tour guide, “is the Empire State Building, standing at three hundred eighty-one meters tall.”
“Did you make that up?”
“That is exactly how tall it is. Four hundred forty-three meters if you include the tip.”
“Well, you have to include the tip.” Diego smirks at my low-hanging joke. “How the hell do you know that?”
“My dad is a real estate developer in Mexico City—that’s where I’m from.
He studied architecture in school, and he’s obsessed with skyscrapers and landmarks around the world, which means he thinks I should also be obsessed with them.
He would quiz me when we traveled. Still does.
So if it’s a famous building, I probably know how tall it is.
” He cranes his neck and points out the other side of the car.
“That one there—well, now it’s kind of hidden—that’s the Chrysler Building, which is three hundred nineteen meters tall—”
“With the—”
“With the tip.” He’s quickly catching on to my humor, and it’s very appealing.
“Do you have any other fun facts about these buildings?”
“Usually just the height. It’s pretty useless. Oh, actually,” he says, finger in the air, “the Chrysler Building was the world’s tallest building for eleven months.”
“Eleven months at world number one. Who knocked it out?”
“That guy.” Diego points back to the Empire State Building, towering above everything in the area.
“What a bitch.”
“Someone’s always after you,” Diego says.
—
Diego thanks our driver by name, like a genuine gentleman, as we exit the car, and my sneakers touch New Jersey for the first time in my life.
At least, I think it’s the first time. I’ve played Futures and Challengers tournaments all over the country in the past year and a half, and it’s all a blur.
“What color do you want for your head sock?” Diego asks me when we get to the check-in desk inside.
“Head sock?”
“Yeah, you wear it under your helmet.”
“Oh, to protect from, like, lice and stuff?” He laughs. “What? I hear kids’ birthday party and immediately think lice.”
“It’s for sweat mostly, but sure, maybe that too.”
“Okay, I’ll take a blue head condom.”
“And I’ll take a red condom,” Diego says to the desk person, who’s unamused by our banter.
But I’m totally fine with that, because through the glass in front of us is an indoor Mario Kart course come to spectacular life.
The track, lined with bright neon lights, weaves around itself, up and down, over two levels, and there’s nowhere else I’d rather be, no one else I’d rather be with.
And I wonder if Diego feels the same way.
On instinct, I reach for my wallet when the guy at the front desk tells Diego the total.
“No, no, hold on to your purse, Princess Peach,” Diego says, handing over his Amex.
I smile and slide my wallet back into my jeans.
Diego’s lifetime prize money is public information, and with all his sponsorship deals, he’s easily clearing millions—plural.
So paying for me isn’t a huge deal for him—he was planning on renting out the track, after all—but when you couple that with that teasing grin of his, it feels oddly romantic.
And now I’m back to thinking this is a date.
And then he pulls on the head sock.
“How do I look?” he asks, turning to me, his face fully covered except for his eyes and the top of his nose, popping out of a small opening.
“Like you’re ready to burglarize a birthday.”
“And they won’t even know it was me,” he says, and we start toward the track. I think he throws in a hop and a skip on the way, gleefully watching the electric karts screech around the place.
Sure enough, not a single preteen recognizes him as we join the lively party, all boys, shoving and yelling, waiting impatiently for the next race. Maybe this was his plan all along. It’s easy to have a night out in incognito mode. I put my head sock on too.
“How’s it going, man?” one of the adults asks Diego, turning and extending his hand for a fatherly shake. “Which one’s yours?” He gestures to the wildlings in front of us in line. One of them chucks a stuffed animal at his friend. Another one attempts to rip its ear off.
“Uh,” Diego says, and I try to do the math on how old he would have been when he’d actually conceived one of these hellions. “This one’s mine,” he answers, pointing a thumb at me.
“Daddy, I want ice cream,” I reply.
Oh boy.
Diego’s eyes smile under his mask, but the other daddy doesn’t care for the joke and slowly turns back to his group.
If Diego was a Sesame Street sock puppet before, he completely morphs into a fantasy when he pulls on his very legit-looking helmet.
Safely hidden behind my own helmet, I run my eyes over his suede bomber jacket and the suggestive print under his sweatpants.
I don’t really care about Formula One, but maybe I’m becoming a fan.
“Good luck out there,” he shouts, moving close to my face and giving my helmet a competitive smack.
I step down into my kart, and my heart rate starts to accelerate before I do.
I drag my sweaty palms across my jeans and take a few breaths, because there’s one little embarrassing detail I failed to mention to Diego.
As we know, I love Mario Kart, and I’m perfectly fine driving around as Princess Peach in the safety of a digital world, but in real life, I hate driving.
I hate it so much that I never even got a driver’s license.