Chapter 11
She didn’t exactly say it, but I’m pretty sure Helen just told me I look like shit. “Did you get any sleep last night?” is what she actually says, but I can read between the lines.
“I didn’t get a ton of it,” I reply, cranky, short, once again not pleased to be here.
“Are you nervous about your first match?”
“I’d say I’m…normal nervous? But I don’t think that’s what kept me up…” I consider whether I want to confess the real reason—it’s not my proudest moment—as Helen waits patiently in her chair, pen and notebook raring to go. “You know read receipts?” I ask her.
“I’ve always called them read receipts,” she says, pronouncing it like reed.
“Agree to disagree,” I reply. Helen shrugs. “So, there’s this guy, and we were supposed to hang out last night, and he kinda ditched me. I sent him a message, he saw it, and he ignored it.”
“This is the new friend you spoke about last time?”
“Good memory.”
“Good notes.” She holds up her pen.
“I kept waking up every hour to check my phone to see if he’d responded, which he never did. Still hasn’t.”
“And that kept you up all night?”
“Well, yeah. And also…I dipped back into the comment sections for all the fun things people are saying.” I brace for impact, because I’m sure she’s gonna run with this. I shouldn’t have even brought it up.
“Why do you think you did that?”
“Masochism?” I shake my head. “One girl called me ‘gap-teeth googly eyes.’ ”
“Oh dear.”
“So I had like eight naps last night, and I don’t understand, because I barely know this guy, and…I don’t know why he’s making me spiral so hard. It’s annoying. It’s so annoying.”
“You seemed excited about him last time. Were there particular things about him you liked?”
“I mean, we had a really fun time just hanging out in my room. And he arranged this whole go-kart thing for us the next day, just me and him.” Helen scribbles.
“And he’s…a lot of things I’m not? He’s confident.
Everyone likes him. And he’s so much further ahead than me.
It makes me wonder why he wanted to hang out with me in the first place. ”
Exhaustion tugs at my eyelids. Why am I not in bed right now? Why am I sitting here, wasting my time talking about Diego? The more I try to forget him, the more I bring him up.
“I just want to be able to stop thinking about him. Can you help me with that? I can’t stop. It ruined my day, my night. It’s one stupid thing, and I can’t turn off my brain. Why does that happen?” Surely I can get some kind of solution here. Therapy can’t be only about questions.
“Well…” Helen thinks. “It can happen for a number of reasons, and there are a few things I want to respond to here,” she says, tilting her head.
“I’m not hearing a whole lot of confidence from you—on a day when you’re going to need that.
Now, I may be entering coaching territory here, so forgive me, but it’s worth saying that you have to remember that you’ve made it this far for a reason.
You are talented. And you are worthy of love—and friendship—and you have to be brave enough to trust that.
Otherwise, small things like this will throw you, and we can’t afford that right now. ”
As hard as I try, and as much as I need to hear that right now, it’s hard to take a compliment when I feel like shit.
She points to my pocket. “On a scale of one to ten, how much do you want to check your phone right now to see if he’s messaged you?” she asks.
“Eleven,” I say. No hesitation.
She smirks. At least I’m still funny. “It takes years for some of my clients to be that honest with me.”
Ah, so client is the right word.
Helen leans closer, elbows on her legs. “I want you to make brave choices today, Austin, on the court and off the court. You know how I feel about the noise around you, and it seems as if it doubled over the weekend. I don’t like this trend. Find a way to silence the noise. And go win your game.”
“Match. Games are played within a set.”
Helen sighs. “I think I need flash cards.”
—
In the back seat of the car, Robbie rests his iPad against his knee.
He’s been glued to videos of old Volt matches and updating me on strategy since I got placed in the draw.
“See, there—he has a hard time returning outside of his strike zone,” and “You have to keep an eye on when he gets too far behind the baseline. That’s the only time your drop shots will work. ”
There’s a lot of problem-solving in tennis.
If your normal game isn’t working against an opponent, you have to be smart enough to find a new solution.
You have to shake things up to win. When I start to speak, Robbie turns his head slightly, keeping his eyes on the screen.
“I’m making a little adjustment today,” I say, “and I need your help…”
“I’m listening.”
I hesitate, staring at the back of my phone.
Slipped into the clear phone case is a folded airline ticket from my very first trip out of the country, for a Challenger tournament in Barcelona.
I lost in the first round, and Robbie and I spent the next day just exploring the city.
We toured Sagrada Família, walked the old streets of the Gothic Quarter, and I made an embarrassing attempt to peel prawns.
That was more than a year ago, when none of this felt real and it was all less complicated.
I take a breath—and hand him my phone.
“Yes?” he says.
“Will you hold on to that for me?”
“Yes?” he says again, this time with caution, sensing a trap.
“I—I think it’s hurting my focus, and I want to try things without it.”
“Okay…this is not at all a…shocking decision.”
“You should tell your face.”
“When would you like it back?” he asks.
I’m scared of the next part, so I take my time getting it out.
“When this is over,” I say. Robbie’s eyebrows shoot up. “At least, I want to try for that.”
“And when you ask for it back—which you inevitably will—what do I do?”
“You keep it, keep it on, charge it. I’ll give you my iPad too. But when I ask for it back”—I sigh—“don’t give it to me?”
His eyebrows reach his receding hairline.
“I mean, maybe I can walk over and use it in your room at night, but I don’t want it around me anymore—for now.”
“We should have a safe word here, because I know there’s gonna be a fight if I follow these directions.”
“Okay, yeah, let’s do a safe word,” I say, and both of us pause, thinking.
“Espresso martini?” he asks.
I smirk. “Yeah. That works.”
“Austin, I think this is a very good idea, and I’m happy you got here.”
“I have one more request,” I say, pulling my sweatshirt over my head—which is really hard to do in a car. I bundle it up and shove it against the window. “Please let me nap the rest of the way there.”
“You got it.”
I close my eyes and get twenty minutes of extra sleep.
—
Other Austin is back again for a quick hit at the practice courts. “Oh, and I’m gonna stick around for your match after,” he says, hovering as I regrip my racket on the bench.
“Ah, great. Thank you for the support,” I say to him, my eyes narrowed, as I spiral a new overgrip over the handle of my racket.
“It’s cool, because, like…if you win, I win—because we worked together.”
“Yeah, it is kinda like that.”
“Do you think I could sit with Robbie?”
I glance over at Rob biting his tongue. Charlotte is chatty enough, and I don’t think he wants more company. “I don’t know. You might have a better time with someone else.”
“Totally cool. I have some friends here today,” he replies, unfazed.
Using a small pair of scissors, I cut the excess grip at the top of the handle and carefully stretch finishing tape around the end of it. Robbie’s bite-and-tear method is far more chaotic, so this is the one part of my maintenance routine he’s not allowed to touch.
“Hey, and I saw those…comments on your post,” I say, hopping up. “I’m sorry about all that.”
“Are you kidding? Dude, that was my highest-performing post of all time. The haters are great for engagement.”
“It didn’t bother you at all?”
“Not really. I just blocked some people.” He points to invisible bodies on the court. “Block, block, block,” he says, and turns back to me. “Does it bother you?”
I glance over at Robbie’s racket bag, the new home for my phone. “Not anymore,” I reply. “If I don’t see it, it doesn’t exist.”
Other Austin’s eyes go wide. “That’s so profound, dude.”
—
Robbie and I trail close behind our US Open escort, who guides us through the crowd of fans. The grounds were busy last week, but today is absolutely slammed. I overheard someone at player dining say the tournament has already broken an attendance record.
“Cruz is down a set,” Robbie says to me.
Huge screens are mounted to the exterior of Arthur Ashe Stadium, broadcasting live matches. I look up to see Diego’s sweaty face on one of them as he makes his way from his towel to the baseline.
Robbie is still in the dark about Diegogate, and I’d like to keep it that way, but the downside there is that I can’t tell him to shut up about him. He would start to catch on.
I sneak a glance at the score. Diego lost the first set 2–6 and is already down a game in the second. The vindictive part of me is happy to see it. Karma’s a bitch, just like you. But it’s very unlike him, especially since he’s playing a qualifier I haven’t heard of, although who am I to judge?
Robbie and I round a corner, and the perimeter of Grandstand Stadium comes into view dead ahead. A pulse of anxiety jolts through me and settles uncomfortably in my stomach.
It’s almost time.
I swing my bag to my side and shove my hand into its front compartment. I fish through grips and packs of gum and finally find my headphones. When I place them on my ears, the noise cancellation kicks in immediately and the hum of thousands of fans washes away.
I reach for my pocket to grab my—
Oh my god, I didn’t think this part through.
It’s pretty hard to cue up my prematch playlist with no phone.
I continue the walk in silence—I can skip the music this time around—but the trouble with that is there’s nothing to drown out my thoughts, and as confident as I’m starting to feel since my perfect practice session this morning, they’re still there. They always are.
You’re a fluke. You don’t deserve to be here.
He has two Grand Slam titles. You’re gonna lose.
The world is watching you, and you’re gonna let so many people down.
Everyone else will celebrate in the comments.
“Rob!” I shout to him, a few strides ahead. “I need my phone for a second.”
He turns, eyes bugged. “No. No way.”
“Chill. I just need music. You know this.”
“Okay, well, tell me what to put on, then.”
“Can I just do it?”
“Austin. Jesus.”
“Okay, okay. There’s a playlist.”
“Called…?”
I hesitate. “One Direction Drop Shots,” I finally say. My taste in music has changed slightly over the years, but I’ve never grown out of my love for 1D. I’ve pretty much kept that to myself.
“That’s what you’ve been listening to this whole time? I thought you were trying our classical music strategy.”
Eriksson famously listened to classical music before his matches, which was deeply on-brand for him as the most graceful man in tennis.
There’s an iconic photo of him holding an original iPod, his eyes closed, white headphone cords snaking up to his ears as he sat on the grass of Centre Court at Wimbledon.
He said classical music calmed his mind and improved his focus when he went into a match, and Robbie thought it could help me too, but the very first time I tried it, I lost in straight sets, so I gave up and went right back to the Boys.
“Didn’t work,” I say. “Bach doesn’t do it for me like Harry does.”
Robbie shakes his head, digs through his bag for my phone. He holds it up to me. “Passcode,” he orders.
“Put on ‘Girl Almighty,’ please,” I say to him as I tap the screen. “On repeat.”
“What song?” he asks, turning his ear to my face. He wants me to shout it.
“ ‘Girl Almighty’!”
“Coming right up,” he says, and soon my second-favorite One Direction banger begins. My pace rises to match the tempo. Already, I walk with more intention, more conviction. I need all the Direction they can give me for my first Grand Slam match—my coming-out party.
Robbie stops me just before we split up, me heading to the court entrance and him to his seat. I lift my headphones.
“One more thing,” he says. “Your nerves will be working against you in the first few games. You’ll be a little tight. If you win the coin toss, choose to receive. Settle in and let Volt do the work up front. Don’t be a hero, and don’t expect to break him in the first game. That will come.”
“Yeah, got it.”
Robbie reaches up to grab my shoulder. “Austin, this is big—but not bigger than you.”
The drums hit and the song starts again as soon as we separate. It plays for twenty seconds or so until it cuts out, Robbie too far for the signal to reach, and now it’s just me and—
Silence.
A feeding frenzy starts in my stomach, butterflies devouring the lining, as I walk onto the court, unpack my bag, and meet Volt at the net to start the match.
The chair umpire shows us both sides of a coin, I choose heads, and with the flick of her thumb, it spins through the air, catching a quick flash from the sun before landing on the court with a ping.
“Heads,” she says, and gestures for me to decide whether I want to serve or receive.
I glance around the stadium. Eight thousand seats, every one of them filled. Fans have gathered around the upper railing too—standing room only.
Volt bounces on his feet, ready to go. I clock the athletic tape wrapped around his thigh and take one last breath before it all begins.
“I’ll serve.”