Chapter 14
Back in my hotel room, a knock interrupts my ice bath. Tough shit, Robbie. I’m busy. I got all the way in here, I settled my breathing, and there’s no fucking way I’m getting out for at least five more minutes.
Another knock.
“Not right now!” I shout through chattering teeth.
I wait. Silence. I focus on my breath again, taking a long drag of air through my nose.
Another knock—harder.
Goddamn it! I pull myself out of the ice and toss a towel around my waist. My footsteps soak the carpet as I stomp to the door. “Rob, I’m in the ice!” I shout, and fling it open.
Diego Cruz stands on the other side.
“Am I interrupting?” he asks with a grin.
My mouth drops. “What are you doing here?”
“You weren’t answering my DMs.”
I snort. Oh, that’s very rich coming from him. But also—he was messaging me?
“Yeah, I’m not really using my phone lately,” I reply.
“What does that mean?”
“It means that it was distracting, so I’m taking a break.”
“Oh shit, yeah. Those sports-bettor guys get scary, don’t they?”
“Something like that.”
“So no phone at all? You’re stronger than me.”
A funny thing to say with his arms bulging out of his tank top—next to me, a shivering set of skin and bones in a towel. A draft of cold air hits my back, and I shake harder.
“You were having a shower?”
“An ice bath,” I say coldly.
“Well, finish up. I’ll wait.”
Wait for fucking what? “Actually, I’m kinda tired, so I’m just gonna pass out after this.”
“Oh,” Diego says, disappointed. But I don’t give a shit. And then, for some reason—maybe it’s confidence from the match—I launch into it.
“You know, I thought we were gonna hang yesterday, and I didn’t hear from you.”
“I know—”
“I mean, it’s all good,” I say with an aggressive shrug, “but you kinda left me on read.”
“I know,” he says again, and hesitates.
I don’t have time for this. “Well, I’m freezing, so I’m gonna hop back in. Totally good to hang at a later date. Just call reception and have them connect you to my room, or send a carrier pigeon or something.” I’m closing the door when he finally finds the words—
“My dog died.”
I pause.
“What?” I say, laughing a little, because this excuse cannot be real.
“My dog, Dandy, died.”
I squint at him. I squint really hard, hard enough that if this is an actual, true thing that happened—which it absolutely isn’t—the squinting would be very rude.
Okay, thinking back, I remember that he does post about his dog a lot—tossing tennis balls to him, taking naps together…It’s some sort of shepherd with long hair and a long snout, and when he pants he looks like he’s smiling.
Diego’s eyes well up.
Oh no. Dandy is dead.
“Shit, dude, I’m so sorry,” I say.
“Thank you. He was fourteen, but it just really bummed me out and I didn’t want to talk to anyone and…” He shakes his head. “I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t be at all. Here—come in.” I open the door wider and let him through. “Let me just…put on some clothes.”
I squat awkwardly in my towel and sort through my suitcase.
For a split stupid second, I consider changing right there, in front of him.
It’s normal in a locker room, and I don’t want to be weird and scurry to privacy, but this feels a little different—and an ice bath isn’t exactly kind to the size of things.
“One sec,” I say, heading to the bathroom.
I pull on sweatpants and, in the mirror on the door, catch a glimpse of him staring down at the floor like a lost puppy. God, I’m an asshole. And a dumbass. I wasted a whole day and night spiraling about someone mourning their childhood best friend. Kill me and bury me with the dog.
I shuffle back into the room and, mouth scrunched, sit on the edge of the bed, searching for something to say. He beats me to it.
“You won today.”
“You won today,” I say back.
“Look at us,” he says, lifting his head. “We should celebrate.” He nods to himself, as if he’s trying to psych himself up.
“What do you have in mind?”
“I want a beer.”
“Well…” I glance at the clock. It’s almost eleven, and I’m wiped, but I have an apology tour to start. “Let’s get you a beer, then.”
“Can I wear this?” Diego asks, picking up my old high school tennis team hat from the dresser.
“Oh, that one’s gross. It’s got sweat all over it.”
Diego pops it on anyway, doesn’t care at all, and I catch myself staring at him an extra second. Now that he’s in a backward hat, he’s transformed fully into my type. His brown hair peeks out from the hat’s frayed edges, and soon he’s gonna put a beer to his lips and I’m gonna fucking lose it.
“Let’s go, Hardy Boy.” He grabs my neck and squeezes. His strength shoots through my body and finds its way to my knees, and now I’m back on the Cruz train, as we head to the elevator and step inside. Unfortunately, someone else needs a ride to the lobby too. The door jolts open.
Robbie stands on the other side, looking just as shocked as I am.
“Where are you off to?” he asks. Robbie’s boldly moved from a Nike tracksuit to a fitted black T-shirt and jeans, and his cologne enters the elevator before he does.
“Where are you off to?” I reply.
“Nowhere,” he says.
“Me too.” He joins us, and we ride in awkward silence, all facing the door.
“Congratulations, Diego,” Robbie musters after a moment.
“Yeah, you too, sir. Serves looked great.” Diego gives me a playful tap with his elbow. Look who’s been keeping up.
Robbie grunts. Another silence settles over us, and I can’t resist my urge to fill the void.
“Diego’s dog died,” I blurt out.
Slowly, Robbie turns. He studies me, then Diego, then looks away.
“I’m sorry. He’s not very good with emotions,” I whisper to Diego.
Robbie shakes his head. “You two enjoy your night.”
“You too, Rob. Back by midnight,” I shout to him through the lobby. He ignores me and exits ahead of us.
A funny feeling takes over as Diego and I walk side by side down the dark Midtown streets, our steps perfectly in sync.
There’s comfort in being with the person you’re obsessed with, not worrying about where they are, what they’re doing—because they’re with you, and they want to be.
It’s one less thing for me to spiral about, and I love it.
I also love that his arm keeps accidentally brushing mine—or maybe it isn’t an accident at all.
Soon we arrive at an unmarked door down a set of stairs. Diego turns my hat and pushes it further down his forehead.
I’ve never been to a dive bar. It smells like cinnamon and sweat, and it would be pitch-dark if it weren’t for the multicolored Christmas lights dangling from the hobbit ceiling.
They cast a strange glow across the bar’s scattered faces.
An old song Dad used to sing along to in the car plays through antique speakers.
“What do you want?” Diego asks, heading to the bartender.
I rarely drink—for a few reasons, including that I’m not quite twenty-one. According to his Men’s Health interview, Diego is careful about what he puts into his body too—he said something a little cringey about how his “body is a temple”—but a rough day is cause for an exception, I guess.
“Whatever you’re getting,” I respond—the best I can come up with.
A minute later, he returns with two dark green beer bottles and we grab a small table in the back.
“Cheers,” he says. “To winning and losing.” A moment passes before I realize what he means by that. I didn’t take him for a philosopher, but he’s full of surprises today. I give him a small, comforting smile.
“It’s just that it all happened so fast. And I wasn’t even there when they put him down. He must have been so scared without me.”
“Your parents were with him?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, he wasn’t alone, then. That’s the important part.”
“Yeah,” he says again.
I take a healthy swig of beer to fill the quiet between us. It’s maybe the fourth beer I’ve ever had in my life, and I think I can officially say I’m not a fan, but I keep drinking, because this conversation has me thinking about Dad. The liquid mixes with the darkness that claws at my stomach.
“Have you ever lost a pet?” Diego asks.
“We never had one when I was growing up. I really wanted to adopt a cat, a fuzzy orange one that walked around like an asshole and was only nice to me.”
He smiles. “I like that for you.”
“Yeah, that tracks, doesn’t it?” I say, nodding, and considering whether I want to share the next part.
“I, uh…lost a dad, though?” I finally say. It’s funny phrasing, but that’s the way it comes out. I’m surprised I even said it. Talking about Dad isn’t something I normally offer up. “So I kinda know how you’re feeling…” The undersell of the century, but hey, I’m trying to relate here.
His face drops. “Oh. I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
He looks genuinely devastated. “I’m really sorry,” he says. “I’m going on and on about Dandy when you—”
“No, really, it’s fine. It’s not…a competition.”
“It’s not the same.”
“Doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt in similar ways,” I say. “Dogs are people too.”
Dogs are people too. What the hell is wrong with me? I was already nervous, and now I’m talking about Dad and I can’t even form a coherent sentence. I’m sure a dog named Dandy would have made a very dapper man. But still, am I well?
I shift the focus back to him. “Is this what tripped you up today, in the first set?”
“No. Well, I don’t know. Maybe. That guy had a nasty slice, and I had to get used to it. After that, it was nothing. But yeah, at every changeover on the bench, I was thinking about Dandy.”
“So you sit down, you’re sad, and then you just get back up and play like it’s nothing? How do you turn it all off?”
Diego considers this. “I don’t know. It sort of happens automatically?”
Must be fucking nice.
“I step back onto the court and my body knows it’s time,” he says. “I guess my brain does too.”
“It never wanders?”
“No, not really. I think about winning the next point.”
I’d kill to be able to do that.
“So, how did you beat the Volture today?” he asks.
“They call him that? Like the bird?”