Chapter 30
The locker room is unusually quiet, just rain pattering the windows. I pass the names of Men’s Singles champions on the wall, the showers, massage tables, and rows of lockers. No sign of Diego. Yet.
I swing my bag from my shoulder and onto the bench and pull out a fresh shirt. If I keep sweating this much, I’ll need a new one every set.
I’m peeling off my shirt on the bench when I hear the door swing open.
I know it’s him, his footsteps strong and steady, the zippers on his bag jingling as he rushes.
He doesn’t stop at his locker, a few rows from mine, but continues through the room, so fast that he almost passes my row. He whips back around when he sees me.
“You did that on purpose!” he shouts, launching right into it.
“Did what?” I say, barely looking up.
“You hit me on purpose!” He’s even angrier than he appeared on court—but he’s always careful about his appearance in public.
“Are you gonna be all right?”
This really gets him, and he chucks his bag to the floor with a thud. He stares at me, steaming, and silence settles over the room again. Glass creaks against a gust of wind.
“Is there something you want to say to me?” he says finally.
“It wasn’t on purpose.” It was more like a happy accident.
“No—you clearly have something else you want to say, so say it.”
Is he fucking serious? “I’m just a little confused, because it seems like you want to talk now. Were the past few days not a good time? I don’t remember hearing from you.”
He tosses his head back in response, just as the door to the locker room opens. “Diego!” Emiliano calls out.
“?Dame un segundo!” Diego shouts back, turning to him. He stares until the door swings closed and we’re alone again.
“I didn’t mean to ignore you—”
“Bullshit!” I launch up from the bench. “We had a great fucking night, and then you disappeared! I can fill in the blanks. I’m not gonna be your experiment, like the other guy.”
“That’s not what this is,” he says, lowering his voice. This, he says. So at least he admits it’s something. It’s this—an indefinable collision of people, one of them normal and nice, and the other an asshole who can shake off feelings in a day if he wants to.
“I don’t understand what you want from me here. I never have. So tell me, what the fuck is this, Diego?”
“It’s a distraction!” he shouts—more loudly than he intended, maybe, but there’s no taking it back now. Not even the apology on his face can make it sound any better. It can’t remove the tiny daggers it left in my heart.
The fucking door opens again—“Austin?”—and Robbie appears next to Diego. I barely clock him, though. I’m preoccupied with Diego’s crushing blow.
“They’re almost ready out there. We have to go back,” Robbie says, his voice hushed.
“We’re almost done—”
“No, Austin,” he snaps, “like right now!”
“They’re gonna knock me a point for being late? He’s gonna be late too,” I say, throwing my finger at Diego. “It’ll even fucking out!”
Diego doesn’t move. He agrees.
“Don’t do this here. Please. This is not a good time. Please,” Robbie says, practically begging.
“I think it is,” I respond, and a look that’s hard to describe glazes over Robbie’s eyes. Like I just witnessed him turning on me. Like this is an unbelievable request. It isn’t. Let’s wrap this up before I have to stare at him for another three sets.
Robbie takes one last look at Diego, then one at me, and turns to leave. Diego’s words spin through my head as I wait for the door to close.
“I’m a distraction,” I say—less to him, more to myself—letting the irony settle in. All this time, I’ve been working on removing distractions on my side, and it sounds like I’m the poison for him.
“That’s not what I said. Not you—this.”
“Same fucking thing.”
He takes a step toward me and I flinch. I can’t control anything right now—my reflexes, my heartbeat, the tears building in my eyes…
“Austin, I don’t want you to get this confused.
” He steps closer again. “I’ve been thinking about you since we met,” he says.
“Since before we met—when I saw that interview. I watched it and you made me laugh. You made me feel proud of you. I didn’t even know you and I felt proud of you.
It was so weird. And I had this strange feeling, like I wanted to know you, to be your friend, to see…
what would happen. And I’m glad we got to know each other—I mean that, really—but, holy shit, I can’t get you out of my mind.
I can’t stop thinking about you. I stay up late with you.
I drink so I can feel more relaxed around you, so I can share things with you—like you do.
Austin, I wish I could be half as good and honest as you are.
” He’s staring into my soul, and he’s saying everything I ever wanted to hear from him, everything at once.
“So what’s the problem?” My voice catches in my throat.
“It’s getting in the way. I can’t focus like I used to, and that scares the shit out of me.”
“Is that you talking or your team?”
“It’s me,” he says, with no hesitation. “The things that I want—I have to sacrifice to get them. I’ve known that for a very long time.”
“Sacrifice what? A relationship?”
“I have to.”
“Are you kidding? Every player here has a girlfriend, a wife, a husband, and they’re doing just fine! They’re doing better because of it! They have someone to talk to, to wake up next to, to eat with, to share life! You think that doesn’t mean anything?”
“They don’t have to compete against each other. They aren’t in each other’s way. It’s too much for me to handle. I was shaking during our first point. I double-faulted! You made me do that!”
“You seemed to recover all right,” I reply, my head pounding, heart pounding. Nothing feels right.
“Austin, I know what you’re saying. I’m not saying that I don’t want it, but I know I can’t have it. It would be too much attention—”
“If you were with a guy, you mean.”
“That would be what everyone would talk about.”
“So you’d be like me. That’s what you’re afraid of? They’d talk about you like they talk about me. Great. Wow. Understood.”
“Look what it’s done to you! You complain about it yourself.”
“I don’t have a choice! I am who I am, and I tell people. It’s as simple as that. And I’m pretty sure it’s better than the other way around—hiding things, not being able to be yourself. That’s some fucking life!”
“There are things that you hide too, so maybe you can relate to this a little.”
My mouth falls open. I can’t believe he said that. I can’t believe he went there.
“I want to be number one,” he says. “I want to win this tournament, and I want to win it again and again and again. I can’t think about anything or anyone else. This is what I have to do.”
I take a moment. “Then I guess we’re done here.”
“I’m sorry, Austin. I really am,” he says. “I’d really like to still be friends.”
I laugh. Fuck, I laugh so hard. And it feels great to finally let something out of me. I’ve been fighting tears this entire conversation, this entire match, and I will not let him see me cry today. Laughing is the next best thing.
“You know what’s really shitty?” I ask him—I can’t help myself. “I didn’t even start this. You hopped the net. You showed up at my hotel. You made me wear your fucking watch. I didn’t ask for it—any of it.”
“I didn’t know it would come to all this—”
“You did, though! You knew we could end up here. This was our draw. We were always in each other’s way.”
He doesn’t respond. And in the quiet I realize something.
“Oh.” I pause. I can barely even say it. “You didn’t think I’d get this far.”
I feel like I’m experiencing my own villain-origin story, my words stacking like weights on my chest. I can’t believe that didn’t occur to me until now.
He shakes his head, but I can see it plainly.
All of this was fine for him. He could fuck around—he could even catch feelings—because he didn’t think he’d actually have to face me here, to deal with this playing out on the court.
A qualifier making it this far was impossible, in his mind.
He had that exact thought. I had it too, and that makes it hurt even worse. He didn’t think I was good enough.
“We have to go,” I say, all emotion drained from my face.
“I didn’t think that—”
I throw my bag on my back and look at him one last time before I leave.
The next time we lock eyes, we’ll be across the court from each other again—as competitors, not friends, not anything more.
Maybe he’s right after all. Let’s leave this all behind.
Because I’ve never wanted to win a match more in my entire life.
“Austin, I know you’re good,” he says to me as I walk away.
“I don’t think you do. I guess I’ll have to prove it.”
—
Robbie is waiting outside, standing an awkward distance away from Diego’s team.
Their eyes dart to me when I emerge. Tensions were high in the locker room, and it seems like they’re high out here too.
Before anyone says anything, Robbie and I take off down the hallway, our silence growing louder with each step.
Even my mind is silent. Normally it would be spinning with thoughts. Instead, I feel like a hollow shell.
As we near the tunnel, our tournament escort catches up to us and walks briskly behind us.
I brace for a lecture from Robbie, but it never comes. Instead, just before we break apart he turns to me and says, “Whatever happened in there, use it.”
I feel so empty that I don’t even know how to process his advice. “How am I supposed to do that?”
“Chances are…whatever you’re feeling right now, he’s feeling it too. Recover faster,” he says. “You don’t have to win this, Austin. You’ll have many more matches here, I promise you, but if you want to win…” He nods at me, his eyebrows up, and disappears back to his seat.
Recover faster.
I saw the tears building deep in Diego’s eyes.
He turned away before one of them fell—he wiped it with his hand—but I saw it.
I didn’t know it would come to all this.
Those tears mean he’s hurting too. He doesn’t want to be in this situation either.
He wants out of it so badly that he’s pulling the plug on everything.
He likes me that much. I finally got my answer, and it’s even the one that I wanted.
But now the two of us are ending like a rock dropped in a lake—with a loud splash and a slow sink to the bottom, never to see the light of day again.
I glance back, but there’s no sign of him. If he doesn’t hurry up, he’ll be the one to get the point penalty.
Soon, the fluorescent lights of the hallway fade into the darkness of the tunnel.
I pass a huge black-and-white photo of Billie Jean King on the wall, another one of Eriksson.
Use whatever you can against him. That’s the advice Eriksson gave me.
In the history of tennis—and everyone is obsessed with history, aren’t they?
—I think I have more on Diego than anyone’s ever had on an opponent.
I know his game, I know what he wants, I know what he wants but can’t have, and I know that he’s injured and working hard not to show it. Aren’t we all.
The crowd claps at my return to court. And I’m surprised at how quickly they clap again. Diego’s caught up. And now he isn’t wearing a smile. He’s wearing a look of pure determination, and also—his ankle brace. That’s what kept him back in the locker room.
He has two more sets to win. I have three, but I have a feeling this next set will be make-or-break.
Above me, the enormous roof is now closed, trapping in the heat, the humidity, the anxiety beating through my body—trapping us together. All of it is stuck in this stadium, with nowhere to go.