Chapter 11 #4
Swinging the door open, Leo finds Gabe standing there, dressed in a white crewneck that has PALM SPRINGS across the front in mint letters and—good Lord—a pair of gray sweatpants. It’s fine, though. Really. What even are heart palpitations?
“Hey,” Gabe says. “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”
Just my sanity. “Uh, no, not at all,” Leo says, now realizing he’s standing there in his boxers and a T-shirt. Thrown by his dad’s text and the knock at the door, he not only forgot to put pants on, but also left The Golden Girls playing on his laptop.
“I knew you were in this room from the other day,” Gabe says. “Your birthday, right?”
Gray sweatpants. “Huh?”
“Your room number—719. July 19. That’s your birthday, right?”
“Oh! Oh, yeah, that’s part of my whole superstition about getting this room every year,” Leo says, playing with the doorknob. “What do you, like, keep a log of people’s birthdays?”
“Leo, we grew up together. And, you know, it’s on your ATP profile,” Gabe says, running a hand through his thick, Head and Shoulders-sponsored hair. Wait. Is he nervous?
“Mmm, right,” Leo says, nodding his head suspiciously.
“Do I hear Blanche?” Gabe says, poking his head into Leo’s room.
“Ah, yeah, you caught me. I’m in the middle of an episode. And I’m … not wearing pants. Please excuse me,” he says, bowing his head formally.
He walks hurriedly over to the black shorts on the floor by his bed and pulls them on before turning to find that Gabe has now fully entered the room.
“What episode is this?” he asks.
“Um,” Leo says, and then chuckles, realizing what he’s about to say. “It’s actually the one where Dorothy’s old high school rival is visiting. They used to play these super-intense pranks on each other back then, and now the friend fakes a heart attack while they’re playing tennis.”
“Stop,” Gabe says. “That’s amazing.” Gabe just stands there, facing the laptop on the bed, watching the episode.
Leo’s eyes shift from side to side like one of those Kit-Cat clocks, wondering, well, what the hell Gabe wants.
“What do you want?” Leo asks, and it comes out a bit more forceful than he intended.
“Sheesh, this isn’t a stickup,” Gabe says. “Can’t I just stop by and say hello?”
“I mean, you can, but you don’t? We don’t—” he says, gesturing between them, “do this. Say hello. Do we?”
“Maybe we do now,” Gabe says. “Can I sit?”
“Uh, sure,” Leo says, sitting down now, too, but slowly, like the bed might be lava.
“Ever since Tie Break Tens, I, well, I just wanted to say I’m sorry about what happened at the US Open,” Gabe says, staring at the spot on the white duvet he’s been picking at, instead of making his usual cocky eye contact.
“Gabe, thank you, but didn’t we already do this? At Delray? You told me I was right about the tipped ball, and it’s fueled me ever since?” Leo says, attempting to cut the tension.
“I apologized for getting the tipped ball thing wrong. But I didn’t apologize for what I said to you after … at the net. The thing about you crying to your dad about it.”
Leo is sitting there, stunned, like Dorothy on his laptop screen as she reacts to her friend fake-dying on the tennis court.
“That was shitty of me. I know you’ve gone through a lot with your dad,” Gabe says, making eye contact now.
“Thanks,” Leo says. He looks down and, as he begins to brush over his blister scars with his thumb, he huffs out a small laugh.
“What?” Gabe asks.
“No, nothing.”
“Okay, now you have to tell me.”
“I just,” Leo begins, “can’t believe this is happening? You’re always taking jabs at me on Instagram, in interviews. And now you’re apologizing. It’s just … surprising.”
“Oh, Leo, come on. That shit is so fake. It’s part of the game we’re both playing here. It’s all about optics. You know that.”
“Fake? Really? You seem to take it pretty seriously. You always make it sound like you hate me.”
“You want to be the pot or the kettle?” Gabe asks, his eyebrow raising, nostrils flaring.
“You know everybody’s always pitted us against each other since juniors, and you’ve never exactly made it any easier,” Leo says, raising his voice.
“I’m here apologizing to you, and this is what you want to talk about, how I tease you in interviews?” Gabe asks impatiently, his posture stiffening.
“That’s not what I want to talk about!” Leo shouts. “What I want to talk about is that you’ve been a dick to me long before what you said to me at the Open.”
“Please, enlighten me,” Gabe says, his eyes cutting into Leo.
“I’m talking about this one time back at BP.
My dad was doing bad in the heat. His MS gets worse when it’s hot out.
And he fell while we were practicing. So, when he went to get cleaned up, Patrick stepped in to practice with me.
I overheard you say something about how I only got to play with Patrick because of my dad and I, like, get whatever I want. ”
The cutting look disappears from Gabe’s eyes now. It’s replaced by a look of concern that Leo hasn’t seen from him before.
Gabe sits quiet for a few moments, even looks sheepish. “I guess I forgot about that,” he finally says, conceding. “That … was a dick move. I didn’t realize that your dad was, you know, having trouble. Ah fuck, so when I said that thing at the Open, that must have really—”
It wrecked me for weeks. “It … stung a little,” Leo says.
“Shit, I’m sorry,” Gabe says, shaking his head.
“Thanks,” Leo says, and the tension in the room is too much for him to handle. He can’t help but walk it back. “Now that I’m saying it out loud, it doesn’t really seem like that big of a deal. You didn’t know what was up with my dad. We didn’t exactly talk much.”
“No, don’t do that. It was shitty of me,” Gabe says. “But I … do remember feeling like you wouldn’t even give me the time of day back then. When you sorta dropped me, I just assumed you thought you were better than me. I thought you didn’t want … me. To be my friend, I mean.”
“I did want to be your friend!” Leo jumps in.
“And it was you who was better than me. At tennis. I came to BP ready to be the next big thing, to take over my dad’s career.
And then it was like I couldn’t even find my way around a court when you and I practiced together.
It really threw me off, so I just avoided you.
” Also, I didn’t know how to be around you.
“You couldn’t be my friend because I was … better at tennis than you?” Gabe asks, his chin titled down, his eyes looking up at Leo as if to say, Seriously?
“Yeah, I know, it’s stupid,” Leo says, studying the white duvet cover for a few seconds, its herringbone design, lines interconnecting. “But I didn’t just hate that you were better than me. I’m not that petty.”
“Mmhmm,” Gabe says.
“Yeah, yeah. I just mean, playing you felt like this speed bump in my path. And that path was everything to me.” Leo pulls a pillow onto his lap, tugging at one of the corners of the white sham. “Since I was a kid, I’ve felt like I’ve had to finish what my dad started.”
He can’t believe he’s saying this, but he’s almost relieved, too. He reminds himself to breathe, and keeps going.
“And it’s like I can feel time running out on that dream.
That’s such a familiar feeling for me, too, watching his health get worse and worse over the years.
It’s like I’ve watched time running out for him.
And the stroke only made it worse. So, I have this part of me insisting that I better make the most of it, I better reach this goal of winning the Open, because there isn’t much time left.
When you came along at BP and basically dismantled my game, I ran away from you, even if I wanted to be your friend.
I ran because I couldn’t have anything throwing me off my path. ”
In the midst of what feels like a lifelong pause, Leo manages to lift his eyes from the duvet and meet Gabe’s, which seem to be connecting every freckle sprinkled across Leo’s face.
“Well, now that I’ve trauma dumped all over the bed, feel free to—”
“I had no idea,” Gabe says. “You’re a strong person, Leo. I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you that, but something tells me they haven’t. So, I guess I want you to hear it from me.”
“Thanks,” Leo says, his eyes darting down to the duvet cover, and then back to Gabe. “I just wanted you to know. There was so much more there. I didn’t think I was better than you, and I didn’t just resent that you always beat me.”
“Well, thanks for telling me,” Gabe says.
They linger on a shared, soft smile.
“Oh my God, here I am, droning on and on about my problems, but you also had so much to deal with,” Leo says. “I know what you were going through back then, too.”
“You do?” Gabe asks, his posture perking up a bit.
“I mean, you know, like, now that you went public and shared your story in interviews and stuff,” Leo says, feeling wobbly, on the edge of telling Gabe they’re more alike than he knows. But he’s shared enough tonight. Holy hell, he’s shared way more than enough.
“Right,” Gabe says, shoulders lowering a little.
“Yeah, shit, it was a lot. I was realizing that I was gay, and on top of that, it’s not easy for a Brown kid in tennis, either.
It was practically all white kids at BP.
My parents went out on a limb for me, they put so much money into my training, money my dad worked so hard to earn.
He climbed the fucking corporate ladder, as an immigrant from Peru, and then his son is like, I want to be a tennis pro. Christ.”
The Golden Girls credits music starts playing, and it’s not exactly the right backing track for this moment, so Leo slowly closes his laptop, maintaining his gaze on Gabe so he knows Leo is here. Right here.
“But I knew I was good, and they agreed to let me train at BP. I had to work twice as hard. I wanted to prove to everybody that I was worth their time. And when you made it seem like I wasn’t, and you were Johnny Chambers’s son …
it messed with me. So, I got in this habit of acting like none of it affected me.
I put on this cheeky grin, acted like a goddamn star in the ads or the club just to seem untouchable. ”
“Fuck.” That’s all Leo can manage at first. He’s too stunned by Gabe’s honesty, by how wrong he’s been about him.
His perspective on Gabe is being reframed in real time, and he has to steady himself.
He swallows. “I should’ve known better. I shouldn’t have ignored you like I did. I’m really sorry. Seriously.”
“Thanks,” Gabe says. “It sounds like we were both growing up way too fast.”
“Yeah, you could say that,” Leo says with an awkward chuckle. He scratches the back of his head. “Have things gotten any easier since you came out?”
He wants to know that Gabe is okay, and he also, cautiously, wants to know the answer for himself, as if Gabe has been on some gay reconnaissance mission.
“Maybe ‘easier’ isn’t the right word. It’s hard in a new way, knowing people are watching me more closely. I guess it’s … lighter. I felt like I was going to explode for a while there.”
Leo nods, still in awe that this conversation is happening.
“The thing is, right after, it was all this glowing press. All the I-can-finally-be-myself stuff. Inspiration porn for straight people,” Gabe says.
“But I was still proud of it. I was actually being open with everyone and it felt amazing. But since all that’s died down, I watch my matches back to take notes, and I hear the commentators talking about whether or not my being out is a distraction.
There are guys on tour who have been accused of domestic abuse, and they’re still allowed to play and the commentators will still praise them every fucking match. But a gay player? That’s too much.”
Gabe shakes his head and exhales slowly.
“I try to put it out of my mind because it’s all bullshit, but of course that’s all the press wants to talk about now. They give so much attention to the commentators, the hecklers. The only place I always see positive stuff is on that one account, Serving Looks.”
“Oh, yeah, I think I’ve seen that,” Leo says, as if it’s not the top account in his algorithm.
“I do feel this huge weight off my chest,” Gabe says. “But it’s hard to not let the negative shit get in the way when the headlines won’t stop reminding me about it. That’s been messing with me, for sure.”
With a laugh, Gabe begins rubbing his temples. “It’s so funny to hear you talk about me like I’m unbeatable because I can barely win a fucking match this season. I come out of the closet and I’m supposed to be this gay role model, and I’m bombing out there.”
“Hey, you did look good the other day,” Leo says. “You seemed locked in, much more than our first practice. And you have won matches. I mean, you won a match at AO and you made it to the third round here, right?”
“Not exactly my best, but yeah, I did,” Gabe says, his face brightening. “Wow, was that a little pep talk from Leo Chambers?”
It dawns on Leo that the two tournaments where Gabe actually has won matches this season are the two where they practiced together beforehand.
Leo is just as shocked as anyone when he adds, “If that little pep talk wowed you, you’re gonna fall off the bed when I say that there may be a world, possibly, potentially, where we … make each other better? Practicing together maybe hasn’t been the worst thing in the world.”
“Huh, who would’ve thought?” Gabe asks, tilting his head, which only accentuates his puppy eyes. “So, I guess you admit it. If you had just been my friend and practiced with me, you might’ve won a Slam by now.”
Leo hits him with the pillow. “Hmm yeah, and you might’ve won more than one title by now,” he says, unable to leave a swipe unmatched.
As Gabe flips him off, Leo leans back on the oak headboard. “All right, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I have an idea.”
“Which is?”
Leo groans. “We could … try playing doubles together in Miami? Brian’s been encouraging me to play more doubles to round out my game this season, and you and I are both trying to get back in form, and, if you aren’t already signed up with someone else, it might—”
“I’m in,” Gabe says.