Chapter 5
Deuce
The kid won a set off him on a Tuesday, and that was the beginning of the end of Allen's good sense.
"Did that—" Chris's voice cracked. "Did I—"
"You won a set." Allen was breathing hard too.
He walked to the net, and he was grinning, he couldn't not be, because this was the whole reason he did the job, this exact thing, a game with a hole in it and then no hole, a person who couldn't do a thing and then could.
"Off a former top-two-hundred player. On clay.
Fair. I didn't give you a single point of that, I was trying by the end, I want that on the record. "
"I beat you."
"You beat me today. Don't get cocky, I'll murder you tomorrow.
" But he was still grinning, and Chris was still standing there with dust on his legs and his hands in his hair and his whole face broken wide open, and then Chris dropped his hands and looked at Allen across the net with an expression that had nothing to do with tennis, and Allen felt the whole afternoon change temperature.
Oh, no, Allen thought. Here it comes.
***
"I've never earned anything in my life," Chris said.
His voice was doing something. "Do you understand that?
Twenty-eight years and I've never — everything I have was given, bought, handed over, and I just won a set off a real player with my own legs and it's the best thing that's ever happened to me and I don't — I don't have anybody to tell.
That's the thing. I've got a hundred people who'd throw me a party for it and not one who'd know why it matters.
Except you. You're the only person on earth who knows why this matters. "
"Chris—"
"You did that. You put that in me. Five weeks ago I was a lie with a good forehand and you—" Chris came around the net post, fast, into Allen's space, close, dust and sweat and that undefended broken-open face, and Allen knew what was coming and had a full second to step back and didn't, which was the whole problem, which was the entire story of the last five weeks in one failure of one second.
Chris kissed him.
It was clumsy and certain at the same time, the way Chris did everything now, no strategy in it, a guy who'd figured out what he wanted and gone for the ball head-on — and Allen, God help him, kissed him back.
For a second. Two. Long enough to feel exactly how much he'd wanted to, long enough for his hand to come up to the side of Chris's jaw, long enough for the whole careful structure of his life to sway on its base — the kid's mouth and the clay smell and the sun and the stupid perfect fact of him, all of it, right there, free for the taking, warm and real and wanting.
Then Allen stepped back.
Both hands on Chris's chest. Not shoving. Just — the brake. The same clean careful distance he'd been keeping from rich people his whole life, put back, an inch at a time, while every part of him screamed to close it.
"No," Allen said. Quiet. "We can't do this."
***
Chris didn't crumble. Allen half-expected it — expected the hurt, the flinch, the retreat — and instead Chris stood there an inch away, chest still heaving, and looked at Allen with those clear certain eyes and said, "Why not.
And don't tell me you don't want to, I felt you want to, your hand's still—" Allen took his hand back. "Yeah. That. So why not."
"Because I'm your coach."
"That's not it. Try again."
"Because you're a Salazar." Allen made himself say it flat, the truest ugliest version, because gentle-and-vague would let the kid argue and gentle-and-true might actually land.
"You want to know why not? Sit down, because it's a list. I'm the help, Chris.
I know you hate that word but it's the word.
I'm the guy your family pays to make you better at a game.
And the second this is anything — the second somebody sees it, and somebody always sees it — here's the story the whole city tells: Salazar kid's sleeping with his coach.
That's it. That's the headline. And you know what that does?
It erases the one thing you've been bleeding for.
You just won a set with your own legs, and if we do this, nobody will ever believe you earned a single point of that pro-am.
They'll say you bought the coach and the coach threw in the extras.
The one real thing you're trying to have, the thing this whole summer is about, gone — folded into a story about who you're screwing.
" He watched it land, watched Chris flinch for the first time, because that one was true and it was aimed at Chris's exact wound and Allen hated using it and used it anyway.
"You'd become the thing you're running from.
Bought. Handed. Except this time you handed it to yourself. "
Chris was quiet. "That's my reason," he said. "You just gave me my reason. What's yours."
"Same reason, other end." Allen picked up the ball hopper, needed his hands, the old trick.
"Your dad offered to fund my academy. At the party.
You heard him. That's not a coincidence, that's a man setting a piece — he saw something between us before either of us said it out loud, and now he's dangling the one thing I've wanted my whole life in front of me, and if I take it, I'm his.
I'm bought. And if I don't take it and I do this anyway, then I'm the help who climbed, the coach who slept his way into the family, and every scar I've got from twenty years of rich people using me and dropping me — every one of them says the same thing, Chris.
Says: get close to that world and you end up on the curb, and this time you'll have earned it.
" He set the hopper down, faced the kid.
"I've got one thing that's mine. A program, a plan, a name that a Salazar can't take.
The second I kiss you, it's not mine anymore.
It's yours. And your family's. And I've watched what your family does with things once they own them. "
The court was very quiet. Across the street the cafecito window was dark; it was too late in the day, Yaz long gone, just the two of them and the settling dust and the long shadows coming across the Har-Tru.
"You're not wrong," Chris said finally. "About any of it.
That's the awful part. Every single thing you said is a real risk and I'm not gonna insult you by pretending it isn't." He took a breath.
"But here's what you're doing, and I know it because I invented it.
You're using true things to hide a scared thing.
I did it for eleven years — I told everybody I quit tennis because it got boring, because I had better things to do, because whatever, and all of those were a little bit true, and the real reason was I was terrified of trying and finding out I was hollow.
You just did the exact same move. You gave me four excellent reasons and none of them is the actual one. "
"Enlighten me."
"The actual one is you think this ends with you on the curb because every other time it did.
" Chris's voice was gentle now, gentler than Allen could stand.
"You think anybody who gets close to your world takes what's useful and drops you when it's inconvenient, because that's what happened, and it happened enough times that you built a whole life around never letting it happen again.
And I'm not gonna stand here and tell you you're wrong to be scared, because you earned that scar the same way I earned mine.
But Allen." He stepped in again, not to kiss, just close, just present, and he put a hand flat on Allen's chest, over the exact spot Allen kept everything locked.
"I don't want the coach. I don't want what's useful.
I've got a hundred people who want what's useful, I could have anything useful I want with a phone call.
The one thing I can't buy, the thing I've wanted my whole life and never had, is somebody who wants me — not the name, not the check, not the forehand — just the guy.
And I finally found him, and he's you, and you're standing here telling me you can't because you're scared I'll turn out to be my family.
So I guess my question is—" his voice went rough "—do you want me to prove I won't? Because I will.
I'll prove it every single day. That's the only thing I've got that isn't for sale. "
Allen didn't have anything.
That was the terrible part, the part he'd carry home.
He was a man who always had the answer, the drill, the correction, the flat true thing — and the kid had reached right past all of it and put his hand on the locked door and named exactly what was behind it, the way he'd been naming things all summer, and Allen stood on his own clay in the long gold light with a Salazar's hand on his chest and no correction to give.
"I need you to be ready for the pro-am," Allen said.
It came out rough. It was the only wall he had left standing.
"That's the deal we made. Eight weeks, a bottom in your game, one real match.
That's what I promised you and that's what I'm gonna deliver, and I can't do that if I'm—" he gestured, helpless, between them "—if we're this.
You've got three weeks. You need me to be your coach for three more weeks, not your—" he couldn't finish it.
"Let me give you the thing I promised. The earned thing.
Then we're not coach and student anymore, and then it's a different conversation, and I'll—" His voice did something.
"I'm not saying never. I'm saying not while I'm the guy who's supposed to be building your bottom.
Because that's the one relationship in your life nobody's ever going to be able to say you bought.
And I'm not gonna be the reason you lose it. "
Chris looked at him for a long moment. And then — because the kid had grown a bottom in more than his tennis, because five weeks of clay had put something in him that could stand in a hard rally and not crack — he took his hand off Allen's chest, and he nodded, slow.
"Okay," Chris said. "Three weeks. Coach me.
Get me ready. I'll be so good, Allen, I'll be the best-earned thing in that whole tournament.
" He picked up his bag, and at the gate he turned back, and the grin was there but it wasn't the camouflage one, it was the real one, the one with no strategy in it, and under it was something that made Allen's chest ache in the exact locked place.
"But I'm not gonna pretend I don't want you, and I'm not gonna let you pretend it's about the coaching.
You want me to wait? I'll wait. I'm very good at showing up when it's hard, I learned it from this guy.
" He shouldered the bag. "Three weeks. And then you're out of excuses. Fair warning."
He walked out into the long Miami evening, and Allen stood alone on the clay with a hopper full of balls and the mark in the dust where the kid had won his set, and he did the thing he'd promised himself he'd never do around a rich person again, which was want something he couldn't afford to lose.
He'd said no. He'd said all the true things and he'd said no and he'd meant it.
It hadn't made him want it one degree less. It had only, the way the clay always did, shown him exactly how far he'd have to run — and how much it was going to hurt — to get to the ball anyway.