Chapter 9
Match Point
"Mr. Salazar, your father's office specifically—"
He walked away before the guy could call anyone, and his hands were shaking, and it was the best he'd felt in eight days.
Because here was the thing Chris had figured out, alone, in the eight worst days of his life, lying awake in the big quiet house his father built: he didn't decide to play the real match for Allen.
Allen was gone. Allen had taken the money and called him a summer and walked, and it had gutted him, had proven the thing at the bottom of him that he'd spent his whole life afraid was true — that nobody wanted him, only what he could give.
And for about four days Chris had let it win.
Had almost taken the exhibition. Had almost gone back in the box.
And then, somewhere in day five, in the dark, he'd realized that taking the exhibition to punish Allen — going small because the one person who made him want to be big had left — was the exact same move he'd been making his whole life.
Quitting the hard thing so nobody could watch him fail at it.
And Allen, wherever he was, whatever he'd sold, had spent six weeks putting something in Chris that Chris got to keep whether Allen stayed or not.
The bottom was his. Nobody could take it.
Not his father, not the money, not even the man who'd built it and then broke his heart.
I'm allowed to want this, Chris had thought, at 3 a.m. on day five, in the refrigerator light of his father's enormous kitchen. For me. Not for him. Not to win anybody back. Just because I earned it and I'm allowed to want one thing that's mine.
So at ten-thirty he walked onto Court 3 in front of two thousand people and the entire Miami press, with his father somewhere in the stands and his stomach in his throat and no coach in his box, and he played.
***
Allen wasn't going to go.
He told himself that for eight days. He had four million dollars in escrow and a signed term sheet on his kitchen table and an academy that would break ground in the spring, and he had done the smart thing, the selfless thing, the builder's-math thing, and there was no reason on earth to drive to Key Biscayne and watch the kid he'd gutted hit twenty minutes of exhibition balls for the cameras.
He drove to Key Biscayne.
He told himself it was to make sure the soft landing went okay.
He stood at the back of the grounds by the practice courts, ball cap low, the help who'd been paid to disappear, and he was turning to leave — he'd seen enough, the kid was here, the kid would do the exhibition and go home and be safe and hate Allen forever and that was the price — when he heard the PA.
"On Court 3, first round of the amateur championship: Christóbal Salazar."
Allen stopped walking.
Amateur championship. Not the exhibition.
The real draw. The kid had defied his father, defied the whole plan, defied Allen's careful cowardly protection, and put himself on a show court in front of the entire city to play a real match he could lose in public — the exact knife Emilio had spent a lifetime and Allen had spent four million dollars trying to keep out of his hands — and Allen turned around and walked toward Court 3 with his heart going like he was nineteen again, and got there in time to see Chris Salazar, alone in his box, no coach, terrified and luminous, dig out of a 0-2 hole against a big-serving kid from Boca and start, point by ugly point, to play.
He was good. God, he was good. Everything Allen had put in him was there — the footwork setting up early, the bottom holding in the long rallies, the kid running down balls he had no business reaching and constructing the point the patient way, the clay way, the way you win when you can't just hit through somebody.
He took the first set in a tiebreak. Lost the second when the Boca kid found his serve.
And now they were in a third — a real, earned, on-your-feet third set, the thing you cannot fake, the thing Allen had told him on day one was the whole game — and Chris was standing on the baseline between points with his hands on his knees, spent, alone, doing it anyway.
And Allen, standing at the fence in his ball cap with four million dollars in escrow, understood that he was looking at the bravest thing he'd ever seen, and that he'd tried to take it away, and that the kid had done it anyway, without him, on the bottom Allen built and then tried to bury.
"You came." Emilio was beside him. Of course he was.
Immaculate in the owner's box's shadow, watching his son, and his face was doing something Allen had never seen on it — something cracked, something almost afraid.
"I told him not to. I begged him. He looked at me this morning and said—" Emilio's voice caught, an old man's voice suddenly "—he said, 'I'd rather lose in front of everyone than win the way you want me to.
' And he walked onto the court. My son. Who quit everything.
" He watched Chris win a long rally, watched two thousand people come up out of their seats.
"I've spent his whole life protecting him from this exact moment.
And I've never in my life been prouder of anything.
I don't—" He looked at Allen. "I don't understand what you people did to my son. "
"We didn't do anything to him," Allen said. "We just stopped telling him he couldn't."
And then Allen did the thing.
"I'm not taking the money," he said. "The academy. Four million. I'm out. Tear it up."
Emilio turned to look at him fully.
"You were right about the story," Allen said, watching Chris, not the old man.
"It'll come. They'll say the help climbed.
They'll say he bought his coach. My reputation takes a hit, maybe my program does, maybe the academy takes ten more years of me clawing it out of the ground with my hands instead of getting handed it clean this spring.
I've done that math. I did it all night.
" He finally looked at Emilio. "And I'd rather build it in ten years and have him than build it this spring and have proved, one more time, that a guy like me has a price.
You offered me the one thing I've wanted my whole life to walk away from the one thing I didn't know I wanted more.
I almost took it. I did take it — for eight days I took it.
And I watched your son walk onto that court alone this morning and do the brave thing I was too scared to do, which was try for something real in front of everyone who might watch him fail.
So no. I'm not taking it. Being close to your son isn't the same as being used by your family, and I spent twenty years too scared to know the difference, and I'm done being scared.
Keep your four million. I'll keep the kid, if he'll still have me. Which he shouldn't."
Emilio looked at him for a long, long moment.
And then the self-made man who'd built an empire from a lunch counter, who called control love and had never once in forty years let go of anything he owned, looked back at his son on the court — his son, playing a real third set on his own two feet, spending everything, luminous — and something in his face let go.
"Go," Emilio said quietly. "He's serving for it. Go stand where he can see you." A pause, rough. "Coaches aren't allowed on the court during a match. But there's a fence."
***
Chris was serving at 5-4 in the third, one game from the first real win of his entire life, and his legs were gone, and his lungs were gone, and there was no one in his box because he'd earned this alone and he was going to finish it alone, and he tossed the ball for the first serve and out of the corner of his eye, at the fence, in a stupid ball cap, was Allen.
Chris caught the toss. Didn't hit it. Just stood there, ball in hand, staring at the fence.
Allen was at the fence. Allen had come. Allen — who'd taken the money, who'd called it a summer, who'd broken him eight days ago on the clay — was standing at the fence of a show court in front of two thousand people and the entire Miami press with his ball cap in his hand now, off, his face bare, looking at Chris like—
"Play the point!" the umpire called.
Chris walked to the fence instead. The crowd murmured. He didn't care.
"You took the money," Chris said, low, just for Allen, through the chain-link.
"I gave it back. This morning. Just now, actually, to your father, who's—" Allen glanced up at the owner's box "—taking it better than I expected.
" He gripped the fence. "I'm not gonna do this here, you've got a point to play, you're serving for the best thing you ever earned and I'm not gonna be the guy who cost you it.
But I needed you to see me before you served.
I needed you to know that when I said everybody wants what you can give—I was the liar.
I didn't want the four million. I wanted you, and it scared me so bad I tried to sell it, and I'm the one who had a price, not you, and I gave the price back and I'm standing at your fence with my hat in my hand in front of the whole city because I would rather be the help who climbed and have you than be the smart guy who protected everything and lost the only real thing I ever—" His voice broke.
"Serve the ball, Chris. Win your match. Then yell at me.
I'll be right here. I'm not going anywhere.
There's no ghost. I'm the ghost. I'm sorry. Serve the ball."
Chris stood at the fence with the ball in his hand and two thousand people waiting and the one person who'd ever wanted him standing bareheaded in the sun having driven back into the storm, and the thing at the bottom of him, the old thing, nobody wants me, only what I can give—
—went quiet.
"You're gonna watch me win this," Chris said.
"I'm gonna watch you win this."
"And then we're gonna have a very long talk."
"The longest. I'll bring cafecito."
Chris walked back to the baseline. His legs weren't gone anymore.
He tossed the ball into the hard blue Miami sky, and he served it like he had a bottom, because he did, because a sunburned man had put it in him and then come back to watch him use it, and four points later — a serve, a forehand, a long patient rally he refused to lose, and one final ball that caught the line and stayed — Chris Salazar won the first thing he ever earned in his life, on his feet, in front of everyone, real, and his.
He didn't look at the trophy table. He didn't look at his father.
He dropped his racket and walked straight to the fence and kissed Allen through the chain-link in front of two thousand people and the entire Miami press, which was going to be a story, the biggest story, the one Allen had spent four million dollars to prevent, and neither of them cared, because it was true, and you couldn't fake it, and it was theirs.
"For the record," Chris said against his mouth, grinning, wrecked, luminous, "I'd have won it without you watching."
"I know," Allen said. "That's the whole reason I could come. You didn't need me to win. You just wanted me there."
"Yeah." Chris kissed him again. "Imagine that. Wanting somebody there. For nothing."
Across the court, in the owner's box, Emilio Salazar watched his son kiss a public-court coach through a fence in front of the whole city, and did not send anyone to stop it, and stood there instead with his hands at his sides, a man learning, forty years late, that some things you can't own and shouldn't, and that the ones you love the most are exactly the ones you have to let earn their own way onto the court.
Somewhere behind the fence Yaz was screaming and filming and screaming, and Elena was crying, and the Miami sun came down on the clay like it came down on everything, the earned and the bought alike, and did not care which was which, because it didn't have to.
The two of them did. That was the whole thing. That was the bottom of it.