Chapter 3 Opposite Games
By sunrise, the Atlanta courts were already hot enough to glare, one surface blinding and the next still in shade.
Theo called it “baking in the flavor,” which meant nothing, except that he said it every year to the new crop of ball kids, who usually smiled and then later Googled whether that was a thing.
Kas waited out the spare minute on the bench, staring into the middle distance, not stretching, not checking his phone, just…
recharging. When he stood, he did it slowly enough to make standing look scheduled.
Some men made a show of how fast they could tie their shoes; Kas made a show of how unnecessary it was.
His singles match was in the night session, and he was already pointed at it, this drill just one more box to check before the real match.
Today was serve-and-volley work, a choice that would have delighted no one except the American press officer, who kept emailing about “candid content” as if tennis players were reality television.
Theo obliged with commentary: “I feel like the villain in a sports anime,” or, after a particularly vicious return, “Is this the Eastern European wellness program they warned me about?” Kas neither smiled nor frowned, which made him the only person on the court (and possibly the continent) who could weather Theo’s running commentary without giving him a crumb.
They alternated serves, starting slow. Theo studied the rhythm: the minimalist efficiency of Kas’s toss, the follow-through finishing at the same angle every time, as if someone had installed it.
Kas’s white tee never so much as bunched at the shoulder, which felt like a personal attack, since Theo’s was already stuck to his back in adhesive splotches.
Theo’s first serve was a showy slice, not meant to win the rally, just to see whether Kas would chase it. He did, arriving with time he had no business having, and returned it with a backhand that looked like a mistake until it wasn’t. “You’re not supposed to actually get that,” Theo said.
Kas ignored the bait, picked a second ball from the hopper, and sent it over with no extra bounce and no comment. “Reset.”
It went like that, ball after ball, the rally refusing to end.
Theo volleyed, reset, tried a no-look dropper to see whether anything would break the man’s rhythm.
Kas ran it down and returned it without even looking impressed with himself, which in Theo’s world was either humility or contempt, and Kas did not seem interested in clarifying.
Theo started noticing things, almost against his will: the angle of the follow-through, the toss that never varied, footwork that spent nothing it didn’t have to.
Admiration, he decided. The rest could wait.
His own game ran on improvisation and the pleasure of the unrepeatable.
For Kas, repetition was the trick. He built every point like a proof.
Then Theo overhit a return and the thing went wild, off the tape, off the fence, landing behind the umpire stand with a dull thud. His laugh came out sharp enough to startle the ball kid, who nearly dropped the entire canister. “Sorry,” he called. “Collateral damage.”
Kas tilted his head, treating the error as an equation. “You are overswinging.”
Theo grinned, walking to recover the ball. “Or you’re under-criticizing.”
This time Kas did smile, barely, a muscle in his cheek remembering the procedure. “You think criticism is the only way to learn,” he said. “It is not.”
“Well, maybe I’m just a glutton.” The joke didn’t land. Theo left it there.
They cycled into net play. Kas served tight, no wasted motion, the ball landing where it was supposed to, over and over.
Theo angled low, forcing Kas wide; Kas redirected rather than blocked, the ball coming back on a trajectory that shouldn’t have cleared the net and did.
The exchanges kept tightening, every volley compressing the space between them, and Theo was sweating now at a rate the drill’s pace didn’t explain.
One volley, the ball caromed off the cord and tumbled between them, dead center, impossible to call.
Both of them started for it. Both pulled up a half-step short, close enough that Theo heard the other man’s breathing change, and the ball bounced twice in the no-man’s-land their hesitation had made, then rolled away, unplayed.
Kas stepped back first, professional. “Yours,” he said.
Theo spun the ball in his palm, buying a breath. “I think that’s the first time you’ve ever ceded a point to me.”
“You earned it.”
It could have ended there, but Theo couldn’t help himself. “If you want, we can add a little applause. Get the full effect.”
Kas’s expression didn’t change. “Win first,” he said.
And there it was. Not boredom. Not detachment. Want, buried under all that discipline.
Theo looked down at his shoes, wiped a stripe of sweat from his brow, and spun the ball again.
This serve was less showy. He dropped it in clean, no spin, no flair, and Kas ran it down without flourish and volleyed it back with an ease that had no place in a drill, and neither of them said anything about it.
They worked through the rest of the bucket without banter, just the pock of clean contact and the rasp of breath between points. Afterward, while they drank from identical, brand-mandated water bottles, Theo felt the words gather and didn’t stop them.
“I’m tired of pretending this comes easy,” he said, not looking at Kas but at the middle band of the three wristbands on his left wrist, the sponsor one, the one whose logo had started to wear off.
Kas drank, then set his bottle down exactly on the baseline’s white paint. “Then stop pretending.”
Theo waited for a punchline, or a correction. None came.
He breathed out, spun the ball once more on his strings, and grabbed the hopper. “You’d think after all these years I’d be better at this,” he said, and failed to make it sound like a joke.
“Maybe you are,” Kas said. He watched Theo collect each ball, gaze unmoving, an evaluation in progress.
Theo dumped the hopper on the sideline and draped his arms over the tape. “Do you ever get tired of it?” he asked. “Of being so…” Precise, he wanted to say. Or relentless. Or lonely. He chose none of them.
Kas shrugged. “There is nothing else worth being.”
Theo nodded, both agreeing and not. “I’ll remember that,” he said.
They packed up and didn’t speak again until the shaded corridor to the locker rooms. By the locker-room doors, the muscle between Theo’s neck and left shoulder had loosened, the way it did after matches already decided.
At the doors, Kas peeled away without a word, absorbed back into his own schedule, nd the corridor was somehow longer on the walk out than on the way in.
* * *
By noon, the lounge had thawed from breakfast chill into something more casual, athletes in varied states of compression wear draped over the modular seating. The brand liaisons had moved in too, holding laptops and phones and occasionally scanning the players for signs of unionization.
Theo staked out the end of a low beige couch, one foot braced on the next seat over, a paper cup of coffee balanced on his knee.
Three shots in, his nervous system had achieved small-dog energy.
His phone pinged with a press request from a tennis blog he pretended not to read; he flicked it away and watched the light warp through the insulated glass until the courtyard looked overexposed, unconvincing.
Kas appeared at the marble coffee bar without a word, the morning’s white zipped beneath a logoed track jacket.
Against the American sprawl of mesh shorts and fraying tees, he looked like a late addition to a luxury watch commercial.
He ordered an espresso, received it in a ceramic cup, and took the seat opposite Theo as if he had not noticed the attention of five other tables, or had noticed and found it irrelevant.
Theo spun a sugar packet in his fingers and surveyed the tableau.
In the far corner, a pair of Argentinian qualifiers played Mario Kart on mute, each loss punctuated with elaborate Spanish profanity.
An Indian doubles team sprawled at a table loaded with protein bars, their conversation a hybrid of gossip and financial planning.
To Theo’s left, the tournament’s media officer perched on a stool, MacBook open, lining up the afternoon’s player content.
It was the sort of room designed to make an hour disappear.
He grinned at Kas. “This is your natural habitat, right? Silent, air-conditioned, everyone pretending they don’t know each other.”
Kas tasted the espresso, considered. “It is preferable to the court.”
“Because there are fewer variables?”
“Because here, the point does not matter.”
Theo let that one spin, then angled his body toward the invisible camera he knew wasn’t there.
“I’m Theo Callahan, and I’m here to ask my doubles partner some hard-hitting questions,” he intoned, dropping into the register of a B-tier sportscaster.
“Kasimir, you’ve just been voted Least Likely To Smile at a Children’s Hospital Appearance. How does that make you feel?”
He gestured with the sugar packet, then balanced it on the rim of his cup for effect. Kas didn’t react, but a laugh rippled from the table behind them; at least one of the Indian pair was following the bit.
Kas sipped his coffee. “I am not good with children.”
“That’s what the focus groups said, too. Follow-up: do you believe in love at first sight, or do you require a background check?”
An infinitesimal delay. “Sight is insufficient,” Kas said. “People lie with their eyes.”
“That’s why I wear sunglasses,” Theo said. “No one’s ever caught me in a lie. Not even my own mother.”
“Your mother has not tried hard enough.” It landed bone-dry, which made it worse and better.
Theo laughed louder than necessary and raised his coffee in salute. “I’ll tell her to raise her game.”