Eight #2
“Well, since we’re not, it most certainly isn’t. How’s this?”
“Looks good. And I’m sorry, but I had to ask.”
Because people always did.
“Now, make sure you think each point through,” Danny said when I didn’t answer. “You know his game. Use it against him.”
With a nod, I picked up my racquet and headed back to the baseline.
Miles was bouncing a ball while he waited at the other end, and I lifted a hand to show I was ready.
We hadn’t discussed a plan, but since he was preparing to serve, I made ready to receive, only for him to almost blow me off the court with a heavy serve straight down the T.
“All right then,” I muttered to myself as he prepared to go again.
For the next ten minutes, he served and I returned, trying to win as many points against him as I could.
Danny was right, I did know his game—I knew his clutch serve was out wide, knew to stay away from his damaging forehand, knew that his height gave him greater reach than most players but also slowed him down, making unexpected drop shots one of his weaknesses—yet every time I thought through a point and tried to execute it, he was either already there to counter, or I tensed up and slammed the ball into the net.
“Fuck!” I shouted as I shanked another ball long.
“Code violation, audible obscenity warning, Mr Russo!” Miles called from the other end of the court.
I huffed an irritable laugh and strode off for a quick break, collapsing on the sideline beside Danny. “He’s like playing against a wall.”
“That’s why he’s number four,” Danny laughed back. “But even though you can’t beat him, playing him is good practice.”
“He can beat me,” Miles said, and I glanced up to find him approaching around the net, scowling faintly.
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “Thanks.”
“I mean it.” He halted out of Danny’s view and folded his arms. “You used to, and you still can.”
“I’m not that player anymore, Miles.”
“No shit. Because you let the fear get you, just like with the stupid meat. And now you’re looking for answers you’ll never find because you already have them.”
I met his determined stare for the few seconds I could bear to, before turning back to Danny. “Any thoughts on what you saw?”
Ignored, Miles huffed out an angry breath, but having just taken an on-court thrashing, I wasn’t in the mood to find his annoyance anything but deeply satisfying.
“From what I could see, you’re looking good,” Danny said, the connection glitching his somewhat indecisive shrug. “You’re moving well and you’re hitting through the ball, you just need to keep working on thinking your way through—”
“Bullshit!” Miles lunged for the phone, scooping it up to scowl directly into the camera. “Have you met Mat, Mr Lovett?”
For a moment, Danny stared through the screen from his drab home office in silence. Then, “Excuse me? What do you mean by that?”
“Miles.” I held out my hand. “Just give me the phone.”
“In a minute,” he said, holding up a finger. “Let me explain myself first, since he asked.”
I was tempted to snatch it out of his hand, but settled for glaring as Miles turned toward the shade so he could better see the older man on the other end of the call.
“What I mean, Mr Lovett,” he said, his tone all bratty American wanker.
“Is that you keep saying Mat needs to think through points, needs to think and plan and play like its chess and think, think, think, and while that might be good advice for someone like me, it’s shit advice for him. ”
“Callahan, you’re a damn fine player, but trust me to know—”
“To know him?” Miles interrupted. “If you knew him, you’d know that Mat can overthink himself out of anything.
You could put a free meal in front of him and he would overthink himself into starving.
He doesn’t need more thinking. What he needs is to fucking relax and learn to trust his instincts again. ”
On the other end of the call, Danny sighed.
“Instincts aren’t enough to make good players, Callahan, you know that.
Now, if you don’t mind, you’re wasting my time with my player.
If Mat is displeased with my work, he can tell me so.
Until then, I’m going to continue doing the job he brought me on to do. ”
“Right, you do that. Overthink him into fucking obscurity because you have the mental flexibility of a concrete block.”
“Goodbye, Miles.”
Miles thrust the phone into my hand so viciously that I almost dropped it.
Then without so much as a second glance, he spun away, storming off the court with a collection of expletives that would have earned him a hefty fine during any match.
I watched him go, watched him shove his racquet into his bag and swing it onto his shoulder, striding to the gate without looking back, like he’d just lost a match and every camera was on him.
The urge to call after him bubbled in my chest, choked off by a combination of annoyance, confusion, and Danny.
He was still watching me from the palm of my hand, and when at last I looked back, a deep, concerned frown had contracted his brows.
“Sorry about that,” I said.
“Hey, no worries, tackling big personalities is part of the job too. Although, I admit that was a first – another player having strong opinions about how I should be coaching you.”
“Yeah.” I glanced up to where Miles had been, the court now empty but for the fluttering shadows of the surrounding trees.
When I looked back, Danny had leaned close again, propped on his elbows. “Something you want to tell me? Because if you want to try something new, you should say so.”
“I don’t know,” I said, running a hand down my face like I could wipe away my confusion. “He’s not wrong, you know, about the overthinking. I just don’t know if not being wrong makes him right.”
“No,” Danny agreed. “And this is hardly the time in the season to be changing your game plan. You got to the second round at Roland Garros and perhaps if you hadn’t run into Callahan, you might have gone further.
That’s big. This has been your best season in years, so you must be doing something right. ”
“But then I lost early at Nottingham, so maybe the French Open was a one off.”
Danny spread his hands in a shrug. “And maybe it wasn’t and you just had a bad day at Nottingham. It happens.”
“Yeah, it just seems to happen to me all the time.” I dropped onto the court, leaning back against the net post. “What changed, Danny? Four years ago, before that car . . . I could beat him then. Why can’t I beat him now? Has he changed that much? Or did I?”
With a sigh, Danny lowered his chin onto his hands.
“I don’t know, Mat. His game hasn’t changed much, he’s just gotten better at it.
That counts for a lot, but then you’ve gotten better too.
You hit harder, you serve bigger, and on the practice court your shots are precise and consistent and you have so many different weapons at your disposal, you just .
. . can’t seem to bring it all together consistently when you’re in a match.
” He shrugged. “Maybe you do need to think less instead of more, I don’t know, but you brought me on to regiment your game and it is paying off, just maybe not as fast or as well as you’d hoped. ”
“Well, if he didn’t change, I must have.”
“You had an accident, Mat.”
“Four years ago! Almost five.”
He lifted his hands in surrender. “Hey, if you want to give his advice a try, we can do that, just keep in mind that what works for one player doesn’t always work for others.”
“He’s not telling me to play like him though.”
“That’s true. If ever there was a player who plotted out every step like one big game of chess, it’s Miles Callahan.”
“Yeah.” I glanced up at the sun-drenched court, still empty of Miles – Miles who had even complained when his carefully-planned flirtation hadn’t worked on me.
For a long minute, I stared at nothing, so many thoughts swirling that they seemed to cancel each other out. Danny cleared his throat. “Well,” he said, leaning back with the familiar creaking of his office chair. “Think it over and let me know, huh? But, Mat?”
“Yeah?”
“Be careful, all right? Callahan might play nice while he thinks you’re a poor little problem he can solve, but he hated you as a junior because he couldn’t win, and there’s no way he really wants a top-tier Matteo Russo back getting in his way.”
The truth of those words hollowed my stomach, a reminder that no matter how hot we were for one another right now, at the end of the day we would always be rivals. There was only ever one winner in tennis.
I packed up and walked back after that, and though I was unsure what I was going to say, I stopped at Miles’s door and knocked before I could doubt myself.
Footsteps sounded within, and a few seconds later Miles pulled open the door.
He’d changed into a ratty t-shirt, the sort that had a myriad of small holes and had faded to an indeterminate colour, yet somehow it was hotter than anything else I’d seen him wear.
Making no move to invite me in, he leaned his shoulder against the doorframe. “Hey.”
“Hey, sorry about that,” I said, glancing at my feet. “With Danny.”
“You’re sorry? I’m the one who lost my temper at your coach.” Miles rubbed one brow as though trying to ease tension. “It really wasn’t my place.”
“No, but . . . well, I guess it was nice to know you believe in me enough to . . .”
“Swear at your coach?”
I breathed out a soft laugh. “Yeah. And, uh, while I don’t like that you can see my flaws because that’s massively embarrassing, I appreciate .
. .” I winced at how stupid this was going to sound, and for a brief moment thought about just walking away.
But Miles wouldn’t, so I stood my ground even in the face of his un-blinking stare.
“I appreciate that you see me,” I finished.
“That you noticed. You know, the overthinking thing. Which . . . I’m doing again right now. ”