Twenty-Four
THE OUTCOME HAD always felt inevitable, and this time there was no escape. Miles won his first-round match and I won mine, leaving us set for an evening battle on centre court at the US Open – prime time for American television.
We had a day off in between, much of which was dedicated to practice and recovery, and for Miles, dodging photographers and the press.
As the highest-ranked American, they swarmed about him like flies, desperately hoping he would break the twenty-year drought of Americans winning their home slam.
It was only a relief they didn’t know his boyfriend now stood in his way.
Tomas kept saying we needed to talk about it, but whenever I brought it up, Miles rolled his eyes and said it would be fine, or that after living and breathing tennis all day he would rather talk about something else.
And when he kept shrugging it off, how could I stress how worried I was that I might beat him without sounding like an arsehole?
All I could do was remind myself that he knew, and hope the match went the same way as our last at Roland Garros.
Far too soon we’d kissed our goodbyes and parted for match prep. Tomas was determined to treat it like any other and Macca tried to keep the mood light. I appreciated their efforts, even as the clock kept counting down like I was charging toward a cliff and the last turn-off had passed long ago.
As before our match in Paris, Miles was already in the waiting area when I arrived, slowly pacing back and forth with his headphones on.
With a pang of regret, I realised I’d never asked what he listened to before a match and wished I had, as I wished I could smile at him, squeeze his hand, kiss his cheek – anything but pretend he was no one.
But the cameras were already on us, and in tennis, playing well sometimes wasn’t enough.
You had to hate the person across the net at least a little, had to want them to lose as much as you wanted to win.
Unable to even look at him, I dropped my bags and started stretching, counting slowly to focus on something that wasn’t the hint of Miles’s scent or the shape of him at the edge of my vision.
Around us, tournament staff and media crews bustled on about their tasks, while in the distance, the sound of tennis’s largest stadium was already like a thumping drum beating to the rhythm of my heart.
If centre court at Wimbledon was tennis’s classical concert hall, then Arthur Ashe was our rock festival – glitzy and exhilarating and loud.
These were the matches we played for. The matches we dreamed of.
By the time a tournament handler gestured me to stand ready for the walk out, my stomach had writhed itself into a dozen knots.
Out of sight of the watching cameras, she held up her hand, counting down on her fingers until I was all out of time.
Until I had to tear myself from the floor and remember how to put one foot before the other as I strode along the narrow passage toward the court.
While I fought the urge to be sick, lit pictures of former champions passed on either side, and a cameraman walked backward in front of me, capturing this moment for the watching eyes of the world.
“Please welcome, from Australia, Matteo Russo!”
It was hard to distinguish applause from the background noise as I stepped out into the bright lights, passing the plaque that reminded every player: Pressure is a privilege.
“Pressure is a privilege,” I whispered to myself beneath the sound of the enormous crowd. “And champions adjust.”
Miles and I would both have to be champions to survive this.
As I made for my chair, I dared to look around.
The court was enormous, the stands seeming to go up forever like stairs to the heavens, up to the bright lights and metal beams of the open roof beyond which the sky was rapidly darkening.
There were thousands and thousands of people and my heart thundered in my throat as I set down my bag, determined to focus on my preparations and not look around again.
“And from these United States of America, the world number three, Miles Callahan!”
The crowd erupted, the roar the loudest sound I’d ever heard on a court, washing over me like it owned the physical force of an ocean wave.
He was the favourite. He was the gorgeous American star whose smile lit up magazine covers.
He was my fucking boyfriend. But none of that was allowed to matter.
He had to be just another player who was in my way.
Trying to hold that thought, I fought the urge to glance over once he’d reached his chair – had he taken off his headphones?
Had he set out his drinks? Was he re-taping his fingers or doing that thing where he just sat a few moments, bouncing one knee?
Since Paris, I’d watched every one of his matches so closely that I’d gotten used to being right there with him.
Now, I had to keep catching myself before I looked around.
Out at the net, the umpire stood waiting with a woman in a flowery dress – our special guest for the coin toss.
Working wholly on automatic, I grabbed a racquet and headed out to join them, every step oddly numb as I kept myself from so much as glancing at the stands around us.
Miles soon followed, and as the umpire went through the usual pre-match monologue, the man I loved bounced on the balls of his feet to keep warmed-up, and I couldn’t look at him.
“Heads or tails?” The umpire held the coin out to me.
I always said heads, but because this match lived in the shadow of our Paris meeting, I passed, throwing the choice to Miles as he had once thrown the choice to me.
A beat of silence amid the endless noise, then, “Tails.”
The woman tossed the coin. “Tails it is,” the umpire said, gesturing to Miles – he, once again, granted the privilege to decide how this match would start. “Serve or receive?”
His gaze flicked to me then, our eyes meeting for a brief moment over the net as he said, “Receive.”
How much I wished we could have been back in that shitty apartment in London, asking that question of one another through a make-believe microphone.
“A photo with our guest first,” the umpire said, stepping back, “then just the two of you, to both sides of the court.”
All the little traditions became second nature after a few years on tour, yet as Miles and I took our places either side of the woman to smile for the cameras, it seemed the most ridiculous thing to do before a match.
Even worse when the woman walked away and it was just the two of us, hands lightly upon each other’s backs as we forced smiles like a pair of strangers.
Yet as we stepped apart, he looked my way. And there before the crowd and the cameras, heedless of the pressure heaped upon him to win, he said, “You got this.”
My stomach twisted at the absurdity of such generosity. At how very him it was. I wanted to tell him I loved him, but all I could do was nod back and say, “So do you.”
MY LEGS COLLAPSED beneath me. Every breath came ragged and my arms shook as I dropped my forehead to the court.
The roaring crowd would see exhaustion and disbelief, not the breaking of my heart.
We’d battled for over five and a half hours.
Five sets fought tooth and nail, going to tiebreaks and multiple deuces as we both refused to back down.
It had been brutal. It had been the hardest match I had ever played. And I’d never felt more alive.
Because I had won.
I wanted to scream.
He was waiting for me when I pulled myself up and jogged to the net to shake hands.
I stared at him, desperately hoping for a smile, a look, a twitch—anything—but his face was blank.
He didn’t look at me. The clasp of his hand might have been that of a stranger, brief and impersonal.
A murmured “well done”, and he went to shake the umpire’s hand in preparation to escape, while all around us the crowd went on cheering.
They had certainly wanted Miles to win, but no tennis crowd could resist the pull of a five-set nail-biter or an underdog win, and I had just pulled off both.
While Miles packed his racquets away, the court was my stage.
I had just won the biggest match of my career and it would look strange if I didn’t celebrate it, if I didn’t bask in the noise and the energy washing around me.
I wanted to hate it, but I couldn’t. Not while a deep, terrible part of me revelled in the triumph.
This was the Matteo Russo I had once been.
This was what I had wanted to do to him in Paris, turning back time to make myself ascendent.
So, while Miles left the court, I dropped to my knees again and roared like a conquering warrior, letting out the last of the pent-up adrenaline.
For the crowd, I told myself, the truth leaving a far nastier taste.
Feeling both exhausted and intensely alive, I went through the rest of the motions: applauding the crowd, gathering my bags, throwing towels and sweatbands into the stands behind my chair. The on-court interviewer stood waiting in his pressed slacks and mirror-bright shoes, microphone in hand.
“Matteo,” the man said with an almost apologetic smile when I joined him.
“That was outstanding, you must be utterly exhausted. Five hours and thirty-six minutes on court – which means you’ve just broken the record for the longest match here at the US Open by one minute.
” He paused for the crowd to cheer while I tried to hold onto the fact that Miles and I had broken that record together.
“How do you even prepare for such a brutal encounter?”
“I don’t think you can,” I said, surprised my voice still worked. “I mean, this is what we train for, physically, every day, but emotionally you never know what you’re capable of until you’re pushed to fight for something.”
And I’d fought to end Miles’s chance at the US Open title this year.