Twenty-Five
THE TWO WEEKS I spent at home after the US Open were awful.
It had been my most successful North American swing – quarter-finals in Washington, third round in Cincinnati, fourth in Canada and at the US Open.
I’d proven to myself that my game was back, had picked up enough prize money to keep me going for a while, and the addition of Tomas and Macca had been great.
Yet those wins felt empty while Miles was silent.
I ought to have been throwing myself into training to keep building momentum, yet it was as much to stop myself thinking that I went to the courts every day.
Tomas and Macca put me through my paces and I pushed myself hard, preferring exhaustion to lying awake at night wondering if today would be the day.
Finally, on the eleventh day of doing nothing but sleeping, training, and sitting around my parent’s house like a blob, he messaged. I’d been asleep, the notification three hours old when I saw it, and though Miles knew the time difference, I still felt like a failure for keeping him waiting.
hey, i’m not going to shanghai. thought i should let you know before you see a headline about it
The four weeks until our next tournament together had just gotten longer. I stared at the message and had to swallow the urge to ask if I should stay home instead if he just didn’t want to see me, or even more pathetically to ask if he still loved me. The question burned in my chest all the same.
Are you injured? I asked instead.
no, i’m working with a new team and the interruption isn’t worth it when i don’t have many points to defend. citing fatigue though, which isn’t entirely a lie
Isn’t worth it. I tried not to read that as seeing me not being worth it and failed.
New team are good?
yeah, so far so good
Tell me about them sometime?
sure. i’ll introduce you. in paris, i guess
The Paris Masters was a whole month again after Shanghai, the big tournaments stretching out toward the end of the season.
It would be two months since our match by then, and the thought of waiting that long to see him again made me want to curl up and cry.
But it was his choice. It had to be. He would either forgive me or he wouldn’t.
Look forward to it, I said, and then because I couldn’t let the conversation go without letting him know, I added, I miss you.
The other answers had come so quickly that for each second he didn’t reply, panic swelled that I’d just fucked things up. Until finally, i miss you too.
Miles Callahan
you’ve got a good draw for chengdu. although henrik has been having almost as good a season as you
Thankfully only meet him if I make the quarters
oh you will
Your faith in me may be misplaced this time
I have to get through Mandel first. Look up my head-to-head against him and see if you’re still sure
i don’t need to. you’ve got this
Miles Callahan
i told you so
Is that our new congratufuckinglations?
no congratufuckinglations is still our congratufuckinglations
this is stop-doubting-yourself-you-idiot-lations
Miles Callahan
see now that is congratufuckinglations! your first ATP final!
wish i was there
Thanks
I wish you were too
I miss you. Would you call me sometime?
You missed a call from Miles Callahan
seriously?
Fuck! Sorry, I was in the shower. I didn’t think you were going to call me right away!
Call again?
idiot
MILES CALLED AND this time I answered, a lump swelling in my throat at the sound of his soft, “hey, you” spoken from a world away.
We didn’t talk about anything momentous, just the small tournament I was playing, a new plant he’d picked up and a new book I’d read and how Katie was doing in Seoul, but somehow the fact that it wasn’t momentous was the most important thing about it.
We were just talking to hear each other’s voices, to reconnect our lives, an hour passing wholly unnoticed.
And at the end, I dared a desperate, “I love you,” because I couldn’t let him go without saying it, even if he didn’t say it back.
But after a small pause, Miles said, “I love you too.” And then, “Now go out there and win. You’ve got this.”
For once, he was wrong. I’d made the final of one of the tour’s smaller tournaments, and although that felt like an important milestone, I didn’t win.
But my ranking crept up to forty-nine, that four at the beginning far too horribly familiar.
Still eight places from where I’d been when that car swerved out of the rain-slicked night, but they were eight places I suddenly needed to push past as fast as possible like a pothole to be sped over.
Perhaps once I was on the other side, the number wouldn’t look so frightening.
Unfortunately, the larger tournament in Beijing the next week didn’t go as well, and the Shanghai Masters even worse.
I’d hoped to make another deep run without the worry of meeting Miles, but a niggling discomfort in my shoulder flared up during the first match.
I pushed through to win, but the recovery day wasn’t enough, and though I played the second round covered in strapping and full of pain killers, I lost.
Miles Callahan
you’re injured
Says who?
says me who just watched you play
what is it? elbow? shoulder? your serve was off
Shoulder
damn, what does macca say?
He says if I curse him out that bad while he’s working on it again he’ll have to wash my mouth out with soap
fuck, on the scale of australian cursing that’s a lot of pain
you had it scanned?
Not yet
go get it scanned!
i’m not replying again until you send proof you’ve done it
Not even if I say I love you?
jerk
i love you too
I’d thought the first month without him had been hell, but at least I’d been able to train and play and exhaust myself.
After Shanghai, I was restricted to a less strenuous routine and spent far too much time lying on my parent’s couch.
It wasn’t the same as the weeks I’d spent in hospital after my accident, wondering if my tennis career was over, yet the parallels were uncomfortable.
Half a season spent tearing through draws and rocketing up the rankings, only to have it all come to a screeching halt like forty-one was a ceiling beyond which I could never pass.
Like I was cursed to play out the same cycle again and again.
It ought to have been a relief that Miles was talking to me at least, but our conversations felt strained, like we were dancing around one another, messaging neither as often nor as freely as before.
And most of it was about tennis. Had New York not broken us, I would have told him how much my injury frightened me, how much I felt like I was trapped in an eddy I would never escape, but it had and I couldn’t.
Could only let him message on his terms while I went slowly insane, my parents sharing increasingly worried expressions when they thought I wasn’t looking.
I missed him like an ache so deep it couldn’t be reached, and because I was still an idiot, I tried to alleviate it by scrolling through his social accounts.
There were pictures of the beach. Of his tennis court.
And his pool. He was clearly training at home, and while every day I yearned to be there with him, the time I had spent there was also taking on the feeling of a fever dream.
I still wasn’t sure our relationship had truly survived beyond it.
That particular doubt persisted despite the occasional ‘I love you’ I prompted from him, and deepened when snaps of him and Emily together started appearing in his feed.
Almost I asked what had happened to make Tina organise it, but since he hadn’t been caught kissing me this time, the question felt like an accusation so I didn’t.
I just scrolled through the photos, hating that she got to hold his hand at events and kiss his cheek for the cameras.
Knowing they were a lie didn’t make us feel more real.
The only silver lining was that Emily’s photos were more guarded now, although the masochistic part of me that wanted to drown in softcore Miles Callahan porn was disappointed Tina had listened.
Miles Callahan
have you already booked for paris?
Not yet. Wasn’t sure I would make it thanks to the shoulder, but things are looking good atm
you’re coming? injury free?
Not injury free, but hopefully enough so yeah, I’ll be there
hmmm. well what do you think of this place?
A house?
yeah, unless you’ve added to your team without mentioning it, it should have enough rooms for all of us. so long as you and i share
You want to share a place?
yes? i can keep looking if you don’t like this one, but it’s close to the stadium, has its own gym (small), pool (fun) and the master bedroom (ours) is at the far end of the house (necessary)
So necessary. I don’t want coaching tips on pre-match railings shouted through the walls
Let’s do it
THE NERVES SET in before we even got on the plane.
I hadn’t seen him since the US Open, wasn’t even sure who we were to each other anymore, and now I was just rocking up at a house he’d rented in Paris.
We wouldn’t even be alone, but perhaps less privacy was what he wanted – Miles, ever the planner.
That he’d said we would be sharing a room was all I could cling to in my determined effort not to panic for the entire flight.
Over the last few months, Tomas and Macca had become my rocks off-court as well as on, working hard to strengthen my physical and mental game.
We’d become good friends in the process, but by the end of the long flight, we were all desperately glad to escape each other’s company.
Or, more accurately, they were desperately glad to escape me, as I was fast becoming a nervous wreck.
It was late afternoon when the taxi pulled up outside the house in Paris, the sky steel-grey and a sharp breeze whipping loose leaves along the street.
While Tomas and Macca helped the driver unload our bags, I went to check we were in the right place.
My heart thumped a sickening tattoo all the way.