Chapter 49
Chapter Forty-Nine
SAM
Paris, France – May
Roland Garros
The morning of my twenty-sixth birthday, I woke up to three things.
The first was Naomi riding my face, with my hands gripping her flexing thighs, and the hem of my old T-shirt in between her teeth in a bid to keep quiet.
The second were massive black balloons, a two and a six, in the hallway outside our bedroom.
The third was my sisters and dad in the living room of the place we were staying in Paris.
“Surprise!”
“What are you doing here?” I asked in disbelief as I was attacked by a hug from both sides by Charlie and Hannah.
“Wyatt invited us! Not every day your brother turns twenty-six and plays in a French Open final,” Hannah said, her voice muffled against me.
It wasn’t that I didn’t know those two things were happening today. It just hadn’t occurred to me to ask my family if they wanted to come because…well, they had lives, and I didn’t expect them to drop everything when I did well in a tournament.
As if summoned by hearing his name, Wyatt’s head popped into the room.
“Breakfast is up!”
Hannah and Charlie let me go and immediately went in the direction of food. Wyatt stepped into the room properly.
“This is one of those ‘ask for forgiveness, not permission’ things. I hope I didn’t overstep,” he said.
I shook my head. “Nothing to forgive. Just surprised. In a good way. I never expect them to come to these things. We play a lot.”
“No, I get it. But I asked Hannah, and she said they were up for it. So here they are.” He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and led me to the kitchen, where Alisha was moving gingerly around the hob as she flipped some pancakes onto a plate, reminding me that she was probably a little hungover.
On the kitchen table was a whole array of toppings as well as two already full plates of pancakes waiting to be eaten. Wyatt went to start building a stack, and the plate Alisha had been holding was waved in front of my face. Three fluffy pancakes that smelled divine.
“These are yours. They’ll do a better job of fuelling you, given you actually have a match today. You can go wild on the toppings front—they’re all picked with you in mind,” she said.
“Thanks. You didn’t have to do all this,” I said seriously, hearing my family chatter in the background.
Alisha smiled sadly. “It’s your birthday. You deserve some kind of fuss. There will be cake later, too. But I’m going back to bed because I cannot watch you play today with this headache.”
“You really didn’t—”
“Don’t even worry about it. Happy birthday, Sam,” she cut in before walking out of the kitchen, swiping the plate Wyatt held out to her as she went.
I watched Wyatt make another two plates as my sisters settled at the table, and still, my dad hovered in the background. By the time I got to the toppings, Wyatt was done.
“Is Mimi awake?”
“Kind of,” I offered. She wasn’t asleep when I left the room, but she wasn’t exactly up and raring to go either.
“Well, I’ll knock and see if she wants pancakes anyway and leave you to it.”
I didn’t get a chance to respond before he waltzed out of the room.
I ran along the toppings table, sticking to savoury over sweet, before taking a seat.
“So, you’ve had a good two weeks,” Charlie said around a mouthful.
“We both have,” I said.
“You still look like you’re enjoying yourself out there,” my dad said, reminding me that he was there. His voice was tentative but warm.
“I don’t know if I would say ‘enjoy’. The matches have been tough, but it’s been a good run. Playing with Mimi is a good time. Today is probably going to be brutal, though,” I ended with a smile.
“It’s been nice seeing you like that out on court,” Dad continued. “Can’t wait to see it in person later.”
I stopped mid-chew, realising that for the first time, I was going to have to set a new boundary.
“That would be nice, but, um, it will have to be in the crowd. Not the box,” I said with as much confidence as I could muster, only to be met by something that looked like pride in my entire family’s faces.
“Wyatt already briefed us on that. It’s fine. We still get to see you play and that’s all that matters,” Dad said.
“Make it a good one,” Charlie said with a wink, and then breakfast conversation shifted to them catching me up on the things I’d missed since our check-in last week.
I was going through the motions of my warm-up on the bike, holding a steady pace as I quickly taped up my fingers, when someone sat on the bike next to mine.
“I hear a happy birthday is in order,” Ryder said as he started cycling.
I looked at him warily. Neither of us had historically been the kind of person to talk to our opponents when getting ready to play them in a final.
“It is. Thanks,” I said, and a short silence fell over us as we both cycled.
“I’ve been thinking. We should probably be better at being friends or something. We were once, right?” he asked uncertainly.
I finished taping my final finger and dropped the roll of tape on the floor. “We were, I think. I wasn’t a very good friend to anyone for a long time, so I don’t know. Why are you thinking that?”
“Because our girlfriends are best friends, and it seems like it might be a good idea to be friendly with each other. To be honest, I think them being friends actually helps them on court.”
I briefly wondered how Ryder knew about Naomi and me before remembering that yes, Lois was Naomi’s best friend, and there was no way they didn’t know what was going on in each other’s lives.
“It definitely makes their matches exciting,” I conceded.
“And stressful,” he added.
“Yeah, that too. So, what, we just learn everything there is to learn about the other so that we can battle on court for hours on end?”
“Oh god, no! Can you imagine? Watching them against each other is both the best and worst thing I’ve witnessed over the last year. We can’t put them through that.”
A chuckle escaped me, and the feeling that a friendship with Ryder could be a great thing washed over me. “We’re doing that today. Which I feel bad about because Mimi is definitely hungover.”
“Oh, so is Lois. I think we should make it a real epic one,” he said with a smirk.
“Really? You don’t want to take it easy on me because it’s my birthday?”
Ryder’s head fell back with a booming laugh. “Now, I know you know that their mantra is ‘all’s fair in love and tennis’.”
I shrugged. “It was worth a shot.”
Ryder and I did play an epic final.
It stressed both our families out for the four and a half hours it took to finish.
And at my birthday/winner’s party, Naomi smushed cake into my face as payback before kissing it off.