Chapter 31
Vince wrote me two more times. On Tuesday, he let me know he had listened to a playlist by Anniemaycandyride on Spotify.
Though I really wanted to know what he thought of the singer’s voice, all I sent him was a thumbs-up.
On Wednesday he wrote that he was going out for burgers with Laurie, Chip, and the others and asked if I wanted to come along.
I pleaded exhaustion and told him to have fun.
Well, it wasn’t a complete lie. I had a cardio-tennis session behind me, a set of smash-ball training, and an afternoon in the fitness room.
My body was longing for relaxation and sleep.
Nevertheless, after I’d sent the message, my heart started to do strange things.
It tightened and grew heavy. But my index finger took on a life of its own, scrolled through my favorite playlist and hovered a few seconds over the song I’d added after Chip’s party.
“Love I” by The Green. At the last moment I decided against it.
Against beginning to wallow in gloom and doom.
Instead, I just closed the app and aimlessly scrolled through my social-media feeds.
My Insta, as always, was full of tennis.
Reels on the longest rallies, the quickest serves, the most emotional speeches.
Posts with quotes, memes, statistics. Seeing as I was familiar with most of them already, I switched to TikTok, checked out a couple of viral posts, and eventually ended up on the official channel of the US Open.
The video of Coco Gauff’s win from last year was there and already had eleven million views.
To a dramatic soundtrack, I saw her sink to the ground and burst into tears of joy, and the most contradictory feelings raged in my heart.
Admiration. Longing, envy, dissatisfaction, restlessness, ambition.
I wanted what she had. I wanted to be right where she was.
And at the same time I knew that I still had a lot to do if I wanted to reach that goal.
And only three weeks to do it. Which was another reason for letting the thing with Vince fizzle out.
He was a distraction. And distractions were dangerous.
I nodded to myself and whispered a yeah into the air.
“Hey.”
My breath stopped. It wasn’t Laurie’s voice. And it sounded angry.
“Vince?” I didn’t expect any answer. “Is…everything okay? Why are you on Laurie’s phone?”
“Because I knew you’d pick up.”
I swallowed. Toyed with giving him some excuse or other. But something in his tone told me we were past that point.
“Laurie will be under the shower for another ten minutes or so. Which means I have enough time to find out what the fuck I did to you.” He didn’t just sound angry, but frustrated.
“You didn’t do anything to me.”
“So why are you acting so weird?”
“I’m not acting weird,” I replied, but even I had to admit it was a pretty lame response.
“You are and have been since Saturday evening. If it’s got something to do with what happened in the Jeep, if that’s not what you wanted, or it was somehow too much…”
“No!” I said quickly, closing my eyes against the images that immediately came to mind.
“Then what is it?” He sounded absolutely bewildered.
I struggled to find an answer. One that wouldn’t embarrass me. One that wouldn’t embarrass him. One that wouldn’t embarrass Laurie.
“Is your godmother…?”
“Kay doesn’t have anything to do with it,” I interrupted, digging about for some kind of plausible excuse. “I simply have too much to do and don’t have any time for…”
“Fun?” He snorted.
“Yes!” I burst out. “I am here to work on my comeback. Not for a…summer fling.”
“Summer fling?”
“Yeah, Vince. A summer fling.” I sighed. “There can’t be anything else between us. I’m in…”
“Of course not,” he replied so matter-of-factly that I couldn’t help but pause.
I blinked. Had he just…? “Listen… Um…do you see things the same way?”
“What?”
“That all this… I mean, that nothing can come out of all this. Nothing…permanent.”
“Sure,” he said.
For an awkward, embarrassing, agonizing moment, there was silence, and then the question popped into my head as to whether there might be something more uncomfortable than confronting him with his feelings for me. Namely, the fact that he didn’t have any.
“Wait a sec, did you think…?” A sound of disbelief came through the speaker, and I squinted so hard my eyes hurt. “Did you think that I…was in love with you?”
The way he said in love, the way he spit it out, made things even worse.
“No!” I said far too loud and panicky as my cheeks began to burn.
“Is that why you…?” He broke off as if having to think. “Because you thought I…?”
“No!” I made another pathetic attempt to pull my head out of the noose.
“Wow.” He let out a humorless laugh that dug uncomfortably into my stomach. “This has never happened to me.”
I felt like he was mocking me and grew defensive. “What? Someone not wanting to marry you on the spot?”
“More like someone dreaming of getting proposed to.”
“I’m not dreaming of anything. Laurie said…” I didn’t finish, but the damage had been done.
“Laurie? What’s Laurie got to do with anything?”
“Nothing,” I peeped. I bit my lower lip and prayed he’d let me get away with it.
“What did my sister tell you?”
I remained silent.
“Well, I’ll ask her myself.”
“No!”
“Then tell me what’s up!”
I let out a heavy sigh. “She was worried about you.”
“Worried? How so?”
I hesitated. “She said that…that you’d had some tough times. And that she didn’t want someone to…to break your heart.” I held my breath.
“And that someone would be you, I take it.” He snorted. “Why didn’t you tell her that that was bullshit? I mean, we made out a couple of times, but that’s it.”
“You’re the one who said that that term was too trivial,” I reminded him, regretting it at the same moment.
“Yeah, but what I didn’t say was that making out with you was serious.”
I swallowed again. Hard. Collected myself. “You know, you’re really acting like an asshole right now.”
“I’m acting like an asshole? Who’s the one talking with my sister behind my back and then ghosting me afterward instead of just talking to me?”
“I didn’t ghost you! All I did was distance myself, and that’s my right.”
“Of course it’s your right. But, fuck, man, do it for the right reasons! Not because my sister drops a bunch of bullshit about me.” His voice was shaking. “Do you know how fucking bad I’ve felt over the last few days? How often I’ve asked myself if I went too far?”
“You didn’t go too far,” I responded with a twinge of guilt.
I hadn’t once considered that he might connect my distance to what had happened in his car.
And, actually, I hadn’t really given him any reason to.
The vibe on the way home had been low-key and relaxed.
But, well, yeah, those kinds of impressions could certainly come up over time.
Start to work on you. I really was sorry that he’d felt bad.
“But Laurie did.”
“She was just worried about you. And if it had been up to her, you would never have known.” It was only once the words were out of my mouth that I realized how underhanded they sounded.
“I mean…well…” Stammering, I tried to save the situation.
“Please don’t be mad at her. She had turned to me in confidence, and I’ve just screwed everything up. ”
“Yeah, well, maybe she should’ve turned to me in confidence first.”
“She did. But you went through the roof.”
I didn’t feel good quoting Laurie. At the same time, I felt the strong need to defend her.
“I already told you that I have no interest in sharing my love life with my little sister. Because. It’s. Got. Nothing. To. Do. With. Her.”
“But you do. You’re important to her, Vince. You’re the only one she’s got.”
“What the fuck do you know? How long have you known us? Three weeks? You have no fucking idea about our lives.” His words were hard. Harsh. And he seemed to recognize it. A little more softly he said, “Why didn’t you just ask me about what’s going on between us?”
Before I could answer, I heard something in the background.
Laurie. Asking Vince what he was doing with her phone.
Vince hissed that she should mind her own business.
Her reply was muffled. Maybe Vince had put the phone down.
Or Laurie had snatched it out of his hand and didn’t realize that I was still on the other end.
Both of their voices grew louder. Discussing, arguing, yelling.
At some point I just hung up and threw my phone onto the bed. Shit.