I panicked a little, I couldn’t lie. Instead of blurting out any old thing, I simply held her gaze for a moment or two. Then I indicated she should sit on the floor in front of me, and she did.
“I didn’t know that was an option,” I finally answered. “For a while there, I thought you were taken. And since then I wanted to respect our friendship. Right now, though, the most important reason is because I want to show you this.”
“Then go ahead.” Toni crossed her legs in an easy yoga pose, sitting with perfectly straight posture between my thighs, facing away from me. Like this, I could be a little braver.
“All you have to do, and maybe it’s not so easy at first, but you have to find that feeling, the one thing that’s making you panic. Now, it might seem like ten things all at once, but usually there’s one central problem. In your case, it’s feeling out of your depth when you start a match, I think. You can adjust that, but let’s use that as a baseline.”
“This therapist role-play is working for you,” Toni whispered, but she squared her shoulders and seemed to focus all the same.
“It’s kind of a positive-visualisation thing.” I laid one tentative hand on Toni’s shoulder, warm to the touch even through her tracksuit top. “You focus on that negative thing, the one that’s causing all the trouble, and you push all your settled, positive feelings towards it.”
“Mmm.”
“So instead of that weird feeling where everything is chaos, and decisions are hard, and you’re always rushing, you get the calm. You can shut out all that noise and turn the world down to what it needs to be. Just one person on the other side of the net. One point at a time, one ball coming at you.”
“You’re good at this.”
I risked placing my other hand on her other shoulder, anchoring Toni to the moment.
“It should feel like this. Like something gently holding you in place. Just the moment, just the ball, just the point. You start the first game like that and it won’t slip.”
Toni laid her hands on top of mine, squeezing gently. I didn’t dare to speak, for fear of disturbing the moment. I wanted so badly for her to get it, to have the same weapon in her arsenal against nerves.
“Well,” she said after the quiet had really settled between us. “Simple, but it works. I already feel like I could beat someone. Even you.”
“Right?” I dipped my head a little to speak the words in a whisper, closer to her ear. “With little tricks like that, you can do anything you put your mind to.”
“Anything?”
“Anything.”
She moved so quickly, with such easy grace that I didn’t even see it coming. In less than a blink my hands were slipping from her shoulders, coming to a rest on her upper arms. Instead of the back of her head, I had that stunning face just inches from my own, eyes trained on my lips.
This part? Yeah, this part I could handle.
“Is this when I say that this could affect our friendship?” I whispered, and thankfully Toni’s only answer was to press her lips against mine.
I’d like to say my brain made some pretty description for it, compare how she kissed to how she played on court, but at that point my last two brain cells were basically high-fiving each other and I was doing my best to kiss back as well as I knew how.
There was that initial nervousness. Not one of those movie kisses where everything magically lines up first time, where both people have the exact same idea about who moves when, and how. Instead, we both moved to the same side at the same time, making Toni laugh softly into the kiss as she corrected, tilting her face the other way.
The kiss got deeper then. Her fingers were suddenly teasing at the nape of my neck, before tangling in my hair and tugging gently.
“Huh,” she said when we finally paused for a moment. “So that’s what that’s like.”
“That doesn’t sound like a complaint…” That ego of mine chose the worst moments to desert me.
“Definitely not.” As we kissed again, and again, Toni made her way from the floor to straddling my lap, fingertips skimming the low vee of my shirt, making the three hours of agonising over what to wear infinitely worth it. Just when I started to wonder how far this was going to get, one of our phones started ringing. Not mine, as if it mattered. The moment had officially been interrupted.
“Sorry, sorry,” Toni muttered, and some impressive cursing in Spanish followed right after. “You know what? Let me take this. It’s the federation.”
“Maybe you didn’t fill out all your forms,” I suggested as she answered, the conversation far too rapid for me to even get the subject matter.
What did become clear was that someone was making Toni very angry, very quickly. I leaned back against the cushions, watching with concern. Eventually enough was repeated for me to start making out some words. Droga instantly had me on alert, and so did acusasión. I was practically levitating off the couch by the time she ended the call.
“What the hell?”
“Oh, trust me, you do not want to know.”
“You’re being accused of something? Drugs?” I had pieced that much together but nothing else. Toni began to pace on the other side of the coffee table, running her hands through her hair.
“Not me, not yet. Xavi—there’s going to be an investigation.” She stopped, texting much faster than her usual pace. “He took on someone new to coach—some kid who’s just gone pro from Mexico City, and apparently he offered him some kind of…amphetamines? Something? I never even heard of the stuff.”
“Shit. Sounds like you got away from him just in time.” I stood up, wondering if I should try to comfort her. The last thing I wanted was to look like I was trying to
