“If you’re okay with it,” she lifted her head enough that I could see one dark brown eye watching me from beneath her messy fringe. “I’m not pushing, but from what you said last night…”
“I’m ready,” I said. “There might be a bit of attention, I don’t know. They kind of gave up on getting anything on my love life, so let’s hope they don’t care.”
“Or…” Toni suggested, sitting up fully and letting me drink in the lines of her back. I traced the short line of her scar with one finger, before bending a little to place a kiss over it. “We could just take a shower and worry about the press later. If we have to. There are no cameras in here, babe.”
“Babe? Really? That’s all I get promoted to after last night’s performance?”
“Keep up the good work and all kinds of nicknames can happen.” Toni slipped out from beneath the sheets, pulling me along with her. I thought about token resistance, but she was strong enough to carry me in there if she put her mind to it.
“I’ll settle for babe,” I said, following her into the white-tiled room and whacking the shower into life. “Now let’s get wet, shall we?”
Chapter Twenty-One
The quarterfinal snuck up on me quickly, having spent a second night with Toni, this time in her room. Although we hadn’t really been out in public together yet, or had much chance to show any public affection, I still felt the whispers whenever I moved around the complex. They would only grow. When Celeste and I had first started dating, it felt like everyone else knew before even we had.
I walked out to the court with an unfamiliar young woman in my wake, clearly still in her teens. It took a moment to register that this was my opponent, and not someone I’d once briefly met and forgotten. She looked like she should still be in the Juniors, those awkward years before the real winning kicked in. Had I looked that young when I’d started out?
“Elin,” I said as we waited to be announced, extending my right hand.
She didn’t take it. “Yeah, I know. Everyone knows.”
“Sorry, but I don’t think we’ve been introduced?” I withdrew my hand, a little embarrassed.
“Sarah,” she said, like I’d asked for a kidney rather than her name.
“Well, it’s great to meet you, Sarah,” I said, offering my hand again. She just stared it down without staying anything at first. I resisted the urge to flip her off instead, but she finally relented, and our hands met for a limp split-second.
“I don’t really go in for the touchy-feely crap,” she replied, before turning and marching out ahead of me.
I saw a distressing amount of myself in her at that age, that almost impossibly young age, right down to the flippy blonde ponytail. I had never been rude, at least not on purpose, but my awkwardness had been taken as thinking too much of myself by some people. Especially Mira, who should have understood my situation as a young champion suddenly in the world’s spotlight, still struggling a little in my second language. I still carried those feelings with me, so I was determined not to write Sarah off the way others had with me.
Despite the attitude over a simple handshake, she was perfectly meek during the coin toss and the warmup. But the minute the umpire called our match to begin, she came out of the traps like one of those angry little devils they have in Australia. I weathered the initial storm, but damn if she didn’t make me work for it.
As we changed ends, I muttered a genuine, “Well played, Sarah,” but whether she misheard or thought it was sarcasm, her mood seemed to darken. From that point on, she started losing her temper at double faults or missed shots. First it was just groans of annoyance or stamping a foot, but the cursing soon got close to being audible. I didn’t mind so much, since it broke her concentration and made my march to winning the first set more of a procession.
Then I started to worry for her. I’d seen plenty of promising young players burn out or rage their way out of the rankings and out of the sport before they ever really got going. When she spoke back to the umpire, we were both called over for a warning word. I resented that a little, as though blame were somehow to be shared here. Bill, an umpire who’d been on the tour longer than I had, gave me a brief wink to mollify me, the joint warning being for the kid’s benefit.
Sarah didn’t calm down.
She got into an argument with one of the line judges next and had a point deducted for her trouble. I fudged a couple of winnable points, trying to let her play her way through it, but the red mist had truly descended.
The ball boy didn’t get out of her way quickly enough, and as he scurried back to take position at the net, Sarah started telling him off. Enough. I would take it directed at me, and the umpires were more than used to it. Upsetting the kids was a step too far. The crowd had grown restless with her bad behaviour, so I intervened.
“Do you want to talk? Or are we going to play tennis?”
Some of the crowd laughed, which I hoped would diffuse the tension. Others seemed to dissent, as though I was part of the problem. Bill leaned into the microphone at his umpire’s chair.
“Quiet, please. Players and spectators.”
We played more of the second set, but Sarah in all her spiky rage had decided the ball boy was the root of all her problems. He scurried across my side of the net to pick up a shot that hadn’t made it over, and she shouted something at him. The kids who staffed all the tournaments—usually for free or
