“Have a good game,” Toni said as we lined ready for the handshakes and coin toss. “You look great, by the way.”
“I looked good last month too,” I said, not moving my lips too much in case the cameras picked us up. “Which, you know, I could have shown you if you’d kept in touch.”
“Elin—”
The umpire interrupted us and there was no chance to say more. We shed our jackets on our respective chairs and I took my end to start the final warmup rally. I kicked the ground in quiet frustration at letting Toni know how hurt I’d been. So much for rising above it.
When the match started, I dug deep, reaching for that competitive boost to start things off with a sting. Instead, I found myself watching Toni shift position on the baseline, her hips swinging smoothly from side-to-side as she awaited my serve. I bounced the ball a little too long and she noticed it, giving me a wink from across the court.
Oh yeah. I was screwed.
As with most of the venues we played, there was a huge general locker room for all the women upstairs in the Caja Mágica, but the actual match participants had smaller changing rooms near the court itself. The lockers and the showers were a shared space there, with a private dressing room either side.
I should have guessed she’d come storming right in after me.
“What the fuck was that?” she almost spat the words, catching me off guard and backing me against the wall.
“Excuse me?” I might have been crazy about this woman, but nobody talked to me that way. “Oh, are we talking now?” I felt sick, I didn’t want to fight with Toni, but now it seemed inevitable. I could no sooner stop it than I could have stopped a speeding train.
“What do you mean are we talking? You’re the one who disappeared on me. Went home to California and then cancelled Stuttgart. What was I supposed to think?” Toni asked. We were inches apart, but it didn’t much look like she planned to kiss me this time. I felt her height advantage so acutely in that moment, her dark eyes trained on me as I fumbled for a response.
“You stopped calling! The messages dropped off. I can take a hint, Toni. I wasn’t going to make a fool of myself, not again.”
“Again?”
I didn’t reply, turning my head away. I tried to sidestep her, but she didn’t give an inch, planting her palms on the white brick wall behind me and effectively trapping me in place. I could get out if I wanted, we both knew that, but it gave me the excuse I needed to finally confront the whole mess.
“Fine. I started blabbing about babies because you caught me in a weak moment, and instead of listening to context, that it’s all some far-off future thing, you freaked out.” I willed myself to stare her down on this point. I was in the right. “I didn’t mean to scare you, but you handled it very badly.”
“So what if I did?” she snapped. “Anyone would freak. What you didn’t bother to ask was what kind of freaking out was I doing? Because that, Elin, is the difference. I didn’t want to run a mile from you. You started talking about the future like I could be part of it, and I didn’t panic for a second. Not until I realised how much I wanted that, how much I liked maybe being in that picture for you. We’d barely been together five minutes, and there I was, ready to grab my U-Haul like some big fucking cliché!”
I squinted at her in confusion as I tried to put it together. “You’re saying you flipped out because you didn’t flip out at the idea of marriage and babies? That’s… That’s pretty dumb?”
“Yeah, well, I’m beginning to see why you don’t date so much, if you start talking about your future kid’s college tuition on a first date.”
“Ha ha,” I replied, patting her on the arm but still making no attempt to move. “If we had just talked…and then when I thought we would, before coming here, you suddenly disappeared!”
“I broke my phone, I told you. It took a while to get a new one—I was on the road.”
“And making Mira your secretary?”
Toni pulled back a little. “What are you talking about?”
“She fields your calls, tells me when you’re too busy? Like you didn’t put her up to it when you realised you wanted out. Please, give me some credit.”
“I…I didn’t know. I never asked her to do that.” Toni let her hand slip down the wall, taking mine instead. “Elin, come on. I would never do that. I know how you feel about Mira, for a start. She’s an excellent coach, but I wouldn’t use her to hide from you.”
“But you did hide from me.” I wasn’t letting her away with this one. I pulled my hand free and shoved past Toni. She caught me and pulled me close. Damn, I really had missed that closeness. I felt her breath on my cheek.
“Of course I hid. You, this… I’m terrified. You don’t know what this is like for me. I have idolised you, looked up to you like my personal goddess for years now. It got me through recovery and coming back. And then I find out not only are you gay, but you actually like me? It’s like shit, maybe Santa was real all this time?”
I couldn’t help it. When she started to cry, the first tear rolling down her cheek, I reached up to stroke it away with my thumb. We were basically holding each other up, and I didn’t know how we’d found ourselves at this point at all.
“I don’t think I want to be an old man in a red suit.” I had to at least try teasing her. “And I’m not asking anything of you, Toni. I just really like
