Concentrate. Focus. All those useful words that had gotten me through every other time. I’d been distracted all week, in truth, and it was coming back to bite me on the butt.
Not anymore. Not with a pretty girl to impress. I mean, did anyone ever have better motivation than that? Other than a crushing will to win at all costs, but mine seemed to have taken the day off. In its place, I’d take anything that might work.
Celeste didn’t see it coming. She seemed to think I was getting nervous about serving, since she was coming back so strong. Instead of my usual precise, calculated approach that some critics said belonged more to chess than tennis, I reverted to a style I hadn’t played much since my first few years after breaking out.
An all-out assault, basically. I served like I was trying to put the ball into the Earth’s crust, and I launched myself into leaps to hit forehands with deadly force. I had won intermittently by playing that way in my teens and twenties, overwhelming other players with force and speed. Having become so disciplined, it felt like being a kid again to just go for it.
It worked too. Celeste could play that way herself, but countering it wasn’t easy. I’d switched to a more controlled style to minimise the toll it took on my body, reducing injuries and making matches quicker and more predictable. Then came this Saturday in July, and suddenly it was “anything goes.”
My hair kept coming loose, and I was red in the face from exerting myself so recklessly, but as each muscle group burned and stretched that little bit harder, I only felt more alive.
Changing ends felt like a needless distraction, and so did every line call dispute or extra bounce between serves. I chugged down vitamin drinks at the appointed times and let that replenish my body as best it could. Turning the second set around finally pushed Celeste to abandon her game plan, but we were deep into the third and final set before she could get any traction on me again. Once or twice I caught her looking at me like we’d never met. She had never played me like this. Being a few years my junior, our paths hadn’t crossed until I was well on my way to being the “Ice Princess,” who was only ever cool.
I didn’t look at anyone else until I heard the umpire call 40-love in the last game I needed to win in order to clinch the thing. Championship point, it would say on screens all around the world. Three championship points, in fact, meaning I could still afford to mess it up once or twice.
I could feel the air cooling. I wasn’t waiting around again to get caught in the rain— not with the trophy almost in my grasp.
When I looked to my box, I saw Toni practically falling into the row in front, she was watching so intently. My mother had rescued herself from her slump and sat there with fists clenched, willing me across that final line.
I bounced the ball once, twice. Tested its weight in my hand and then gave its final bounce. Then it happened in that slow motion that I could never recapture outside of the moment. The ball, tossed to just the right height. My other arm arcing up to meet it, the sweet kiss of strings against racquet at exactly the position and speed I had asked of them both.
Ask anyone who hits things for a living and they’ll tell you: You hear it when the contact is sweet, that perfect connection, where what happens next seems preordained by forces greater than anything you may or may not have done.
An ace. No return. Celeste’s shoulders drooping as the ball hit the back wall of the court, utterly beyond her. My knees, how they gave way in sheer relief and maybe exhaustion. Falling to the dry, sandy ground, knees and shins barely registering the prickly grass. I let go of my racquet. I remember that much, but I didn’t hear it land over the cheers that went up. If our entrance had been a dragon, this was a whole army of them.
Just one formality left: shaking Celeste’s hand and the umpire’s in turn. I made myself get up, and as soon as we exchanged those pleasantries, I was free to react, to enjoy the chaos around me.
I cried out, something primal and incoherent that wasn’t a word. Just a feeling, the high of winning as potent and new as it had been that very first time. On and on the crowd cheered, and I felt the sudden compulsion to see what I’d seen so many others do over the years—never me, not rule-keeping, well-behaved me.
On shaking legs I got up and jogged towards the stands full of people, seeing the path to my destination as though it had been illuminated in neon. Used to it by now, most people either moved out of my way or tried to help me climb to that first level, over the wooden hoardings to where my family waited. I didn’t feel any of the hands on me, helping and guiding. I was on a mission.
Moments later I reached them, and the little crowd of loved ones surged towards me. My father reached me first, ecstatic to pull me into a bear hug even though I knew he’d have been reading the newspaper on his phone during most of the match. He may not have loved the sport, but I knew he loved me. A
