“Of course you are,” she replied. “But now we’re going to be in the same place whenever we get the chance. Pretty nice, right?”
“Right,” I agreed, that sweet contented feeling I was almost getting used to slipping right into place again.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Hiding my injury proved impossible by the end of the first week at Wimbledon. I’d had to disclose everything I was taking, none of it illegal by the game’s standards. I checked in with the drug-testing staff if they’d had any change in procedures, but all I got in response was a glare. Good.
Shots before the game, shots after the game—it affected me in the strangest ways. Sometimes my body didn’t feel like my own, and my usual precision was shot to hell. In a weird way, the early matches became more fun. I got to rely on my killer forehand, which always made me feel powerful. I had weakness, or maybe just a lack of confidence, on my serve and on the backhand, but people tended to target that anyway.
I tried desperately not to view everything about the tournament as some heavy milestone, but it did weigh on me. Smiling through interviews and press conferences had become second nature, but this time I hung on every word, considered every answer like it might be the last time I was ever quoted.
Not having to face Mira in front of a camera certainly helped, and her replacement at the BBC was much kinder in her questioning. A former champion in her own right, she’d wrapped up her career in the early nineties, long before I ever burst on the scene. When she asked me about equalling the record that had stood for thirty years, I found myself opening up in a way I hadn’t before.
“It’s not the only important thing, I know that. But every time you get closer, when you win the fifteenth slam and then the sixteenth and you still have years left to play, it becomes an obsession,” I admitted. “I realised this year I’ve let it define my career, and that was wrong. Maybe the next person to equal it, to break it even, is already playing today. There’s so much talent out there.”
“Like your good friend, Celeste.”
“She could do it, sure. She has years ahead of her, and she’s great on every surface. I’ll certainly be cheering her on for as long as she plays.” I had come dangerously close to revealing my imminent retirement, and I was not ready for that.
“Speaking of other players.” Here it came. I hadn’t worn the ring on court or on playing days at all, but this interview between the third round and quarterfinals was on my off day. The diamond sparkled on my left hand, catching the studio lights over and over. I resolved in that moment that I had to find something every bit as gorgeous for Toni to wear.
“Yes?” I said.
“You announced before the French Open that you and Antonia Cortes Ruiz are dating, and now, forgive me for prying, but you seem to have updated your accessories.”
I looked down at my clothes and my shoes to toy with her a moment, before lifting my hand. “Yes, I have. We got engaged here in London, in fact. Wimbledon will always be very special to us.”
“Of course.” It wasn’t live, so asides like that would be edited out. “Do you want Wimbledon to be The One? Where you finally break the Grand Slam record? Could it really happen next Saturday?”
“That would mean a lot to me.” I couldn’t tell her how much. “But hey, there’s a lot of tennis between now and then.”
Toni was having a fantastic Wimbledon, and with the luck of the bracket, we couldn’t meet each other before the final itself. Assuming we both got there.
“It doesn’t feel right,” she said, as we lay on the couch in our suite after the round of sixteen matches. It had been the busiest day of the tournament; there was a reason they called it Manic Monday. My head was swimming a little from the painkillers. “Being out there and enjoying my tennis while you’re in agony.”
“It’s not all bad,” I tried to reassure her, even as her hand skimmed the inflamed area around my hip and made me suck in a quick breath through my teeth. “Just a few more matches. Then they can fix me for good.”
“I think…” she trailed off. Much like with her texts, I had learned some patience. Toni was particular about how she shared her thoughts, and this was going to be no exception. “A part of me is still worried that when you’re done with playing, you’ll be done with me. You’re not in it yet, but there’s a grieving process. There might be times when you don’t even want to know the sport exists.”
I mulled that over for a moment. “Then those are the weeks that I’ll stay home. I can be on my own without resenting you, I promise. If it gets hard, we’ll just have to talk about it. You did, you know, put a ring on it.”
“Ah, so you did take that seriously? Good to know.” She kissed my shoulder. “Need another gel pack? You don’t feel so cold there anymore.”
“No, it can wait a while,” I said, confident the pain wouldn’t come roaring back. “Don’t move just yet.”
The one thing working against me was that I had been bracketed into the first quarterfinal, meaning I played again the next day in the early afternoon. I was going to get screwed one way or another; having Tuesday off would mean playing the quarter and semi back-to-back instead.
It was really starting to make sense, how many of us succumbed to injury. The exertion I’d taken for granted now felt like climbing Everest, only to win a shot at scaling Kilimanjaro the very next day.
From the moment the umpire called “Game, set, match” in my name, I was wiped. I didn’t remember
