Slammed, стр. 27

“Fine, fine. I’m just glad you’re taking something seriously this time around.”

Parisa came back from booking my next car to the stadium for that afternoon. I didn’t trust the traffic and liked to arrive plenty early for my matches.

“I did some digging on this Toni, personal stuff. Do you want that too?”

I froze for a second. I really didn’t want this to turn into a whole situation. It felt like an unfair advantage somehow. Besides, if I was going to snoop around the woman before getting to know her better, I should really have done it by myself and stalked her social media like everyone else had to.

But hey, I had a match to prepare for and a ton of extra physio to be ready for it.

“I guess. It might help me get into her head a bit quicker.”

“Um… Sure?” Parisa shot me a curious look once my mother wandered off to get everyone else working. “Elin, is this what I think it is?”

“Please don’t think anything about it,” I asked. “Just spill and see if there’s anything useful.”

“Okay, so she’s been out for almost two years since she blew her back out at a Prem tournament somewhere in the Far East, I haven’t checked which one yet. I want to say Shenzen? Funny though, it was actually a doubles match and she got hurt colliding with her partner. She didn’t even play doubles before that season. Initial gossip was that she was out for good, right away.”

Shit. That had to be a crushing blow for anyone in this sport. I knew there couldn’t be a good explanation as such, but I’d been hoping for a slow recovery that just got delayed along the way.

“If we can find out more about how she hurt her back,” I said, feeling pretty ashamed for bringing it up. “And how it’s changed her game since she came back? Apparently I beat her in Paris before all that, but I don’t remember the match at all. Vague flashes, but it’s all just a mess of rallies apart from the finals.”

Parisa added to her notes.

“Not married, no kids. I checked since that’s usually the reason for an absence of more than six months. I think she had some funding issues when she first came back too, but she’s more than breaking even again.” Parisa was good, I had to admit it. “Current gossip is that she’s sleeping with her coach, you remember Xavi? Him.”

“But no confirmed couple sightings?”

That got me a knowing grin. “Nope. There’s hope, then. You want me to come to the practice session with you? We have a bit of press after, previewing tomorrow’s match.”

“Oh, that, yeah,” I had skipped ahead to the prospect of Toni so quickly I forgot I had another player to overcome, this time one of the lowest seeds from Poland. I tried to get to know my peers as far as possible, but the peppy young blondes were the hardest to keep track of. I suspect plenty of players felt the same about me when I was coming up. “Sure, keep me company if you don’t mind.”

“Alice not coming?”

“She says she won’t be caught dead in Queens unless I make the final. And that when I do, she’s bringing her own homemade signs. We’d better tip off Mother or there might be an international incident.”

“Oh, let her have her fun,” Parisa suggested. “It might be nice to go viral because your sister had some fun with a placard.”

“Just remember you said that.”

My second-round match went almost perfectly. My hip decided to let me play as though it had never been a problem. Then all I needed was for Toni to do her part against Sasha and meet me in the third round.

Good luck!

I sent the text a good hour before her match started, hoping she’d have a chance to see it before phones were tucked away. I wished we had some cuter way of saying it, like actors and breaking a leg. Definitely not one to try and make a thing of in professional sports.

Be careful what you wish for

Her reply might have sounded like a mild threat from anyone else, but it just made me smile. Of course she would be nervous at the prospect of playing me, only the cockiest player wouldn’t these days.

I watched Toni’s match through fresh eyes, with an intensity I hadn’t had since my teens. Back then, I’d been trying to learn every trick and skill from Mira and the other greats. Now I was watching like an unofficial coach, cheering Toni on from afar. I held my breath when it looked like she wouldn’t make it to the ball, then punched the air when she dived to make the backhand, winning the set in the process.

During the end changes, and the inescapable adverts on American television, I looked at the e-mail Parisa had sent with a bunch of relevant links. Thorough to a fault, that woman. A few were generic match reports, the kind of thing I wouldn’t read about myself. Dry recounting of key shots and boring stats, almost never worth the time.

A few were interviews, though, and I found myself skipping straight to those. Sports media, never the most incisive, hadn’t asked any deep questions. Generic enquiries about where young Antonia had grown up, when she’d realised she loved tennis. The first one or two had one-sentence answers, short and snappy. I recognised that from my own. I’d been so terrified I’d say something wrong that I’d tried not to say anything at all.

But then the profiles got more in depth, and I found myself missing entire points to keep reading. Toni revealed a little more with each thoughtful question, and I found out how her parents had separated early, pulling her back and forth for years between Guadalajara and Malága.

Six years younger than me. Hardly insurmountable, but it was a little disheartening to have it confirmed. As age