Page 105 of Summer After Summer

“Don’t let it get in your head,” Matt says.

It’s already in there, buried deep. “Of course.” I kiss him briefly on the cheek. “I’m going to go.”

“I think that’s a good idea.”

“I’ll see you back at the apartment later?”

“Sure.”

I weave my way through the crowd, avoiding Fred on the other side of the room. I leave the reception room and start to walk down the hallway. It feels good to absorb the silence as my feet fall on the thick carpet.

“Olivia!”

I stop, close my eyes, sigh.

Oh, Fred. Why can’t you just let me sneak away?

I turn around. Part of me wants to rush into his arms and pick up where we left off. The other half wants to run away in a childish display.

I do neither.

“What, Fred?” I say in a voice that’s harsher than I want it to be.

He stops short. “I wanted … Good luck tomorrow.”

“Thank you.”

And then I walk away from him as fast as I can before the past catches up to me.

The Wimbledon qualifying rounds take place at the Roehampton Sports Center. It’s a beautiful stretch of Kelly-green lawn divided into courts separated by low net fencing. There’s no proper stands, just corridors where the few people who come to watch the matches roam around. All the players are in white, and I’ve got a special outfit for the tournament, provided to me by my first top-tier sponsor.

My opponent is a woman named Olga. She’s nineteen, tall and stocky, with a serve that sounds like a bullet. But she’s a one-trick pony, a fast-serve out wide so she can try to place the return down the line, and I cracked her code the last two matches we played. She doesn’t deviate today. The BOOM of her serve draws a crowd, but the points play out with a certain sameness. So much so that I’m almost coaching her in my mind, telling her to surprise me by serving down the middle once in a while.

She doesn’t, and I break her early in the first set, and the match quickly starts to feel inevitable. She fights harder in the second set, but she doesn’t change her strategy, and before long that set is over too, and I’ve done it.

I’m into the second round of qualifying.

One match down, nine to go, I think as I shake her hand across the net. I go back to my chair and drape a towel over my head. It’s midday and hot.

Matt hugs me from behind. “Great match.”

“Thank you. The plan worked.” I pull the towel off and wipe off my very red face.

“Indeed, it did.”

“Tougher match tomorrow.”

“Probably,” he says. “But you know what to do.”

I smile at him, feeling a confidence I haven’t felt in a long time.

Matt mentions that there’s some media that want to talk to me. I do a few quick interviews, giving the same platitudes that athletes have for time immemorial. When I’m done, I take a cab back to my apartment. The cabbie is chatty, telling me the history of the street we’re driving down. I listen politely, struggling with his northern accent.

When I get back to the apartment, I shower, change, stretch. I take out one of the prepared meals and heat it up, then sit down at the kitchen table to eat. It’s part of my decompression routine, so I don’t focus too much on what’s coming up tomorrow. Because right now, all I have to do is wait.

My phone pings on the table in front of me.

It’s a text from an old number.

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