Page 54 of Summer After Summer

Ash laughs quietly, and we come back to ourselves.

Claude uncorks the bottle and pours a bit for Ash to taste. She sips it and nods, and when he fills our glasses and then leaves us again, the moment has passed.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

June 2008

Crack!

At the Miami Challenger in 2008, it’s a sickening sound that I feel all the way through my body as I reach for a passing shot down the line.

I fall to the ground, clutching my side. The pain is like nothing I’ve ever felt before, and I know immediately what it means. No summer trying to accumulate points with the hope of turning pro early. No tournament win, my first of the year, that I’m one game away from. No career at all, maybe, depending on how bad the injury is.

No telling either whether I’ll live through the day because it hurts so much to breathe that it feels like I’m having a heart attack and drowning at the same time.

On the video that exists of this moment, it looks like I’ve gone to sleep, my eyes closed, my hands wrapped around my midsection. But I’m not sleeping. Instead, I’m thinking of death, and my life is flashing before my eyes in snippets, a Ferris wheel of regrets.

I spend a night in the hospital in Miami, hooked up to an IV of painkillers. One of my ribs is badly fractured, and I’m given more scans than I knew were possible to determine if anything else is broken. When they decide nothing is, I’m taped up, given a prescription, and told to take it easy for six weeks, to give myself time to heal.

I feel crushed by the news. Six weeks off isn’t on the schedule. I haven’t had one week off since I was ten, when I decided that I was going to try to be a professional tennis player. Time off isn’t how I’m going to reach the next level. But I also know that rushing healing isn’t going to work either. My roommate in my sophomore year had tried that, and she wasn’t playing tennis anymore.

So I call Aunt Tracy and let her know I’ll be coming home for the summer instead of shifting from city to city as planned, and she helps make the arrangements to get me there. A week later, I’m on the train to the Hamptons.

As I watch Long Island scroll by through the grimy train window, I try to take this setback in stride. Finishing college isn’t a bad thing. I like my coach and my classes. I’m glad I picked education as my major, with a minor in music. When the time comes to retire from tennis, I’ll enjoy teaching. I have a good set of friends, and while I haven’t had a long-term steady relationship, there’s a guy I’m casual with, and my life is all rolling along basically according to plan. And now I can enjoy the summer and go back in the fall and finish school properly before I turn pro, and my life becomes solely about tennis.

I’m trying to focus on the positive, but it’s hard.

Instead, I text Ash: Coming to the Hamptons, bitch!

She answers immediately. For reals?

Yes! On the train.

Why?

You didn’t see the video?

I do have my own life, you know.

Ash is at Columbia. Her current declared major is prelaw. She’s been through premed, politics, psych, and a few others that I haven’t absorbed.

I thought you were my #1 fan.

ROTFL.

You know I suck at text language.

The slightly creepy guy sitting next to me is trying to look at my phone, so I tip it away from him.

Okay I watched the video. Damn, girl.

I’m okay.

It says you cracked a rib?

Yeah. Six weeks of rest required.

FAN-TASTIC!

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