Page 56 of Summer After Summer

What I want to do is go back to sleep, but it’s already hot in here, and I know from experience that once I’m up, I’m up. So instead of pulling the sheet over my head, I go to the bathroom and take a long, cool shower, then change into my tennis clothes and head to the club.

It’s a bright morning and the sun hurts my eyes. I’ve forgotten my sunglasses at the house, so I pull my tennis cap low and pray that Matt doesn’t notice the extra slowness in my step and the way I’m wincing when anyone talks too loudly.

I might be fooling him, but I’m not fooling Cindy, who crushes me in our first set. But I don’t roll over that easily and I fight my way back, bringing us level at one set apiece. We’re running out of time, so we play a tie-breaker, and first I’m up a mini-break and then she is, and then I rip a serve and I move up to the net, and she swings her arm back and cracks a passing shot down the line.

The world slows down, and now I’m inside a memory. Cindy’s expression is the same as that of the woman who took me down fifteen years ago, and my arm is moving to try to get the shot, but my brain is screaming, No!

I get halfway there before I stop myself, but I can already feel the pain blooming at the site of the old tear.

The shot lands in, and Cindy puts her arms up in victory. I put my hand on my thighs, hunch over, and breathe in and out slowly. I can feel Matt’s eyes on me, like he’s X-raying my torso, trying to decide if history is repeating itself.

“Olivia?”

“I’m okay,” I say, but it’s low, mostly to myself.

Matt’s hand is on my back. “Can you stand up?”

I nod, then tip myself up slowly. I rub my side. I’ve hurt myself, but it’s not a break. I’ve just strained the muscles, an injury I’ve had more than once since the terrible break in Florida.

“Sorry,” Cindy says, not looking sorry at all.

“Don’t be. That was a great shot.”

She smiles. “See you tomorrow?”

“Take the day off tomorrow,” Matt says before I can answer. “Besides, isn’t it your birthday?”

“You never used to give me my birthday off.”

“I’ve mellowed in my old age.”

I rub my side again, pressing into the muscles, trying to determine what I’ve done. Nothing too permanent, I don’t think, but a day off is probably a good idea. Every part of my body hurts since I started playing every day.

“I’ll take you up on that, then.”

He smiles at me, the worry in his eyes easing. “You’ll be okay.”

“I will.”

He releases me, and I go to the sidelines and recover my tennis bag. I wince as I bend to pick it up and stop. I’m about to ask Matt to take it for me, but then someone’s picking it up.

“Let me help you,” Fred says.

I rise slowly. It hurts to move, but it hurts to be around Fred too. “I got it.”

Fred doesn’t let his grip go; he just slings the bag over his shoulder and extends his hand like he’s letting me go through a doorway first. I can feel Matt’s eyes on me again, and some of the students’ too, so I start to walk away, letting Fred follow me.

“You feeling okay?” Fred says. “Did you aggravate the old injury?”

“I’m fine.”

“It felt like I was watching history repeat itself.”

I shake away the echo of my own thoughts. I stop at the court fence and open the door. “You were watching?”

“I’ve always liked watching you play. You know that.”

My brain leaps to that first summer when we didn’t get enough time to figure out what we could be before he left. He was supposed to come to watch me play then, but we didn’t make it far enough. But there were other summers. Ones I wish I could forget.

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