Page 71 of Game Point
‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘I mean, I’m sure there will be a part of me that will always miss the direct competition. But it’s tempered by the fact I know I’m not playing like I used to, like I was … hungry. And I’d rather get off the court while I’m full and satisfied than regret running my joints into the ground chasing something I’m not sure I care about.’
I took a second to process his honesty, how clearly he could communicate how he felt to me, and to himself. Meanwhile, my own feelings towards my career paled in comparison, an internal battle that had been reignited.
Humming in agreement, I tried to compare how I felt to him. It had been a quick decision to retire, but the relief was immediate, knowing the stress and strain were over. It didn’t matter anymore, it was done.
But as I recovered from my injury, I’d struggled to sit still, missing the movement of training, thinking more and more about that tennis court in the neighbourhood, wondering how many boxes of rackets and balls I had stored in the spare bedroom.
‘What?’ Oliver asked, pulling my attention from the road, the red of the traffic light ahead glowing against his skin, the stubble that had grown from days of not shaving.
Did he know how good he looked with a little stubble?
I shook my head, ‘It’s nothing. I’m just thinking.’
A careful smile grew across his lips. ‘Thinking that you mightnotbe full and satisfied and you might still want a trophy of your own instead of stealing mine?’ Apparently,I took a moment too long to reply, and he read apprehension in my face. ‘You are!’
He wriggled in his seat, doing some sort of happy dance. I rolled my eyes as, thankfully, the traffic light turned green again and I accelerated ahead.
‘What did it?’ he asked, entirely too full of hope for a decision I wasn’t sure I had actually made.
‘Okay, first I haven’t changed my mind,’ I started, waiting a moment before I continued. ‘Second – Mum, she …’ I trailed off. How did I describe what Mum had said to me other than that she’d given me a talking to? ‘She said something.’
‘I should’ve known it,’ he said. ‘You are a mummy’s girl.’
I scowled at him. ‘I am not.’
‘One day at your parents and they immediately set you right.’
‘They have not.’ I let out a heavy breath, getting a little irritated at his pure sunshine joy. ‘I haven’t changed my mind.’
‘Then what is it?’ he asked, the light in his voice dimming. I hated that I had caused that.
My eyes searched the road ahead as if it was supposed to give me the answer to his question. When it didn’t, I was forced to come up with my own.
‘I don’t want to have regrets,’ I admitted. It felt like an alarm you’ve snoozed in the morning when you already didn’t get any sleep. You know if you don’t drag your ass out of bed, no matter how reluctant, you’ll be sorry, you’ll miss your day,your shot.
I’d pressed snooze a thousand times. But I couldn’t drown out the alarm anymore, the ring blaring in my ear.
‘And I don’t think I can sit there and watch somebody else take a trophy that could’ve been mine,’ I continued, trying to keep my nerve, taking out the anxiety with my grip on the steering wheel. ‘But I don’t think I can handle losing again.’
‘It’s that mindset that’s going to see you lose again,’ Oliver replied, ‘You walk on to that court like you’ve already lost.’
‘Because I have.’
‘Because you allow yourself to feel the enormous pressure,’ he said. I looked at him out of the corner of my eye:could he read my mind now, too?‘You don’t sleep. You lie awake and torture yourself over something that hasn’t even happened yet. You walk onto that court in such a negative space because you feel like you’ve already lost, because you are convinced that you will but are still desperate to win.’
I blinked away a tear, that feeling of vulnerability like a knife cutting though my heart.
‘So …’ I asked, somehow pushing through everything, finding the light in this. At least this time he’d be on my side. He wanted to help, thought he had the answers, so fine. Now was the time to prove it, convince me. ‘How do we fix it?’
‘We?’ His tone was not what I’d expected. I expected the happy, perky Oliver I’d had in the passenger seat a few seconds ago. I expected the man who’d claimed he’d been watching me play for years, who apparently had an endless list of suggestions to make. Not a low, solemn, questioning, ‘We?’
‘Yes, we.’ The pit in my stomach was a mile wide, as I stopped outside the gates to my house, the automaticsensor swinging them into action. I looked at him, the pit increasing another mile as I took in his expression. ‘Don’t you still want to work together?’
‘Dylan.’
Before he could say anything else, I cut him off. ‘I know it’s a far push, we can work with another coach if you want help trying to find your feet but I don’t like a lot of guidance gameplay wise. I know my body well, I’m confident in how I play but it sounds like you want to take a mentality view to –’
‘Dylan.’ His voice cut through the noise in my brain, and stopped me right in my tracks.
