Page 12 of Love All
So I give it a job. I turn it into instruction.
“Closer to the center line,” I tell him, on the third repetition. “You’re guarding the alley. It’s a trap.”
“I’m aware of the alley’s reputation.”
“Then stop falling for it. Split-step on my toss, not after. You’re a half-beat late, and a half-beat late is a winner going the other way.” I toss, serve, watch him move. “Late.”
“I wascontemplating.”
“Contemplate on your own time. On my serve, you move.” I gather another ball. “Again.”
He doesn’t sulk, which annoys me. Sulking I’d know what to do with. He adjusts, splits early the next time, right on the toss, and puts the poach away into the open court with a soft little efficiency I’d admire in anyone whose existence didn’t personally offend me. Then he has the gall to look over, eyebrows up, waiting, like a dog who has performed the trick and would now like to discuss compensation.
“Better,” I say. It costs me a molar.
“Say it like you mean it.”
“That was me meaning it. Don’t get greedy.”
I run us through serve-and-poach until my arm complains. And the infuriating part, the part I’ll be lying about by omission for weeks, is that he’sgood.Not coasting-good. Not gifted-and-lazy good, not the good that shows up to collect compliments. He reads the poach a half-beat before I call it. He covers the lob I haven’t warned him about because he saw it leave the returner’s strings the same instant I did. Twice he takes a ball that is technically mine, cleanly, without apology, in exactly the two spots where insisting onminewould have cost us the point; both times I open my mouth to correct him and close it again, because there is nothing to correct.
“You can say it,” he says, after the second one.
“Say what.”
“That I’m not getting in your way.” He’s grinning, lightly winded, criminally pleased with himself. “It’s killing you. You had a whole speech about improvisation and I’ve ruined it bybeing correct. Go ahead. I’ll wait. I’m very patient when I’m winning.”
“You’re not winning. There’s no score. It’s practice.”
“There’s always a score, Astor. You taught me that.” He bounces on his toes, ready for the next ball. “Fifteen-love, by the way. I’m keeping it in my head. You’ve been ahead the whole time, if that helps. You’re a genuinely terrifying tennis player and I’d follow you into a war.”
“Then cover the alley and stop narrating.”
He covers the alley. He stops narrating. And for about forty minutes, against every intention I carried through that gate, it’s, as a tactical observation, nothing more —good.We’re good. Two people who agree on nothing, who built an entire rivalry out of refusing to give each other an inch, turning out to give each other, on a tennis court, exactly the inch required and not one more. His serve, my net. My setup, his put-away.
There’s a point in the middle of it, and he will never, as long as I live, get the satisfaction of knowing I remember it — where Reyes throws up a lob I’ve misjudged, and behind me Benedict saysgot it,in a voice with no panic anywhere in it, and I trust it. I just trust it. I turn and cross and leave my entire half of the court undefended on the unverified word of Benedict Prescott-Hawthorne, and the overhead comes down clean and unreturnable, and for one half-second I have handed a person the single thing I have never handed anyone.
My back.
A rhythm neither of us agreed to, and both of us, mid-rally, simply fell into, you match a stranger’s stride on a sidewalk without deciding to, and three blocks later you notice you’re in step. I notice. Mid-point, a ball comes back harder than it should. I shift to cover his half and find him already covering mine, and we cross behind each other in the small scrambled choreography doubles partners spend years learning, and hishand finds the small of my back for half a second. Just guiding. Justhere, I’ve got this side, you take that one.The most ordinary contact in the sport.
It lands in my spine like a struck note. I put the next ball into the bottom of the net.
“Mine,” I say, too fast. “My fault. Bad footwork.”
“Sure,” he says, and does me the enormous, unbearable courtesy of not looking at me while he says it.
“Okay, somebody explain this to me,” Reyes calls from the far baseline, hands on his hips, ball abandoned. “A week ago you two wanted each other in the ground. Now you’re crossing like figure skaters. I feel like I’m intruding on something.”
“You are,” Benedict says, retrieving the ball, unbothered. “A private demonstration of competence. I’d walk you through it, Reyes, but you’d need a picture book.”
“He’sprotectingher now. Hawthorne’s gone soft—”
“I’m protecting thescoreline.Astor doesn’t need protecting. She needs you to hit it like you mean it so I’m not bored back here.” He spins the ball on his strings. “You’re down a break, by the way. To two people who can’t stand each other. Sit with that.”
And I hear myself say it before the department of my brain in charge of dignity can veto the motion: “Save your breath, Reyes. You’re already losing to a man who has never once tried at anything in his life. Picture how it’ll feel when he actually does.”
A small, stunned silence.
