Page 73 of This Could be Love

Vince wrote me two more times. On Tuesday, he let me know he had listened to a playlist by Anniemaycandyride on Spotify. Though I really wanted to know what he thought of the singer’s voice, all I sent him was a thumbs-up. On Wednesday he wrote that he was going out for burgers with Laurie, Chip, and the others and asked if I wanted to come along. I pleaded exhaustion and told him to have fun. Well, it wasn’t a complete lie. I had a cardio-tennis session behind me, a set of smash-ball training, and an afternoon in the fitness room. My body was longing for relaxation and sleep. Nevertheless, after I’d sent the message, my heart started to do strange things. It tightened and grew heavy. But my index finger took on a life of its own, scrolled through my favorite playlist and hovered a few seconds over the song I’d added after Chip’s party. “Love I” by The Green. At the last moment I decided against it.Against beginning to wallow in gloom and doom. Instead, I just closed the app and aimlessly scrolled through my social-media feeds. My Insta, as always, was full of tennis. Reels on the longest rallies, the quickest serves, the most emotional speeches. Posts with quotes, memes, statistics. Seeing as I was familiar with most of them already, I switched to TikTok, checked out a couple of viral posts, and eventually ended up on the official channel of the US Open. The video of Coco Gauff’s win from last year was there and already had eleven million views. To a dramatic soundtrack, I saw her sink to the ground and burst into tears of joy, and the most contradictory feelings raged in my heart. Admiration. Longing, envy, dissatisfaction, restlessness, ambition. I wanted what she had. I wanted to be right where she was. And at the same time I knew that I still had a lot to do if I wanted to reach that goal. And only three weeks to do it. Which was another reason for letting the thing with Vince fizzle out. He was a distraction. And distractions were dangerous.

I nodded to myself and whispered ayeahinto the air.

As if wanting to put me to the test, my phone started to vibrate, and Vince’s name flashed on the display. I immediately sat up a little straighter. Why was he calling me? And what else could he want? I’d already told him I couldn’t come an hour ago. My eyes darted to the right—it was half past seven. He and Laurie had probably long since made their way to the burger place. Maybe they were already there. My phone continued to vibrate for at least another twenty seconds. Twenty seconds warning me that therewas only around 5 percent of battery left in my phone. Then it gave up. Torn between relief and regret, I went looking for my charger. Rummaging through the compartments of my bag, I continued to wonder why Vince had called. Once I found the charger, I plugged it into my phone and into the socket. Just then, it began to vibrate again. This time Laurie’s name flashed on the display. I frowned. Coincidence? I took the call with a hesitant “Yes?”

“Hey.”

My breath stopped. It wasn’t Laurie’s voice. And it sounded angry.

“Vince?” I didn’t expect any answer. “Is…everything okay? Why are you on Laurie’s phone?”

“Because I knew you’d pick up.”

I swallowed. Toyed with giving him some excuse or other. But something in his tone told me we were past that point.

“Laurie will be under the shower for another ten minutes or so. Which means I have enough time to find out what the fuck I did to you.” He didn’t just sound angry, but frustrated.

“You didn’t do anything to me.”

“So why are you acting so weird?”

“I’m not acting weird,” I replied, but even I had to admit it was a pretty lame response.

“You are and have been since Saturday evening. If it’s got something to do with what happened in the Jeep, if that’s not what you wanted, or it was somehow too much…”

“No!” I said quickly, closing my eyes against the images that immediately came to mind.

“Then what is it?” He sounded absolutely bewildered.

I struggled to find an answer. One that wouldn’t embarrass me. One that wouldn’t embarrass him. One that wouldn’t embarrass Laurie.

“Is your godmother…?”

“Kay doesn’t have anything to do with it,” I interrupted, digging about for some kind of plausible excuse. “I simply have too much to do and don’t have any time for…”

“Fun?” He snorted.

“Yes!” I burst out. “I am here to work on my comeback. Not for a…summer fling.”

“Summer fling?”

“Yeah, Vince. A summer fling.” I sighed. “There can’t be anything else between us. I’m in…”

“Of course not,” he replied so matter-of-factly that I couldn’t help but pause.

I blinked. Had he just…? “Listen… Um…do you see things the same way?”

“What?”

“That all this… I mean, that nothing can come out of all this. Nothing…permanent.”

“Sure,” he said.

For an awkward, embarrassing, agonizing moment, there was silence, and then the question popped into my head as to whether there might be something more uncomfortable than confronting him with his feelings for me. Namely, the fact that he didn’t have any.

“Wait a sec, did you think…?” A sound of disbelief came through the speaker, and I squinted so hard my eyes hurt. “Did you think that I…wasin lovewith you?”

The way he saidin love, the way he spit it out, made things even worse.