“I spent some time Googling yesterday. So…” She shrugged. “A lot, I guess. The parts that played out in public, at least.”
He’d figured as much. The woman was a former teacher, for God’s sake. Discovering that he was a retired pro had taken her a while, but once she knew, she was going to do some research.
“Why don’t you tell me what you discovered, and I’ll fill in any missing pieces?” Stretching out his legs in front of them, he tried to keep his breathing even.
It probably wasn’t fair to make her do most of the work, but they had to start somewhere, and he wasn’t sure he could recite his entire professional history without humiliating himself.
Besides, if this morning progressed as he hoped, they’d eventually have time for other conversations. Time for him to explain the parts of his past no one could find online, because he’d never told them to a single soul. Time to get comfortable revealing themselves to one another in ways more intimate than physical nakedness.
Maybe she understood his reasoning, or maybe she didn’t have the energy to argue. Either way, she took the conversational lead without protest.
As she spoke, she stroked the back of his hand with her thumb, the caress gentle. Soothing. “You went pro as a teenager and moved from the Stockholm area to Miami to train. Commentators considered you the biggest threat of your age cohort. Your serve and your backhand were your biggest weapons, although your forehand was consistent too. You won your first and only Grand Slam just before you turned twenty-one, defeating the top-ranked male player in the world in the finals. After that, you rose to number four in the world. Your highest ranking.”
Over half a decade later, he could still recall every moment of that win with crystalline clarity. His backhand streaking down the line, Alvillar’s forehand slamming into the net. The roar of the crowd. The disbelief that he’d done it. The glance at the umpire to confirm, and the smiling nod he’d received in return. Then a choked cry ripping from his throat as he fell to his knees on that blue court, buried his sweaty face in his sweaty hands, and sobbed in gratitude.
He’d climbed on some planters and jumped up to his box, where his coach, his physio, his hitting partner, and his family were waiting, and hugged them all while his father cried and the cheers and whistles from thousands of fans deafened him.
And then…and then…
“But you had to pull out of your next tournament after a bad fall, which left you with wrist and knee injuries. You had surgery.” Tess’s voice was soft. Barely audible. “When you returned to the Tour after a few months, you worked your way back up to the top ten.”
The rehab had been excruciating, the return to form slow but satisfying. He hadn’t won another major after that hiatus, but he’d taken a few tournament trophies home and kept working on his conditioning. Finaling in another Grand Slam was only a matter of time.
Until one day during practice, when he’d pounced on a drop shot from his hitting partner and hit a monster backhand. Only to feel something go terribly, terribly wrong.
“Then came the next surgery on my left wrist. And some repairs on the right too, as long as I was already out of commission.” Those procedures had required a longer recovery time. Afterward, he’d never been able to generate quite as much power on his backhand. Not even with two-handed strokes.
“You were ranked in the hundreds when you returned, but you worked your way back to the top thirty and reached the semifinals of a major. And then…” She trailed off, her thumb resting lightly on the T of his scar. “Your final surgery. At least the final one the public knows about.”
Sometimes, the specialist still suggested another procedure, but Lucas told him to pay for his kid’s college tuition some other way. He was done with wrist surgery, now and forever.
He filled in the rest of the story for Tess. “After that one, I couldn’t put any topspin on my backhands, or any power behind them, without causing myself pain. Without risking another surgery. So I started relying on a cross-court slice. A shot to keep me in a point, but not one that would win the point. All my opponents knew they could exploit it.”
His serve had still won him some free points. And his forehand had been passable, but even it had started to break down. Maybe for physical reasons, maybe mental. All the guys on the Tour had known if they rushed him, if they made it impossible for him to run around the ball to the forehand, they could keep hammering his backhand until they got him out of position and set up a winning shot.
His rank had dropped to the eighties. Then back into the hundreds.
Every time he’d played, commentators had lamented his promise. What could have been, if he hadn’t injured himself so many times. If only he didn’t have wrists of glass. Inevitably, they’d show footage of his lone Grand Slam win during interviews, and he’d watch himself on the monitor as he collapsed onto the coated asphalt, sobbing in thanks at his good fortune.
He’d grown so fucking sick of the same questions, the same pitying looks, he’d wanted to scream at them. To rage. Him, of all people.
But how many times could he reiterate how it felt not to have his backhand as a weapon anymore? How it felt to enter majors as a wild card, solely because of his previous win? How it felt to watch the other guys in his generation, men whom he’d left in his wake once upon a time, reach semi-finals and finals while he languished in the early rounds?
And how long could he keep pretending he still had any glimmer of a real career? A plausible shot at another title?
“I’m sorry, Lucas.” Tess lifted their entwined hands, rubbing her cheek against the backs of his knuckles. She dropped a soft kiss on his scar, and then let their hands fall into the water once more. “I know this must be hard to talk about.”
He took a deep breath and finished the story. “There was no point anymore. So I left.”
Late last year, he’d retired from professional tennis. Quietly, without some grandiose fucking announcement, because if he had to hear about his vanished potential again, he didn’t know what he might do, to himself and to everyone around him.
“You’ve asked me several times why I chose to work here, and the answer isn’t especially impressive. I accepted the first job offer with decent pay and benefits.” He shrugged. “The island isn’t far from where I used to live, and this position lets me make a living from tennis. The only thing I do well.”
But not well enough. Not anymore.
He gestured at the endless ocean and sand surrounding them. “It’s a private island. Not much media finds its way here, so I don’t have to answer pointless questions all the time.”
She raised that skeptical brow of hers. “Not even from tourists?”
