AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘I promise,’ I say, and mean it. My sincerity is more for Victor than it is for the pack of cards—I don’t care if I offend literal pieces of paper—but it seems Victor really believes in this stuff, and I don’t want to be disrespectful.
Satisfied, Victor hands me the cards. ‘Hold them between your hands and push your question into them with your mind.’
‘Do I have to tell you the question?’
‘No, you telepathically tell the cards.’
Right. Okay. Sure. Telepathically tell the cards. For a second, I fumble around for an appropriate question. Finally, I settle onIs Phoebe going to be okay?and mentally push it into the deck.
I hand the cards back to Victor and he shuffles them, then flips down the tray table.
‘Now, there’s no such thing as a bad reading,’ he says as he starts laying out cards facedown. ‘And I also don’t read reverse.’ I don’t know what that means but I don’t want to ask. ‘Do you have the question in your mind?’
I nod. Suddenly, I’m super curious about the reading.
‘Eight of Cups,’ Victor says as he flips the first card over. ‘Disappointment. It might feel you’ve been abandoned or left behind but it also represents the desire to escape our lives, if just for a moment.’
I lean in closer. I know disappointment—I’ve lost matches and had tough draws—as much as I know victory, and the demands of professional tennis are relentless. New cities, new tournaments, play your best, win that title—or lose it—pick yourself up, keep going. ‘What’s the next card?’
Victor cracks his neck, like he’s physically preparing himself for the revelation. He flips the next card. ‘Death. It represents the end. A major change is on the horizon. New beginnings.’
I don’t like those connotations at all. Tennis players are notoriously superstitious, and while I do my best not to buy into the hype, the Death card rattles me. Victor flips a third card and sucks in a breath.
‘Five of Swords. It represents conflict, competitions and defeat.’ He looks over the cards spread before him. ‘The cards suggest that a major change is coming. You may feel defeated.’
Not exactly the reading I want going into a major tournament. ‘I thought you said there were no bad readings.’ I pick up the Death card. ‘This looks like a bad reading, Victor.’
He plucks the card from my hand. ‘Death is not literal, Gabriel. It represents the closing of one chapter and the start of another. In many readings, it is invigorating.’
Just as he slips the card back into the deck, the plane lurches as it hits a patch of turbulence. I grasp the armrest and shoot Victor ayou did thisglare, but he avoids my gaze.
No bad readings, my arse.
I check my phone as soon as we land, but my five messages are still unread.
‘Focus on the tournament,’ Papa says as he picks the luggage off the carousel. ‘She’ll be fine.’
‘Iamfocused.’ I grab my tennis kit off the belt. I have four racquets in circulation for this tournament. All Wilsons. My favourite has a green accent, and got me to the third round of Wimbledon on a wild card, and the semi-final of the US Open three months later. I may not buy into tennis superstitions but there’s no way I’d risk leaving it in Paris. ‘That doesn’t mean I’m just going to stop worrying about her.’
Papa fixes me with a hard gaze. ‘Don’t argue with me, Gabriel.’
I wasn’t, I want to snap back, but if I lose it at Papa now, there’s no way we’ll make it through the next two weeks. I bite back the words, even as they sizzle on my tongue.
Victor finds our shuttle driver and we load our luggage into the back. In Paris, I have an assistant, another trainer and a nutritionist, but when we’re attending a big tournament, it’s only me, Papa and Victor. When we travel for smaller titles, it’s just me and Papa. I prefer it when Victor is with us. Being the centre of Papa’s universe can be overwhelming.
When I first turned pro, mymamanand my sister, Claudia, would tune intoeverymatch, no matter the time difference. Now that I’ve been on the tour for nine years, they keep up to date with highlight reels. Sometimes, when I call Claudia, we don’t even talk about tennis—just life and university and who she’s dating—and for a brief moment, with her, I’m not Gabriel Madani, the tennis player. I’m just Gabi.
We take the shuttle into Melbourne. The sky is vast and blue and there’s not a single cloud in sight. Cool air billows from the van’s air conditioner, and the driver chats about how Melbourne’s set for a record heatwave next week.
Fantastic. Can’t wait to play tennis with a touch of heatstroke.
We check into the hotel and a bellboy whisks our small mountain of luggage into a service elevator. By the time we open the door to our river-view apartment, our bags wait in the narrow hallway.
‘What a beautiful view,’ Victor announces as he steps up to the floor-to-ceiling windows. The mid-morning sun glitters over the Yarra, the wide brown river that runs through the middle of the city. Silver trains weave their way along the labyrinth of tracks leading to a large train station. I catch my reflection in the window; my curls are frizzy and out of control, and my brown eyes are rimmed with dark circles. I look, and feel, a mess.
‘It feels great to be back in Melbourne, doesn’t it?’ Victor sighs in a way I’d describe asdreamy.
‘Fine, I guess. I’m going to take a shower.’
