Sadie nodded.
“It hasn’t always been about protecting myself. And when Des said she didn’t want to be seen with me, like people might get the wrong idea . . .”
“Jay, I don’t know what came over her.”
“I do,” Jay said quickly, “and for the record, the stories that sparked her concerns were wrong, but her fears about added press coverage aren’t baseless. People will talk. Eventually someone will say something stupid, or make unfair assumptions, or stereotypes.”
Sadie’s breath shallowed, as if she couldn’t get air all the way to her lungs due to the pressure building in her chest. Her urge to protect her daughter collided with her natural defiance against being pushed around by other people’s ideals. “Why do I get the feeling the whole world knows something I don’t?”
“Because they do,” Jay said matter-of-factly. “You’ve got a smartphone, you can use Google, you can talk to Des or any reporter or player you come across this week, and they’d bring you up to speed.”
“Why don’t you bring me up to speed?” She wondered why Jay would be so willing to let someone else tell her story when Sadie had spent so much of her life fighting against that very prospect.
“It doesn’t matter what I say.” Jay shrugged again, but this time she stared out the window as a plane pulled up to the gate. “The story was agreed upon a long time ago. There’s no changing it now.”
“It’s never too late to change the ending,” Sadie said, not even quite sure if the comment was for Jay or herself.
“Yeah.” Jay’s throat visibly tightened, as if she were trying to force down a ball of emotions. “I’m not sure I’m ready to get to the ending yet, but maybe I wouldn’t mind adding a few footnotes to my career.”
“Footnotes?” Hank asked from behind them. They both jumped, and Jay leaned away from her.
“I didn’t sign on for footnotes. I want highlights,” Hank said.
Jay’s smile returned, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “I suppose stranger things have happened, but either way, I’ve been meaning to ask you to help set up some footwork drills for us in Madrid. Maybe some ladder work.”
Hank nodded. “We could do that easily. Des would benefit from those exercises, too, both in doubles and singles. As the pace of your last game sped up, she tried to replace finesse with power, which is one of the reasons why I wanted her to work with you instead of a baseline striker.”
He turned to Destiny, who had stopped farther down along the window. “Des, come here. We need to go over some schedule additions.”
Destiny edged closer, her earlier anger replaced, or maybe simply tempered, by a more childlike need to please both coach and mother as she got close enough to be included in their circle. Once Sadie felt certain her daughter wouldn’t cause any more trouble, she glanced back to Jay, who nodded slightly as Hank ran through some workout options. Her brow had smoothed, her expression studiously neutral, her shoulders relaxed, and she’d propped one long leg atop the other, ankle over knee.
Nothing in her demeanor spoke of the tension that had accompanied their conversation minutes ago, leaving Sadie to wonder whether she’d misread the emotions she’d seen in Jay’s eyes then, or if the transition back to tennis topics was one she’d perfected over years of practicing self-preservation.
★ ★ ★
Madrid, Spain
Jay backed up a few steps and rocked forward with a backhand right at the opposing net player’s feet. She didn’t even wait to see the ball come off her racket. The only play would be straight up. She charged up to the net as if her feet intuited the dance even before the music began to play. Then with the push of a basketball player going for the easy layup, she spiked the ball into the service box a good six feet in front of her Austrian opponent. She gave a fist pump as it bounced into the first row of the stands.
God, it felt good to be in command again.
Then, without thinking, she wheeled to smile at Destiny, who stood stone-faced as usual.
“Game, and set Pierce/Larsen,” the chair umpire called. “6-3.”
Another jolt of exhilaration raced through her, like the blood being pushed along by her rapidly beating heart. Turning away from Destiny, she looked up into the players’ box to see both Hank and Sadie on their feet applauding the shot and the set. Her stomach gave a pleasing little lurch like one might get on a carnival ride. There were people rooting for her. Well, her and Destiny, but still, even a half-share of Sadie’s smile was better than a full portion of anyone else’s.
She jogged to her bench and snatched a towel from atop her bag, then snagged another and tossed it to Destiny, who caught it wordlessly.
“You’re welcome,” Jay said cheerfully as she dropped onto the bench.
Destiny snorted and remained standing.
She thought about telling the kid she couldn’t catch gayness from sweating in close proximity, but she didn’t want to get into that conversation now, or maybe ever. They’d reached a politely distant sort of stasis over the last four days, and that had led to a quarterfinalist berth. Destiny hadn’t warmed to her so much as resigned herself to a sort of business relationship. She at least answered direct questions from Hank or Jay. She’d also worked her ass off on the practice courts, even while keeping up with a full slate of singles matches. Maybe the singles matches had even helped the doubles, or vice versa, because they’d each made it to the third round individually, a fact that would help both their rankings and their wallets. Even if they somehow managed to blow the next two sets, they’d exceeded all expectations for their time in Madrid.
“Plus, the sun is nice,” Jay said aloud before taking a big swig from her water bottle.
“What?” Destiny asked tersely.
“I was just mentally listing all the good things about today,” Jay said breezily. “We’ve made enough money to cover our travel all the way through the French, we’ve bumped up our rankings both together and separately, we’re killing it out there on the court so far, and the weather is nice. I might get a tan.”
“I don’t need a tan,” Destiny said flatly.
“Yeah, well, not all of us were born with your fabulously bronze skin tone and teen-model good looks,” Jay said, as she tossed the water back onto her bag and pushed off the bench.
“Was that some kind of a come-on?”
Jay rolled her eyes. “Don’t flatter yourself, kiddo. You’re not my type.”
“That’s not what I heard,” Des muttered as she brushed past her, heading toward the court.
“Seriously?” Jay asked in a harsh whisper. “You want to do this now?”
Destiny said nothing as she accepted three tennis balls from a ball boy and took turns bouncing them.
“You’re going to say something like that to me in the middle of a match? A match where I am carrying you, by the way.” Jay pushed. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
A muscle twitched in the girl’s jaw as she palmed one of the balls and tossed the other one back to the ball kid. “Get back in position.”
“Or what?”
“I’ll serve with you standing right here.”
“No, you won’t,” Jay said as she reached her boiling point. “You don’t have it in you.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You don’t know me.”
“Yeah, I do,” Jay snapped, barely bothering to whisper now. “I’ve known women like you my whole career. You want to win, and you want to do it on your terms, but you don’t want it bad enough to make a scene. If you serve with me standing here, you’ll catch the attention of every reporter from here to Paris. Then everyone would know we got into a tiff on the court, and they’ll start to wonder why you’re having passionate debates with a known lesbian.”
“You think I care that you’re a lesbian?” Destiny asked. “You really think that’s the issue here?”
“I do,” Jay said, her face growing hot despite the cool breeze. “That and the prospect of your guilt by association. Wouldn’t want the
young suitors and hot sponsors to get the wrong idea . . . or the right one.”
Destiny waved her away dismissively. “Go back to your position.”
“No,” Jay said adamantly, “I will not be bossed around by a baby bigot.”
“Time,” the chair called.
“We’re about to get fined for delay of game,” Destiny said.
“Look at my face,” Jay instructed. “Do I really seem concerned about the score right now?”
“I couldn’t care less about your concerns,” Destiny said. “Just like I couldn’t care less about what the press thinks of my sexual orientation. I care about their opinion of me about as much as I care about yours.”
“Fault,” called the chair umpire. “Time violation, Pierce/Larsen.”
“That’s one,” Destiny said. “One more and we lose the point.”
“I know the rules, damn it.”
She couldn’t figure out what Destiny was trying to play at, but she wanted it to end right now. If she had to walk off the court to teach the kid a lesson, she would. She’d thought they were past all the snarking and tantrums, but maybe Destiny had only been waiting to lob her insults out of earshot of her mother. Jay had plenty of familiarity with that two-faced bullying tactic, but she wasn’t in high school, and she wouldn’t let Destiny act like she was either. “I’m not going to roll over just because we’re in the middle of a match. I won’t be held hostage by a set point, or by you. I know more than I care to about dealing with run-of-the-mill mean girls.”
“Then you know nothing about me,” Destiny said. She tossed the ball high into the air and brought her racket down with a whip and a crack. Jay didn’t turn to see where the serve landed, but she heard the murmurs flutter through the small crowd, followed by the chair umpire’s score call.
“15-Love.”
Any other time she would’ve been amused by scoring a point with her back to the court, but Destiny had already ruined her good vibes from the first set, and right now the second set seemed secondary to drawing a hard line with the person who was supposed to be her partner.
“I’m not some prima donna,” Destiny said flatly. “And whether you believe it or not, I’m certainly not a homophobe.”
“Yeah,” Jay scoffed. “Have you looked in the mirror lately?”
“Every morning. I know who I am and what I stand for.” She tossed her frizzy ponytail over her shoulder and met Jay’s eyes with a steely glint in her own. “I’m the daughter of a single black woman who never took one ounce of crap from anyone and who gave me everything she had. I’m the product of a woman who never wavered, and never compromised, and never once put her needs over mine.”
Jay took a step back, unsure of where this conversation had taken its latest bizarre turn.
“If you think for one second, I’m going to sell out my mother to some playgirl predator in order to further my career, you’ve severely underestimated me.” Destiny grabbed another ball and tossed it up without so much as a bounce. Jay watched, transfixed, as she crushed her serve, then heard the ball clunk off someone else’s racket, quickly followed by a shout of “out.”
“Thirty-Love.”
“When did this become about your mom?” Jay felt disoriented and a little stupid for needing to ask the question.
“The first time I saw you look at her, the morning she went to your hotel room, just a second ago when we walked off the court and you sought her out in the crowd before I did,” Destiny said as the ball boy approached once more. She took a ball and started to lift it toward the sky.
“Wait.” Jay held up her free hand.
Destiny paused and arched a regally high eyebrow. “I’ll go back to my spot. Just gimme a second to catch my breath.”
“Why? You haven’t moved in five minutes. I’m pulling all the weight here.”
Jay chuckled in spite of her clenched stomach. Who the hell was this girl? She’d been nothing but a complete shit for weeks, and then she went and dropped a bomb in the middle of a quarterfinal match. Now she followed up her overprotective daughter routine with more shit. Jay should snatch the ball and shove it down her throat, or at least walk off the court. Instead she wandered back to her spot at the net and tucked low to offer Destiny a better serve angle.
The ball whizzed past her head, and she had only a flash of time to feel grateful the sizzling shot hadn’t hit her between the shoulder blades before it arched back over to her right. She watched out of the corner of her eye while jogging backward as Destiny sent a crosscourt laser smacking into the baseline.
“40-Love.”
Jay turned to see they were standing only a few feet apart and thought now was as good a time as any to ask for clarification. “So, this whole bullshit attitude of yours since, like, day one wasn’t about your image at all? It’s because you don’t want me to hit on your mom?”
“I don’t want you near my mom.”
“But not because I’m gay?”
Destiny rolled her eyes. “Because she’s better than you. I know all the stories about you. I’ve heard what you did and, more importantly, how you ran.”
Jay winced, but years of practice kept her from responding to the charge.
“My mom is a queen. She deserves better. She deserves better than you,” Destiny shot back. “Man, woman, gay or straight, I don’t care, but she deserves the best.”
All the air left Jay’s lungs. Without thinking, she turned to seek Sadie in the stands once more. She had her hair pulled back under a white cap. Her dark eyes peeking out from the shadow of the bill were filled with concern, but she managed to force a smile anyway. Even her worry was more beautiful than anything Jay had let herself look at in years. Her heart constricted, but she managed to say, “Yeah, she does.”
Destiny lowered her racket. “What?”
“You’re right.”
Destiny’s light brown eyes narrowed suspiciously.
“Your mom is special. And she deserves the best in every way,” Jay admitted.
“And you can’t give her that.”
Jay frowned at the bluntness of the statement. She wanted to argue, wanted to feel some of the fire or anger that had burned her up minutes ago, but she couldn’t. What could she possibly offer a woman like Sadie other than a little light flirting? Some company on the road? A role model for her daughter, who clearly already had the best anyone could ever hope for in that arena? And in return she’d expose Sadie to a firestorm of innuendo and insane scrutiny. She would obscure a bright future with the cloud of her past, and eventually Sadie would have no choice but to cut ties. She’d made it clear the first time they’d met she would always do what was best for Destiny, and eventually that wouldn’t be Jay anymore. Why run the risk of putting any of them through that kind of trauma when they all knew how it had to end?
“Time.” The chair umpire called again, pulling Jay out of her musings.
“Fine, if that’s really your worry, let’s end it now,” Jay said quickly. “I like your mom a lot. I like to talk to her and travel with her, and yeah, I adore her smile, but I know the score. I always know the score. I won’t do anything to drop trouble on her doorstep.”
“It’s not her doorstep I’m worried about,” Destiny said, clearly not satisfied. “It’s her heart. I won’t let you hurt her, even if it means losing this match, or every match for the rest of my life.”
Jay nodded solemnly. At least they could agree on that point. Neither one of them wanted Sadie to get hurt. “I don’t know what else to say. You can believe my promises or not, but you have my word. I won’t do anything to put her heart or her reputation in jeopardy.”
With that, Des tossed the ball and aced a corker down the middle of the court.
“Game, Ms. Pierce and Ms. Larsen.”
Destiny stuck out her fist in Jay’s direction.
She stared at the peace offering, knowing she should accept. They’d crossed a bridge today, and it was the right call to make, but even as Jay tapped her own knuckles a
gainst Destiny’s, she feared she’d paid a heavy price for the tentative peace she’d won.
Chapter Five
Sadie wondered if body snatchers had to be physically present, or if they could just teleport into someone’s skin mid-tennis match without anyone around them seeing the switch. She hadn’t read a lot of science fiction, but she did know her daughter, and the woman sitting in front of the press corps right now wasn’t her.
“How does it feel to be a semifinalist?” someone called out.
“Well,” Destiny said with the quirk of a smile, “it feels a lot better than being knocked out in the first round.”
“Was that a complete sentence?” Hank asked under his breath. “And kind of a joke?”
Sadie didn’t answer. She was too busy sitting in awe.
“And you’re the last Americans anywhere in the draw,” another reporter added. “Did your shared nationality bring any sort of added connection or sense of national pride to your matches?”
“I can’t speak for Jay, but I want to win no matter who else is in the draw. As to a connection, I think winning is a better uniting force than both being from the same country.”
“What did you lace her Cheerios with this morning?” Hank asked.
“She wasn’t like this after breakfast,” said Sadie, recalling her daughter’s surly mood before coming to the court. She’d written it off as a combination of mental hangover from Destiny’s singles loss the evening before and her displeasure at playing doubles. Still, she hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary from her until the start of the second set. Clearly Destiny and Jay had had a sizable dispute, but about what? By the time they’d come off the court happy and sweaty and tired, but semifinalists, she hadn’t had the heart to bring it up. The reporters didn’t share her unwillingness to dampen the mood, though.
“What happened in the first game of the second set?” a man asked from the front row.
“We won,” Jay said, the sound of her voice amplified by the mic as she leaned forward, her arms folded casually across the top of the table, making her biceps flex. “With no help from me.”
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