Love All

by Spangler, Rachel;

  Sadie reached across the tiny wrought-iron patio table and ran her fingers through Jay’s thick, sandy locks. “I’m not neutral toward you. If it were up to me, I would stand up on this balcony railing and shout to all of Mallorca how proud I am of you.”

  Jay smiled sweetly, but not exuberantly. “For now, it’s enough that I get to celebrate a win with you. I know you’re in our player’s box for Des, but I love being able to make eye contact after a good point, or see your smile even when I miss a shot. It’s like I know that no matter what the score, I’m going to be in bed with you that night, and that’s really all the win I need.”

  Sadie’s heart filled to capacity and pressed on her ribs as if trying to grow enough to accommodate all the emotions Jay inspired. No one had said anything so unabashedly sweet to her in, perhaps, ever. She wanted to give it all back and then some. “I love being there for you at the matches, and I love being able to stand in the back of your press conferences with Des. And with Des having more sponsor events, and tour clinics, and people bending her ear in different directions, it’s been nice to hover in the background just watching you two do your thing.”

  “Her having her own room these days has been helpful too,” Jay admitted, “but as much as I love having you on the road with us, I don’t want you in the background. Every day, even today when I’d won a tournament, I started counting down the hours until it would be just the two of us. The whole time the organizers were taking pictures and giving speeches, I was thinking of things I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like, I know Des trained in Buffalo, but did you grow up there? What do your parents do? Any siblings? What jobs did you work before she went out on tour? Do you like cats or dogs? I want to know everything about you, not just as a tennis mom, but as a whole person.”

  Sadie’s face flushed. She’d been just a tennis mom for so long, she barely remembered what it felt like to be a whole person, much less share those parts of herself with someone else. Jay had gone a long way toward opening up new parts of her sense of self, but it still baffled her that anyone would care about her past or interests, much less someone as wonderful as Jay.

  She scooped up another bite of rice and shrimp al ajillo while she let the questions sink in.

  “Well, I did grow up in Buffalo with a pretty close family. I’m named after my mother’s mother. One older brother, Ty, still lives in the area. My parents are a lot older now. They can’t travel much, but my mom was a special education teacher and my dad is a retired American Baptist preacher.”

  Jay’s eyes went wide. “A Baptist preacher?”

  “Indeed.” Sadie laughed. “I was a walking stereotype at seventeen. Preacher’s daughter, unwed pregnant teen. I know it sounds awful, like some after-school special, but it really wasn’t. My parents are the kindest, most loving people. Not a judgmental bone in their bodies. I know they worried a lot about me. I think they wanted better for me than the choices I made early on, but I never doubted they loved me, and they adored Des from day one. I think that’s why I never worried about staying a stereotype, no matter what people on the outside assumed about me. They instilled so much hope and drive in me.”

  “And strength,” Jay added, taking Sadie’s hand in her calloused palm and bringing it to her lips. “You are the strongest woman I’ve ever known.”

  She rolled her eyes playfully. “What I went through is nothing compared to what you’ve faced. Sure, people said and believed hurtful things about me, but I always had love and support, and I’ve never once thought of Destiny as a mistake. You had to face the doubts and venom of strangers and friends and lovers along with your own insecurities about the path you took. I would take a string of dead-end jobs and night school classes over trial by the press any day.”

  Jay didn’t argue. Instead, she raised her glass of sangria. “And yet here we both are. So, to us.”

  Sadie clinked her glass against Jay’s. “To us, and to a glorious night alone in a beautiful place with a bea—”

  A knock sounded on the door.

  Both of them froze, Sadie’s heart beating so loudly she could barely hear her own voice as she called, “Who is it?”

  “Your favorite daughter,” Des called.

  Panic registered on Jay’s face, causing an ache to settle in Sadie’s chest. Taking a deep breath, she said, “It’s okay. We’re not doing anything wrong. Pull out your phone.”

  “Coming.” On her way to the door, she picked up a stack of receipts and travel vouchers off the dresser. Throwing open the door she said, “Hi, Baby Girl.”

  Des’s smile flashed brightly at the welcome, sparking a similar reaction in her. No matter what she’d interrupted, Sadie had never been anything but thrilled to see her daughter happy.

  “Whatcha doin?” Des hugged her, but midway through the embrace the muscles in her back and shoulders stiffened, and Sadie knew she’d spotted Jay.

  “We were just going over some travel vouchers and trying to make arrangements for the next few weeks.”

  Destiny didn’t quite relax as she stepped back and surveyed the room, as if scanning for more context clues.

  “Hi, Des,” Jay called from the balcony, her voice more casual than Sadie would have expected. “You want some paella? We’ve got plenty.”

  “Um, no. I ate with Viktor back at the venue.”

  “Good, as long as he didn’t stick you with the bill.”

  Des grinned slightly. “No, we pawned it off on the organizers.”

  Jay laughed lightly. “Well done, you.”

  “What did you have planned for your big celebration tonight?”

  “You’re looking at it.” Jay made an encompassing gesture with the phone in her hand. “A glamorous dinner of hotel paella, making flight and hotel arrangements for England, paying bills. If I’m really feeling frisky, I might treat myself to my third hot shower of the day.”

  Des nodded slowly, as if she couldn’t find any fault in the individual aspects of the plan, but still didn’t know if she liked the sum total. Sadie didn’t think she’d put anything together yet, but her apparent unease stemmed from somewhere as she asked, “Where’d Hank go?”

  “Some USTA officials took him out to dinner with the junior champions. He grumbled about having to put on a dress shirt, but honestly, I think he was pretty proud to have been invited.”

  “That’s nice,” Des said, as if she’d already moved on from the topic after the completely benign response. Her eyes kept wandering from Jay to the papers in Sadie’s hands and back to the food on the balcony table. Then finally, she nodded once, hard enough to make her ponytail sway. “Okay then, I guess I’ll let you guys get back to your planning and whatnot.”

  “You’re welcome to stay,” Jay said, and Sadie could have kissed her for the offer. “If we old people aren’t too boring for you.”

  “No,” Des said quickly. “I just, well, actually maybe since you’re doing travel stuff for England, I should go ahead and tell you now that I talked to Dad earlier this evening.”

  Now it was Sadie’s turn to tense, but years of practice in this area had given her the same skills Jay and Des had developed to appear calm on the court even when facing a superior player. “Oh? What did he have to say?”

  Des glanced over her shoulder at Jay quickly before saying, “He’s going to use his leave time to come to Wimbledon. He wanted to know if he could still get tickets, but I told him he could sit in my player’s box.”

  “Of course,” Sadie said quickly. “I’ll send him passes.”

  “Great. And can you let him know what hotel we’re staying at, so he can stay there too?”

  Sadie nodded and shifted some of the papers she’d clutched a little too tightly to buy time, afraid her voice would relay her tension. She glanced at Jay with a look that she hoped relayed more apology than panic. Jay thankfully seemed to get both messages and ambled casually back into the room.

  “We’re at the Rose and Crown
in Wimbledon,” she said, with one swipe across her phone screen. “They’re sold out.”

  Des frowned. “Maybe the tour has some rooms set aside.”

  “You could always ask,” Jay said noncommittally, “or I think there are some houses for rent in the area.”

  “Maybe we could all stay in a house together,” Des said, eyes wide with childlike excitement.

  A little squeak escaped Sadie’s throat, but the sound was drowned out by her daughter’s effusive praise. “Oh Jay, you’ll love my Dad. He’s like the perfect man. He’s so handsome and strong, and he’s an army officer, so he’s also chivalrous.”

  “Hmm,” Jay managed even as the color began to rise in her face.

  “His name is Tad. Isn’t that cute?”

  “Yeah,” Jay said, her smile strained. “Tad. Go figure.”

  “And he’s kind of a war hero. He got a bunch of medals in Afghanistan, and he even met President Obama. That’s why he can’t come to many of my matches. He works all over, sometimes at embassies, sometimes even at the Pentagon. This is his first official leave since I turned pro,” Des continued as she flopped onto Sadie’s bed with a dreamy expression. “Oh, and he’s got the most amazing blue eyes in the world, like a model.”

  “Sounds like Prince Charming,” Jay managed, but her blush faded as if someone were slowly draining the blood from her complexion.

  Sadie wanted to take her hand to connect them in any tangible way. Instead, she stood frozen in mutual awkwardness as Destiny rattled on.

  “Everyone adores him. Just watch, the press will take, like, a thousand pictures of him and my mom together in our box. Even the tabloids love him.”

  “And he spoils her.” Sadie finally cut in as Jay swayed slightly, her face now completely pallid. “So she might be a little biased in her assessment.”

  “Daddies are supposed to spoil their daughters,” Destiny said, with a happy little laugh that made her seem so much younger and lighter than she had in months. Even when she’d started winning and smiling more, she’d still acted so much older than her age. Sadie’s mood lightened at the reminder that her daughter could still feel like a teenager.

  Still, as was too often the case, Destiny’s joy came with a boatload of tangential insecurities for Jay. Sadie had more than a few complex emotions on the subject as well, but she would’ve preferred for them to discuss it privately, so she could soothe the fear and doubt she saw filling the blue eyes she found so much more appealing than Tad’s. How deeply would those fears and self-recriminations take root before she had a chance to kiss them away?

  “Hey, I have an idea,” Des said, sitting up quickly. “Let’s have a mother-daughter movie night!”

  “What?” Sadie asked, not sure she’d heard correctly.

  “We haven’t hung out in weeks. We can get a movie online and get under the covers in our PJs and use all the pillows and eat popcorn from the vending machines, just like we used to do at my junior tournaments. Those trips were the best.”

  Sadie smiled broadly, both at Destiny’s assessment of the memories she, too, cherished, and the hope that those days weren’t over. Her daughter, the beautiful, driven French Open champion, still wanted to spend time cuddling and watching movies with her. Could any parent ever hope for anything more?

  Even Jay seemed to understand the answer to that question, because she cleared her throat and said, “Sounds like the perfect night. Why don’t we table our, um, travel planning?”

  “Oh, Jay.” Sadie’s heart felt like it was being torn in two. How could the two most precious people in her life need the same thing from her at the same time, and yet so separately? She wanted to be with them both, to live a life where she could hold them close simultaneously. Surely that could be a possibility someday. And yet, standing there frozen between two halves of her heart, no hopes for the future would save her from the choice of the moment.

  Jay rescued her by putting her choice into reasons she couldn’t deny. “Life is busy, Destiny’s only getting older; the rest of it will all be there later. Enjoy nights like these while you’ve got them.”

  Destiny’s eyes narrowed at Jay, either out of suspicion or perhaps surprise that her normally playful friend had said something so uncharacteristically sentimental.

  Sadie at least managed to cast Jay an apologetic look, and what she hoped sounded like a sincere, “thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it.” Jay turned her back on them, either to hide her emotion or to gather her things on the balcony. “But I’m taking my paella with me, ’cause, you know, food is kind of like company.”

  Destiny laughed. “Sometimes food is better than certain company.”

  “True words, young Padawan,” Jay agreed, with a hint of wistfulness in her voice. Once again Sadie had to stifle the urge to cup Jay’s face in her hands and kiss away the underlying sadness she saw so clearly there. As much as she loved her time with Jay, she was a mother first, and she hadn’t had nearly enough time or opportunity to devote to that role lately.

  Chapter Ten

  London, England

  “Des and Hank are meeting with the massage therapist at three if you want to join them,” Sadie said, as she folded her arms across the top of the green half-wall separating her from Jay’s practice court.

  “Nah.” Jay used a white towel to mop the sweat from her face. “I’m good.”

  Sadie sighed and whispered, “Yes, you are.”

  Jay’s pulse radiated through her chest and to points farther south as she watched Sadie’s espresso eyes sweep across her body. “I mean, my muscles are feeling good, but whatever compliment you just tossed out there, I gladly accept.”

  “All the compliments,” Sadie said, her voice low enough that only Jay could hear, but she still leaned forward, offering a tantalizing peek of her cleavage disappearing under the sexy V-neck of the olive-colored shirt that hugged everything from her neck to her waist the way Jay wanted to.

  “Hey, Pierce,” a voice called across the court.

  Jay jumped back and spun around guiltily, then wiped the back of her hand across her mouth in case she’d been caught drooling. She spotted one of the men’s players entering through a cutout in the opposite wall.

  “You done with the court?” he asked.

  “I guess.”

  “You sure?” he asked amicably. “No rush.”

  She glanced back to Sadie and the shirt she wanted so much to be, and realized she wasn’t going to focus on anything remotely close to tennis for the rest of the day. Then without even turning around to face him, she called, “No worries. My work here is done for today.”

  Sadie smiled seductively, and Jay barely had the strength in her knees to crouch down and collect her rackets.

  “I’m sorry if I interrupted your workout,” Sadie said, as they strolled toward the exit of the All England Lawn Tennis club.

  “No you’re not,” Jay said, “but neither am I.”

  “I just thought that if Hank and Des were going to be busy until almost five . . .” She let the sentence dangle for Jay’s imagination to fill in the unspoken.

  “I like the way you think. Maybe we should hail a cab.”

  Sadie brushed her shoulder against Jay’s slightly, then put a few more inches between them. “No, I cut out part of your workout. The least I can do is make sure you get a cooldown.”

  “A cooldown? Nothing about me is ever cool with you around. I might combust before we make it halfway back to the inn.”

  “It’s only a mile,” Sadie said, even though she sounded concerned as she drew in a shaky breath. “Come on, let’s talk about something else.”

  “What else?” Jay asked, as they passed through metal gates and onto an asphalt sidewalk that skirted a lush, green park.

  “Tennis. Tennis seems safe. How are you really feeling about the tournament?”

  “Honestly?”

  Sadie nodded.

  “I don’t want to jinx anything, but I feel fantastic. I don’t know
if it’s the cool weather or the grass or just the gravity of Wimbledon, but I’ve always had an extra bounce in my step here.” She felt more than a little bit of that bounce now. “And when I’m with you, all the good is magnified. It’s not a technical answer, but I just kind of like everything right now.”

  “I know what you mean. Des played here as a junior last year, and I enjoyed it, but this trip is so much better. It’s like everything good before now seems amplified by sharing it with you,” Sadie said thoughtfully, as they turned down a residential street lined with tidy white homes. Then she chuckled. “Or maybe it’s just that skirt you’re wearing.”

  Jay glanced down at the short white skirt stretched tight over her upper thighs. “Really?”

  Sadie bit her lower lip and nodded. “I never really pictured you as a skirt woman.”

  “I don’t know that I am, or that I’m not.” Her cheeks warmed. “I usually wear shorts because they have pockets, but you know Wimbledon is more traditional, and I don’t know, I kind of like looking like I’m part of it all. And I mean, I’m not opposed to skirts, but this is kind of more of a skort.”

  “Don’t cheapen the experience for me.” Sadie bumped Jay’s shoulder. “I’ve been over here fantasizing about the way that spandex stretches so tightly across your glutes when you lunge, and how I’d like to get back to the room and push it up, and . . .”

  Jay held her breath waiting for more, but Sadie shook her head. “Sorry, it appears tennis is not actually a safe topic.”

  Jay blew out the air she’d been holding in a dramatic rush. “You’re going to be the death of me if you keep teasing.”

  “I’m not teasing,” Sadie said, with mock affront. “I fully intend to elaborate on all my skirt-based desires as soon as we get back to the hotel, but this lovely British neighborhood might not be the best place to get hot and bothered.”

  “Too late,” Jay muttered, looking around furtively for a secluded place to drag Sadie where they wouldn’t be seen. Some of the brick houses ahead had nice dividing walls between them and the street. If she could’ve been assured no one would pull into any of the driveways, she would’ve put one of them to good use.