Page 87 of Power Moves
I turn away to stifle a smirk. Is he seriously going to get all Lleyton Hewitt after winningone point?
He serves again and it’s like his eyes and his arms have finally synced. His athlete body is connecting with his athlete brain; he’s worked out how to play.
I swing, he swings back, I go deep, he goes wide, I slice, he lobs. My arteries pulse with something that doctors may call blood, but I would call glee. This is lung-burning, toe-searing, brain-challenging tennis. I’d forgotten how fun this can be. With every plum strike of the racquet, my smile widens, the sight of Archie zig-zagging across the court only adding to the joy-o-meter. It’s hot, my silk top is sticking to my back, my bra is working overtime, and I never expected it but I’m havingfun. That is, until Archie sends a ball over my head and it lands adroitly in the left-hand corner. He’s won another point. I swivel to him and he raises his eyebrows. I know what he’s saying.Game on.
There’s no time for joy now. I have to be focused. Mum’s voice comes back to me.Footwork, focus, then finesse.The three Fs. The memory of another good F flashes up and I blink it away.
Archie serves again and I return. I’ve got my footwork down pat and my focus is solid—now I need to nail him with my finesse. I’ll go for the slice.
I’m setting up my play when Archie extends his wrist and with superhuman force, sends the ball in the opposite direction to what I’d anticipated. It lands on the line before bouncing off-court.
I grit my teeth. It’s forty–fifteen. I hear Mum’s voice again.You’re distractable, which makes you careless. You could have picked up the pace; you could have upped the topspin.
I ground myself, tilting the soles of my feet from side to side. I amnotgoing to get distracted. I am going to focus. I am going to remember all of Mum’s rules. I am finally going to be the person she wanted me to be.
Archie is bouncing the ball, preparing for his serve.
I’m trying to think straight.Focus, footwork, finesse.Oh crap, that’s not the order. I’ve got to organise my footwork first. And shit, I forgot to check Archie’s footwork.
Oh jeez, and now I’m remembering all the bad things about tennis: the non-physical thwack, thwack, thwack. The things I’d tell myself because I knew Mum would never say them out loud.You lose focus, thwack,you’re not ruthless enough, thwack.You’re distractable, which makes you careless. You lack any natural talent.Thwack, thwack, thwack.
Mum was always so kind—telling me I was improving, telling me I had so much potential, but she said other things too that I could never forget, always harping on about how I was so easily distracted. Her real meaning was easy enough to decipher: she thought I was lazy.
Archie’s serve lands like a grenade, straight on the line, and I baulk. He’s won the game.
‘Best of three?’ he calls.
I’m already walking to the service line.
By the time we get to thirty–forty in the third, I’m properly sweaty. My skirt is functioning more like a belt, it’s been hitched so high. My glutes are going to be on fire tomorrow. Archie has undone another button on his shirt and has been wiping his forehead on his discarded blazer.
‘Switch sides?’ calls Archie.
‘No need,’ I retort.
‘Scared of serving into the sun?’
I’m halfway to the net by the time he’s finished the sentence. There’s no way I’m giving him any excuse to cry foul. ‘Not scared,’ I glare, rounding the net.
‘Maybe you should be,’ smirks Archie as he approaches.
I glower as he passes me. The heat from his body makes my throat thicken. It’s literal heat—it must still be twenty-five degrees and it’s past 5 p.m.—but it’s more than the mercury reading. It’s a visceral thing. His body has an electric charge that makes my skin crackle. It makes me feel like kindling in a pyrocumulus storm.
‘You know what your problem is,’ I say, turning to face him at the baseline. ‘You always think you’re going to win.’
‘I never think that,’ counters Archie.
‘Youassumeyou’ll win in everything.’
‘No I don’t.’
‘Look at you here,’ I say, gesturing at him with my ball in my hand. ‘I am objectively the better tennis player. I’m crap at most things in life, but I am at leastokayat tennis.’
‘You’re great at tennis.’
‘No, I’m not,’ I say, waving him quiet. ‘I am okay with being okay, though. Butyou—you’re still smirking and snarking around as though you’re going to win, and you don’t care at what cost.’
I hadn’t planned on doling out such a character assassination, especially right now, in the golden sunset at Wagga’s newest sporting precinct, but with the cockatoos squawking against the pink sky, and the motes of dust in the air backlit by the sinking sun, I realise I don’t give a shit. The endorphins have made me manic.
