For the Love of Tennis | ✅

Chapter 01

When my boyfriend broke up with me, I cried.

It started as a small pressure in my chest, and it wasn’t long before it had expanded to my throat, squeezing until it felt like a ball was lodged there. And all the while he had been speaking to me a soft, hushed voice, hands gripping the throw of the settee as though he literally had to come to grips with the statement.

We were wrong, Dayson and I, but I loved him.

“Chandy,” he said. “Baby, I think it’s best if we go our separate ways.” And then what followed was a long paragraph summing his reasons.

• You’re too muscly, Chandy

• I never see you, Chandy

• You’ve moved on with that tennis group, Chandy

• I never see you

• I never do

And, by the time he’d said that last word, I burst into tears.

It felt like an explosion coming straight from the centre of my heart. I could feel myself melting, and I wanted myself to run down the settee leg, across the floor and out of the room, away from him. But I knew I had to be strong. So, I wrung my hands together, steeled my gaze through the blur, and attacked him. Verbally, of course. With a swing of my arm I could have him, and then whose fault would this all be?

“Don’t do this to me, Day,” I begged. “Please. I need you.”

His face softened at the use of his name, but then his eyes hardened and he shook his head. “If you need me, why do I never see you? Why are you always at the courts? And whenever I try to meet up, you always say no.”

“Because I’m practising!” I almost spat. “You know? That tennis competition I have in a few weeks? The one that determines my life or death?"

“Some practice!” he shot back. “What? You meeting with someone else?”

That hit me. And I swear I was this close to either bawling my eyeballs out of their sockets or grabbing my racket from the cupboard at the far side of the room and hitting him full on the head with it.

“So that’s what this is about?!” I snarled. “You think I’m being disloyal.”

Something flickered across his face and I had a fleeting thought that perhaps he was cheating. “Answer the question, Chandy.”

“Guess what? No, I’m not going to answer that question because you should look at me and really ask yourself whether this girl”— I jabbed my finger to my chest— “is worthy of cheating on you. Because she’s not.”

“She’s too muscly.”

I sucked a breath in. “Get out.”

“Chands?” His eyes grew wider. I closed my eyes, not wanting to see them.

“I said get out.” My voice was a growl, and he knew better than anyone what to do when he heard it.

I could hear him lifting himself up from the bed. “Chandy, please.”

Ha, so now he’s begging. And who wanted to break up in the first place?

“No,” was all I could say.

When the bedroom door closed, I turned round and burst into tears.

Hi and welcome to a brand new book!!! Updates will be weekly, if I can.
Ana xx