For the Love of Tennis | ✅

Chapter 02

My mother is one of the supporting kind.

After the break-up, I heard the front door slam, and then tentative pacing up to my room before a small creak as the door opened. Her head peeked in.

“Chands?”

I could only reply with a half-strangled sob.

Then it had been hugs from then on. She’d gone down, made me chamomile tea and plopped me down on the sofa with it. Then she opened a box of chocolates, took one and told me to eat the rest.

“Now you rant to me,” she said after I’d eaten my fifth rich Belgian dark chocolate filled with sweet caramel. “You tell me how much of a dick he was.”

I smiled, feeling the chocolate smeared across my lips. “Well, he broke up with me.”

“Hmm. Carry on.”

“And he never puts the toilet seat down after he takes a piss.”

“Took a piss,” my mother told me. “He’s long gone now.”

“And he’d always tell me how muscly I was.”

“What a dickhead,” said my mother. “What an absolute dickhead.”

I laughed through the sugar.

“Let me tell you now, Chandy, that a girl with muscles is sure as hell attractive and if Dayson couldn’t see your potential as an amazing tennis player then screw him to the stinking place.”

“Sticking-place,” I reminded her gently.

“My little Shakespearess,” she said fondly as she leaned over to plant a kiss on my head.

“I love you, Mum.”

“Same here, Chandy. Forget about him. You deserve better.”

You deserve better.