For the Love of Tennis | ✅

Chapter 03

Seven months. That's how long it's been since Dayson was last in this room.

I glance round at the pastel-blue walls that Mum and I so carefully painted when we first moved here. Around the room, I've placed up various certificates celebrating my tennis success. My mum wanted to frame them but I said they weren't that important so they're held up by only a strip of sticky tape.

The cabinet lies to the end of the room next to the wardrobe. It sits almost bare, but Mum is so convinced that now that I'm training with an elite team, it'll be crammed full in the summer.

I can only hope so.

Tennis is my dream. It always has been ever since I picked up the half-broken racquet lying neglected on someone's garden front. There'd been no label on it, nothing, and yet I still felt drawn to this rickety old thing. A week later, mum had brought it to a local sports repair shop, and I remember the feeling that buzzed in my stomach as we bounded to the courts. Oh, how badly I wanted to play.

I wasn't very good at first. Instead of hitting the ball, my racquet would swing through empty air, leaving me disappointed but determined.

Mum started up classes. We learned together, hitting balls over nets until eventually our forehand became so strong that we could probably wound an unexpecting victim.

And then Mum's arm went bad.

It had been mother's day. She'd spent the night out with some of the other mums from my school. They'd met down at the pub for a few drinks and catching up. It'd been late when she'd come out of it, icy winds biting at the scarf around her neck. She told me she'd been ever so slightly tipsy but her vision and mind were both perfectly clear as she stood to cross the street. She turned her blonde head both ways to check for traffic and, assuming there was none, stepped out into the road.

And then the motorcycle hit her.

She tells me this bit clearly. She remembers it well, she says. She fell to the floor like a ragdoll, pain hissing up her arm. There was a stifled gasp and then someone tapped her shoulder, rolled her whole body over when they saw she wasn't responding. The biker's eyes met hers. He'd taken the helmet off, and she remembered his face perfectly. Those deep-set, brown eyes.

The wail of the sirens pierced my ears. Twelve-year-old me clinging to her for dear life as she was wheeled up into the back of the stuffy ambulance.

The bike had hit a nerve in her arm. Her elbow joint was so stiff it creaked when she moved it.

She couldn't play tennis with me anymore.

So I played for the two of us.

The creak of the door jolts me from my thoughts. For some reason, the door has to sound like her creaking elbow, but I don't ponder on that thought much longer.

"Yes?" I say.

Like seven months ago, her head peeks round the side. I take in her blonde hair turning grey at the roots. She'll have to go to the salon to get them done again. She'll probably go to the same place that she works at. Maybe they could give her a discount for being an employee. But then I doubt Andre will let her.

"Stop moping around," she says.

"I'm not."

"Yes, you are." She strides in and gestures to the collecting on mugs on my desk. "What do you call this?"

"Being a teenager," I reply with a grunt.

"No, I call it moping after Dayson."

"It's been seven months."