Kate Christie (27 page)

“Right.”

She was unusually quiet. Understandable, since it was nationals.

“Are you okay?” I asked, working my way down her spine.

She hesitated. “I’m not sure I can do this.”

“What do you mean, exactly?” I asked, pressing down against the small of her back. “What can’t you do?”

“I’m not as good as everyone thinks,” she explained, voice 16 Kate Christie

muffled against her hands. “It’s like, when I’m on the court, I have this anger inside me that makes me win. You know? But it’s not really inside of me. That’s the problem. It’s outside of me. I have to keep it there or I wouldn’t be able to handle it.”

I tried to choose my words carefully. “Are you saying the emotion you use to win comes from the assault?”

Her muscles tensed even more beneath my hands. We hadn’t talked about the rape other than that one time. I’d wanted to, but I hadn’t wanted to push her. Besides, the timing never seemed quite right, with tennis and the end of the semester propelling us forward.

“Yes,” she said, her voice quiet. “I was never this good before.”

I sat back on my heels. She turned over and watched me, eyes shuttered in the old way.

“Jess,” I said, taking her hand in mine, “you know that saying—what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger?”

She nodded.

“I know it sounds cheesy and clichéd and all of that, but it’s true. You survived something terrible and it didn’t kill you. It made you stronger. That strength is deep inside you, where your athletic ability comes from. In here.” I touched her forehead.

“And in here.” I placed my hand on her chest, above her heart.

“And especially in here.” I tickled her stomach.

She squirmed away, smiling reluctantly. “At least one of us thinks I can do it.”

“I believe in you,” I said, and lay down beside her. “Now come here.”

My arms around her, we lay quietly, listening to each other breathe as the sun climbed higher beyond the window.

When it was time, we left the apartment and drove to campus, where I dropped her at the gym. She kissed me as she left the car, her lips pressing firmly against mine. Then she was sliding out the passenger door, bag in hand, and striding toward the gym entrance. She looked back at me once and I flashed her a thumbs-up. She nodded and disappeared inside. As I went to park the car, I tried to contain my pride. This was it.

The top nine singles players from each team met each Beautiful Game 17

other in the finals. Jess was seeded number one. Her opponent, a woman named Michelle Argot from Hawaii-Pacific, was a former Division I top ten player who had blown her knee two years earlier and struggled back. A senior, she was ranked just behind Jess in our division. They had met once over spring break in Tucson. There, I knew, Jess had lost the first set and been taken to a tiebreaker in the second, but ultimately she’d won the match with two service breaks in the third set. That boded well, I thought, crossing my fingers.

The stands were packed. Holly and I scored seats in the second row only with difficulty. When Jess took the court to warm up, I felt pressure on my bladder—just like a soccer game.

Meanwhile, out on court, Jess didn’t appear nervous at all. Her movements were careful and controlled, graceful as ever. I couldn’t believe she was my girlfriend. I wondered if my head was swelling visibly with the pride my chest couldn’t quite seem to hold.

Jess had first serve. Tucking an extra ball into her tennis skirt, she took a deep breath and looked toward the stands.
Do
it
, I thought as her eyes found mine.
Kick her ass
. She nodded slightly like she’d heard me, bounced the ball twice, and tossed it up. The match was underway.

Sometimes in sport you feel so strong and good and skilled that it’s like you are the ball or the racquet or the bat. Everything clicks and the sun is perfect overhead, never in your eyes, and even the wind seems to gust in your favor. It’s almost as if you are the game and the game is you. You’re in the zone. Jess, it quickly became evident, was having one of those days, buoyed along by the gods of sport or whatever inner strength it was that made her swing powerful, her shots accurate, her serve deadly. At first, everything she did was just right.

But it rarely lasts long, that perfect synchronicity between body and mind. Something gives and you return to mortality, after the match or game if you’re lucky. For Jess, the come-down occurred in the middle of the second set. She’d won the first 6-4 and was leading the second 3-1, thirty-love on her serve.

Three more games, and she would be the undisputed national champion, no matter what the rest of her team did.

1 Kate Christie

She served and moved in immediately to play the net, but Michelle anticipated her step and angled a clean shot crosscourt.

Jess did something she had done a thousand times before—she scrambled and reached for the distant ball. A drop shot, all she could manage, and the ball skipped over the net, bouncing twice before Michelle could manage more than a few steps. Jess hit the ground and rolled. Forty-love. The fans went wild.

Then the clapping died away as Jess stayed down holding the back of her right leg, face twisted in pain.

I grabbed Holly. “Her hamstring!” She’d had problems with it during the winter season.

“But I thought it was okay now,” Holly said, grimacing.

“So did she.” Despite the heat of the day, I shivered a little.

This was not supposed to happen.

We watched as Carrie, an SDU athletic trainer, sprinted out onto the court, bag of medical tricks in hand. Adrienne, Jess’s coach, followed, her steps quick. I resisted the urge to jump the barrier and run out with them, holding tightly instead to Holly and waiting with everyone else.

After a few moments, Adrienne conferred with the chair umpire. He granted Jess a ten-minute injury time-out. After that, he said loudly enough for those of us in the first few rows to hear, Jess would have to play—or forfeit the match.

Adrienne and Carrie helped Jess off to the side of the court and began working on her there. Steve, the student trainer, squatted down next to Jess as she said something. Then he stood up and headed for the stands.

“Cam,” he said, catching my eye. “Can you come down here?”

I scrambled down from my seat and followed him around the edge of the court, barely aware of the eyes of the crowd on my back. She had to be okay. She was only three games away.

When I reached her, Jess was holding a bag of ice to the back of her right thigh. Her eyes were red and full of tears, but she managed to fake a smile as I squatted down next to her.

“Hey, champ,” I said, a hand on her shoulder. “How you doing?”

“Not so good,” she said. “I was almost there, but now. .” She shook her head, staring down at her leg.

Beautiful Game 1

I glanced over at Carrie, who was checking her watch, Ace bandage in hand. “Can she play?”

Carrie shrugged. “If this were any other match, I’d say no.

But she’ll have the summer to recover. It’s up to her.”

“What do you think?” I asked Jess.

“I don’t know,” she said, her voice low. “It’s bad, Cam. Really bad.”“Okay, but this is it,” I said, tightening my grip on her shoulder. “This is the championship match. And you know what?

I don’t think you’ll let yourself just bow out. You’ve come too far to quit now. What do you say? Want to get back out there and give it a try?”

Jess looked at me staring hard at her at the edge of the dark green court, restless spectators murmuring in the background.

She squinted into the sunlight, and then all at once, she nodded.

“Okay. But if I never walk again, you’ll be the one pushing the wheelchair.”

“Deal.” I held out my hand and she slapped it. “Now get out there and finish her off.”

While Carrie wrapped Jess’s leg, I went back to the stands.

Everyone around me asked if she could play. I told them she was damn well going to try.

Moving gingerly, Jess headed onto the court. The trainer had sprayed her leg with a deep numbing spray, anesthesia in an aerosol can. Not a long-term fix, but at least it would temporarily dull the pain. Back in position again, she took a few practice swings, wincing each time her weight shifted onto her bad leg.

This was going to be ugly, I thought, slouching down in my seat.Jess held on to win one last point on her serve to go up 4-1 in the second set. On Michelle’s serve, though, she barely moved.

She didn’t score a single point. 4-2. Her serve again, only this time Michelle upped the pressure. Jess lost again. Now it was 4-3, back even on serve. I was starting to get nervous. So were the other SDU fans.

When Jess asked for a break, the chair umpire granted a short time-out. She went to her bench, waved Adrienne and Carrie away and hung her head, a damp towel draped over her 200 Kate Christie

face. She sat motionless, invisible to the crowd. I wondered where she was—in her sunlit apartment upstairs at Claire and Sidney’s house? On a storm-swept beach west of Bakersfield? Snuggled under the covers with me on a laid-back Sunday morning?

Wherever it was, I hoped it was galvanizing her. She would have to break Michelle again to win.

When the time-out ended, Jess rose, tossed the towel aside and walked toward court, barely limping. She was ready. Whether or not her leg would hold, that was the question.

Whereas earlier in the match Jess had been in the zone, now she had to work desperately hard for every point. Sweat poured down her face, dripped from her shirt, darkened the edges of her white tennis skirt. A scowl seemed etched permanently into her face as she switched to a long serve-and-volley game, wearing Michelle down slowly, relentlessly, moving her from one side of the court to the other. She let Michelle make all the attacks and most of the unforced errors. With this strategy, she managed to hold her next serve.

With Jess up 5-4 in the second set, Michelle broke herself with a double fault at thirty-thirty and another at thirty-forty.

Then, on match point, she returned a crosscourt volley well over the end line. And just like that, the match was over.

The shocked silence in the stadium was broken by the chair umpire’s calm, “Game, set, match to Jessica Maxwell, San Diego University.”

Jess dropped to her knees while Holly and I screamed and threw our arms around each other. The stands erupted around us, the pent-up tension of the past half hour released in cheering and whistling. Jess had done it. Despite her injury, she was the new NCAA Division II national tennis champion.

She finally allowed herself a smile as she shook hands with her opponent and the chair umpire. Then she waved at the stands, briefly, and headed for the bench. She would prefer not to have the attention, I knew, now that the match was over and she wasn’t out there playing her guts out anymore. Adrienne and Carrie met her at the edge of the court, and the stands began to empty as people wandered off to watch the remaining top matchups. So far, two other SDU players had won. Things Beautiful Game 201

were looking good for a possible team championship as well.

“Go get her,” Holly said. “And come find me later, okay?

We’ve got some celebrating to do tonight.”

“Yeah we do!”

On the other side of the court, Jess was listening to the trainer and nodding, her forehead lined. She glanced up, straight across to where Holly and I stood beside the emptying stands.

She nodded at me almost imperceptibly.

“See ya,” I said, clapping Holly on the back as we headed in opposite directions.

Adrienne was still standing beside Jess when I reached them.

The coach glanced at me, then returned her attention to the trainer. I stood behind the bench, eavesdropping.

“For the next hour,” Carrie was saying, “I want you to ice fifteen minutes, then walk and stretch for twenty. Then ice fifteen, walk and stretch for twenty. Keep moving around or you’re going to seize up, which you definitely don’t want. No running, either. I’ll take another look after the last match.”

She handed over four Advils and a water bottle to wash the pills down, then patted Jess’s shoulder and stood up. “Good work,” she added. “You showed a lot of courage out there. You should be proud of yourself, kiddo.”

Jess glanced back at me and smiled, then returned her attention to the trainer. “Thanks, Carrie. Thanks a lot.”

“You’re welcome.”

Carrie nodded at me, eyes gleaming knowingly. I had it on good authority from one of the student assistants that our head trainer was a softball-playing, died-in-the-wool dyke herself.

Adrienne, however, was a straight mother of two young children. As Carrie walked away, Adrienne looked from me back to Jess again. “She’s right. You did show a lot of courage out there, Maxwell. You earned this victory.”

“Thanks, Coach,” Jess said. Then she focused on the next court over where Julie Seaver was battling the second seed.

“How’s everyone else doing?”

Adrienne gave her an update on the team competition, congratulated her again on her win, and strode away with a final nod to me.

202 Kate Christie

I sat down on the bench next to Jess and threw my arm across her shoulders.

“Awesome match, champ! I knew you could do it.” Not the time to tell her I had doubted her inner strength. Probably there wouldn’t ever be a right time for such an admission.

“Thanks, Cam.” She leaned into me. “Couldn’t have done it without you.”

A mild glow centered in my belly, and I didn’t even mind her sweatiness. Must be love.

“You’re amazing,” I said. “You don’t even know how incredible you are, do you?”

She smiled some more, her eyes tired. The adrenaline appeared to be wearing off. “I can’t believe I won. It doesn’t feel real yet. I still feel numb.”