Page 102 of This Could be Love

For a second I wondered whether in a few years’ time I’d want to know the same things about Vince. What happened to him. Without me. Without us.

“I think I prefer to remember him like this,” she said. “As that wonderful man I got to spend a night with in Charleston. Who, sadly, just did not fit that stage of my life.”

“Haven’t you ever wondered about what could have been? Ever regretted not following your heart?”

“Of course. Of course I’ve thought about it. Whenever I’d get eliminated from a tournament and end up sitting around some hotel room or other. Whenever I’d win a trophy but have no one to share my happiness with. Whenever that hole of loneliness would open up inside my heart. But I never regretted it. Because Ididfollow my heart.” She smiled. “Just in a different way.”

For a moment everything was still.

“So, what are you trying to tell me? That Vince is my Joseph?”

Her expression grew remarkably soft. “That sometimes we meet the right people at the wrong time.”

Chapter 43

The following days were an emotional roller coaster I only survived by switching to autopilot and throwing myself into training. I changed my jogging route and ran along the road in the mornings instead of the beach, which was worse for my joints but better for my heart. I trained even longer, harder, and more intensely, and only left the tennis court when I thought I could feel every single one of my muscles and like I could bathe in my own sweat. I pushed my body to the limit to distract myself from thinking about him. It worked surprisingly well during the day, but as soon as I left the court, my thoughts would start to spin. A maelstrom of grief, longing, and disappointment. At night, I was tormented by crazy dreams and by waking phases when I just stared into space or at my phone. I read old messages and wrote new ones I didn’t send. Once I almost had a heart attack when I saw that Vince wasonline in the middle of the night. It took everything I had not to write to him. Not to be terrorized by the question of why he was awake at three in the morning. Whether for the same reasons as me or for ones I didn’t want to know. But my gut feeling told me that he wasn’t the type to fight break-up pain with one-night stands.

Day four I got the bill for overworking my body. During volley training suddenly everything went black, and I had to grab hold of the net at the last moment.

“Okay, I’m not going to watch this any longer,” I heard Kay say. “You are going home right now and resting!”

“But it’s just…”

“No arguing!” I had never heard Kay be that loud before. “You’ve got circles around your eyes that would make a panda jealous and eyes like a tomb.”

“It’s just the heat,” I grumbled as sweat dribbled down the hollows of my knees.

“You’re exhausted, and it’s no wonder. You’ve been training like a crazy woman for days. You’re not eating enough, and your sleep’s shit.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but she didn’t let me get a word in edgewise.

“I know you’ve got a broken heart, and I can only imagine how you feel. But keep this up another four days and you can watch the US Open from a hospital room. Go home, Lou,” she said a little more softly. “I’ll tell Gabe that he doesn’t need to come today.”

* * *

I had just finished typing in the door code when my mother called. It was already 11 p.m. in Munich, which is why I answered with some trepidation.

“Have you heard the news already?” she said in a tone I couldn’t decipher.

“What news?”

“Diaz dropped out. It was just announced.”

“Is she hurt?” I asked, shoving my tennis bag through the door.

“No. She’s fighting the aftereffects of a summer flu.”

More than a simplehmmdidn’t want to cross my lips. It should have been a good thing that the current number one in the world was out of the race before the US Open had even begun. One hurdle less.

“But that’s some pretty good news,” my mother said, somewhat surprised.

“Yeah. Definitely.”

“Is everything okay, Lou?”

The “of course” was already on the tip of my tongue when I heard myself say something else. “No, not really.” My voice gave out, and at the next moment I started to sob.

“Oh dear,” my mother whispered as terrible sounds came from my throat.