Two tennis partners can read every shot. An injury asks what they are when they cannot play together.
Saskia and Mara find a language on court. When an injury stops Saskia, Mara is offered another partner. What will remain between them?
Completed · 19 chapters · 2h 13m
WarmSensual tension; intimacy fades to black.Yearning · Tender
Injury
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Dear Maeve,
The first time Mara called mine, she meant the ball. She called late. I stopped my swing, and it landed between us. I was ready for her to tell me I’d been standing in the wrong place. Instead she said she should have spoken sooner.
Saskia Rowe moved from singles to doubles to learn what her hands could do when another player's game depended on them. Mara Dwyer can see an opening a shot before it exists. On their first day together at the Vale, she calls for a ball too late and Saskia stops her swing. They lose the point. Then they begin to tell each other where they intend to move, and a court that felt divided starts to feel shared. Mara has a reputation for deciding too much for her partners. Saskia has made an art of needing nobody's permission. At a small club event they invent a two-tap signal for the moment a conversation cannot wait until after the next point. In an empty room above the courts, Mara fixes the grip on Saskia's racquet without an audience. Saskia begins to want the woman who notices when she is struggling, and still lets her answer for herself. When a problem with Saskia's calf returns during their first tour event, she conceals it until the next morning's match is no longer hers to play. She withdraws their team, tells Mara what she hid, and admits she wants her company after tennis. Another player has offered Mara an entry the following week. Mara promises an answer before sign-in. For Saskia, the difficult part is not that Mara might play with somebody else. It is finding out whether the place she made beside Mara exists when she cannot help win a match.
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We’ve known each other five days. I know how she loads her right foot before crossing the middle and that she orders soup while it’s too hot to eat. I know she notices the service door squeak every fourth time it opens. I know she can see a place for me on a court without putting me there herself.
On Saturday I tried to keep playing when my left calf tightened. She asked if I wanted to stop, and let me answer. We lost the match. Later, in an empty room above the courts, she fixed the grip on my racquet because she’d seen my thumb catch on the tape. Nobody was watching. She asked before she touched it.
I moved to doubles because I wanted to learn what my hands could do when somebody else’s depended on them. Now a part of my body has stopped doing what I ask. I don’t know how long that will last. I haven’t told her how frightened I am of being the player beside her who needs more than she can give.
I can ask her to call the middle before she moves. I can even call a ball mine. I don’t know how to ask whether she would still choose a place beside me if we had no match to play.
From The Court We Choose
Read this if you want closeness built through a game, and tested away from it.
Read this if you want every small choice on court to make the private question harder.
Read this if you want two women who can anticipate a shot but cannot yet name what they need.
Slow burns where the waiting is the point
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