We won our opening match at Northmere in two sets. Anika served the last point and I took the return out of the air before it could make either of us nervous. On the other court Mara and Jules had already finished. They were sitting at the far end of the stand when we came off, too distant for a greeting that would look like anything other than one team studying another.
I had wanted to earn the match with them. Having earned it, I spent the evening trying to be a person who could eat dinner.
Anika found me looking at film on my phone in the hotel corridor. “You know her,” she said. “That isn’t a weakness unless you decide it is.”
“She knows me too.”
“Good. We won’t have to waste time introducing ourselves.”
She wanted to go over our own patterns once, not watch every point…
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