I restrain my focus and swallow a fourth sip. “Just getting to know the mother of my child while I can.”
“How’d you get into tennis?” She changes the subject, straightening her posture.
“My father used to play racquetball at this local club when I was a kid. I started joining him when he needed a partner. Used to love the sound the ball made when it smacked against the wall. So damn satisfying,” I say. “As I got older, my father used to bet me a dollar per game. Then I talked him up to five dollars. One summer I made over a hundred bucks beating him. Eventually tried my hand at tennis as I got older—making the state tournament team in high school, which led to a college scholarship, which led to being discovered by my coach my senior year. The rest is history.”
She cups her chin in her hand, perched over the island as she studies me. “Did you ever in your wildest dreams think this would be your life?”
“I did, actually,” I say. “Never felt more at home than I did on the court. This game … it came more naturally to me than anything I’d ever done—and I played everything as a kid. Baseball. Soccer. Basketball. Football. And don’t get me wrong—I wasn’t terrible at any of them by any means. But tennis brought out the rock star athlete in me. Kind of think it was always supposed to be this way.”
“Okay, so what’s with the sperm bank thing? What made you decide to donate?”
I tell her about my senior year of college, needing some quick cash to fix my car. My scholarship was academic only—the rest of my student aid went to cover room, board, and books. My parents sent what they could each month, a hundred bucks or so, but aside from selling every last possession I owned or making minimum wage at a yogurt shop, this seemed like the path of least resistance at the time.
“Twenty-one-year-olds are notorious for having a one-track mind. I was never thinking about the future—unless it involved tennis,” I say. “So what about you? What made you want to be a single mom?”
“I’ve always wanted to be a mom,” she says with an indulgent, sugar-sweet sigh and a slightly upturned mouth. “I was actually married in my twenties. Very briefly. To the man I thought would be the father of my kids. It didn’t work out—which was a blessing in disguise. But after the divorce, I moved here to be closer to family, and I sort of buried myself in my work and the next thing I know, my mid-thirties were right around the corner. It kind of felt like a now or never sort of thing. One of my friends told me about IUI using a donor, and how someone she knew had a bunch of babies that way and it was cheaper than adoption, so I thought I’d try it … never thought it would work the first time, but thank God it did.”
“Think you’ll have more?” I ask.
She bites her lip, silent for a beat, and then shakes her head. “There was a time in my life when I wanted five kids—a big, loud, crazy house. But that’s not realistic if it’s just me. It’ll probably always be just the two of us. And I’m fine with that.”
The tiniest hint of bittersweet is woven through her words.
“You can plan every aspect of your life down to the finest details, but it doesn’t always go the way we think it will,” I say. “Sometimes I think that’s the whole point.”
“Isn’t that the truth.” She takes a generous gulp of wine, finishing what remained in her glass.
“How boring would this be if we knew exactly what our lives were going to be like in our thirties, our forties, beyond? What would we have to look forward to?”
I let the gravity of my own words sink in, examining them in the context of our current situation. While the last sixteen years have been a wild ride, it’d be disappointing if the next sixteen were nothing more than a continuation of that.
The money, the blinding-lights fame, the all-you-can-eat buffet of sex, the glory of winning tournament after tournament—it’s a dream come fucking true.
But there’s got to be more.
Only what that “more” is, I’ve yet to figure out.
“There’s always, always something to look forward to.” She rinses her glass and places it next to the sink, alongside a row of used bottles with pink caps and a handful of pacifiers.
“I know I don’t have any say in how you raise Lucia,” I say. “But promise me something.”
Seriousness colors her expression and her eyes widen. “Okay?”
“Don’t let her believe a single thing she reads about me,” I say.
Rossi lifts a brow as she spins to face me. “Not even the good stuff?”