Page 21 of Breakpoint

Jaz took Dani’s hand and led her towards their seats and as their fingers brushed, Dani’s skin crackled with electricity.

Their victory on the court had been significant, but this, this realization, this unspoken acknowledgment of something new and unexpected between them, felt even more monumental.

The Florida sun beat down on the hard court in Jaz’s backyard, the air thick and humid even at seven in the morning.

Florida in July was no joke. Sweat beaded on Dani’s brow as she stretched for a wide serve from Jaz.

The satisfying thwack of the ball against her racket strings usually filled her with a focused energy, but she knew the shot was going wide. Again.

Across the net, Jaz was a vision in her crisp white tank top and tiny workout shorts.

Dani worked extra hard to ignore the way Jaz’s slim-fitting top hugged her curves and dipped a tad in the front.

But Dani’s eyes couldn’t help but focus on all the skin on display with each powerful swing.

When Jaz moved to return the ball, her muscles rippled beneath her mocha skin.

Dani’s heart did a little flip at the way the sunlight caught the fine hairs on her arm or the slight furrow of concentration in her brow.

Focus, Dani, she told herself, but her gaze kept drifting back to Jaz.

She’d never noticed before how gracefully Jaz moved, how the effort of the game made sweat to drip down her shirt that Dani wanted to lick off with her tongue.

Even the way Jaz tucked a tennis ball into her shorts seemed… captivating.

Every interaction now was laced with the undercurrent of attraction.

Because now that this attraction was here, Dani couldn’t un-see it.

Everything about Jaz turned her on. Her muscles strained as she hit a forehand, the slight peek of her skin visible when she tossed the ball up for a serve.

Her thick thighs were astonishing; hard muscles in her arms as she made contact. Every movement set Dani ablaze.

This revelation was too much to process by herself.

She needed to tell someone. To process this seismic shift in her perception.

To share her surprising discovery of the unexpected depths of attraction for a woman she once loathed.

Everything now felt charged with a strange, unfamiliar energy when she was in Jaz’s presence.

It was a lot easier to push down feelings when they were apart after Wimbledon. Dani doing a press and sponsor tour Chris had set up to capitalize on her win with Jaz. They still texted and talked every day, but she could also focus on other things.

Dani wished she had true friends to talk to about whatever this was she was feeling. No way she could tell Sascha. It would be on social media so fast it would make her head spin. No one on her team. Most of her friends from college she’d lost touch with, and she was afraid they would leak it too.

She would have to process it alone. But it was definitely throwing her off her game and even Jaz could see it.

“Dani, that’s your third missed backhand. The forehand I hit didn’t even have any top spin on it. ”

“I’m good. Just serve.” Dani tried to rally, to push the unsettling thoughts aside and concentrate on the game. But the very next serve Jaz sent out wide, Dani didn’t even get her racket on it as it whistled past her outstretched arm.

“Get it together, Dani,” Jaz barked. Jaz blew out a breath, seeming to calm herself down. “We only have a few weeks before the Olympics, and now that we’ve won Wimbledon, we have a target on our backs. We’ll get everyone’s best shot. They’ll be gunning to take us out.”

“I know, I know. I’m just having an off day. A lot going on.” It was a lame excuse, and she could feel her cheeks burning. Jaz frowned, unconvinced.

Then her demeanor changed and she approached the net, a hint of concern in her voice. “Still upset about your mom?”

Warmth spread through her that Jaz cared enough to ask.

She and Jaz had multiple conversations, usually one sided where Jaz would let her ramble, about the disconnect she still felt with her parents, especially her mom.

It was nice having someone real and meaningful to share what she was going through, but who also understood her current life.

Dani shook her head no, picking at a loose thread on the griptape of her racket. “But I am sick of the media requests Chris keeps pushing on me to get a joint interview with her.”

“The media are vultures and only looking for their own narratives. Don’t give them anything you don’t want to,” Jaz spat out with venom .

Dani cocked her head to the side and asked something that had been niggling in the back of her mind. “What's your deal with the press? You’re actually thoughtful—”

“Gee thanks,” Jaz replied sardonically.

“What I meant is that you have a lot of insight about tennis and how to approach the game. And we both know the press is part of the game, too, no matter how much you hate it. We need them to cover the sport for our sponsors and to get paid. But you blatantly treat them like shit and as you just said, give them nothing.”

“I don’t trust the press,” Jaz declared with determination.

Dani rolled her eyes because that was blatantly obvious. “No shit, but why?”

“Because they treat me like shit. Nothing I do is ever good enough, no matter that I’ve reached the pinnacle of our sport eighteen times.

They constantly remind me I’m not good enough.

I didn’t come onto the scene in the traditional route and all the tennis purists, who are usually the network commentators, don’t let me forget it.

The tennis scene wasn’t kind in the beginning.

When I turned pro at sixteen, it was always who do you think you are, coming to our sport and dominating us like that?

And when I really started winning the racist remarks, microaggressions and straight vitriol was endless.

And I was just a kid.” The frustration on Jaz’s face was palpable but also the pain in what she had lived through.

Dani could admit she heard many of the unflattering comments about Jaz over the years, some bordering on racist and others just outright racist and nasty.

She now saw the impact of twenty years of this had on Jaz, because the pain and anger were etched across her face.

Dani waited to keep going because she learned a while back, if she didn’t want Jaz to clam up, to not try to fill the silence with a question.

But allow Jaz to process her thoughts and emotions in her own time.

After a few minutes, Jaz finally continued, “And then social media and the blogs would say, ‘Oh, you make millions of dollars, and this is what you signed up for.’ But I became a pro at sixteen. I didn’t know what I was signing up for.

How many kids have their shitty days and awkward moments picked apart on television, often multiple times a day?

I was a kid. Granted, I was better than any other kid and some adults in the country, maybe even the world.

But I just wanted to play tennis with Brandon.

I didn’t realize what else came with all this.

The exposure. The attention when you’re as good as me. ”

“Why didn’t you just quit?” Dani inquired.

“And do what, exactly? I became my family’s income.

I was supporting us, putting food on the table, paying the bills and got us out of the hood.

That’s where my fire comes from because I refuse to go back to gunshots.

Plus, my team and all the other people who rely on me to support them.

I’m as much of a business as I am a person, and if I stop this, all the money that flows to them stops as well.

I have no choice but to succeed because everyone lives off my checks. Thankfully, I’m damn good.”

Dani marveled at how different their lives growing up had been.

Her family would be thrilled if she didn’t play tennis.

Dani never had to play. Or to worry about what would happen to her family if she didn’t win.

She knew she would always be taken care of and that she would never go hungry.

She was just playing for her love of the game, not to survive with the pressure to take care of her family.

Jaz looked past Dani, staring into the distance wistfully as she spoke.

“Besides, it’s the only thing I’ve ever done and all I’ve ever known.

My world has really been tennis since I was thirteen.

Hell, I don’t even know how to fill a prescription when I’m sick.

Someone does it for me and things just show up. ”

Dani remembered one night Jaz telling her she felt like a child star you always hear about in those True Hollywood stories.

She didn’t have the childhood, teenage fun or early twenties debauchery.

She never did or had time for partying or sneaking out with her friends.

Jaz had been a professional, or preparing to be a pro as far back as she could remember.

Even though Dani's parents were famous in the sports world, she still did normal things growing up.

“I’m sorry. For everything you have to go through,” she said honestly.

“It is what it is. Thankfully, I’m fucking awesome at tennis.

But I keep a tight circle as small as possible with people I trust. And after all that I’ve been through, I chose not to allow anybody to project their stereotypes on me anymore.

Tell me that I’m too aggressive, too dark, or that I'm just not good enough. So don’t feel sorry for me.

" Jaz shrugged her shoulders and seemed so resigned to her circumstances and life, like she had no other options.

"But are we going to keep yapping or get back to this hit session?”