Jersey Tomatoes are the Best (21 page)

I’m dying to tell him about my mind-game-free wins, how I beat every one of those girls on pure tennis; but he has other ideas. He pulls me down again, rolls on top of me, and starts the kissing at my neck, just behind my ear. Slowly, his lips slide lower, come around, until he reaches the hollow at the base of my throat. I can’t help it; I feel it coming, and despite my best efforts to control myself …

I whoop. My body jerks involuntarily, and I dissolve in hysterical giggles. David rolls away from me, onto his back, and sighs impatiently.

“I’m sorry! I really tried this time!” I say instantly. “But you
know
that is my most ticklish spot.” I’m truly sorry, but the laughter creeps into my voice nevertheless.

This annoys him.

“It’s, ah, kind of a mood breaker, if you know what I mean?” he replies sourly.

“I know. I’m sorry, David.” I place my hand on his chest. I lean over and kiss him lightly on the lips, once. Again. I look into his eyes, trying to convince him of my sincerity. This has been emerging as an issue between us: my knee-jerk laughter whenever he makes romantic overtures. Especially near my neck. His grouchy expression relaxes slightly. Another kiss, one he returns.

“You taste salty,” I comment softly. He murmurs in agreement.

“I need to shower,” he says. He sits up.

“Join me?” he asks. Only a trace of a smile.

He’s serious.

At this precise moment the last person in the universe I want in the room with me and David would be my father. But that’s whose voice speaks in my ear. His paranoid words of wisdom accompany the semisick feeling that spreads in my gut as I realize what David is suggesting, and I’m transported back to that breezy outdoor restaurant in Boca on the first day of camp, and Mark is telling me to trust my instincts.

I don’t think this is what my dad had in mind when he told me, “Never be afraid to say no.”

I don’t want to say no to David. But I don’t want to shower with him, either.

“I … don’t know if that would be such a great idea,” I say softly. Hesitantly, as if I’m actually considering this suggestion. So I’m not saying no. Or yes.

To my incredible relief, David shrugs.

“Yeah, it’s probably not. We’d never get any sleep, would we?” He’s looking at me with this confident smile. No worries or rejection. He thinks I’ve got tomorrow’s games on my mind, and the importance of a good night’s shut-eye.

He leans over and gives me one last, chaste kiss on the cheek before rising from the bed. He picks up his tennis bag and heads for the door. Then he pauses, his hand on the knob.

“I’m half tempted to knock at Missy’s room, just to say, ‘I told you so!’ ” he declares.

“Huh?” I ask.

“You know, about you. Kickin’ ass?”

I smile at him. “I guess that means you were right. For once.”

“Damn right I am!” he says, laughing. His white teeth flash
in his tan face. Movie-star-bright teeth. A random thought crosses my mind: has David had his teeth done, or does he just brush really, really often?

“See you at breakfast,” he says breezily, and walks out. I wait one moment, listening to his retreating footsteps and the rustle of his tennis bag, before jumping up and opening my door just a crack. His room is way at the far end of the hall. I see him stand before it, pull his key card from his pocket, insert it and go inside. His door clicks shut.

I rechain my door, then fall back on my rumpled bed. One cleansing yoga breath. Then another. It takes a few minutes before my heart slows its wild beating.

*   *   *

He clinches it in three straight sets the next day, out of which I only get to watch two. That’s because they start the boys’ final moments after my opponent and I finish the girls’. I’m in the locker room, toweling off from my shower, when Missy calls in to say he’s already up 3–love. I race to get dressed, but then I’m held up by the reporters. The Chadwick “communications” people have set up a mini press gathering in one corner of the refreshments tent. There are two aluminum chairs, circled by six more chairs, but I end up sitting alone because my opponent decided to beat it, no comment.

You can’t blame her. She lost to an unknown, unseeded nobody two years younger than her. Some Jersey Tomato who doesn’t have a full-time coach, an agent or a sponsor.

“I’m just a teenager who likes to hit tennis balls,” I reply to their questions. The handful of reporters laugh, on cue. Missy,
standing off to one side, obediently smiles in kind, the fake smile I’ve learned to recognize. She is stressed because this happened way too fast, too unexpectedly, for her to script what I should say.

I tell them I’m from the Garden State and proud of it, and that I learned to play in my backyard, coached by my dad. They’re lovin’ it. It’s so Cinderella story, and these guys are bored with the usual suspects. Then the questions get more complicated.

“Henry, the girls you beat have been playing the junior circuit for years. How do you explain your win here?” asks one. I shrug.

“I guess three weeks at Chadwick is like three years on the circuit?” I suggest. Laughter, especially when Missy calls out, “Yes, we told her to say that!”

“Maybe it’s not so complicated,” I continue. “I mean, whether you hit a million balls in your backyard or on an expensive court in a private club, it’s still a million balls, right?” Nods, followed by scribbles. I wonder, if I started reciting from Dr. Seuss, would they quote that, too? “One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish …”

“What do you think is the best part of your game?” another asks. I pause.

It occurs to me that the answer to this question, the honest-to-goodness answer, would have been different only one short month ago. Back then, someone might have said, “Her strokes are okay, but she wins by being bitchy and breaking her opponents’ concentration.”

Not today. Not this tournament, not tomorrow … not anymore. I feel this rush.

“Self-control,” I answer seriously. They pause. Frown.

“What do you mean? Do you mean mental toughness?” one asks. I shake my head.

“I prefer to think of it as control. That I’m controlling the point,” I reply.
My shots. My skills. My conditioning and foot speed. Not my mouth
.

Missy steps forward.

“Thanks, everyone, but we have to wrap this up. Chadwick is playing in the boys’ final, and we want to watch. If you have follow-up questions, please refer them to our communications office.” She leans close to me and whispers, “Let’s go.”

By the time we arrive and find Yoly, her mom and her little sister Carolina in the stands, David and his opponent are sitting. The scoreboard reads 7–5, first set to Ross. My heart does this little skipperdy beat, and I fight the urge to flash him a thumbs-up, a blown kiss,
something
. But I know it wouldn’t be welcome. He is staring at the court a few feet ahead of him, oblivious to the packed bleachers.

David’s in the zone. There is no breaking that concentration.

General applause from both sides of the court signals the resumption of play, and David and his opponent head back out to the field of battle. I pull on my sun visor and settle in for the match.

It’s the best tennis I’ve ever seen, not counting pro matches on television. His opponent is good, but David is … incredible.
His racket-head speed and flawless technique result in these withering, barely returnable shots. He is so quick to the ball that he never seems rushed; every stroke looks like a demonstration for an instructional video, or like he’s posing for a
Tennis
magazine cover photo. Click.

When it’s over, people stand. The applause is loud; there’s even some cheering, which is unusual in tennis. David’s won in three sets, and while it clearly wasn’t hard for him, there were plenty of opportunities for him to show his stuff. He strides quickly to net to shake his opponent’s hand, and makes a point of pausing, speaking with him briefly.

Guys with cameras have spilled onto the court, as well as tournament officials, scurrying around to set up a mike stand for the courtside trophy ceremony. Amidst the chaos, David scans the crowd. When he finds me, he flashes the best smile ever. My heart does a 360.

“Go down to him,” someone murmurs, giving me a gentle shove. I turn. Missy.

“Is that okay?” I’m surprised.

“Absolutely. He’ll love it,” she says reassuringly. “Go on.”

I don’t need a second invitation. I shoulder my way through the spectators, stepping carefully down the bleachers. I push through reporters. I find David near his courtside chair, rummaging through his enormous tennis bag. As he pulls out a dry shirt, he sees me approach.

“Hey,” he says, aiming a heart-melting grin in my direction. I can’t help it: I close the last five feet between us with a skip, a little jump, and my arms are around his neck. I hear him
laugh softly, feel my feet lift as he swings me around, and I experience this nanosecond of completely perfect, golden happiness.

Then I hear it. The metallic whirr of digital cameras. The buzz of lenses maneuvering into focus. Clicks. David puts me down, and we both turn to face a gauntlet of people taking our pictures. I recognize the
Tennis
magazine guy I met after my match, saying something to one of the photographers. I look at David, a ready apology on my lips, for getting in his way. But he’s glancing over my head. Back in the stands, toward Missy and Harvey, and he looks at them questioningly, nods slightly, then winds one arm around my waist.

“Smile, Henry,” he says, aiming one at the growing hive of photographers and onlookers. The clicks increase as I obediently pose; they rapid-fire when I shyly lean my head against David’s shoulder.

I fell into this moment. Spontaneously skipped to his side.

So why does it feel staged?

*   *   *

The air inside La Cubana is thick: heavy with garlic, roasted meat, fried bananas. Actually, not bananas. Yoly tells us they’re
plátanos
, and even though they look like bananas, they aren’t. A few small plates piled high with them, thin golden rounds that crunch oily in your mouth, line the center of the long table before us now. David and I sit at one end with Yoly and her cousin Enrique.

The Cruzes’ restaurant is the sort of place my mother would describe as a hole in the wall. Mark would call it a dive.
It’s packed with Formica tables and booths upholstered in red vinyl. The walls are a crazy quilt of hand-painted murals depicting island scenes (I’m guessing Cuba), old concert posters and framed, yellowed news clippings about baseball players.

Even though the menu is written in English and Spanish, David and I yield ordering to Yoly and Enrique. Yoly insists on
empanadas
to start, followed by lettuce-and-tomato salad. Dinner will be the restaurant’s famed
cerdo asado
, or roast pork, along with
ropa vieja
, which is Spanish for “old clothes.” Yoly explains it’s actually spicy shredded beef. We’ll also have black beans and white rice, plus something I’ve never heard of:
yuca
.

“It’s a root vegetable, like a potato,” Enrique tells us. “Cook it with a few pounds of garlic, and it melts in your mouth.”

Enrique smiles easily at us across the table. He’s older, almost twenty, and is handsome in a sort of not-tall, square-jawed way. He studies business administration at Miami University, but comes home lots of weekends to work at the restaurant. “Better money than my campus job,” he explains, “plus free food.” His mother, Yoly’s
tía
Blanca, does a lot of the cooking at La Cubana. It’s her pork we’re destined to eat.

“Best pork in Little Havana,” Yoly tells us after the waitress gathers the plastic menus and hurries off to get our drinks.

“Which means best pork in Miami,” Enrique adds.

“Which also means best pork in Florida,” Yoly counters.

“And that means best pork in … the country?” David suggests.

“More like the world,” Enrique corrects. “Excepting Cuba, of course.”

“Well, I’m psyched,” I declare. “Even for the yuck-thing. Bring on the garlic.” As if on command, my stomach makes a low, audible groan. Everyone cracks up.

“Someone needs to feed this girl,” David says, smiling. “She’s earned it.”

“Oh, we’ll feed you, all right,” Enrique says. “When we come out with the
flan
for dessert, you will both be begging us to stop.” Everyone laughs.

Mr. Cruz, from the end of the table, says something in Spanish to Yoly. She lowers her eyes as a blush spreads across her cheeks. “
Sí, sí
, Papi,” she says, a little dismissively, and waves her hand at him. Enrique stares at her, his eyebrows raised.

“Why not? I think it’s a great idea,” he tells her. Yoly sighs.

“Let’s not push this,” she says to him. Undertones of “drop it” in her voice.

“What?” I press.

“Nothing,” Yoly says at the same time Enrique replies, “The
quinces.
” They glance at each other, then Yoly sighs in resignation.

“My dad would like to invite you to my
quinceañera
in a few weeks,” she explains. “Please. You are under
no
obligation to attend.”

“Even though you would miss one of Miami’s best parties of the summer,” Enrique adds.

“I like parties,” David says agreeably.

“You would
love
this,” Enrique tells him.

As Enrique tantalizes us with descriptions of the extravagances planned for Yoly’s
quinces
, I try to ignore the growing distress on her face. She trusts me with all this Cuban-tradition stuff; David is unknown to her. Enrique’s unabashed enthusiasm for the family’s celebration stands in sharp contrast to her demand that I tell no one about her very “not Chadwick”
quinces
photo.

“Wait,” I hear David interrupt. “You go to church?”

“Before the party,” Enrique explains. “There’s a big mass, and everyone comes. The girl walks to the altar, led by both parents. She looks like a bride, you know? All dressed up in this very fancy gown? Her mother places a tiara on her head; her father gives her a ring. In turn, she hands them a plastic doll, which is usually dressed just like her. It’s meant to symbolize her growing up and giving away the things of her childhood. Then the parents hand her flowers.”