Chapter Text
── ⋆⋅𖤓⋅⋆ ──
The hotel room was too quiet.
It had the kind of silence that expensive rooms always had, a thick, carpeted silence that swallowed footsteps and made every small sound feel guilty. The air-conditioning whispered from somewhere near the ceiling, turning the heavy Paris heat into something pale and artificial. Outside, evening had not fully arrived yet. The sky beyond the curtains was still bright, a washed-out blue fading into silver, the kind of light that belonged to late spring in Paris, when the city looked tender from a distance and merciless up close.
Jannik Sinner sat at the edge of the bed with his elbows on his knees and his racket bag still lying on the floor near the door. He had not unpacked it.
He had not even moved it since dropping it there fifteen minutes earlier, the strap twisted like a broken arm, clay dust still clinging to the bottom. A small orange stain had printed itself onto the cream-colored carpet. He stared at it for a while, as if it were something alive, something that might explain the day if he watched it long enough.
The television was on mute. Roland Garros continued without him.
On the screen, two commentators sat behind a desk, speaking with their hands. Behind them, highlights played on a loop. The red clay. The white lines. Juan Manuel Cerúndolo sliding into a forehand. The ball kicking up. Jannik arriving late, again and again and again.
Then the scoreboard.
6-3, 6-2, 7-5, 6-1, 6-1.
The numbers looked like someone had carved them with a knife. Jannik reached for the remote and turned the television off. The room snapped back into silence.
He could still hear the crowd, though. Not the roar, not the dramatic kind of noise people imagined when they thought of stadiums, but the smaller, crueler sounds. The sigh when he missed a ball he always made. The scattered applause after Cerúndolo hit another passing shot. The murmur moving through Court Philippe-Chatrier like a breeze through dry leaves: something is wrong with him.
He rubbed his hands over his face. His palms smelled faintly of clay and sunscreen. He had showered at the stadium, but the match was still on him. It lived under his skin. It sat behind his eyes. It had filled his bones with weight.
There was a knock at the door. He did not answer immediately. A second knock, softer.
“Jannik?” Darren’s voice came from the hallway. “It’s me.”
Jannik inhaled through his nose, held it, then stood. His legs protested. Not with pain, exactly, but with a deep, exhausted refusal. Like they had done enough. Like they no longer belonged to him.
He crossed the room and opened the door. Darren Cahill stood there with one hand in his pocket and the other holding a bottle of water. He had the expression people wore when they were trying not to look worried and failing.
“Hey,” Darren said.
“Hey.”
“You alright?”
Jannik stepped back to let him in. “Yes.”
Darren gave him a look.
Jannik almost smiled, but it did not arrive. “No.”
“That’s more believable.”
Darren entered and closed the door behind him. For a moment, neither of them moved. Darren looked around the room: the bag on the floor, the unopened suitcase, the phone face down on the bedside table, the curtains half-drawn. He saw everything. Coaches always saw everything. That was part of the problem.
“Have you eaten?” Darren asked.
“No.”
“Drunk anything?”
Jannik nodded toward the minibar, though he had not touched it.
Darren held out the bottle. “Drink this.”
Jannik took it, unscrewed the cap, and drank because it was easier than arguing. The water was cold enough to hurt his teeth. He swallowed too fast and felt it land in his stomach like a stone. Darren sat in the armchair near the window. He leaned forward, forearms on thighs, hands clasped.
“I won’t make a speech,” he said.
“Good.”
“I could.”
“I know.”
“I have several.”
“I know.”
Darren smiled faintly, then let it go. “The official line will be heat and fatigue.”
Jannik looked at the bottle in his hand. Condensation gathered around his fingers.
“That is not wrong.”
“No. It isn’t.”
“But it is not right.”
Darren said nothing.
Jannik walked to the window and pulled the curtain a little farther open. Down on the street, cars moved slowly in the Paris traffic. A scooter slipped between them. Someone laughed below, sharp and bright, the sound floating upward and disappearing before it reached him.
“I felt empty,” Jannik said. His voice was calm, which made the words worse. “Not nervous. Not tight. Just empty. I knew what I had to do, and I couldn’t make the body do it. I saw the ball. I saw where to go. But everything was...late.”
“You’ve played a lot.”
“I have played everything.”
“Since February, you’ve played like a machine.”
Jannik turned. “I am not a machine.”
“No,” Darren said quietly. “You’re not.”
The words stayed in the room between them. Jannik looked away first.
Since February, people had called it unstoppable. He had seen the headlines even when he tried not to. Sinner’s streak continues. Sinner sweeps Indian Wells. Sinner too strong in Miami. Sinner conquers Monte Carlo. Sinner takes Madrid. Sinner wins Rome in front of impossible pressure, impossible noise, impossible expectation.
Unstoppable. It was a beautiful word from the outside. From the inside, it felt like being chased.
Every week had turned into the next: airports, practice courts, press rooms, recovery beds, protein shakes, ice baths, tape, sweat, clay, hard court, clay again. Trophies raised above his head while cameras flashed so brightly he sometimes could not see the faces in front of him. People asking how it felt. People asking how long it could continue. People asking whether he was now at his peak, whether he was becoming unbeatable, whether he had changed tennis, whether he could win everything.
And all the while, somewhere under his ribs, a quieter voice had been saying: rest. He had ignored it. Champions ignored voices like that. At least, that was what everyone told themselves until the body spoke louder.
Darren rubbed a hand over his jaw. “You need time off.”
Jannik gave a small laugh with no humor in it.
“Everyone will say this now.”
“Everyone should have said it before.”
“You did.”
“I didn’t say it loudly enough.”
Jannik shook his head. “No. I would not have listened.”
Darren did not argue. That was another thing Jannik disliked about him sometimes. Darren knew when silence was more accurate than comfort.
A phone buzzed.
Jannik’s phone, face down on the bedside table, vibrated once, stopped, then began again. He looked at it but did not move.
Darren glanced toward it. “Your parents?”
“Maybe.”
“Your team?”
“Maybe.”
“Media?”
“Definitely.”
The phone stopped. A second later, another notification lit the room in a brief blue pulse. Jannik closed his eyes.
Darren stood. “We can handle the press tomorrow. You don’t have to say anything tonight. The statement is enough. Heat, fatigue, disappointment, thanks to the fans, congratulations to Juan Manuel. All true enough.”
“All true enough,” Jannik repeated.
Darren walked to the door, then paused. “Listen. Tonight, don’t make any decisions.”
Jannik looked at him.
“I mean it,” Darren said. “No big decisions when you’re exhausted.”
Jannik’s face remained still. “I know.”
Darren studied him. “Do you?”
“Yes.”
“You have that look.”
“What look?”
“The look where you’ve already decided something and you’re pretending you haven’t.”
For the first time all evening, something almost alive moved across Jannik’s expression. It was not amusement exactly. More like recognition.
“I am only tired,” he said.
“I know,” Darren said. “That’s what worries me.”
Jannik gave him back the water bottle.
“Goodnight, Darren.”
Darren hesitated, then nodded.
“Goodnight. Try to sleep.”
The door opened, then closed. Again, silence.
Jannik stood where he was for several seconds, listening to Darren’s footsteps fade down the hallway. Then he walked to the bedside table and picked up his phone.
Thirty-seven messages. Missed calls. Voice notes.
A few from his team. One from his brother. Two from his father. Three from his mother. Several numbers he did not immediately recognize but knew would be people wanting words from him before he had any.
He opened none of them. He switched the phone to airplane mode. The room seemed to exhale.
He sat on the bed again and stared at the blank screen. His reflection looked back at him faintly: pale, red-haired, shoulders curved inward, eyes too open. He looked younger than he felt and older than he was.
No big decisions when you’re exhausted. Darren’s words passed through him and did not catch. Jannik stood.
He went to the bathroom, turned on the light, and looked at himself properly. The mirror was unforgiving. The heat from the day had left a faint redness high on his cheeks. His hair, still damp from the shower, curled unevenly around his forehead. There was a scratch near his left elbow where he had slid and caught the clay badly in the third set. Or the fourth. Or the fifth. The match already felt scrambled, stretched beyond logic.
He gripped the edge of the sink.
“You need rest,” he told his reflection.
His reflection stared back, unconvinced. Rest. The word sounded simple. A bed. A quiet room. No tennis for a few days. Maybe more. Maybe the mountains. Maybe home. Maybe nothing.
But when he imagined lying still, he felt something worse than fatigue begin to rise in him. The match returned. The questions returned. The headlines. The polite concern. The analysis. The slow dissection of why his legs had gone, why his serve had dropped, why his forehand had landed short, why he had looked, in the words someone would inevitably use, human.
He could already see himself trapped here tomorrow. Breakfast in the hotel with sympathetic faces. Meetings. Recovery sessions. Calls. Explanations. Plans. The soft prison of people caring about him. He lowered his head. There was only one person he wanted to sit in silence with. The thought arrived so cleanly that he almost laughed.
Carlos.
Not because Carlos would comfort him. Not exactly. Carlos was terrible at hiding his feelings, which made his comfort too honest to be gentle. He would open the door with wide eyes and say something too loud, something like, “What are you doing here, man?” Then he would pull him into a hug before Jannik had decided whether he wanted one. Then he would ask three questions at once. Then he would understand without needing the answers.
Carlos Alcaraz, who smiled like the sun was personally responsible for him. Carlos Alcaraz, who turned tennis courts into parties and battlefields at the same time. Carlos Alcaraz, his biggest rival, the boy across the net, the measuring stick, the storm, the only one who could make him feel both more alone and less alone.
The only one who understood what it meant to win too much and still feel hunted. Jannik turned off the bathroom light. Back in the room, he took his phone out of airplane mode. Messages flooded in with small, frantic sounds. He ignored them and opened the airline app.
Paris to Murcia. Nothing direct. Paris to Madrid. Madrid to Murcia? Too long. Paris to Alicante? Then a car. Paris to Corvera, with a connection. Early morning options. One late option if he moved now.
He sat on the edge of the bed, thumb hovering. It was absurd.
He should sleep. He should ice his legs. He should call his parents. He should meet with Darren and Simone and discuss a rest block like an adult professional athlete with a body that belonged not only to himself but to a team, a schedule, a ranking, a country, sponsors, tournaments, expectations.
He selected the flight. Passenger: Jannik Sinner. The name looked strange in the small boxes, like it belonged to someone else. He booked it before he could become reasonable.
For several seconds afterward, he held the phone very still. Then he laughed once, softly, almost in disbelief.
“Okay,” he whispered.
The laugh vanished quickly, but it left behind a thin line of air inside his chest. Not relief. Not yet. But movement. He searched hotels in Murcia.
Not the biggest one. Not the most obvious. Nothing that would announce him to the world with marble pillars and photographers in the lobby. He chose a quiet place outside the center, with pale rooms and good reviews written by people who cared about parking, pillows, breakfast, and whether the air-conditioning worked. It was anonymous enough to feel safe.
He booked one night. Then another. Then three. He did not know why. He stood again and began to pack.
At first, he moved slowly, placing clothes into the suitcase with the careful precision of someone performing a task in front of an audience. Folded shirts. Socks. Chargers. Toiletry bag. Laptop. Passport. Watch. A cap. Then he stopped being careful and simply gathered things. A hoodie from the chair. A half-open packet of electrolytes. A book he had not read past page twelve. His second pair of shoes.
The racket bag remained near the door. He looked at it.
For a moment, anger moved through him so suddenly that he almost kicked it. Not anger at the rackets. Not really. At the shape of his life. At the fact that even leaving felt like something tennis had organized for him.
He crouched and opened the bag. The smell of clay and strings rose out of it. He touched one of the rackets lightly. The frame was familiar, intimate, almost part of his hand.
“You stay,” he said.
Then he shook his head, because talking to rackets was a bad sign. He took one racket out, then put it back. Took it out again. In the end, he packed none of them. He left the whole bag in the room.
At the door, he paused and looked back.
The hotel room no longer looked like his. It looked like the aftermath of someone else’s bad day. The bed still made, except for the dent where he had sat. The television black. The clay stain near the entrance. The water bottle on the table. The racket bag was abandoned like evidence.
His phone buzzed again. This time, the name on the screen was Simone. Jannik watched it ring. He let it go. A message followed almost immediately.
Call me when you can. No pressure.
That was worse than pressure. Jannik put the phone in his pocket, picked up the suitcase, and opened the door.
The corridor smelled faintly of flowers and cleaning products. At the far end, a housekeeping cart stood abandoned beside a door. He walked past it quietly, cap pulled low, hoodie folded over one arm. He did not take the elevator closest to his room. Too obvious. He walked to the second one near the service corridor and pressed the button.
While he waited, he felt his heartbeat in his throat. This is stupid, he thought. The elevator arrived. He stepped inside. This is necessary, another part of him answered.
In the lobby, people moved in little islands of conversation. A family checking in. A man in a suit arguing softly into a phone. Two women in summer dresses laughing near the bar. No one looked at him for the first three seconds, and then someone did.
Recognition was a physical thing. He could feel it land. A boy near the reception desk, perhaps twelve, froze with a paper cup in his hand. His eyes widened. He looked from Jannik’s face to his cap and back again.
Jannik lowered his gaze and angled toward the side exit.
“Jannik?” the boy whispered.
Jannik stopped. He should have kept walking. He knew that. But the voice was too young, too uncertain, and there were some habits even exhaustion did not break. He turned.
The boy stood half behind his father now, embarrassed by his own courage. The father looked confused, then recognized Jannik too.
“Bonsoir,” Jannik said softly.
The boy swallowed. “I’m sorry you lost.”
The father closed his eyes briefly, mortified.
“Matteo.”
But Jannik only nodded. “Me too.”
The boy clutched the paper cup tighter. “You were tired.”
“Yes,” Jannik said. “A little.”
“You will win next time.”
The certainty in his voice was unbearable.
Jannik forced a small smile. “I’ll try.”
“Can I-”
The boy stopped, looking at the suitcase, the cap, the darkness around Jannik’s eyes. Something in him understood more than most adults would have.
“No. Sorry. Goodnight.”
Jannik’s smile became real for half a second.
“Goodnight, Matteo.”
He left through the side door before anyone else could notice. Outside, Paris hit him with warm air.
The street smelled of asphalt, perfume, cigarette smoke, and rain that had not fallen yet. The sky had darkened to violet. A taxi moved slowly along the curb, its light on, and Jannik lifted a hand. The driver pulled over.
“Charles de Gaulle?” the driver asked when Jannik got in.
“Orly,” Jannik said.
The driver glanced at him in the mirror. “Orly? At this hour?”
“Yes.”
The driver shrugged, as if tennis players fleeing Paris after catastrophic losses were none of his business.
“D’accord.”
The taxi pulled away from the hotel.
For the first few minutes, Jannik watched the streets without seeing them. Paris blurred past in gold windows and pharmacy crosses and crowded terraces where people sat shoulder to shoulder over glasses of wine, continuing their lives with insulting ease. Somewhere in the city, tennis was still being played. Somewhere, people were already building explanations for him.
Too much heat. Too much fatigue. Too much pressure. Too much tennis.
He leaned his head back against the seat. The driver kept the radio low. A French song played, soft and melancholy, the singer’s voice sliding between words Jannik understood and words he did not. It suited the evening too well.
After a while, the driver said, “You are the tennis player.”
Jannik opened his eyes. In the mirror, the driver’s gaze flicked up, then away.
“Yes,” Jannik said.
“I saw the match.”
Of course you did, Jannik thought.
Aloud, he said, “Bad match.”
The driver made a sympathetic noise. “Bad day.”
“Yes.”
“My wife says you look like a good boy.”
Jannik blinked. “Okay.”
“She says this when you play. ‘He is a good boy, this one.’” The driver turned the wheel with one hand. “Today she said, ‘Leave him alone, he is cooked.’”
Despite himself, Jannik gave a quiet laugh. The driver smiled in the mirror, pleased.
“Cooked is the word, no?”
“Yes. Cooked is good.”
“Where do you go now? Home?”
Jannik hesitated. The answer sat in his mouth and changed shape. Not home. Not exactly. Not anywhere he could explain.
“Spain,” he said.
“Holiday?”
“Something like that.”
The driver nodded wisely, as if Spain, after losing in Paris, was a medical prescription.
“Good. Sun, food, sleep. You are young. You come back.”
Jannik looked out the window again. You come back.
Everyone always said that. As if coming back were automatic. As if the body were a door one could reopen with the right key. As if the mind did not sometimes stay behind in strange rooms, in lost matches, in years that asked too much.
His phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out. A new message from his mother.
Amore, call when you can. We love you. No tennis tonight. Just breathe.
He stared at the words until they blurred.
Then he typed: I’m okay. I will call tomorrow. Love you.
He did not say where he was going.
He could almost feel the lie in the omission, small and hot. But he could not bear the questions. Not even from her. Especially not from her, because she would hear it in his voice. Mothers heard the things people tried to hide between syllables.
Another message appeared.
Darren: Don’t disappear on us.
Jannik looked at it. Then he turned the phone face down on his thigh. The airport appeared in pieces: signs, ramps, glass, lights. The taxi slowed at departures.
The driver turned. “Terminal?”
Jannik checked quickly. “Three.”
At the curb, he paid, added too much tip, and reached for the door.
“Signor Sinner,” the driver said.
Jannik paused.
The driver’s voice softened. “Sleep.”
Jannik nodded once. “I’ll try.”
Inside Orly, the world was bright and hollow. Airports at night always felt like places outside time, full of people moving too quickly or not moving at all. Business travelers with laptop bags. Couples asleep against each other. Children crying with total commitment. Screens blinking destinations in blue and white.
Jannik kept his cap low and used the self-service kiosk. His fingers moved through the process automatically. Passport. Booking code. Seat. Boarding pass. Bag drop.
When the machine printed the tag, it made a cheerful sound that felt obscene.
At security, the line was short. A woman in front of him argued about a bottle of lotion. Behind him, a man watched a football match on his phone without headphones. Jannik placed his suitcase on the belt, then his hoodie, shoes, cap, phone.
Without the cap, he felt exposed. The security officer looked at him, then at the passport, then back at him. For one suspended second, Jannik prepared himself. The officer stamped nothing, smiled politely, and waved him through.
“Merci.”
“Merci.”
He collected his things too quickly, nearly dropping his phone. His hands were less steady than he wanted. Not shaking, not visibly, but slightly disconnected from instruction.
In the restroom near the gate, he splashed cold water on his face and looked at himself under fluorescent lights. Airport mirrors were worse than hotel mirrors. They made everyone look like they had done something wrong.
His phone buzzed again. This time, it was a notification from a sports app.
BREAKING: Sinner shock exit at Roland Garros, cites heat and fatigue.
He deleted the notification. Another appeared in a news account.
CERÚNDOLO STUNS SINNER IN PARIS.
He turned off notifications. For a moment, he considered turning the whole phone off again. Instead, he opened the contacts, scrolled to Carlos, and stopped.
Carlos Alcaraz
The name sat there like an open door. His thumb hovered over the message icon. He imagined writing:
I’m coming to Murcia.
Are you home?
I lost. I don’t know where to go.
He locked the phone without sending anything. Not yet.
If he warned Carlos, Carlos would try to make sense of it. He would call. He would ask if Jannik was okay, and Jannik would have to answer while standing in an airport bathroom in Paris, exhausted beyond dignity. No. Better to arrive first. Better to become real in Spain before explaining himself.
At the gate, he sat in the far corner with his back to the wall.
The flight was not full. A few passengers sat scattered across the seats, each inside their own private weather. A man in a linen jacket typed furiously on a laptop. An elderly couple shared a packet of biscuits. A young woman asleep under a denim jacket had one hand resting protectively on her backpack.
Jannik put in earbuds but played nothing. He needed the world muffled. Boarding began twenty minutes later. He waited until the line thinned, then stood. The gate agent scanned his pass.
“Bon voyage,” she said.
He nodded.
The tunnel to the plane smelled of metal and trapped air. He walked slowly, one hand grazing the rail. Each step away from Paris felt both reckless and inevitable.
On the plane, his seat was by the window.
He placed his suitcase overhead with more effort than it should have required and sat down. His knees ached. His back ached. His entire body had become a map of small complaints. He fastened the seat belt and leaned his head against the window.
A woman took the aisle seat. Middle remained empty. She glanced at him, then looked again. Her face changed with recognition, but she said nothing. He was grateful enough that he almost spoke first.
The cabin filled with the soft chaos of departure. Bags shoved into overhead bins. Seat belts clicking. A flight attendant explaining something to a passenger in French, then English, then Spanish. The safety demonstration began. Jannik watched without watching.
His phone was still in his hand. He opened the messages again.
Darren: Don’t disappear on us.
Simone: Call me when you can. No pressure.
Mark: Bro. What the hell. Call me. Or send a meme so I know you’re alive.
Mamma: Amore, call when you can. We love you. No tennis tonight. Just breathe.
And then, lower down, one unread message from Carlos. Sent ten minutes after the match.
Carlos: Jannik. I saw. Call me later, okay?
Jannik stared at it for a long time. I know this face. His throat tightened so suddenly he had to look out the window. The plane began to move. Lights slid past. Ground crew in reflective vests walked below, small and purposeful. The engines deepened. The cabin trembled. Paris, beyond the glass, spread itself in lines of white and amber.
Jannik typed one word.
Later.
He stared at it. Then he deleted it. The plane turned. He typed again.
I’m okay.
Deleted. He locked the phone and placed it face down on his lap. No warning anyone.
Not even Carlos. Especially not Carlos.
The plane accelerated.
For one sharp moment, his body pressed back into the seat, and then the ground loosened its grip. Paris dropped away. The runway became a strip of light, then a thread, then nothing. The city opened beneath them, enormous and indifferent, the Seine reflecting fragments of sky.
Jannik closed his eyes. He did not sleep. Instead, memory came.
Not the match at first. Something older. A practice court in Spain, years ago, sunlight burning white on the lines, Carlos laughing because he had hit a tweener in a drill where no tweener was required. Jannik standing across the net, pretending to be annoyed, secretly impressed.
“You cannot do normal?” Jannik had called.
Carlos had grinned. “Normal is boring.”
“Normal wins matches.”
“Fun wins matches too.”
“Not always.”
Carlos had bounced the ball on the frame of his racket. “Against you, I need both.”
That had stayed with Jannik for reasons he never admitted. Against you, I need both. It was a compliment disguised as a joke. Carlos did that often. Tossed sincerity into the air and covered it with laughter before it could become too heavy.
The memories shifted.
Indian Wells, this year. Heat but dry, clean. The ball coming off his racket like it had been waiting for him. Miami, humid and loud. Monaco, where the sea flashed in the distance and every match felt like a negotiation with the clay. Madrid, altitude and noise. Rome, pressure wrapped in love so intense it almost suffocated him.
Every trophy had felt different.
Indian Wells: confirmation. Miami: momentum. Monaco: hunger. Madrid: dominance. Rome: responsibility. By Paris, there had been nothing left to feel. Only obligation. The woman in the aisle seat spoke softly.
“Excuse me.”
Jannik opened his eyes.
She held out a small packet of almonds. “You look like you need food.”
He stared at the packet, then at her. She was perhaps in her fifties, with silver hair cut neatly at her jaw and kind eyes that did not pry.
“Thank you,” he said. “I’m okay.”
She raised an eyebrow. He took the almonds.
“Gracias,” he added, because they were flying to Spain and because his brain was tired enough to mix languages on instinct.
She smiled. “De nada.”
He opened the packet and ate one almond. It tasted like cardboard and salt. He ate another.
After a while, she said, “My son plays tennis.”
Jannik almost laughed. Of course.
“He is eleven,” she continued. “He cries when he loses.”
Jannik looked down at the packet. “Smart.”
“You cry?”
“No.”
“Never?”
He looked out at the darkness beyond the wing.
“Not where people can see.”
She accepted this answer with a slow nod. “That is not always good.”
“No.”
“But it is how you survive, maybe.”
He turned back to her.
She shrugged. “We all have stupid ways.”
This time he did laugh, quietly. The woman smiled but did not push further. She opened a book and left him alone. He ate half the almonds and placed the rest in the seat pocket.
Somewhere over France, the cabin lights dimmed. The plane became a narrow tube of breathing strangers suspended in dark air. Jannik leaned into the window and watched his faint reflection overlay the night.
He wondered what Carlos was doing.
At home, probably. Or maybe at the academy. Maybe with his family. Maybe watching tennis with one eye and playing on his phone. Maybe he had already gone to bed, though Jannik doubted it. Carlos lived as if sleep were a rumor other people had invented.
Murcia.
The word itself had warmth in it.
Jannik had been there before, but never like this. Never as an escape. Never carrying a loss he could not explain to anyone who had not stood beneath the same invisible weight. He imagined the roads outside the airport, dry and dark. The air smelling different from Paris, warmer, more open. He imagined Carlos’s voice saying his name.
Jannik. Not “world number one,” not “defending champion,” not “Italian star,” not “shock exit,” not “fatigue concerns.” Just Jannik. His phone remained off. He did not know whether that made him selfish or sane. Maybe both.
The captain spoke over the intercom in French-accented English, then Spanish. Cruising altitude. Smooth flight. Expected arrival on time. Arrival. The word pressed into him.
He had booked the hotel, but he had no plan after that. That was the strangest part. Jannik always had a plan. Practice at this time. Treatment at that time. Press here. Recovery there. Meals measured, flights arranged, rackets strung at specific tension, days divided into useful pieces.
Now he had a room in Murcia and no explanation. The emptiness ahead scared him. It also felt like the first honest thing he had done in months.
He drifted, not sleeping, not fully awake. Images rose and broke apart. Cerúndolo’s left-handed forehand. The towel over his head between games. Darren’s face. The clay stain on the carpet. Carlos grinning through the sunlight. His mother’s message: Just breathe.
He tried. Inhale. The airplane air was dry, cold, recycled. Exhale. His chest loosened by a millimeter.
A baby cried three rows ahead. Someone coughed. A flight attendant moved down the aisle with water. The woman beside him turned a page. Normal life, continuing mercifully around him.
Hours in planes always stretched strangely, but this one seemed both endless and too short. When the descent began, Jannik felt it first in his ears, then in his stomach. The engine note changed. The plane tilted. Darkness outside the window softened at the edges, and below, scattered lights appeared like embers.
Spain.
He pressed his forehead lightly to the glass.
There was no grand revelation. No music. No sudden peace. His loss was still there. His body was still exhausted. His phone, when he turned it on, would still fill with people looking for him. Tomorrow would still exist.
But the air beneath the plane belonged to somewhere else. That was enough for now.
The woman in the aisle seat closed her book. “First time in Murcia?”
“No,” Jannik said. “But...first time like this.”
She nodded as if that made perfect sense. “Then welcome differently.”
He smiled faintly. “Thank you.”
The plane descended through a low layer of cloud. For a few seconds, the window showed only gray vapor lit by the wing light. Then they broke through, and the land appeared: dark fields, roads, small clusters of buildings, the distant suggestion of hills under the night.
The landing gear lowered with a heavy mechanical groan. Jannik’s hands closed over the armrests.
He had played finals in front of twenty thousand people without blinking. Still, every landing made him aware of surrender. You trusted the machine. You trusted the pilot. You trusted the invisible calculations that brought metal back to earth.
Maybe that was what tired people needed. A moment where something else carried them. The runway lights rose to meet them. The wheels struck the ground hard, bounced once, then held. A rush of reverse thrust filled the cabin. People leaned forward against their seat belts. The plane slowed, roaring, trembling, then easing into a taxi.
Jannik exhaled.
Around him, phones began to wake. Screens lit up like little moons. Messages arrived. Lives resumed. He turned his own phone over in his hand but did not unlock it. Outside the window, the sign came into view through the darkness and glass reflections.
Región de Murcia International Airport. Corvera.
Twenty minutes from Murcia. Twenty minutes from Carlos.
The plane rolled slowly toward the terminal and Jannik sat very still, his suitcase above him, his secret intact, his body heavy with defeat and travel and something that was not quite hope but had begun, faintly, to resemble it.
── ⋆⋅𖤓⋅⋆ ──
The airport was smaller than Jannik expected it to be.
Maybe it was because he had arrived in the kind of hour when even public places seemed half-asleep, when lights were too bright and footsteps too loud and everyone moved as if they were borrowing the night from someone else.
Or maybe it was because he had come from Paris, from noise and clay and questions, from a city that had watched him lose and had immediately begun speaking about him in the past tense.
Corvera did not speak about him. Not yet.
The plane emptied slowly. People stood too early, as people always did, bent awkwardly under overhead bins while the aisle remained blocked and no one went anywhere. Jannik stayed seated by the window with his hands folded around his phone. His body felt too large for the seat now, not because there was no space, but because every joint had become aware of itself. Knees, hips, shoulders, neck. A thousand little reports arriving late.
The woman beside him glanced over. The silver-haired one who had given him almonds.
“You have someone meeting you?” she asked.
“No.”
“A taxi, then.”
“Yes.”
She studied him for a moment, not with curiosity but with the careful kindness of someone deciding how much kindness another person could tolerate.
“You should eat something warm,” she said.
Jannik nodded. “I will.”
“You say that like my son.”
“Does he also lie?”
“All the time.”
That made him smile. It was small, but it was real. The aisle began to move. The woman stood, reached for her bag, then looked back down at him.
“Whatever you came here for,” she said, “I hope you find it.”
Jannik did not know what to answer.
So he said, “Thank you.”
She walked ahead of him into the aisle and disappeared into the tired line of passengers.
Jannik waited until almost everyone had left. It was an old habit and a new necessity. He did not want to stand shoulder to shoulder with strangers while his face sat on half their phones. He wanted distance. Even two meters of it felt like mercy.
When he finally rose, his legs resisted. For a second, he gripped the back of the seat in front of him and closed his eyes. The cabin smelled of coffee, recycled air, and the faint human sourness of travel. Somewhere near the front, a flight attendant laughed softly at something another crew member said. The sound was ordinary, and because it was ordinary, it felt almost unreal.
Jannik took down his suitcase. No racket bag.
The absence of it was physical. His shoulder expected the weight. His hand expected the strap. Without it, he felt unfinished, like someone had erased part of his outline. He followed the last passengers out.
The tunnel from the plane to the terminal was warm. Spain came through even here, through glass and metal and airport air-conditioning: a dry heat held in the walls, a suggestion of dust, a different texture of night. Paris had been heavy, damp, elegant even in its cruelty. Murcia felt open before he had even stepped outside.
Inside the terminal, the lights were white and calm. Signs pointed toward baggage claim, exits, rental cars. A small child dragged a plush dinosaur along the floor. A man in a black T-shirt yawned with his whole face. A couple walked hand in hand, speaking Spanish too quickly for Jannik’s tired brain to catch.
He kept his cap low.
At passport control, no one stopped him. At baggage claim, he stood near a pillar and watched the belt turn. It took seven minutes for his suitcase to appear, red tag flashing under the fluorescent lights. Seven minutes was enough time for his phone to vibrate nine times.
He did not look. When he picked up the suitcase, his arm trembled slightly.
He hated that. The small betrayals more than the big ones. Missing a forehand on television was one thing. Shaking while lifting luggage was another. It belonged to old men, injured men, people who needed chairs placed under them and soup brought in bowls.
He was twenty-four. He was supposed to be unstoppable. The word returned to him and made him feel faintly sick. Unstoppable. No one using that word ever asked what happened when the person inside the machine wanted to stop.
Outside arrivals, there were only a few drivers waiting with signs. None for him. Good. The taxi rank sat under a roof washed in yellow light, and beyond it the night stretched flat and dark. He could smell warm asphalt, exhaust, and something dry from the fields beyond the airport.
A taxi rolled forward when he approached.
The driver got out, a compact man with tired eyes and a white shirt open at the throat. He looked at Jannik’s suitcase, then at Jannik’s face, then looked away quickly in the universal gesture of someone who had recognized a famous person and was deciding whether to be decent.
“Buenas noches,” the driver said.
“Buenas noches.” Jannik placed the suitcase in the trunk before the driver could take it from him. “Hotel Nelva, please.”
The driver’s eyebrows rose slightly. “Murcia.”
“Yes.”
“Twenty minutes. Maybe less now.”
“That’s okay.”
They got into the car. The seats were warm from the day. A small plastic rosary hung from the mirror and moved gently when the driver pulled away. The airport slid behind them, lights shrinking in the rear window.
For a while, neither of them spoke. Jannik watched the road.
Spain at night was not empty, but it knew how to be quiet. The highway stretched ahead in black ribbons, edged by low barriers and occasional signs. Farther out, lights gathered in small clusters: houses, industrial buildings, maybe villages. The sky was wide and dark, the moon thin as a scratch.
His phone vibrated again. He took it out, saw Darren’s name, and turned it face down on his thigh. The driver noticed. Of course he did. Taxi drivers saw everything without seeming to.
“You do not want to answer,” he said.
Jannik looked up at the mirror. The driver’s English was careful but good.
“Sorry. I don’t want to...” He gestured vaguely. “Enter your business.”
“It’s okay.”
“My daughter does this,” the driver said. “When her mother calls and she knows she did something stupid.”
Jannik gave a tired laugh. “Maybe I did something stupid.”
“Ah.” The driver nodded with the seriousness of a doctor receiving symptoms. “Then maybe answer later.”
“Yes.”
“Or never.”
Jannik looked out the window. “Later is better.”
The driver hummed, as if this was debatable.
The highway lights passed rhythmically across the windshield. Light, dark, light, dark. Jannik felt his body sink into the seat by slow degrees. He was too tired to sit properly. Too wired to sleep. His mind moved in circles that always returned to the same two places: Paris behind him, Carlos ahead.
Carlos did not know. That fact sat beside him like another passenger.
It should have made him anxious. Instead, it protected him. As long as Carlos did not know, nothing was required yet. There was no expression to face, no questions, no laughter hiding concern, no arms around him, no voice saying his name like it had already understood too much.
He could exist in the in-between. In the taxi. On the road. As no one’s responsibility.
The driver cleared his throat. “You are Italian?”
Jannik almost smiled. “Yes.”
“From the north?”
“Yes.”
“My brother works in Bolzano.”
That made Jannik turn his head. “Really?”
“Yes. In a hotel. He says the mountains there are...” The driver searched for the word. “Not real. Too beautiful.”
“They are real.”
“You miss it?”
The question should have been simple. It was not.
“Yes,” Jannik said. “Sometimes.”
“Then why Murcia?”
There it was.
Not asked like the world would ask it. Not with headlines beneath it. Just a man driving a taxi through the dark, wondering why a tired Italian with expensive luggage had landed in Corvera and asked for Hotel Nelva.
Jannik’s hand tightened around his phone.
“I know someone here,” he said.
“Friend?”
He paused. The road hummed under the tires.
“Yes,” he said finally. “A friend.”
It was not a lie. It was not enough truth either.
The driver nodded. “Good. Friends are better than hotels.”
Jannik almost answered, but something in the sentence lodged in his chest. Friends are better than hotels.
Hotels were clean, sheets and key cards and water bottles were lined on desks. Hotels did not ask why your shoulders had dropped. Hotels did not remember your face at eighteen. Hotels did not hit drop shots against you and then grin like forgiveness was easy.
Hotels were places to stop. Friends were places to arrive. He swallowed and looked away.
Murcia began to gather around them gradually. First more lights. Then roundabouts. Then apartment blocks, signs, palm trees dark against the sky. The city did not announce itself like Paris. It rose quietly, warm and low, with streets that looked lived in rather than displayed.
Jannik had been here before in fragments: tennis obligations, short visits, the academy, passing through. But tonight the city felt unfamiliar, perhaps because he was not arriving as a player on schedule. He was arriving as someone who had run out of places to stand.
The taxi turned onto Avenida Primero de Mayo. The hotel appeared ahead, modern and pale, its windows lit in calm squares. Hotel Nelva.
Very close to the city center. Very far from Roland Garros. The driver pulled up at the entrance.
“Here,” he said.
Jannik paid before the meter stopped glowing. Again, too much. Again, because generosity was easier than conversation. The driver got out and opened the trunk. This time Jannik let him take the suitcase out.
When he handed it over, the driver looked at him properly for the first time.
“Señor Sinner,” he said quietly.
Jannik held still. The driver’s face changed, not into excitement, not into hunger, but into something like sympathy.
“My daughter was right. You did something stupid.”
Jannik stared at him, then laughed under his breath.
“Maybe.”
“But maybe good stupid.” The driver closed the trunk. “Good night. Sleep. Murcia is quiet when it wants.”
“Thank you,” Jannik said.
He watched the taxi pull away. Then he turned toward the hotel doors.
The lobby of Hotel Nelva was softly lit, with polished floors and a scent of citrus and clean linen. A few armchairs sat near low tables. Tall plants stood in corners, their leaves glossy under warm lamps. Somewhere beyond the reception desk, a bar murmured with low conversation. Glasses clinked. A coffee machine hissed.
Jannik stepped inside and felt, absurdly, like he had crossed a border more important than the one between countries. At reception, a woman in a navy blazer looked up with a practiced smile.
“Buenas noches.”
“Buenas noches,” Jannik said. “I have a reservation.”
“Name, please?”
“Sinner.”
Her fingers moved across the keyboard. Then stopped. Only for a fraction of a second. But he saw it.
She looked up. Her eyes moved over his face, the cap, the exhaustion, the suitcase. Recognition arrived carefully, like a guest entering a quiet room.
“Of course, Señor Sinner,” she said.
Her voice did not change. Not much. He was grateful enough that it hurt.
She continued typing. “Passport, please?”
He handed it over.
While she checked him in, a man emerged from a side office behind the desk. He was in his late forties or early fifties, with a trimmed beard, a dark suit, and the composed manner of someone used to solving problems before guests noticed they existed. The manager, Jannik guessed immediately.
The woman glanced at him once. The manager glanced at the screen. Then at Jannik. Jannik braced himself.
But the manager only came forward with a small, professional smile.
“Señor Sinner,” he said, in English now. “Welcome to Hotel Nelva. We are pleased to have you with us.”
“Thank you.”
“I hope your journey was comfortable.”
“Yes. Thank you.”
The manager’s eyes held his for just a little longer than necessary. He knew. Of course, he knew. Maybe he had seen the match. Maybe everyone had. Maybe the world was smaller than any airport.
But he did not mention Paris. He did not mention tennis. He did not say he was sorry. Jannik felt an unexpected loosening behind his ribs.
“We have placed you in a quiet room,” the manager said. “Upper floor. Away from the elevators.”
“That is very kind.”
“If you need anything, you may call reception directly. Any time.”
“Thank you.”
The receptionist passed him the key card in a small paper sleeve.
“Breakfast is from seven until eleven,” she said. “The restaurant is on the ground floor. Wi-Fi information is inside. Would you like assistance with your luggage?”
“No, thank you.”
The manager gave a faint nod. “Of course. Have a restful evening.”
Restful. Not good. Not successful. Not victorious. Not better luck next time. Restful.
Jannik took the card. “Goodnight.”
He rolled his suitcase toward the elevators, aware of both of them behind him but not watching in the way he feared. When the elevator doors opened, he stepped inside and pressed the button for his floor.
As the doors closed, he saw the manager turn slightly to the receptionist and say something too low for Jannik to hear. He expected it to be about him. Maybe it was. Maybe it was only about towels.
The elevator rose smoothly.
In the mirrored wall, Jannik saw himself again. Airport shadows under his eyes. Hoodie creased. Cap low. Mouth set in a line that belonged to someone trying not to fall apart because falling apart required too much energy.
When the doors opened, the hallway was empty. His room was near the end, just as promised. Quiet. Away from the elevators. He tapped the key card. A green light blinked. The door opened. The room was cool and dark. He stepped inside and let the door close behind him.
For a moment, he did not turn on the light.
The curtains were open, and the city outside gave enough glow to shape the room: bed, desk, chair, television, a narrow entryway, the reflection of the bathroom mirror. He stood there with one hand on the suitcase handle and let the darkness receive him.
No one knew exactly where he was. His mother knew he was alive. His team knew he was not answering. Carlos knew nothing. The room held all those facts without judgment.
Finally, Jannik turned on a lamp. Warm light spilled across the bed. The first thing he did was take off his cap. The second was to sit on the floor.
Not the bed. Not the chair. The floor, with his back against the wall and his knees drawn up slightly, as if the trip had removed the last layer of performance from him and left only the animal need to be low, still, hidden.
His phone lay in his palm. He stared at it for a long time. Then he called his mother. She answered before the first ring had finished.
“Jannik?”
The sound of her voice almost undid him.
He closed his eyes. “Ciao, mamma.”
There was a silence, but not an empty one. A mother’s silence. Listening to breath, to distance, to everything a child had not said.
“Where are you?” Siglinde asked.
He leaned his head back against the wall. “Spain.”
“Spain?”
“Yes.”
Another silence.
“Which part of Spain, Jannik?”
“Murcia.”
“Murcia,” she repeated, very carefully.
He could hear movement on her end. Maybe she had stood. Maybe she was walking to another room. Maybe his father was there and she was lifting a hand to say wait, wait, let me listen first.
“You are in Murcia,” she said, “tonight.”
“Yes.”
“After Paris.”
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
She inhaled. He pressed his thumb into the phone case.
“I know,” he said before she could speak. “I know it sounds...”
“Stupid?”
He laughed weakly. “Yes.”
“Dangerous?”
“No. Not dangerous.”
“Not planned.”
“No.”
“Not something your team knows.”
He said nothing.
“Jannik.”
“I needed to leave.”
The words came out thin, but once they were in the room, he could breathe around them.
“I needed to leave,” he repeated. “I could not stay there. I could not sit in that hotel and wait for tomorrow and everyone asking me how I feel and what happened and what we do next. I could not do it. I know I should have told them. I know. But I could not.”
His mother said nothing for a moment.
Then, softer, “Are you safe?”
“Yes.”
“At a hotel?”
“Yes. Hotel Nelva.”
“You have eaten?”
A sad smile touched his mouth. “A woman on the plane gave me almonds.”
“Almonds are not dinner.”
“I know.”
“You are hurt?”
“No. Just tired.”
“How tired?”
He opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling. So tired the ceiling seemed too far away.
“Very,” he said.
His mother’s breath trembled. Only slightly. Other people might not have heard it. He did.
“Oh, amore.”
He looked down. The room blurred. He did not cry. Not exactly. But something in his face changed, tightened, almost broke. He pressed two fingers against his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“For losing?”
“No.”
“For leaving?”
“Yes.”
“Jannik.” Her voice became firm now, the voice that had survived raising sons and running through all the fears mothers were not allowed to show. “Listen to me. You do not have to be sorry for being tired.”
He breathed out.
“You do have to tell people when you disappear.”
“I know.”
“You do have to take care of your body.”
“I know.”
“You do have to eat more than airplane almonds.”
“I know.”
“But being tired?” she said. “No. For this, you are not sorry.”
He lowered his hand. For a while, neither of them spoke.
Then she asked, “Why Murcia?”
He stared at the carpet. There it was again. The question everyone would ask because the answer was obvious and not obvious at all.
“Carlos is here,” he said.
He could hear her understanding before she answered.
“Ah.”
It was not a surprise exactly. Siglinde had watched enough tennis, enough matches, enough ceremonies and glances across nets to know that rivalry was not only what people wrote in newspapers. It was an intimacy built in public, strange and sharp.
You learned another person through their patterns, their courage, their pressure points. You learned what their eyes looked like when they believed, and when they were afraid.
“You told him?” she asked.
“No.”
“Jannik.”
“I know.”
“You flew to the city where Carlos lives and did not tell Carlos.”
“When you say it like this, it sounds bad.”
“It sounds like you are my son.”
That made him laugh, and this time the laugh loosened something.
“I don’t know why,” he admitted. “I mean, I know why, but not...logically. I didn’t think, ‘I should go to Carlos.’ I just knew I could not go home yet. I could not stay in Paris. And then I thought of him.”
“Because he understands.”
“Yes.”
“Because he is your friend.”
Jannik hesitated.
“Yes.”
“And because he is not part of your team.”
The words landed more deeply than he expected.
He frowned slightly. “Maybe.”
“He does not need you to be ready for the next tournament.”
“No.”
“He does not need to fix your serve.”
“No.”
“He does not need to protect your ranking.”
“No.”
“He knows the pressure, but he is outside the room where everyone makes decisions about you.”
Jannik closed his eyes again. His mother had always had a way of reaching the center without walking around the edges.
“I don’t want to be discussed tonight,” he said.
“I know.”
“I don’t want to be managed.”
“I know.”
“I don’t even want to be understood professionally.”
“Then maybe Carlos is not strange.”
Jannik swallowed.
“Maybe not.”
“But you should tell him tomorrow,” she said. “Not tonight, if you cannot. Tomorrow.”
“Yes.”
“And you tell Darren and Simone now.”
He groaned softly. “Mamma.”
“No. You tell them. They are worried.”
“I know.”
“They care about you.”
“I know.”
“And they will forgive you faster if you call before they begin phoning hospitals.”
He opened his eyes. “They would not.”
“Your team? They would.”
He rubbed his forehead. “Okay.”
“Video call,” she said.
“Mamma.”
“I want to know they have seen your face.”
“You are very bossy.”
“Yes. I am your mother.”
The simplicity of it warmed him.
He stayed on the floor while she asked the questions she needed to ask. Had he checked in safely? Yes. Did anyone follow him? No. Had the hotel been discreet? Yes. Was he going to eat? Maybe. Was it maybe acceptable? No. Could he order soup? Yes. Did he promise? Yes.
Only when he promised did her voice soften again.
“Jannik?”
“Yes?”
“I am sorry for today.”
He stared at the lamp. The official reason: heat and fatigue. The real reason: everything.
“I am too,” he said.
“But it is one match.”
“It did not feel like one match.”
“I know.”
“It felt like my body quitting in public.”
“That is a hard feeling.”
“Yes.”
“But your body did not betray you,” she said. “It protected you the only way it could. You did not listen when it whispered, so it shouted.”
He had no answer.
“Sleep tonight,” she said. “Tomorrow, you decide what comes next. Not as number one. As Jannik.”
His throat tightened again.
“Okay.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
“Call me after you speak to them.”
“Maybe tomorrow.”
“Jannik.”
“I will send a message.”
“Good enough.”
They hung up reluctantly, as families often did after fear had passed but not disappeared. Jannik remained on the floor. The room seemed quieter after his mother’s voice left it. Not empty. Just quiet in a different language.
He looked at the phone. Darren had called again. Simone had sent three messages.
Darren: Pick up when you can.
Simone: We just need to know where you are.
Darren: Jannik, this is not about tennis. Answer.
He winced. Then he started a video call before he could lose courage. Simone answered first, his face appearing too close to the camera, eyes sharp with worry and lack of sleep.
“Jannik.”
“Hi.”
“Where are you?”
Then Darren joined. His face appeared in a second square, older, tired, jaw tight.
Jannik raised a hand weakly. “I am okay.”
Darren stared at him. “That was not the question.”
“I’m in Murcia.”
For one full second, neither of them spoke.
Simone blinked. “Sorry. What?”
“Murcia,” Jannik repeated.
Darren leaned back from the camera. “Spain, Murcia?”
“No, Darren. Italy, Murcia.”
“Don’t get smart with me right now.”
Jannik looked down. “Sorry.”
Simone was still staring. “You are in Murcia. Now.”
“Yes.”
“In a hotel?”
“Yes.”
“Which hotel?”
“Nelva.”
Darren closed his eyes. Simone said something in Italian too fast and too frustrated for Jannik to catch cleanly. Then he switched back.
“Why?”
Jannik sat on the bed now, because suddenly the floor felt childish under their gaze. He leaned forward, elbows on knees, phone propped against the lamp.
“I needed space.”
“You could have had space in Paris,” Simone said.
“No.”
“You could have had space at home.”
“No.”
“You could have told us.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Jannik’s mouth tightened. Because if I told you, you would make it reasonable. Because you would ask where, why, how long, what about recovery, what about press, what about plans. Because you care about me and that caring has schedules attached. Because I did not have enough energy to defend the only decision that felt like air.
“I couldn’t,” he said.
Darren opened his eyes. His voice was quieter now.
“You scared us.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“You walked out of a hotel in Paris after a brutal loss and stopped answering your phone.”
“I know.”
“We didn’t know if you were hurt, sick, followed, collapsed somewhere-”
“I know.” Jannik’s voice cracked slightly on the second word. He looked away from the screen. “I’m sorry.”
That stopped them. Simone’s expression changed first. Concern moved through the frustration, softening it at the edges. Darren’s jaw loosened. Jannik stared at the wall beside the bed.
“I am sorry,” he said again. “Really. I was not thinking clearly. I just...I did not need to be there. I needed one moment where nobody was looking at me like I was a problem to solve.”
Darren rubbed a hand over his face.
“Kid,” he said quietly.
“I know I am not a kid.”
“I know you’re not.”
“But you say kid when you’re worried.”
“Because I’m worried.”
Jannik nodded.
Simone leaned closer to the camera. “Are you injured?”
“No.”
“Cramps?”
“No.”
“Dizziness now?”
“No.”
“Fever?”
“No.”
“Have you eaten?”
Jannik hesitated.
Darren pointed at the screen. “That hesitation is an answer.”
“I will order something.”
“Now,” Simone said.
“After the call.”
“No. During the call.”
Jannik gave him a look. “Seriously?”
“Yes.”
Darren’s mouth twitched despite himself. “I’m with Simone on this one.”
Jannik sighed and reached for the room service menu on the desk. He flipped it open with one hand while holding the phone with the other.
“This is stupid,” he muttered.
“No,” Simone said. “Flying secretly to Murcia is stupid. Ordering dinner is normal.”
Darren said, “What are the options?”
Jannik scanned the menu. The words blurred slightly.
“Salad. Pasta. Fish. Soup. Sandwich.”
“Soup,” all three of them said at once.
Jannik blinked. “Three?”
Simone frowned. “Three?”
“My mom also said soup.”
Darren nodded. “Smart woman.”
Jannik called reception from the room phone while the video call remained open. The receptionist answered with the same careful politeness. He ordered vegetable soup, bread, and tea because the combined force of his mother, coach, and trainer made rebellion feel inefficient.
When he hung up, Simone looked satisfied.
“Good.”
“I am being supervised like a child.”
“You vanished like one,” Simone said.
Jannik accepted that because it was fair.
Darren leaned forward again. “Now. Murcia.”
Jannik looked at him.
“Why Murcia?” Darren asked.
Simone folded his arms. “Yes. This is the part I do not understand.”
Jannik ran a hand through his hair. Without the cap, it was messy and flat on one side. He suddenly felt too exposed.
“Carlos,” he said.
Again, silence. Not shocked silence this time. Something more complicated.
Darren’s eyebrows rose. “Carlos.”
“Yes.”
“Does Carlos know you’re there?”
“No.”
Simone’s face did something between disbelief and despair.
“Jannik.”
“I know.”
“You keep saying this.”
“Because I know.”
“You fly to Murcia because of Carlos Alcaraz and do not tell Carlos Alcaraz?”
Darren muttered, “That’s actually very Jannik.”
Jannik shot him a look. “Not helpful.”
“It’s accurate.”
Simone ignored Darren. “Why Carlos?”
Jannik leaned back against the headboard. He looked toward the window. The curtains were still open, showing a slice of Murcia at night: streetlights, dark palm shapes, the faint movement of cars below.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“That’s not an answer,” Simone replied.
“It is the only one I have.”
Darren watched him carefully. “Try.”
Jannik breathed in.
He had explained it to his mother, but this was different. With Siglinde, he could be incomplete and still understood. With Darren and Simone, words became part of a plan the moment they were spoken.
He knew that was unfair. They loved him too, in their way. But their love had always arrived with notebooks, physiotherapy tables, match analysis, nutrition plans, calendars. Useful love. Necessary love. Love with structure.
This thing had no structure.
“I think...” He stopped, started again. “I think because he knows this life, but he is not responsible for me.”
Darren’s face softened almost imperceptibly. Simone listened.
“He knows what it is like when everyone wants you to be special all the time,” Jannik continued. “He knows what it is like when winning becomes...normal for other people. Like, if you win, okay, good, expected. If you lose, disaster. He knows how loud it gets.”
“Many players know,” Simone said, but gently now.
“Not like him.”
Darren did not argue.
Jannik looked down at his hands. “And he knows me when I am not only this.”
“This?” Darren asked.
“The ranking. The results. The machine people talk about.” His mouth twisted. “The unstoppable tennis.”
Simone looked away.
“I know it sounds strange,” Jannik said. “He is my rival. Maybe the biggest. Maybe I should want to be away from all tennis people. But Carlos...” He paused, searching for something true enough. “Carlos does not make tennis feel like work. Even when we play, even when it is hard. He makes it feel alive.”
There. That was closer. Neither Darren nor Simone spoke immediately.
Jannik felt embarrassment crawl up his neck. “Forget it.”
“No,” Darren said. “Don’t do that.”
“I sound dramatic.”
“You sound exhausted.”
“That too.”
“You also sound honest.”
Jannik looked at him through the screen.
Darren leaned back in his chair. He seemed to be in his hotel room in Paris; behind him, a suitcase lay open, and a lamp cast yellow light across a wall. Simone was somewhere else, maybe his own room, maybe the physio setup, with folded towels visible behind him.
For the first time, Jannik understood that they too were stranded by his choice. Left in Paris with his racket bag and the clay stain and the unanswered questions. Guilt moved through him.
“I should have told you,” he said.
“Yes,” Darren said.
“I am sorry.”
“I know.”
Simone sighed. “I understand needing space. I do. After this stretch, after these months...maybe we all should have made you stop.”
Jannik shook his head. “I wanted to play.”
“Yes,” Simone said. “You always want to play when winning.”
“I thought I could keep going.”
“We know.”
“I thought if I stopped, everything would stop.”
Darren’s eyes sharpened. “What does that mean?”
Jannik wished immediately that he had not said it. But the call was quiet now. Patient. He rubbed his thumb along the edge of the phone case.
“When you are winning, everyone believes in something. You also start to believe that if you keep going, you don’t have to feel the tiredness. You don’t have to ask questions. You just play the next match, and if you win, then it was right to continue. And then you win again, so you continue again. It becomes...” He searched. “Proof.”
“Proof of what?”
“That you are okay.”
The words came out almost too softly to hear. Darren’s face changed. Simone said nothing. Jannik wished he could take the sentence back, but it had already crossed the screen and entered their rooms.
“That,” Darren said after a while, “is exactly why you need rest.”
“I know.”
“No, not just body rest. Real rest.”
Jannik gave a small, humorless smile. “In Murcia.”
Darren exhaled. “Apparently in Murcia.”
Simone shook his head, but his eyes were kinder now.
“How long?”
“I booked three nights.”
“Three nights,” Darren repeated.
“Yes.”
“And Carlos still doesn’t know.”
“No.”
“When are you going to tell him?”
“Tomorrow.”
“You sure?”
“No.”
“At least you’re honest.”
A knock came at the door. Jannik froze. Simone immediately leaned toward the camera.
“Who is that?”
“Room service.”
“Check.”
Jannik picked up the phone and carried it with him to the door. He looked through the peephole. A young hotel employee stood outside with a tray, looking bored in the professional way of people delivering soup at midnight.
“It’s food,” Jannik said.
“Open,” Simone commanded.
Jannik opened the door.
The young man smiled. “Room service, señor.”
“Thank you.”
The tray entered with a quiet clatter: a bowl of soup covered by a silver lid, bread in a basket, tea, a small bottle of water, napkin folded into unnecessary elegance. The employee placed it on the desk and handed Jannik the receipt.
“Anything else?”
“No, thank you.”
The young man glanced up at him. Recognition flickered. Jannik saw it happen and felt too tired to defend himself from it.
But the young man only said, “Que descanse.”
Rest well.
Jannik nodded. “Gracias.”
He closed the door. When he returned to the bed, Darren was smiling faintly.
“What?” Jannik asked.
“Nothing.”
“You look amused.”
“Everyone in Spain is telling you to rest. Maybe listen.”
Jannik took the lid off the soup. Steam rose into his face, carrying the smell of vegetables, olive oil, and salt. His stomach tightened, then he remembered it was hungry. He sat at the desk and ate while they watched.
“This is strange,” he said after the first spoonful.
“Good,” Simone said.
“I mean you watching me eat.”
“You lost the right to privacy when you fled the country.”
“I did not flee the country. I flew to another country.”
Darren laughed. “That’s the definition, mate.”
Jannik ate more soup.
Warmth entered him slowly. Not dramatically. Not enough to fix anything. But enough for his hands to stop feeling hollow. He tore bread with his fingers and dipped it in the bowl. For a few minutes, the only sounds were the spoon against the ceramic, Simone typing something off-screen, Darren breathing, the distant murmur of hotel pipes.
When half the soup was gone, Darren spoke again.
“Okay. Practical things.”
Jannik groaned.
“Only a few,” Darren said. “We need to know you’re safe. We know. Good. We need to handle the press. We will keep the official statement. Heat and fatigue. No details.”
Jannik nodded.
“We need your racket bag.”
“It’s in the room.”
“I know. I have it.”
Jannik looked up sharply. “You have it?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
“Did you think we’d leave it there as a crime scene?”
Jannik looked into the soup. “I forgot.”
That one word sobered them.
Simone’s voice softened. “You forgot your rackets?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
No lecture. That was almost worse.
Darren continued carefully. “We won’t say where you are. If anyone asks, you are taking private recovery time.”
“Thank you.”
“But you message us twice a day. Morning and evening. Just enough so we know you’re alive.”
Jannik nodded. “Okay.”
“And you see a doctor if anything feels off.”
“Yes.”
“And you tell Carlos.”
Jannik looked away. Darren waited.
“I will,” Jannik said.
“Tomorrow.”
“Yes.”
Simone folded his arms again. “And if Carlos calls us because you appear at his door like a ghost?”
Jannik’s mouth twitched. “Then you can say you knew.”
“Very generous.”
“I try.”
Darren leaned closer. “Listen to me. I don’t understand why Carlos either. Not fully. But I don’t need to understand everything tonight.”
Jannik looked at him.
“If being there helps you breathe, breathe. If seeing him helps, see him. I care about whether you are safe, whether you rest, and whether you come back to yourself. The rest we can figure out.”
Something in Jannik’s chest tightened again, but differently this time.
“Thank you,” he said quietly.
Simone sighed. “I agree.”
“You do?”
“I don’t like it,” Simone said. “But I agree.”
“That means a lot.”
“I still think you are crazy.”
“I know.”
“And you are eating the whole soup.”
“I know.”
“And tomorrow you stretch.”
Jannik closed his eyes. “Simone.”
“Gentle stretch.”
“Okay.”
“No running.”
“I am not planning to run.”
“No tennis.”
“I don’t even have rackets.”
Darren lifted a finger. “For once, your bad planning supports recovery.”
Jannik laughed. It surprised all three of them.
The laugh was brief, but it changed the room. It made the hotel less anonymous, the call less like a crisis meeting and more like three people who cared about one another trying to stand around something broken without stepping on the pieces.
Simone smiled a little. “There he is.”
Jannik looked down, embarrassed.
Darren’s expression softened. “Finish eating. Then sleep. Message your mom. Message us when you wake.”
“Yes.”
“And Jannik?”
He looked at Darren through the screen.
“No more disappearing.”
Jannik nodded. “No more disappearing.”
They ended the call after a few more practical details, a few repeated warnings, and one final order from Simone to drink water. When the screen went dark, the room expanded around Jannik again.
He finished the soup because he had promised too many people not to. He drank the tea, though it had gone lukewarm. He sent his mother a message.
I spoke to them. I ate soup. I’m safe. Going to sleep.
Her reply came almost immediately.
Mamma: Good. Sleep as my son, not as a tennis player. Ti voglio bene.
The sentence felt like a blanket laid carefully over something cold. He typed back:
Ti voglio bene anch’io.
Then he opened Carlos’s contact again. The screen showed the same name.
Carlos Alcaraz.
A small photo from some tournament appeared beside it, Carlos smiling too brightly, eyes squinting, hair messy, the kind of photo Jannik had never changed because it annoyed him and comforted him in equal measure.
His thumb hovered. It would be easy now. One message. I’m in Murcia. Three words. A grenade.
He imagined Carlos wherever he was: maybe in bed, maybe in the kitchen, maybe with family, maybe restless for reasons of his own. The phone lighting up. His eyes widening. The immediate call. The confused laugh. The worry. Jannik locked the phone. Tomorrow.
Not because he was afraid. Because tonight, the knowledge belonged only to him.
He stood and moved around the room slowly, preparing for sleep with the heavy concentration of someone relearning ordinary tasks. Shoes off. Hoodie over chair. T-shirt changed. Face washed. Teeth brushed. Water placed beside the bed. Curtains drawn halfway, not fully, because he wanted the city to remain visible in a narrow line.
Murcia glowed outside.
Not dramatically. No skyline pretending to be immortal. Just streetlights, apartment windows, the occasional car moving through the warm dark. Somewhere out there, people were finishing dinner late, walking dogs, closing bars, arguing on balconies, sleeping with fans on. Somewhere out there, Carlos existed without yet knowing Jannik had entered his city like a secret.
Jannik sat on the edge of the bed.
The mattress was firm. The sheets smelled of laundry and nothing else. In Paris, the hotel bed had felt like a place where he was expected to recover efficiently. This bed felt like a place where he could disappear for eight hours and perhaps wake up less carved out.
He lay down. His body accepted the mattress with a long, silent collapse. For several minutes, he did not turn off the lamp. He watched the ceiling instead. Thoughts moved through him, but slower now.
Paris. The match. Cerúndolo’s face at the net, apologetic and victorious, both of them sweaty and stunned for different reasons. The press room he had barely survived. Darren’s warning not to make decisions. His own suitcase rolling through Orly. The taxi driver saying, maybe good stupid. The hotel manager recognizing him and choosing not to make a scene. His mother saying he did not have to be sorry for being tired. Simone and Darren staring at him through the phone, shocked first, angry second, afraid underneath both.
Carlos. Always, at the end, Carlos. Jannik turned onto his side. He tried to understand it again, now that he was no longer moving.
Why Carlos? Because Carlos knew the pressure. Yes. Because Carlos was his friend. Yes. Because Carlos did not need him to be useful. Yes.
Because Carlos had seen him across nets in the moments when Jannik was most himself: focused, stubborn, alive, angry, brave. Because rivalry stripped away politeness. Because there were things an opponent knew that even a coach did not. The exact shape of your courage. The point where your patience broke. The difference between your silence when you were calm and your silence when you were drowning.
Carlos knew his silences. Maybe that was why. Or maybe the truth was simpler and less explainable. He just needed him. Right now, in a way that had arrived before language.
Jannik turned off the lamp. The room went dark except for the thin line of Murcia at the curtains.
In the dark, he could almost pretend the world had narrowed to one hotel room, one city, one night. No ranking. No trophies lined up behind him like expectations made of metal. No headlines. No analysis. No questions about the streak, the loss, the heat, the fatigue, the future.
Here, he was not the man who had won Indian Wells, Miami, Monaco, Madrid, and Rome. He was not the player who had arrived in Paris with the weight of inevitability and left with clay on his shoes and no rackets on his shoulder. He was not Jannik Sinner, number one.
Not tonight. In Murcia, behind a hotel door no one would knock on until morning, he was just Jannik. A tired young man in a strange room. A son who had called his mother. A friend who had not yet found the courage to send three words. A body asking, finally, to be heard.
His breathing slowed. Outside, a car passed, its sound rising and fading like a small wave. Jannik closed his eyes. And for the first time since Paris, he let himself stop.
── ⋆⋅𖤓⋅⋆ ──
Morning arrived without asking permission.
At first it was only a pale line at the edge of the curtains, thin and gold, cutting through the darkness of the hotel room. Then it widened slowly, spreading across the floor, touching the leg of the chair, the suitcase near the wall, the glass of water on the bedside table. Murcia woke quietly beyond the window, not with the hard impatience of Paris, but with a dry brightness that seemed to enter the room before the city made any sound at all.
Jannik woke before his alarm. For a few seconds, he did not know where he was.
The ceiling was unfamiliar. The pillow smelled wrong. The light came from the wrong angle. His body, always quicker than his mind after travel, gave him the answer first: hotel bed, Spain, sore legs, heavy shoulders, no racket bag.
Then memory returned. Paris. The loss. The flight. The taxi. His mother’s voice. Darren and Simone on the screen, shocked and worried. Murcia. Carlos. Jannik lay still.
He did not move immediately because moving would begin the day, and the day had questions waiting inside it. Instead, he listened. The soft hum of air-conditioning. A distant door closing somewhere down the hallway. A vehicle passing outside, low and brief. His own breath.
He was not rested. Not truly.
One night could not repair three months of relentless tennis. One bowl of soup could not refill what five tournaments and one collapse in Paris had emptied. His body still felt as if someone had filled his muscles with wet sand. His eyes burned a little. His right wrist had a dull stiffness that made him flex his fingers slowly under the sheet.
But he had slept. That alone felt like something.
Not the kind of sleep stolen between matches, measured by recovery apps and discussed by people who watched his numbers. Not sleep as a performance tool. Not sleep because tomorrow he had to practice at ten.
Just sleep. He turned onto his back and stared at the ceiling. His phone was beside him, face down. He did not touch it.
For several minutes, he let himself exist in the small, impossible luxury of not knowing what the world wanted from him. Maybe there were messages. There were definitely messages. From his team. From his mother. From his brother. Maybe from Carlos. Maybe not. Maybe the news had moved on. Maybe Roland Garros had found another story by now, another body under the sun, another player dizzy beneath the heat.
Maybe, for one morning, he could be no one. The thought was so tempting that he smiled faintly at the ceiling.
“No one,” he whispered.
His voice sounded rough from sleep. He reached for the phone at last, mostly because he had promised. There were messages. Of course. His mother had written first.
Mamma: Buongiorno, amore. How did you sleep?
Darren had written an hour earlier.
Darren: Morning check-in when you wake. No rush, but don’t forget.
Simone: Gentle stretch. Water. Food. No heroic nonsense.
Mark: Still alive in Spain or abducted by tapas?
Jannik breathed out a quiet laugh. Nothing from Carlos. The absence made his stomach twist, which was stupid because Carlos did not know he was in Murcia. A person could not fail to call if they had not been told there was anything to call about. Still.
He answered his mother first.
I slept. Still tired but okay. I’ll eat breakfast.
Then Darren.
Alive. Going to shower, stretch, eat.
Then Simone.
Water, stretch, food. No heroic nonsense.
His brother received:
Tapas later maybe. Alive.
He looked at Carlos’s contact. For a long moment. The little photo smiled back at him, bright and careless and impossible. Jannik locked the phone. Not yet.
The room felt different in daylight. Less like shelter, more like a decision that had already happened. He got out of bed slowly. His feet met the cool floor. His calves tightened immediately, both of them complaining with the precise bitterness of overused muscles.
“Okay,” he muttered. “I know.”
He stood.
The first steps toward the bathroom were ugly. Not painful enough to worry anyone, if anyone had been there to worry, but stiff enough that he was grateful no camera could see him. He had spent years training his body to appear elastic, composed, ready. There was something almost embarrassing about this private version of himself: hair flattened on one side, T-shirt twisted from sleep, walking like an old man toward the shower.
The bathroom light made him squint.
In the mirror, he looked less destroyed than the night before. That irritated him for reasons he could not explain. The outside always recovered before the inside. His face had already begun to return to its normal calm, the neutral expression people mistook for strength. Only his eyes told the truth, and even they could be managed with a cap and distance.
He turned on the shower.
At first he let it run hot, steam fogging the mirror and warming the tiles. Then he stepped in and stood under the water without washing, head bowed, hands braced against the wall. The water struck the back of his neck, his shoulders, the tight muscles along his spine. He closed his eyes. For a few minutes, he tried not to think. The attempt failed, but less violently than usual. Thoughts came, touched him, passed.
Paris was still there, but softer around the edges. The match still existed, but the points no longer arrived in perfect order. He remembered the heat most clearly now: not heat as temperature, but heat as pressure. Heat rising from the clay. Heat trapped in his shoes. Heat collecting under his cap, behind his eyes, inside his chest. The strange moment in the second set when he had looked across the net and realized the court seemed too large.
Cerúndolo had played well. That mattered. It would matter more later, when Jannik had enough energy to be fair. For now, there was only the fact that his body had stopped answering him.
He washed slowly. Hair, face, arms. Clay still seemed to appear from nowhere, a faint reddish residue under one fingernail, on the edge of his ankle. Paris leaving him by degrees. When he got out, the mirror was completely fogged. He wiped a circle with his palm. His own face appeared through the blur.
“Today,” he said softly, “you don’t play.”
The reflection did not argue.
He dressed in the least noticeable clothes he had: a plain T-shirt, a light jacket, dark shorts, cap. No bright colors. No logos big enough to announce anything. Sunglasses in his pocket, though the idea of wearing them too early felt more suspicious than not.
Then he stretched. Simone had said gently, which meant Simone would somehow know if he lied.
Jannik laid a towel on the floor and moved carefully through the routine. Neck. Shoulders. Lower back. Hips. Calves. Hamstrings. Nothing aggressive. Nothing designed to prove anything. He listened to the body the way he should have listened weeks earlier.
His left hamstring tightened but released. His back cracked softly. His right ankle felt tender, not injured, just tired of changing direction at impossible speeds. He breathed through the discomfort.
The room was quiet except for the air-conditioning and the faint city sounds rising beyond the window. He counted his breaths, not reps. That helped. Numbers too easily became sport. Breath belonged to life.
When he finished, he sat cross-legged on the floor for a moment, palms resting on his knees. He was hungry. The realization was surprising enough that he almost smiled.
Not tournament hungry, not the scheduled kind where food arrived because calories were required. Actually hungry. Human hungry. Bread-and-coffee hungry. Something-warm-from-an-oven hungry.
He stood and checked the mirror again. He looked like himself. That was the problem. He pulled the cap lower. At the door, he hesitated.
The hotel room had become safe in twelve hours. Leaving it felt like stepping back into visibility. But the idea of spending the whole morning inside, watching walls, waiting for courage to text Carlos, made his skin tighten.
He needed air. He picked up his phone, wallet, key card and left.
The corridor smelled faintly of cleaning products and coffee from somewhere far away. A housekeeping cart stood near the elevators, stacked with white towels. A woman in uniform looked up as he passed.
“Buenos días.”
“Buenos días,” he replied.
No recognition. Or excellent acting. Either was fine.
The elevator took him down with a soft mechanical sigh. In the lobby, morning had changed everything. The bar area was bright now, occupied by guests with suitcases, businesspeople with laptops, a couple studying a map, an older man reading a newspaper with religious concentration. The receptionist was different from the night before, a young man this time, speaking into a phone. The manager was nowhere visible.
Good. Jannik crossed the lobby without slowing. Outside, Murcia met him warm and clear.
The sun had already risen high enough to paint the street in hard, clean light. It was not yet oppressive, not like Paris had been, but the promise of heat was there, waiting in the pavement. Cars moved steadily along the avenue. A bus hissed to a stop. Somewhere nearby, someone rolled up the metal shutter of a shop, the sound rattling through the morning.
Jannik stood beneath the hotel entrance for a moment and inhaled. The air smelled of dust, traffic, coffee, and something sweet from a bakery he could not yet see. He followed the sweetness.
Walking felt strange at first because he had no destination approved by anyone. No physio room. No practice court. No tournament car. No badge around his neck. He walked because he wanted to walk, and that simple fact made the morning feel almost illegal.
He moved away from the hotel, toward streets that grew narrower and more textured as he approached the center. Murcia unfolded in layers: apartment balconies with laundry hanging in the sun, small cafés already busy with voices, scooters parked at angles, orange trees planted along sidewalks, shop windows reflecting pieces of sky. People passed him without pausing. A woman in a green dress spoke rapidly into her phone. A man carried crates of fruit into a store. Two teenagers laughed over something on one of their screens.
No one stopped. No one whispered. No one said his name. Jannik kept walking. At a corner, he found the bakery.
It was small, with a glass door propped open and a striped awning casting shade across two little tables outside. The window displayed pastries dusted with sugar, round loaves, braided bread, croissants, small cakes shining with glaze. Inside, warm air carried the smell of butter, yeast, coffee, toasted sugar.
His stomach answered immediately. He stepped in. A bell above the door chimed.
The woman behind the counter looked up. She was perhaps in her sixties, with gray hair pinned back and hands dusted lightly with flour. Her face had the calm authority of someone who had been awake since before sunrise and respected no one who complained about mornings.
“Buenos días,” she said.
“Buenos días.”
She waited. Jannik looked at the pastries as if they were written in a language he had studied but forgotten.
The woman smiled slightly. “Café?”
“Yes. Please. Un café.”
“Solo? Con leche?”
“Con leche.”
“Grande?”
He hesitated. She decided for him.
“Grande.”
“Okay.”
“And to eat?”
He pointed at something golden and folded.
“What is that?”
“Pastel de cabello de ángel.”
He did not know exactly what that meant, but it looked like comfort.
“One, please.”
She placed it on a small plate with a napkin and began making the coffee. Jannik stepped aside, pretending to study the shelves while really studying the feeling of being treated like a customer and nothing more.
A man at the counter drank espresso and read headlines on his phone. An elderly woman counted coins carefully from a purse. A construction worker in dusty boots bought two long loaves and joked with the baker. Spanish moved around Jannik quickly, warmly, too full of local rhythm for him to catch every word. He liked that. Not understanding everything gave him cover.
The baker placed the coffee and pastry on the counter.
“Here.”
“Gracias.”
He paid in cash. Another small pleasure: no team member handling it, no tournament account, no room charge tied to his name.
“Sit,” the baker said, nodding toward the little tables. “You look tired.”
Jannik blinked. It was said without drama. Without recognition. A fact, like the weather.
“I am a little tired,” he admitted.
“A little?” Her eyebrows rose. “Men always lie badly.”
The construction worker laughed into his coffee.
Jannik smiled, caught. “Okay. Very tired.”
“Better.” She pushed an extra small glass of water toward him. “Drink.”
He looked at it. Simone would have loved her.
“Thank you,” he said.
He took the plate and coffee to the table nearest the wall, half-hidden by a tall plant. From there, he could see the street through the open door. Morning light spilled across the floor. The espresso machine hissed. Cups clicked. Someone outside called a greeting to someone inside.
Jannik took a bite of the pastry. It was sweet, flaky, soft in the center. He closed his eyes for half a second.
Food had become technical for him over the years. Protein, recovery, timing, digestion, weight, energy. This was not technical. It was sugar and pastry and warmth, and his body accepted it with something like gratitude.
He drank the coffee slowly. His phone buzzed. He looked.
Simone: Did you stretch?
Jannik took a photo of the pastry and coffee, then sent it.
Stretch done. Eating.
Simone replied almost instantly.
Simone: That is not enough protein.
Jannik smiled. Then another message arrived from Darren.
Darren: Good. Take it easy today. No media. No statements. No sudden flights.
Jannik typed:
No sudden flights.
He paused, then added:
I’m walking a little.
Darren: Good. Don’t get recognized.
Jannik looked around the bakery. No one was looking at him. He wrote:
Trying.
Then, because guilt pricked him, he opened Carlos’s contact again. Still nothing from him. Of course. Jannik set the phone face down. Not yet.
He wanted to keep the morning untouched a little longer. It was selfish, perhaps. Childish, perhaps. Carlos deserved to know if Jannik had come all this way because of him. Or maybe he did not deserve the burden of that explanation without warning. Maybe the silence protected Carlos too.
That was a weak argument. Jannik knew it. He ate the last piece of pastry anyway. When he stood to leave, the baker looked him over from behind the counter.
“Better?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Not fixed.”
“No.”
“But better.”
“A little.”
She nodded as if satisfied with this measurable progress. “Come tomorrow. Eat more.”
Jannik smiled. “Maybe.”
“Not maybe. You are too thin.”
The construction worker laughed again. Jannik shook his head, still smiling, and left the bakery with the taste of sugar on his tongue. Outside, the day had grown brighter. He walked without checking a map. That was the point.
Murcia’s streets drew him in with their warmth and irregularity. He turned where shade looked inviting, crossed where the traffic allowed, paused at windows displaying shoes, ceramics, fruit, books. The city had a lived-in intimacy that made him feel both foreign and welcome. Balconies leaned over narrow streets. Church bells sounded somewhere in the distance. Delivery vans squeezed through spaces that looked too small for them. People moved with purpose but not panic.
He kept his pace slow.
At first, slowness felt like failure. His body was trained to move efficiently, always with a purpose. Even recovery walks had targets. Steps, time, heart rate. This walk had none, and he had to remind himself more than once that wandering was not laziness.
It was the reason he had come. Freedom, he discovered, was uncomfortable when one was out of practice.
He passed a small plaza where children chased pigeons and a father held two coffees while trying to prevent a stroller from rolling away. He passed a flower shop with buckets of yellow and white blooms spilling onto the pavement. He passed an old man sitting on a bench, face tilted to the sun, eyes closed like someone receiving news from another world.
No one bothered Jannik.
Once, a young man glanced at him a little too long. Recognition flickered, maybe. Or maybe Jannik had imagined it because famous people became paranoid in public, confusing every second glance with discovery.
He turned down another street. The buildings opened suddenly, and the city gave him Plaza del Cardenal Belluga. Jannik stopped. The square was alive.
Not crowded enough to feel suffocating, but full of motion: tourists lifting phones, waiters carrying trays across terraces, couples walking slowly, a child pointing upward at the cathedral façade. The morning sun lit the stone in warm tones, drawing shadows into every carved detail. The Cathedral of Murcia rose on one side with a kind of ornate patience, its façade layered and intricate, as if generations had kept adding devotion until the building became almost too rich for the eye to hold. Nearby, the Bishop’s Palace stood in softer colors, elegant and composed, its lines balancing the cathedral’s drama.
The plaza itself seemed to breathe between them.
Tables spread under umbrellas. Glasses flashed. Conversations overlapped in Spanish, English, German, Italian. Coffee cups, maps, sunglasses, menus, the scrape of chairs on stone. A waiter laughed at something an older woman said. Bells began to ring from above, and the sound rolled across the square like bronze light.
Jannik stood at the edge with his hands in his pockets. For the first time in days, he felt very small. Not diminished. Small in a good way.
The square did not care that he had lost. The cathedral had watched centuries pass; it could survive one tennis score. The palace, the stone, the bells, the terraces full of people eating breakfast and arguing gently about directions, all of it existed on a scale that made rankings seem ridiculous. Number one was a phrase that mattered only inside certain rooms, on certain websites, during certain matches. Here, pigeons landed near his shoes with total indifference.
He walked into the plaza slowly.
A waiter approached from a terrace. “Mesa?”
Jannik shook his head. “No, gracias.”
He wanted to keep moving.
He circled the square, looking up more than ahead. Sun warmed the back of his neck. His legs loosened with each step, though fatigue remained underneath, waiting. He took a photo of the cathedral, then immediately felt foolish because he was not someone who took tourist photos. Then he thought, why not? Today he was. Today he could be.
He sent the photo to his mother.
Beautiful, no?
She answered a minute later.
Mamma: Very beautiful. Are you wearing sunscreen?
He laughed aloud softly, earning a curious glance from a woman at a nearby table. He replied:
Yes.
Then, after a pause, he actually bought sunscreen from a pharmacy off the square, because lying to his mother about sunscreen felt more dangerous than any public sighting. He sat for a while on a shaded stone edge near the plaza, watching people cross the open space.
A group of schoolchildren moved past in pairs, their teacher counting them with exhausted precision. Two elderly men argued over a newspaper. A woman posed for a photo and then immediately checked whether she liked it. A cyclist rolled carefully through the edge of the square, one hand raised in apology to pedestrians.
Normal lives. Jannik absorbed them greedily. He tried to imagine texting Carlos from here. He took out his phone and opened the chat. Carlos’s last message remained there from the night before.
I know this face. He could hear Carlos saying it. Not teasing. Not dramatic. Soft, maybe, with that directness he had when the laughter fell away. Jannik began typing. He stopped. Deleted it. Locked the phone. Not yet.
He wanted to feel free for a little bit more. That was the truth.
Once he texted Carlos, the day would change shape. Even if Carlos reacted well, even if he laughed and came running and hugged him too hard, Jannik would no longer belong to himself alone. His secret would become shared. His escape would become a story with another person inside it.
He was not ready. He stood and kept walking.
The heat increased near midday. Not Paris heat, not the violent trapped heat of a stadium, but a dry, steady warmth that gathered on his arms and made the city shimmer slightly at the edges. He bought a bottle of water and drank half while standing in the shade of a narrow street. Simone would have approved, though he would have complained about electrolytes.
Jannik wandered through more of the center, drifting in and out of shaded streets, letting the rhythm of Murcia replace the rhythm of tennis. He looked at shop signs, at tiles, at balconies. He watched a man repair a bicycle chain with intense concentration. He paused outside a bookstore and considered going in, but the thought of being trapped between shelves if someone recognized him made him move on.
Around one, hunger returned. This time it came with a harder edge. The pastry was gone from his system. His body wanted real food.
He found a restaurant on a side street not too far from the center, with a shaded terrace and an interior that looked cool through the glass. It was not empty, but not crowded. Perfect, he thought. A place where people cared about lunch more than tennis.
That assumption would, very soon, prove optimistic. A waiter greeted him near the entrance.
“¿Una mesa?”
“For one,” Jannik said in English before correcting himself. “Para uno.”
The waiter smiled. “Claro. Inside or terrace?”
Jannik glanced at the terrace. Too visible.
“Inside, please.”
The waiter led him to a table near the back, partly shielded by a wooden divider and a large plant. Jannik sat with his back to the wall, an old instinct. From there, he could see the entrance but it was not immediately visible from there.
Good.
The restaurant was cool, with tiled floors and white walls decorated with framed black-and-white photographs of Murcia. The smell of grilled fish, garlic, olive oil, and fresh bread moved through the air. Conversations rose and fell around him. Cutlery chimed against plates. A television above the bar played silently, subtitles moving beneath footage from Roland Garros.
Jannik noticed it and almost stood up again. Then he saw it was a women’s match highlight, not him. He stayed. The waiter brought water and a menu. Jannik chose simply: gazpacho, grilled chicken, salad, bread. Simone would still complain about something, but less.
He texted Simone before the food arrived.
Lunch: gazpacho, chicken, salad.
Simone: Good. Protein. Water. Any Carlos news?
Jannik stared at the message. He typed:
Not yet.
Simone: Jannik.
Jannik put the phone away.
The gazpacho arrived cold and bright, tasting of tomato, pepper, vinegar, and summer. He ate slowly. The restaurant’s coolness settled around him. For twenty minutes, everything was almost peaceful. He could hear people talking about ordinary things: someone’s cousin, a late delivery, a child’s school, weekend plans. The television flickered without sound. The waiter refilled his water without comment.
Then the door opened. At first, Jannik did not look up. People entered restaurants all the time. But a voice reached him. A young male voice, Spanish, familiar in a way that did not make sense until his body reacted before his mind did.
He looked toward the entrance. Álvaro Alcaraz stood near the host stand, one hand on the door, laughing at something the woman beside him had said. Jannik went completely still.
The restaurant did not change. No dramatic music. No sudden silence. Plates continued to move. A waiter crossed the room. The television showed a slow-motion replay of a serve. But inside Jannik, every alarm went off at once.
Álvaro. Carlos’s brother.
With his girlfriend, or at least someone who looked like she was with him in that relaxed, intimate way: sunglasses pushed into her hair, hand briefly touching his arm, smile easy. They were talking to the waiter now. Álvaro was still smiling, unaware, casual, at home.
Of course, he would be here. This was Murcia. Jannik had flown into Carlos’s world and then acted surprised to find Carlos’s life inside it.
He lowered his head immediately, cap brim hiding his face. His pulse jumped. Not match pulse. Worse. This was ridiculous, humiliating panic. He could face break points in Grand Slam finals. He could not face Carlos’s brother seeing him eat chicken in secret.
The waiter gestured toward the dining room. Please not here, Jannik thought.
The universe, briefly merciful, led Álvaro and the woman toward a table on the other side of the room, closer to the window. But to get there, they would pass within sight of Jannik’s section unless the wooden divider hid him enough.
Jannik picked up the menu and lifted it slightly. Absurd. He was hiding behind a menu. If Darren could see him now, he would never let him forget it. Álvaro’s voice came closer.
“...no, Carlos said he was going to train later, but I don’t know, maybe too hot...”
Carlos. The name struck like a ball off the frame. Jannik kept his eyes on the menu without reading a word.
Álvaro laughed again. The woman answered softly. Their steps passed. For one second, through a gap between the plant leaves, Jannik saw Álvaro’s profile: familiar mouth, familiar expression, enough resemblance to Carlos that Jannik’s stomach twisted.
Then they moved on. They sat. Jannik exhaled silently. His chicken arrived at that exact moment.
The waiter placed it down with a smile. “Buen provecho.”
“Gracias,” Jannik whispered.
He looked at the plate. There was no way he could eat now. His body had gone from hungry to hunted in three seconds.
He took one bite because the waiter was still nearby and because leaving immediately would draw attention. The chicken tasted like nothing. He drank water. His eyes kept flicking toward Álvaro’s table.
Álvaro had his back partly turned. Good. The woman faced more toward Jannik but was looking down at her phone. Good. The waiter approached their table with menus. Good. Jannik reached slowly for his wallet.
He needed to leave before Álvaro saw him. Not because Álvaro would do anything terrible. That was the absurd part. Álvaro would probably blink, smile, say, “Jannik? What are you doing here?” Maybe laugh. Maybe immediately text Carlos. Maybe call him over. Maybe not.
But any version ended the same way: the secret exploded before Jannik chose to give it away. He could not have Carlos find out from his brother. He could not. Jannik signaled discreetly to his waiter.
The waiter came over. “Everything okay?”
“Yes.” Jannik’s voice was too tight. He cleared his throat. “Can I pay, please?”
The waiter glanced at the almost untouched plate. “Was it not good?”
“No, it is good. I just...” Jannik searched for a lie and found a weak one. “I have a call.”
The waiter nodded with the polite disbelief of hospitality workers everywhere.
“Of course.”
He brought the bill. While he was gone, Jannik risked another glance. Álvaro was looking at the television now. The silent television above the bar. Jannik followed his gaze. Roland Garros footage.
Novak Djokovic walking into an interview area, towel around his neck, face serious. The subtitles were Spanish, but the sound was off. Beneath it, a ticker mentioned temperatures in Paris. Álvaro said something to the woman and gestured at the screen. She looked up too.
Jannik’s skin went cold despite the warm restaurant. The waiter returned with the card machine. Jannik paid too quickly.
“Thank you,” he said, standing.
The waiter glanced at the full plate again. “Do you want it to take away?”
“No, thank you.”
He felt bad immediately, but there was no time. He put on his sunglasses inside, which was stupid, then took them off because it was even more stupid. He kept his cap low and angled his body toward the exit. To leave, he had to cross part of the dining room. Not directly past Álvaro, but close enough.
He waited until a waiter carrying plates moved between them, then walked behind him like an exhausted spy in a very badly written film. Three steps. Five. Álvaro laughed at something. Jannik’s shoulders tightened. Seven steps.
The woman looked up. Jannik turned his face slightly toward the wall. Nine. The door was there. He reached it.
“Señor?”
He froze. It was his waiter. Jannik turned just enough. The waiter held up his phone. For one terrible second, Jannik thought he had been recognized and asked for a photo.
“You forgot this,” the waiter said.
Jannik looked at his own phone in the waiter’s hand. His heart stopped, then slammed back into motion.
“Thank you,” he said, taking it.
Too loud? Too soft? He had no idea. From across the room, Álvaro’s head moved slightly. Jannik did not wait to see if he looked. He stepped outside. The heat hit him like a hand.
He walked fast at first, then forced himself to slow down because fast walking drew attention. His pulse was ridiculous. His phone was slippery in his palm. He turned down the first side street, then another, then stopped in the shade beside a closed shop and leaned one shoulder against the wall.
For a moment, he almost laughed. Almost.
The whole thing was absurd. Completely absurd. He had escaped a restaurant because his rival’s brother had entered with his girlfriend. He had abandoned grilled chicken like evidence. He had used a waiter as cover. He had nearly lost his phone, which would have been the stupidest possible ending to the stupidest possible lunch.
He covered his face with one hand.
“Idiot,” he whispered.
The word had no real anger in it. Only disbelief. His phone buzzed. He flinched. It was Simone.
Simone: Did you eat?
Jannik stared at the message.
Some.
Simone: Some?
Jannik did not answer. Another buzz.
Darren: All good?
Jannik looked back in the direction of the restaurant, though it was no longer visible. He typed:
Yes.
Then, because the universe had apparently developed a taste for timing, his phone buzzed again.
Carlos.
Jannik nearly dropped it. The screen showed a message, not a call.
Carlos: Jannik? You alive?
Jannik stood very still in the shade. Carlos did not know. Probably, he had simply remembered the match, remembered his own message, wondered why Jannik had not answered. Normal. Kind. Terrible.
Jannik opened the chat. His thumbs hovered over the keyboard.
I’m alive.
That was safe. He typed it. Then he stared. If he sent that, Carlos might call. If Carlos called, Jannik might answer. If Jannik answered, Carlos would hear something in his voice. Carlos always heard too much when he stopped joking.
He deleted the message. Locked the phone. Not yet. But now “not yet” had begun to feel less like freedom and more like cowardice. He pushed away from the wall and walked back toward the hotel.
The walk felt different now.
The city that had been sheltered in the morning had become a maze of possible recognition. Every young man with dark hair might be someone who knew Carlos. Every group of friends laughing outside a café might contain a cousin, a friend from the academy, someone who had watched enough tennis to place Jannik’s face beneath the cap. Murcia was no longer anonymous. It was Carlos’s home, full of invisible threads leading back to him.
Jannik kept his head down.
The heat pressed harder. Sweat gathered at the back of his neck. His legs, already tired from the morning, began to complain again. He had walked too much. Simone would know somehow and scold him. Darren would say nothing but raise one eyebrow, which was worse.
By the time Hotel Nelva came into view, Jannik felt the brief, desperate relief of someone reaching safe territory. The lobby was cooler than heaven. He crossed it quickly. The manager from the night before stood near reception, speaking with a guest. His eyes flicked toward Jannik. Recognition, concern, discretion, all in one brief look. He gave the smallest nod.
Jannik returned it and kept walking. In the elevator, alone, he took off his cap and leaned his head against the mirrored wall. The person looking back at him was flushed, tired, and faintly ridiculous.
“You wanted freedom,” he told himself.
His reflection looked unimpressed. Back in the room, he locked the door and stood with his back against it. Silence. Air-conditioning. Safe again. For now.
He placed his phone on the desk as if it were dangerous and took off his shoes. His feet ached. His calves had tightened. He drank water straight from the bottle, then another half bottle, then sat heavily on the edge of the bed.
The morning’s fragile freedom had cracked. He could still feel the restaurant around him: the cool air, the wooden divider, Álvaro’s laugh, the moment the waiter said “Señor?” and Jannik’s soul tried to leave his body. He began laughing. Quietly at first. Then harder, though it hurt his tired ribs. It was not exactly amusement. It was panic draining out through a side door. He laughed until he had to press his palms into his eyes.
Then he stopped. The room settled. His phone lit up. Carlos again. This time a missed call. Jannik stared at it. The screen went dark. He did not call back. Instead, he turned on the television.
It was not a good decision. He knew this the second he did it. But the room had become too full of his own thoughts, and he needed other voices, even if they were dangerous. The first channel showed a cooking program. Too cheerful. The second, a soap opera. The third, news. The fourth, sports.
Roland Garros.
He should have turned it off. He did not.
Novak Djokovic was on screen, sitting in front of a sponsor wall, microphone in hand. The interview seemed to be from earlier in the day. His face was composed but serious, the expression of a man who had spent half his life answering questions designed to become headlines.
The Spanish commentator introduced the segment. Jannik caught enough. Temperatures. Conditions. Players suffering. Roland Garros schedule. Concerns after several difficult matches. Then Djokovic spoke in English, dubbed lightly but still audible underneath.
“...it’s not easy for anyone. You can prepare, of course, but when the heat is like this and the rallies are long, the body reacts. Sometimes people outside think that because we are professionals, because we train, we can handle everything. But there is a limit.”
Jannik sat very still. The interviewer asked about whether more precautions should be taken. Djokovic nodded, thoughtful.
“We need to talk about it seriously. Not only when something happens. The calendar is intense, the expectations are intense, and with the conditions, it becomes dangerous. Players are not machines.”
Players are not machines. Jannik looked down at his hands. He had heard that sentence before, from Darren, from his mother, from some part of himself he had ignored.
On the screen, clips played of players sitting under towels, ice packs around necks, ball kids moving slowly in the heat, the clay shimmering beneath the white sun. Then, inevitably, footage from Jannik’s match appeared.
He reached for the remote. But his hand stopped. There he was. Red clay. White shirt damp with sweat.
Face blank in the way people mistook for calm, unless they knew him well enough to see the absence inside it. He watched himself miss a backhand. Watched himself turn away. Watched Cerúndolo pump his fist. Watched the scoreboard appear.
6-3, 6-2, 7-5, 6-1, 6-1.
The numbers still looked impossible. A Spanish commentator spoke over the footage. He understood pieces. Then Djokovic again.
“I don’t want to speak for Jannik,” he said. “He knows best what he feels. But I have been there. Many of us have. When you win a lot, people think everything is easy. Sometimes winning takes more from you than losing, because nobody permits you to stop.”
Jannik’s throat tightened. He turned the television off. The room went quiet. For a few seconds, the black screen reflected him sitting on the bed, small and still. Nobody gives you permission to stop. He thought of Paris. The hotel room. Darren at the door. The flight app. The racket bag left behind. The taxi driver. The bakery woman. The plaza. Álvaro’s laugh.
Maybe he had not come to Murcia for Carlos only. Maybe he had come because he needed to steal permission. His phone lit up again.
Carlos: Call me when you can. Don’t be stubborn.
Jannik almost smiled despite himself.
“Too late,” he murmured.
He picked up the phone. This time, he did not open Carlos’s chat. He opened his mother’s.
Murcia is beautiful.
Then he stopped. Deleted it. He opened Darren’s chat.
Saw Djokovic talking about heat. He said players are not machines.
Darren: He’s right. How are you feeling?
Jannik typed: Tired.
That word was easy now.
Darren: Good answer. Honest one.
Jannik put the phone down again.
The day had stretched strangely. It was barely afternoon, but it felt as if several lives had happened since waking. The quiet one in the bakery. The tourist in the plaza. The fugitive in the restaurant. The patient watching another champion explain limits on television.
He went to the bathroom and splashed water on his face. The cold helped. He looked at himself in the mirror.
“Text him,” he said.
No answer.
“Text Carlos.”
Still nothing. He returned to the bed and sat with the phone in both hands. He opened the chat. Carlos’s messages waited.
Jannik? You alive?
Missed call.
Call me when you can. Don’t be stubborn.
Jannik began typing.
I’m in Murcia.
He stared at the words. His heart beat hard. Send. His thumb hovered. Before he could press it, the television, still on mute, caught his eye. He had turned it off. Hadn’t he?
No. The screen had gone black because he had changed channels too quickly and left it idle, or maybe he had only muted it. He could not remember. Now the news channel had returned, images moving silently across the screen.
A studio. A female anchor. A headline bar in Spanish. Jannik looked without understanding at first. Then his own face appeared. Not match footage. A photo. Grainy, taken from a distance. A man in a cap leaving a bakery. His stomach dropped. The headline shifted.
JANNIK SINNER VISTO EN MURCIA TRAS SU DERROTA EN ROLAND GARROS
Jannik Sinner was seen in Murcia after his defeat at Roland Garros. For one second, he did not breathe. Then the phone in his hand began vibrating. Carlos calling. Jannik stared at the screen, at Carlos’s name flashing over the unsent message.
On television, the anchor kept talking. His secret was no longer his.
“Fuck.”
── ⋆⋅𖤓⋅⋆ ──
The word came out flat at first, almost quiet, as if his body had not yet decided whether panic was worth the energy. Then Carlos’s name kept flashing on his phone.
Carlos calling.
The television showed the same image again: Jannik outside the bakery, cap low, head turned slightly to the side, one hand in his pocket. It was not even a good photo. Grainy, over-zoomed, probably taken from across the street. But it was enough. His profile was enough. His walk was enough. His mistake had been enough.
Jannik stared at the screen until the call ended. One missed call. Then another call began immediately. Carlos again. Jannik’s fingers tightened around the phone.
He could not answer. Not like this. Not while the news anchor’s mouth moved around his name on the screen, while the headline repeated in Spanish beneath his face, while the room seemed to shrink around him.
He rejected the call. Instantly, guilt hit him. Then fear. Then his phone vibrated with a message.
Carlos: Jannik.
Another.
Carlos: Pick up.
Another.
Carlos: Are you actually here?
Jannik’s breath came too fast. His first thought was stupid and childish: maybe if he turned off the television, it would stop being true. He grabbed the remote and shut it off. The screen went black.
The room became silent, but the silence was no longer safe. It had teeth now. His phone vibrated again.
Darren. Jannik answered before thinking.
The video opened too close to his face, his own breathing loud in the microphone. Darren appeared on the screen from his hotel room in Paris, expression already alert, as if he had known this call would not be good.
“Jannik?”
“They know,” Jannik said.
Darren’s eyes sharpened. “Who knows?”
“The news. Spanish news. They have a photo of me. In Murcia. I was outside the bakery.” He stood, then sat again immediately because standing made the panic worse. “They know. Everyone knows. Carlos called. I didn’t answer. I don’t know what to do.”
“Okay,” Darren said, calm in the way people sounded when they were trying to lend you their nervous system. “Breathe first.”
“No, don’t tell me to breathe.”
“Breathe anyway.”
“I should have told him.”
“Yes.”
The bluntness struck him so hard he almost laughed.
Darren softened immediately. “But that’s not useful right now. Where are you?”
“In my room.”
“Door locked?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Stay there.”
The screen shifted, and Simone joined the call, hair messy, shirt wrinkled, face tense.
“What happened?”
“He’s been spotted,” Darren said.
“In Murcia?”
“Yes.”
Simone swore in Italian.
Jannik pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead. “What do I do?”
“First, you do not go outside,” Simone said.
“I know.”
“No lobby. No restaurant. No walk. Nothing.”
“I know.”
“Second, you answer Carlos.”
Jannik looked at him through the screen.
Simone’s face was very serious. “Jannik.”
“I know.”
“No, you do not know, because if you knew, you would have done it before flying to his city like a criminal.”
Darren gave Simone a look. “Helpful tone.”
“It is true.”
“It is true,” Jannik said miserably.
Darren leaned closer to his camera. “Listen. Carlos can help you. He knows Murcia. He knows where you can go without being seen. He knows who to trust, who not to trust. If the press are already picking up your location, then your best option is not to improvise from a hotel room.”
Jannik’s throat felt tight. “He’s angry.”
“Probably,” Darren said.
“He should be.”
“Probably.”
“That does not help.”
“I’m not here to lie to you.”
Simone’s voice softened, but only a little. “He will be angry because he cares. That is different from being against you.”
Jannik looked at the blank television.
On the dark screen, he could see a faint reflection of himself sitting on the bed, phone in hand, shoulders hunched. He looked like the opposite of the person people wrote about. No machine. No champion. No world number one. Just a tired man hiding from a news segment in a hotel room.
“What if he asks why?” Jannik said.
Darren blinked. “Then you tell him the truth.”
“I don’t know the truth.”
“Yes, you do.”
Jannik shook his head.
Darren’s tone gentled. “You don’t know how to explain it neatly. That’s different.”
Simone nodded. “Tell him what you told us. You needed space. You thought of him. You made a stupid decision because you were exhausted.”
“Very poetic,” Jannik said.
“It is accurate.”
Darren said, “You also call the hotel desk and ask them not to confirm anything to anyone. No calls to the room. No visitors unless you approve them.”
Jannik looked toward the door instinctively.
“Do it now,” Darren said.
Jannik grabbed the room phone. His hand shook enough that he misdialed reception once, cursed under his breath, then tried again. The receptionist answered smoothly and politely.
“Reception, good afternoon.”
“Hi. This is the room...” He glanced at the key card sleeve on the desk. “Room 714. I need privacy. Please, no calls transferred to my room and no visitors sent up unless I call first.”
“Of course, Señor Sinner.”
The name made his stomach drop. “And please do not confirm I am staying here.”
There was a pause. Only a pause.
“Of course,” the receptionist said again, even softer. “We understand.”
“Thank you.”
He hung up.
Darren was watching him. “Good.”
“I hate this.”
“I know.”
“I just wanted one day.”
Simone sighed. “You had almost one day.”
“That is not funny.”
“It was not a joke.”
Jannik closed his eyes. His phone buzzed in his hand again. Carlos. Not a call this time.
Carlos: I know you are looking at the phone.
Against his will, Jannik almost smiled. It disappeared immediately.
Darren saw it. “Text him.”
“I will.”
“Now.”
“Yes.”
“Jannik,” Simone said.
“I said yes.”
“No disappearing.”
“I know.”
They looked at him from the screen, both of them in Paris, both carrying the frustration of being far away and unable to physically drag him into common sense.
Darren spoke first. “We’re going to handle anything external. No statements from you. If someone asks, you’re resting privately after Paris. That’s it.”
“Okay.”
“You message us once you’ve spoken to Carlos.”
“Okay.”
“And if you leave the hotel, you tell us where you’re going.”
Jannik hesitated. Darren raised his eyebrows.
“Yes,” Jannik said.
Simone added, “Eat tonight.”
“I ate lunch.”
“You said ‘some.’”
“That was because of a situation.”
“What situation?”
Jannik rubbed his face. “Álvaro came into the restaurant.”
For a second, both of them froze.
Then Darren said, “Álvaro Alcaraz?”
“No, another Álvaro in Murcia connected to Carlos.”
“Don’t get smart with me twice in twenty-four hours.”
Simone stared at him. “Did he see you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?”
“I escaped.”
Darren closed his eyes. “You escaped.”
“Can we not talk about it?”
“No,” Simone said. “We will talk about this for years.”
“Please don’t.”
Darren opened his eyes again, and despite everything, there was a trace of amusement in them.
“Text Carlos before the rest of Murcia finds you one family member at a time.”
Jannik let out a small, helpless laugh. Then the laugh faded.
“I’ll text him,” he said.
“Good,” Darren said. “Now.”
Jannik ended the call before they could watch him do it. The room went quiet again. His phone sat hot in his palm. He opened Carlos’s chat. Messages filled the screen. He typed:
I should have told you.
Left it there. His thumb hovered over send. Then someone knocked on the door. Three firm knocks. Jannik’s heart stopped.
For a second, he did nothing. The phone dimmed in his hand. Another knock. Not housekeeping. Not room service. Not timid. Certain. He stood very slowly. His whole body had gone cold.
The hallway outside was silent. He moved toward the door, each step too loud on the carpet. He looked through the peephole. At first, all he saw was the distorted shape of two people. Then one leaned closer.
Dark hair. Wide eyes. Jaw set in a way Jannik had seen across the net when Carlos missed a shot he believed he should have made. Carlos. Behind him, slightly to the side, stood Álvaro. Jannik closed his eyes.
“Oh no,” he whispered.
From outside, Carlos’s voice came through the door, muffled but unmistakable.
“Jannik, open the door.”
Jannik did not move.
“Open the door before I start shouting your full name in the hallway.”
That made him move. He unlocked the door and opened it.
Carlos stood there in a white T-shirt, dark shorts, hair messy as if he had run a hand through it too many times, face flushed from anger or the heat or both. Álvaro stood behind him with an expression somewhere between apology and curiosity, holding car keys in one hand.
For a brief, suspended second, nobody spoke. Jannik held the edge of the door. Carlos looked him over quickly, head to toe, the anger in his face disrupted by concern despite his clear attempt to maintain it.
“You look terrible,” Carlos said.
“Hello to you too.”
Carlos’s eyes flashed. “Do not make jokes.”
Jannik shut his mouth.
Álvaro lifted a hand awkwardly. “Hi, Jannik.”
“Hi.”
“I thought I heard you at the restaurant,” Álvaro said.
Jannik’s eyes widened. Carlos turned his head sharply.
“You saw him?”
“No,” Álvaro said. “I thought I heard him. The voice. But then I thought, no, why would Jannik Sinner be hiding in the back of a restaurant in Murcia?”
Jannik looked at the floor.
Álvaro added, “Apparently, because Jannik Sinner was hiding in the back of a restaurant in Murcia.”
Carlos made a sharp sound.
“Álvaro.”
“What? It’s true.”
Jannik stepped back. “Come in.”
Carlos entered first, fast, carrying heat and worry into the room like weather. Álvaro followed and closed the door behind him. For a moment, the hotel room seemed absurdly small with both Alcaraz brothers inside it. Carlos turned immediately.
“What the hell?” he demanded.
Jannik had expected anger, but the volume still made him flinch. Carlos noticed. His face changed for a fraction of a second, then hardened again because he was not finished.
“What the hell, Jannik?”
“I know.”
“No. Do not ‘I know’ me. You are in Murcia?”
“Yes.”
“Since when?”
“Last night.”
“And I find out because my phone starts exploding with people sending me a news clip?”
“I was going to text you.”
Carlos laughed once, disbelieving and not amused.
“When? After dinner? After a week? When you accidentally meet my grandmother in the supermarket?”
Álvaro muttered, “That could happen.”
Carlos pointed at him without looking.
“Not now.”
Jannik stood near the desk, hands at his sides, feeling very tall and very young.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Carlos’s face tightened. “Why did you not tell me?”
Jannik looked away. There were many answers and all of them sounded insufficient now that Carlos was in front of him.
“Because I didn’t know how,” he said finally.
Carlos stared. “You text, ‘Carlos, I am in Murcia.’ Very easy.”
“I know.”
“Or you call. You have called before.”
“I know.”
“Or you answer when I call. Also possible.”
“I know.”
“Stop saying you know!”
The room snapped into silence. Jannik’s mouth closed. Carlos breathed hard through his nose. His hands were planted on his hips now, and he was looking at Jannik with the helpless fury of someone who had been frightened and had nowhere to put it.
Álvaro shifted near the door.
“I can wait in the hallway,” he offered.
“No,” Carlos said.
“Yes,” Jannik said at the same time.
They looked at each other.
Álvaro raised both eyebrows. “Okay. I will stay exactly here and become furniture.”
Nobody laughed. Carlos took one step closer to Jannik, then stopped himself.
“You scared me,” he said, quieter now, but still sharp. “Do you understand that?”
Jannik nodded.
“I saw the match. I know your face when something is wrong. I text you. You do not answer. Okay, maybe you need space. Then suddenly the news says you are in Murcia. My Murcia. And you did not tell me.”
“I know.”
Carlos’s eyes narrowed.
Jannik winced. “Sorry. I- sorry.”
Carlos dragged both hands through his hair.
“And do you know how we found you?”
Jannik looked at him warily.
“Tell him,” Carlos said to Álvaro.
Álvaro looked faintly embarrassed now. “Carlos remembered your mother’s phone number.”
Jannik blinked. “What?”
Carlos avoided his eyes for the first time. “I remember numbers.”
“My mother’s phone number?”
“You gave it once.”
“When?”
“Years ago. At an event. You lost your phone, or thought you lost it, and you asked me to call your mother from mine. Then you found the phone in your bag after ten seconds because you are dramatic in boring ways.”
Jannik stared at him.
Álvaro nodded. “He remembers everything weird. Passwords, birthdays, phone numbers, bad jokes from 2019.”
Carlos shot him a look. “Enough.”
“You called my mother?” Jannik asked.
Carlos looked back at him, defiant now. “Yes.”
Jannik’s face changed.
Carlos’s anger faltered slightly. “She was worried too.”
“What did you say to her?”
“I said I was sorry to bother her, but I needed to know if you were safe. I told her I had seen the news. I told her you were not answering me.” He swallowed. “She hesitated. Then she told me about the hotel.”
Jannik closed his eyes. He could imagine it too clearly: his mother holding the phone, hearing Carlos’s worried voice, weighing privacy against safety, choosing safety because mothers always did.
“She should not have had to do that,” Carlos said.
“I know,” Jannik whispered.
This time, Carlos did not snap at him.
The anger remained, but under it something else moved: hurt, yes, and fear, and the soft, bruised confusion of someone trying to understand why he had been chosen and avoided at the same time.
Carlos looked around the room, then really looked. The half-empty water bottle. The unmade bed. The suitcase still partly open. The television remote near the pillow. The untouched lunch menu from the hotel desk. No rackets. No team. No familiar structure around Jannik at all.
His voice changed. “Are you okay?”
Jannik almost said yes. The habit rose automatically. Then he saw Carlos’s face and understood that yes would be insulting.
“No,” he said.
Carlos went still. Álvaro’s expression softened. Jannik looked down at his own hands.
“I am not...bad. I am safe. I slept. I ate some breakfast. But no. I’m not okay.”
Carlos’s shoulders dropped a fraction.
“Why did you come here?” he asked.
Jannik swallowed. The question again. But from Carlos, it did not sound like an investigation. It sounded almost afraid of the answer.
“I don’t know how to explain it.”
“Try.”
Jannik looked toward the window. The curtains were half open, afternoon light bright against the glass. Somewhere below, Murcia continued without caring that his secret had collapsed.
“I lost,” he said.
“I saw.”
“Not just lost. I felt...” He searched. “Empty. Like my body had gone and I was still standing there asking it to play. I knew what to do. I saw the ball. I was late anyway. Everything was late.”
Carlos listened now, anger held back by effort.
“And after, everyone was kind. That made it worse.”
Carlos’s eyebrows pulled together.
“Darren, Simone, my team, they were all worried. My family. Everyone. And I know this is good. I know I am lucky. But I could not stay in that hotel and be something people had to manage.” Jannik’s voice thinned. “I could not be a meeting.”
Carlos’s face shifted.
“I needed to leave before they started fixing me.”
Álvaro, very quietly, said, “That makes sense.”
Carlos glanced at him.
Álvaro shrugged. “It does.”
Jannik continued before he lost courage. “I thought about home, but if I went home, I would have to explain. I thought about somewhere else, but then I would be alone with the same thoughts. And then I thought of you.”
Carlos’s anger disappeared so quickly that it almost looked painful.
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Jannik let out a small, helpless breath. “I don’t know.”
Carlos stared at him.
“I don’t,” Jannik insisted. “Not exactly. Maybe because you understand the pressure. Maybe because you are not my coach. Maybe because with you, tennis is...” He stopped, embarrassed.
Carlos leaned forward slightly. “What?”
“Alive,” Jannik said, barely above a whisper. “Even when it is hard.”
The room became very quiet. Álvaro suddenly found the carpet interesting. Carlos’s eyes softened in a way that made Jannik look away immediately.
“So you came,” Carlos said.
“Yes.”
“To see me.”
“Yes.”
“But did not tell me.”
Jannik closed his eyes. “When you say it like that-”
“It sounds insane?”
“Yes.”
“It is insane.”
“I know.”
Carlos exhaled, long and slow. He seemed to be physically pushing the remaining anger out of his body, not because it was gone, but because something more urgent had replaced it.
“Okay,” he said.
Jannik opened his eyes. “Okay?”
“Okay. We leave.”
Jannik blinked. “What?”
“We leave this hotel.”
Álvaro straightened. “Yes. That is why we came with the car.”
“You came with a plan?” Jannik asked.
Carlos gave him a look. “One of us had to.”
“I have a reservation.”
Carlos stared at him. Jannik heard himself and looked away.
“That sounded stupid.”
“A little.”
Álvaro stepped in, more practical.
“The news knows you are in Murcia. Maybe not the hotel yet, but it will take them five minutes, maybe already they know. If people start waiting outside, it becomes complicated.”
Carlos nodded. “My family's house here is full. Everyone is there, cousins, my parents, people coming and going. Not good for quiet. Alicante is empty.”
“Alicante?” Jannik repeated.
“Yes,” Carlos said. “The house there. Nobody is there. We can stay as long as you need.”
Jannik’s stomach twisted. “Carlos, I can’t-”
“You can.”
“It is too much.”
Carlos stepped closer again. “You flew to Murcia without telling me because you needed me, yes?”
Jannik could not answer. Carlos’s voice softened, but the words stayed firm.
“Then let me help.”
Jannik looked at him.
This was the thing he had feared, maybe. Not the anger. Not even the questions. This. The moment Carlos became real, became present, became someone who would take his strange, exhausted choice and turn it into shelter.
“I don’t want to cause problems,” Jannik said.
Carlos laughed softly, not unkindly. “Too late.”
Álvaro added, “Much too late.”
Jannik nearly smiled.
Carlos noticed. “Pack.”
“I already packed mostly.”
“Good. Finally, you do something convenient.”
“I left my racket bag in Paris.”
Carlos blinked. Álvaro made a sound that might have been a cough or a laugh.
Carlos stared at Jannik. “You left your rackets?”
“I was tired.”
“You came to Spain without rackets?”
“Yes.”
For some reason, this made Carlos smile properly for the first time since arriving. It broke across his face quickly, bright despite his obvious attempt to resist it.
“Maybe you are serious about resting,” he said.
“I think the rackets also needed space.”
Álvaro laughed. Carlos shook his head.
“Pack, idiota.”
The word landed gently. Jannik moved.
The room transformed from a hiding place to a temporary station. Carlos stood by the window, carefully not looking out too obviously. Álvaro called reception from the room phone with the confidence of someone used to solving family logistics. He spoke fast Spanish, polite but firm, explaining that Señor Sinner would be checking out early, asking for the bill to be prepared discreetly, requesting that no one come up.
Jannik folded clothes badly. Carlos watched for ten seconds before stepping in.
“That is not folding.”
“I know how to fold.”
“No, you know how to put fabric into a suitcase and hope.”
“Carlos.”
“Move.”
“I can pack my own clothes.”
Carlos picked up a shirt Jannik had rolled into a sad knot and shook it out.
“Apparently not.”
Álvaro covered the phone receiver and said, “He does this to everyone. Let him. It is faster.”
Jannik stood aside, too tired to defend his dignity.
Carlos folded with surprising competence. Shirts, shorts, socks. He did not comment on the electrolytes scattered near the charger or the book Jannik had carried through three countries without reading. He only paused when he found the room service receipt.
“Soup,” he said.
“My mother, Simone, and Darren bullied me.”
“Good.”
“I was going to eat.”
“No, you were going to say you were going to eat.”
Jannik stared at him.
Carlos looked up. “What?”
“You sound like them.”
“Then they are smart.”
Álvaro hung up the phone. “Bill is ready. The manager will meet us by the side exit. No lobby.”
Jannik looked at him. “You arranged all that?”
Álvaro shrugged. “I am useful sometimes.”
Carlos zipped the suitcase. “Phone?”
Jannik picked it up from the bed.
“Passport?”
Jannik touched his pocket. “Yes.”
“Charger?”
“Yes.”
“Any rackets to abandon?”
Jannik gave him a look. Carlos smiled, quick and mischievous, then softened.
“Ready?”
Jannik looked around the room.
It was strange how quickly a place that had held his panic could become nothing again. The bed, the desk, the television that had betrayed him, the window facing Murcia. He had arrived the night before, believing the room might protect him. It had, for a while. Then the world had found the crack.
He nodded.
“Yes.”
They moved quietly. Álvaro went first, checking the hallway with theatrical seriousness.
“Clear,” he whispered.
Carlos rolled his eyes. “You are enjoying this.”
“A little.”
Jannik followed with his suitcase, Carlos beside him. They took the service elevator down, not the main one. The mirrored walls reflected the three of them standing shoulder to shoulder: Álvaro relaxed but alert, Carlos restless, Jannik pale under the cap.
Carlos looked at him in the reflection. “You okay?”
Jannik considered lying.
“Not really.”
Carlos nodded. “Good. Keep doing that.”
“What?”
“Telling the truth.”
Jannik looked at him, but the elevator doors opened before he could answer.
The manager waited near a side corridor with a printed bill and an expression of perfect discretion. He did not seem surprised to see Carlos. Of course not. In Murcia, Carlos was not exactly anonymous either.
“Señor Sinner,” the manager said quietly. “Everything is prepared.”
“Thank you.”
“I am sorry for any inconvenience.”
“You did nothing wrong,” Jannik said quickly.
The manager inclined his head. “Your privacy matters to us. We have not confirmed anything.”
Carlos looked at him. “Gracias.”
The manager’s eyes warmed slightly at Carlos, but he kept his professionalism intact.
“Of course.”
Jannik signed where instructed, paid, and accepted the receipt without reading it. His hand felt steadier now, perhaps because decisions were being made around him and for once, he did not resent it. Or perhaps because Carlos stood close enough that the room no longer felt full of exits.
The side door opened into a service area behind the hotel. A car waited there. Álvaro unlocked it.
The afternoon heat rose from the pavement. Somewhere around the corner, a scooter passed. No cameras. No waiting fans. No shouting. Just the strange, quiet escape continuing. Carlos took Jannik’s suitcase and put it in the trunk.
“I can do that,” Jannik said.
Carlos closed the trunk. “You can also answer your phone. Many things are possible.”
Jannik accepted the hit silently. Álvaro got into the driver’s seat. Carlos opened the back door for Jannik.
Jannik hesitated. “You sit in front.”
“No.”
“Carlos.”
“You are tired. Back seat.”
“I am not eighty.”
“You walk like it today.”
Álvaro laughed from inside the car. Jannik sighed and got in. Carlos sat beside him in the back. That surprised him.
Álvaro glanced at them through the mirror. “Everyone comfortable?”
“No,” Jannik said.
“Good. Family road trip mood.”
Carlos leaned forward and smacked his brother lightly on the shoulder.
“Drive.”
They pulled away from the service area and into Murcia traffic.
For the first few minutes, no one spoke. The city passed around them in sunlit fragments: crosswalks, balconies, palm trees, restaurant terraces, shop signs, people waiting at bus stops. Jannik kept low instinctively, cap on, though the windows were tinted. His phone buzzed continuously in his pocket.
Carlos noticed. “Is that your team?”
“Probably. My mom. Maybe everyone.”
“Tell them you are with me.”
Jannik pulled the phone out.
Darren: Update?
Simone: Do not ignore us.
Mamma: Carlos called me. I am sorry, amore, but I was worried.
Jannik closed his eyes briefly. He replied to his mother first.
It’s okay. I’m with Carlos now. Leaving the hotel. I’m safe.
Then Darren and Simone in one group message.
Carlos and Álvaro came to the hotel. I checked out. Going somewhere private. I’m safe.
Darren: Good. Details when you can. Stay off radar.
Simone: Thank God. Eat dinner. Do not let Carlos make you play tennis.
Carlos, reading over his shoulder, said, “I can see that.”
“You are not supposed to.”
“What did he say?”
Jannik turned the screen. Carlos read it and snorted.
“Tell Simone I have self-control.”
Jannik typed:
Carlos says he has self-control.
Simone: He lies.
Carlos gasped. “Rude.”
Álvaro, from the front, said, “Accurate.”
Jannik felt a smile pull at his mouth before he could stop it. Carlos saw. For a moment, their eyes met. Something quiet passed between them. Not fixed. Not easy. But there. Then Carlos looked out the window, giving him space.
The road opened as they left Murcia behind.
Alicante was not around the corner. It gave them time. The city thinned into highway, buildings falling away into stretches of dry land, low hills, scattered houses, the pale gold and green of southeastern Spain under late afternoon sun. The sky was wide, almost aggressively blue. Heat shimmered above the road.
Álvaro drove with one hand on the wheel, music low. Spanish pop hummed through the speakers, not loud enough to demand attention. Carlos sat sideways slightly, one knee bent, looking at Jannik more often than he thought Jannik noticed.
Finally, Jannik said, “Stop checking if I am alive.”
Carlos looked away quickly. “I am not.”
“You are.”
“You disappeared into my region and made national news. I can check.”
“Fair.”
Álvaro laughed. “Very fair.”
Jannik leaned his head back against the seat. The movement of the car began to pull at his exhaustion. Not sleep exactly, but the softened edge of it. He watched the landscape slide past.
“Thank you,” he said after a while.
Carlos turned. “For yelling at you?”
“For coming.”
Carlos’s face softened. “You’re welcome.”
“And for yelling, maybe.”
“No, the yelling was for me.”
Jannik looked at him.
Carlos shrugged. “I was scared. Then angry. So I yelled.”
“That is very honest.”
“I am practicing. You should try it.”
Jannik huffed a laugh.
Álvaro said, “This car is becoming emotionally mature. I don’t like it.”
Carlos kicked the back of his seat. Álvaro swerved dramatically within his lane.
“Abuse! I am driving!”
“Then drive better.”
“I am saving your dramatic tennis friend from paparazzi.”
Jannik said, “I am not dramatic.”
Both brothers looked at him. Even Álvaro, through the mirror.
Jannik looked out the window. “Okay.”
Carlos laughed. The sound filled the car, warm and familiar, and something inside Jannik loosened another fraction. They stopped once at a service station outside the busiest area. Álvaro went in to buy water, snacks and coffee. Carlos insisted Jannik stay in the car.
“You are putting me in hiding.”
“You put yourself in hiding. I am improving the hiding.”
“I need to stretch my legs.”
“Stretch in Alicante.”
Jannik looked at him. “You are bossy.”
Carlos leaned against the car door outside, arms folded through the open window.
“Yes.”
“You admit it?”
“Today, yes.”
Jannik studied him.
Carlos’s anger had faded, but traces remained in the set of his jaw. Hurt did too. Jannik could see it in the spaces between their words, in the way Carlos sometimes looked at him directly and then away, as if he was still deciding whether to ask the bigger questions.
“I really was going to text you,” Jannik said.
Carlos looked at him.
“I know it does not matter now.”
“It matters a little.”
“I had the message written.”
“What did it say?”
Jannik took out his phone and showed him the unsent words still sitting in the chat.
I should have told you.
Carlos read it. His expression shifted.
“That’s all?”
“I didn’t get far. You knocked.”
Carlos handed back the phone. “You should send it.”
Jannik blinked. “You are here.”
“So? Send it.”
“That makes no sense.”
Carlos held out his own phone. “Send.”
Jannik stared at him, then looked down at the message. He pressed send. A second later, Carlos’s phone buzzed in his hand. Carlos looked at the screen, then at Jannik.
“Yes,” he said. “You should have.”
Jannik swallowed. Then Carlos typed something. Jannik’s phone buzzed.
Carlos: I know. Don’t do it again.
Jannik read it twice. Then he nodded.
“I won’t.”
Carlos’s voice was softer. “Good.”
Álvaro returned with a plastic bag and three coffees, oblivious or pretending to be.
“I bought chips, water and something that says protein but tastes like sadness.”
“Give the sadness to Jannik,” Carlos said.
Jannik accepted the protein bar. “This is bullying.”
“This is care,” Álvaro said. “Very similar.”
They drove on.
By the time they reached Alicante, the sun had lowered, turning the light warmer, stretching shadows across the road. The air changed near the coast. Even before Jannik saw the sea, he sensed it: a faint softness under the heat, a brightness in the distance, the suggestion of salt.
The house was in a quieter area, away from the dense tourist streets. It stood behind a gate, pale-walled and clean-lined, with terracotta roof tiles and a small garden that looked half-wild in the heat. Bougainvillea spilled magenta over one wall. A lemon tree leaned near the path. The windows reflected the evening sky.
Álvaro pulled into the driveway.
“Empty,” he said. “As promised.”
Carlos got out first and opened Jannik’s door before Jannik could protest.
“I can open doors,” Jannik said.
“You can also disappear. I don’t trust your door decisions.”
Jannik shook his head but got out.
The air smelled of warm stone, dry plants, and distant sea. It was quieter than the hotel, quieter than Murcia, quieter than his own head had been all day. No lobby. No receptionist. No possible cameras unless someone had followed them, and Jannik trusted Carlos enough to believe he would have noticed.
Álvaro opened the trunk. “I’ll help you get inside, then I'll go back.”
Carlos frowned. “You don’t want pizza?”
“I have plans.”
“With your girlfriend?”
“Yes. The girlfriend I abandoned after lunch because my brother began shouting about Jannik Sinner being in Murcia.”
Jannik winced. “Sorry.”
Álvaro waved him off. “She thought it was funny.”
“Did she see me?”
“No. I told her later.”
Jannik looked alarmed. Álvaro held up both hands.
“She will not say anything. Relax.”
Carlos gave him a warning look.
Álvaro rolled his eyes. “I know. Secret tennis rescue mission. Very serious.”
They carried the suitcase inside.
The house was cool and still. White walls, tiled floors, simple furniture, wide windows facing the garden. It had the clean emptiness of a family place between visits: not abandoned, but waiting. A bowl sat on the entry table with two old keys and a receipt inside. A pair of sandals had been left near the back door. On one wall hung a framed photograph of the sea.
Jannik stood in the entryway and listened. No voices. No television. No elevator hum. No footsteps in hotel corridors. Just the low hush of an empty house holding the heat outside.
Carlos watched him carefully. “Better?”
Jannik nodded once. “Yes.”
Álvaro patted Carlos on the shoulder.
“I leave you two. Don’t fight too much.”
Carlos said, “We are not fighting.”
Álvaro looked at Jannik. “He says that before fighting.”
Jannik almost smiled. “Thank you. For helping.”
Álvaro’s expression gentled. “No problem. Next time you hide in Murcia, choose a restaurant my family doesn’t use.”
“I will make a note.”
“Good.”
Carlos walked him to the door. They spoke quietly in Spanish for a moment, too fast for Jannik to follow fully. He caught his own name, mamá, privacidad, mañana. Then Álvaro left, the car pulling away down the driveway until the sound faded.
The door closed. The house became even quieter. Carlos turned back to Jannik. For the first time, they were alone. The fact landed between them with surprising weight. Carlos clapped his hands once, too loudly.
“Okay. Tour.”
Jannik blinked at the sudden brightness in his voice.
“Tour?”
“Yes. You need to know where things are. Also, if I do not move, I will start yelling again.”
“At me?”
“Probably.”
“Tour is good.”
Carlos nodded, satisfied, and led him through the house.
“This is the living room.”
It was wide and comfortable, with a large sofa facing a television, shelves holding books, games, a few framed family photos, and an old tennis ball sitting inexplicably beside a candle.
Jannik pointed at it. “Decoration?”
Carlos picked it up.
“No idea. Maybe from training. Maybe the house grew it.”
“Spanish houses grow tennis balls?”
“Only the good ones.”
Jannik smiled. Carlos showed him the kitchen next: bright, with blue-and-white tiles, a wooden table, a fridge that contained water, eggs, fruit, yogurt, and almost nothing else.
“We will order pizza,” Carlos said immediately, as if defending himself.
“I did not say anything.”
“You looked.”
“I looked at an empty fridge.”
“It is not empty. There is yogurt.”
“Athlete dinner.”
Carlos opened a cabinet and found pasta, rice, canned tomatoes and three bags of chips.
“See? Luxury.”
Jannik leaned against the counter, feeling fatigue return now that he was safe enough to feel it.
Carlos saw. “Rooms upstairs.”
“I can carry my suitcase.”
“I know.”
Carlos carried it anyway. The staircase was tiled, with a wooden handrail polished smooth by years of use. Upstairs, the hallway was narrow and softly lit. A window at the end showed the evening sky turning peach. Carlos stopped at the first door on the right.
“This is my room.”
He opened it briefly. Jannik glimpsed a bed, clothes tossed over a chair, a shelf full of trophies and random objects, a pair of shoes abandoned in the middle of the floor, and a poster slightly crooked on the wall.
“Messy,” Jannik said.
“Personality.”
“Mess.”
“Personality.”
Carlos closed the door and crossed the hall. “And this is you.”
The guest room was simple and clean. A bed with white sheets. A small desk. A wardrobe. Pale curtains moving slightly in the air from the vent. A framed print of the sea above the bed. The room smelled faintly of sun-warmed cotton and closed windows.
“It’s across from mine,” Carlos said. “Bathroom is there. Towels in the cabinet. If you need anything, ask.”
Jannik stepped inside. The room felt different from Hotel Nelva immediately. Less anonymous. More personal, but not invasive. A space offered rather than rented. Carlos placed the suitcase near the wardrobe.
“You can stay as long as you need,” he said.
Jannik looked at him. Carlos’s voice was casual, but his eyes were not.
“I mean it,” he added. “One night. Three nights. A week. Whatever. Nobody is coming here unless I say. My family knows not to come. Álvaro knows. My parents know you are here, but they will not bother you.”
Jannik’s throat tightened. “Your parents know?”
“They know someone needs quiet. That is all.”
“Carlos.”
“What?”
“This is a lot.”
Carlos shrugged, almost defensive. “You came to me.”
“I know.”
“So let me be useful.”
Jannik lowered his eyes. “Okay,” he said.
Carlos looked relieved and tried to hide it by clapping his hands again.
“Pizza.”
“Now?”
“Yes. You barely ate lunch because you were busy pretending to be a spy.”
“I did not pretend.”
“You hid behind a menu.”
Jannik stared at him. “Álvaro told you?”
“Of course.”
“I hate everyone.”
Carlos grinned. “You will hate less after pizza.”
The evening settled slowly around the house. Jannik unpacked only what he needed: a toothbrush, a charger, clean clothes, a book he still had not read. He sent messages to his mother, Darren, and Simone with the new situation, careful but brief.
I’m in Alicante with Carlos. Private house. Safe.
Mamma: Good. I trust him. Sleep well tonight.
Darren: Much better. Stay there. We’ll manage media.
Simone: Eat. Stretch tomorrow. No tennis.
Jannik looked at the last message and called down the hall, “Simone says no tennis.”
Carlos shouted from downstairs, “Tell Simone I know!”
Jannik typed:
Carlos says he knows.
Simone: I do not trust Carlos near a tennis court.
Jannik decided not to pass that on.
Downstairs, Carlos ordered pizza with the seriousness of someone negotiating a peace treaty. He asked Jannik what he wanted, ignored his “anything is fine,” and ordered two pizzas, salad, water, and something sweet, “because you look like a ghost and ghosts need dessert.”
They ate at the kitchen table while the sky outside darkened. The pizza arrived hot, cheese sliding, crust blistered at the edges. Carlos paid at the door and returned with the boxes balanced in both hands like trophies.
“Dinner of champions,” he announced.
“Former champions,” Jannik said without thinking.
Carlos stopped.
Jannik realized the words had come out wrong. “I didn’t mean-”
Carlos put the boxes on the table. “You lost one match.”
“I know.”
“No.” Carlos opened the first box with unnecessary force. “You know, but you don’t know. You lost one match.”
Jannik sat down slowly.
Carlos took plates from a cabinet. “You won everything for months.”
“Not everything.”
Carlos gave him a look.
“Almost everything,” Jannik admitted.
“You are tired. You lost. You scared everyone. You are still you.”
Jannik stared at the table.
Carlos placed a slice on his plate.
“Eat.”
“You sound like Simone.”
“Good.”
They ate.
For a while, the food did the talking. Jannik had not realized how hungry he was until the second slice disappeared. Carlos watched with satisfaction and did not comment, which was kind of him. The salad remained mostly decorative, though both of them took some out of obligation.
The conversation came slowly. Not about Paris at first. About safer things.
Álvaro’s terrible driving, according to Carlos. Carlos’s terrible passenger behavior, according to Álvaro via text message, which Carlos read aloud in an offended voice. The bakery woman who had told Jannik he was too thin. The fact that Jannik had actually bought sunscreen because his mother asked. Carlos laughed so hard at that he nearly choked on pizza.
“You are afraid of your mother,” Carlos said.
“Yes.”
“Good. Me too, and she is not even my mother.”
“She is powerful.”
“All mothers are powerful.”
Jannik smiled into his water.
The house felt warmer now, not in temperature but in presence. Carlos filled rooms naturally. Not loudly all the time, despite what people thought, but completely. Even when he was quiet, he left energy in the air. Jannik usually experienced that across the net, where it demanded answers. Here, at a kitchen table with pizza grease on Carlos’s thumb and a napkin stuck briefly to his elbow, it felt less like pressure and more like proof of life.
After dinner, Carlos stood. “Movie.”
Jannik raised an eyebrow.
“Movie?”
“Yes.”
“I thought we were going to sleep.”
“It is eight-thirty.”
“I am tired.”
“You can fall asleep during the movie. That is allowed.”
“What movie?”
Carlos avoided his eyes.
Jannik immediately became suspicious. “Carlos.”
“The first Twilight.”
Jannik stared. Carlos stared back, entirely serious.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because you need something stupid and dramatic that is not your life.”
“That is your reasoning?”
“Also, I like it.”
Jannik blinked. “You like Twilight?”
Carlos pointed at him. “Do not judge me in my own house.”
“I am judging silently.”
“You said it with your face.”
“My face is tired.”
“Your face is judgmental.”
Jannik leaned back in his chair. “Twilight.”
“Yes.”
“Vampires.”
“Yes.”
“Teenage vampires.”
“Iconic teenage vampires.”
Jannik covered his face with one hand.
Carlos laughed. “Come on. You flew to Murcia in secret. You have no right to be embarrassed by cinema.”
“That is actually fair.”
They moved to the living room.
Carlos turned off most of the lights, leaving only one lamp near the sofa. The room became soft-edged and comfortable. Outside the windows, the garden was dark now, with the faint outline of bougainvillea against the wall. Somewhere far away, a dog barked twice. The air-conditioning hummed quietly.
Jannik took one end of the sofa. Carlos took the other, leaving a respectful space between them that somehow felt more intimate because it was deliberate. Carlos started the movie. The opening scenes filled the room with gray forests, rain, and teenage melancholy.
“This is not Spain,” Jannik said.
“No. This is Forks.”
“You say that like it is a sacred place.”
“It is, for some people.”
Jannik looked at him. “You are serious?”
Carlos grinned. “Watch.”
Jannik tried. At first, he watched because Carlos wanted him to. Then, because the movie was strange enough to distract him. Then, because Carlos’s commentary became its own performance.
“He is suffering,” Carlos announced when Edward appeared dramatically.
“He looks constipated,” Jannik said.
Carlos gasped. “Respect cinema.”
“This is cinema?”
“This is culture.”
Jannik huffed a laugh.
A few minutes later, Carlos said, “You see? He watches her sleep. Very normal.”
“That is not normal.”
“It is a romantic vampire normal.”
“That is worse.”
Carlos threw a cushion at him. Jannik caught it against his chest and, for the first time in days, did not feel like the movement had been demanded of him by sport. They watched. Sometimes in silence. Sometimes with comments.
Sometimes Jannik looked at the screen and realized he had missed several minutes because his mind had gone quiet, not spiraling, just quiet. Carlos did not ask where he had gone. He only nudged the plate of dessert toward him without looking.
It was some kind of chocolate cake from the pizza place, too sweet and slightly dry. Jannik ate half. Near the baseball scene, Carlos sat forward with sudden energy.
“This part is good.”
Jannik watched vampires play baseball in a thunderstorm. He turned slowly toward Carlos.
Carlos pointed at the screen. “Do not say anything.”
“I was not.”
“You were.”
“I was thinking.”
“Judgment.”
“Maybe.”
Carlos laughed again, softer this time.
The movie continued toward its dramatic ending. Jannik’s eyelids grew heavy. The sofa was comfortable, the house quiet, Carlos’s presence steady at the other end. He let his head rest back, not asleep but close. After a while, Carlos paused the movie. Jannik opened his eyes.
“Why?”
“You were falling asleep.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“I was watching.”
“What just happened?”
“Vampire things.”
Carlos smiled. “Bed.”
Jannik wanted to argue on principle, but his body had already voted. He sat up slowly. The room tilted a little with exhaustion. Not dizziness, exactly. Just the deep pull of rest overdue.
Carlos noticed immediately. “Careful.”
“I’m okay.”
“Truth.”
Jannik paused. “I am very tired,” he said.
Carlos’s face softened. “Good. Bed.”
They turned off the television. The sudden silence after the movie felt clean. Carlos gathered plates and glasses, but Jannik took one from him.
“I can help.”
Carlos looked ready to argue, then let him.
They cleaned the kitchen together in a sleepy, ordinary way. Plates in dishwasher. Pizza boxes folded. Leftovers into fridge. Water glasses rinsed. It was such a normal sequence of tasks that Jannik felt almost dizzy with it. No one filming. No one asking. No schedule. Just crumbs on a table and Carlos arguing with a trash bag that would not close properly.
“Need help?” Jannik asked.
“No.”
The bag slipped. Jannik raised an eyebrow.
Carlos glared. “Silence.”
Eventually, the kitchen was done. They went upstairs. The hallway was dim, lit only by the small lamp near the stairs. Carlos stopped between the two bedroom doors, his on one side, Jannik’s on the other.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
The day had been too much to summarize. Panic, news, anger, escape, highway, empty house, pizza, vampires. Somehow, all of it had brought them here: two rivals standing barefoot in a quiet hallway, too tired to pretend the situation was normal and too relieved to question it.
Carlos leaned one shoulder against his doorframe.
“You have everything?”
“Yes.”
“Towels?”
“Yes.”
“Water?”
“Yes.”
“Phone charger?”
“Yes.”
“Do you plan to flee to another city before morning?”
Jannik looked at him. Carlos’s mouth twitched, but his eyes stayed serious.
“No,” Jannik said. “I promise.”
Carlos nodded.
“Good.”
Jannik looked at the floor, then back at him. “I am sorry you found out from the news.”
Carlos’s face changed.
“I am,” Jannik said. “I wanted to tell you. I was...I don’t know. I wanted to keep it mine for a bit longer. The quiet. Before it became something to explain.”
Carlos was silent.
Then he said, “I understand that.”
Jannik blinked.
“I am still mad,” Carlos added.
“That makes sense.”
“But I understand.”
The words loosened something in Jannik that he had not known was still tight.
“Thank you,” he said.
Carlos nodded once, awkward now under the weight of sincerity.
“Tomorrow we will talk more.”
Jannik’s stomach tightened.
Carlos saw. “Not like interrogation. Just...talk. Or not talk. But no hiding inside your head all day.”
“I don’t hide.”
Carlos stared at him.
Jannik sighed. “Okay.”
Carlos smiled faintly. “Goodnight, Jannik.”
There it was. Just his name. Not Sinner. Not number one. Not the headline, not the loss, not the ranking. Jannik. He held onto it for a second before answering.
“Goodnight, Carlos.”
Carlos entered his room and left the door partly open for a moment, then seemed to think better of it and closed it halfway, not fully. Across the hall, Jannik stepped into the guest room. The room was dark except for the light spilling from the hallway. He closed the door most of the way, leaving a small crack without quite deciding why.
He changed into sleep clothes, brushed his teeth, and placed his phone on the bedside table. Messages waited, but none demanded immediate answers. For once, he let them wait. He lay down.
The guest bed was not as perfectly anonymous as the hotel bed. The pillow smelled faintly of detergent and sun. The house made small sounds around him: pipes settling, air-conditioning, a distant movement that might have been Carlos in his room across the hall.
Jannik stared at the ceiling. In the morning, he had wanted freedom for a little longer. By afternoon, freedom had become exposure. Now, in Carlos’s house in Alicante, with his suitcase near the wardrobe and no racket bag anywhere in sight, he felt something quieter than freedom.
Safety, maybe. Or the beginning of it. He turned onto his side, facing the door.
Across the hallway, Carlos moved once, then the house stilled. Jannik closed his eyes. For the second night in a row, he was not where the world expected him to be. But this time, someone knew. This time, someone had come to get him. This time, when sleep reached for him, he did not feel like he was disappearing.
He let go.
── ⋆⋅𖤓⋅⋆ ──
The next morning, Jannik woke to silence.
Not hotel silence. Not the expensive, padded kind that made every movement feel observed by invisible staff. This silence was wider and warmer. It belonged to a house with closed shutters, tiled floors, and sunlight waiting patiently behind curtains. It held the faint hum of air-conditioning, the occasional creak of pipes, the distant sigh of traffic far enough away to seem like another country.
For a few seconds, Jannik kept his eyes closed. He knew where he was this time. Alicante. Carlos’s house. Guest room across the hallway.
No Paris. No hotel. No television headline. No news anchor saying his name over a stolen photo. No service elevator, no side exit, no flight booked in panic. Just a bed, a pale ceiling, and the heavy aftertaste of sleep. He felt better.
Not good, exactly. Better. His body had started to understand it was allowed to stop, though it had not forgiven him yet. His legs remained thick with fatigue, and there was a dull ache between his shoulder blades from travel, stress, and perhaps from sleeping too still. But the terrible emptiness from Paris had receded a little. It sat farther away now, at the edge of the room instead of inside his chest.
Jannik opened his eyes.
The guest room was softly lit. Sun slipped through the curtains in thin, uneven lines, striping the floor and the side of his suitcase. The framed print of the sea above the bed looked brighter in the morning, blue and white and almost too peaceful. Across from him, the door stood slightly open, exactly as he had left it.
He turned his head toward the hallway. No sound. He sat up slowly, listening. Nothing. No movement in Carlos’s room. No footsteps downstairs. No music, no phone call, no laugh, no clatter from the kitchen.
For a moment, the quiet felt pleasant. Then it changed. Jannik got out of bed. His feet met the cool floor. He stood still, waiting for dizziness or stiffness to announce itself. Stiffness came, but mildly. He crossed the room and opened the door wider.
The hallway was empty. Carlos’s door was ajar. Jannik hesitated. He knew he should not look. It was Carlos’s room, Carlos’s privacy. But concern nudged him forward before politeness could stop it. He knocked lightly on the frame.
“Carlos?”
No answer. He pushed the door open just enough to see inside.
The room was empty.
The bed was unmade in a way that looked like a small storm had slept there and left early. A T-shirt lay on the floor. A pair of sneakers was gone from the spot Jannik remembered by the chair. The crooked poster remained crooked. On the bedside table sat a phone charger, an empty glass, and a wrist brace.
Jannik stared at the brace. His stomach tightened. Carlos’s injured wrist. Of course.
He had known. Everyone knew, in the way the tennis world knew injuries: through rumors, withdrawals, cautious statements, photos of practice sessions, little clips analyzed by thousands of strangers who believed they could read pain from thirty seconds of footage. Carlos had hurt his wrist. He had not played since Madrid. He would not play Wimbledon. The sentence had circled tennis-like weather.
But seeing the brace there, abandoned beside Carlos’s bed, made it real in a different way. Not a headline. Not a tournament update. A thing left on a bedside table by someone who probably hated needing it.
“Carlos?” Jannik called again, louder this time.
Still nothing. He went downstairs.
The house was cool and still. Morning light filled the living room in pale rectangles. The sofa where they had watched Twilight looked innocent now, cushions slightly displaced, a folded blanket tossed over the armrest. The television was off. The kitchen held the remains of the night before in small signs: two water glasses drying beside the sink, the pizza leftovers in the fridge, a napkin Carlos had missed under the table.
On the kitchen table sat a note. Jannik picked it up.
Gone to move a little. Don’t panic. There is coffee. And do not flee. -C
Jannik stared at the note. Then he laughed softly through his nose.
“Idiot,” he murmured.
But the first line remained in his mind. Gone to move a little. He knew what that meant.
Stretching. Training. Maybe not proper training, not with the wrist, but something. Footwork. Legs. Core. Shadow swings he should not do. Anything to feel like tennis had not slipped farther away while he rested. Jannik put the note back on the table carefully.
He should have been relieved. Carlos was not missing. Carlos had left a note. Carlos had known him well enough, or maybe simply read him well enough, to write don’t panic before Jannik had even earned the right to panic.
But instead, guilt moved through him with slow precision.
Carlos had gone to train with an injured wrist. Carlos, who had not played since Madrid. Carlos, who would miss Wimbledon. Carlos, who had driven him out of Murcia and opened an empty house so Jannik could hide from a loss. And Jannik was here because he had lost one match. One match after winning everything. The thought sat cold in his stomach. He set it aside badly and went to shower.
The bathroom across from the guest room was simple, with blue tiles and a narrow window high on the wall. He turned the water hotter than necessary and stepped under it, letting steam gather around him. The shower helped less than the day before. Yesterday it had washed Paris from his skin. Today it left him alone with himself.
He kept thinking of the wrist brace.
Tennis players learned to understand injuries as interruptions in a language only the body spoke fluently. A wrist injury was not just pain. It was timing, touch, confidence, the intimate mechanics of trust. The wrist decided how the racket face lived in space. It received force and translated intention. A bad wrist made every ball a negotiation.
Carlos without his wrist was almost unthinkable. Carlos without Wimbledon was worse. Jannik closed his eyes under the water.
He remembered Carlos on the grass: explosive, improvising, smiling like the surface had challenged him personally and he had accepted. He remembered the way Carlos could turn defense into theater, could make people gasp before a point had even ended. The idea of him watching Wimbledon instead of playing it felt wrong in a way that had nothing to do with rivalry and everything to do with balance.
Tennis needs Carlos. Jannik hated how quickly the thought became personal. I need Carlos. He opened his eyes. The water beat against his shoulders. He turned it off.
After dressing, he moved downstairs again. The coffee machine took him a few minutes to understand. Carlos had left the capsules beside it, and somehow that felt like another kind of note. Jannik made an espresso badly, then another more successfully. He drank it standing at the counter, looking out toward the garden.
The day outside was already bright. Bougainvillea burned pink against the wall. A lemon tree shifted slightly in the breeze. Somewhere beyond the property, a car passed, then silence returned. He checked his phone. Messages from his mother, Darren, and Simone. Nothing urgent.
Mamma: Good morning, amore. I hope you slept. Be kind to yourself today.
Darren: Morning check-in. No media. Rest. Let Carlos help.
Simone: Stretch gently. Eat breakfast. If Carlos suggests tennis, say no.
Jannik typed replies with one hand. To his mother:
I slept. I’m okay. Carlos is out training, I think.
Then he paused, considered deleting the second sentence and sent it anyway. To Darren:
Alive. At the house. Quiet.
To Simone:
No tennis. Coffee first.
Simone: Coffee is not breakfast.
Jannik ignored that for the moment.
He wandered back into the living room and saw his book on the side table, where he must have dropped it the night before without remembering. Wuthering Heights. The copy was creased at the spine and still marked near the beginning because, despite carrying it through tournaments, flights, and countries, he had never properly finished it.
He picked it up. The cover felt familiar and accusatory. He sat on the sofa, legs stretched in front of him, and opened to the marked page. For a while, he read. Or tried to.
The English was dense in a way that usually pleased him when his mind was calm. Today, the sentences seemed to move like weather across moors he could see but not enter. Catherine. Heathcliff. Houses full of old hurt. Love sharpened into cruelty. People circling each other, destroying each other, refusing to say the simple thing before it became impossible.
Jannik frowned at the page. He did not understand it. Not the words. The words were fine. The people.
“How can you love someone like this,” he said aloud to the empty room, “and do nothing?”
The house did not answer. He read another paragraph, then closed the book around one finger and stared at the wall.
Maybe that was unfair. They did things. They did terrible things. They married wrong people, wounded each other, haunted each other, turned love into punishment and absence into proof. But they did not do the one thing that seemed obvious from the outside: stop. Speak. Choose.
He looked down at the book again. Maybe everyone seemed obvious from the outside.
From the outside, Jannik Sinner should have stayed in Paris and rested professionally. From the outside, he should have texted Carlos before landing in Murcia. From the outside, he should have known that hiding in a city full of Alcarazes was a flawed strategy. From the outside, two people in a book destroying themselves for love seemed ridiculous.
From the inside, things became foggy. He opened the book again. Catherine said something impossible and dramatic. Jannik made a face.
“No,” he told the page. “Bad decision.”
He read on anyway.
By ten-thirty, the coffee had worn into a slight nervousness. By ten-forty, he had eaten yogurt from the fridge because Simone’s voice had become unbearable inside his head. By ten-fifty, he had moved from the sofa to the kitchen table and back again. By eleven, the front door opened.
Jannik looked up immediately.
Carlos entered carrying a gym bag over one shoulder, hair damp with sweat, cheeks flushed, T-shirt darkened at the collar. His right wrist was wrapped. Not fully braced, but supported enough that Jannik’s eyes went there before he could stop himself.
Carlos noticed. Of course, he noticed.
“Good morning to you too,” Carlos said.
Jannik looked at his face. “Good morning.”
Carlos kicked the door shut gently behind him.
“You did not flee.”
“You told me not to.”
“I know. Sometimes you listen.”
“Rarely.”
Carlos smiled, but he looked tired. Not Paris tired. Not Jannik’s hollow, overplayed tired. A different kind. Restless tired. Frustrated tired. The kind that came from not being allowed to do the thing your body had been built around. He dropped the gym bag near the stairs and walked into the kitchen.
“You ate?”
“Yogurt.”
Carlos paused mid-step. “One yogurt?”
“And coffee.”
Carlos turned slowly. “That is breakfast for a depressed bird.”
“I was reading.”
“Birds read?”
“This conversation is already bad.”
Carlos opened the fridge and took out a bottle of water.
“What were you reading?”
“Wuthering Heights.”
Carlos squinted. “That one with the angry people on the moors?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I started it months ago.”
“And?”
Jannik looked toward the book on the sofa.
“They are all insane.”
Carlos laughed and drank water. “Good review.”
“I mean it. They love each other, but they do everything except be normal about it.”
Carlos leaned against the counter, bottle in hand.
“Maybe normal would make a short book.”
“Better for everyone.”
“Not for literature.”
“Literature needs therapy.”
Carlos laughed again, and the sound warmed the kitchen. Then he flexed his wrapped wrist unconsciously. Jannik saw it. The guilt returned immediately.
Carlos caught the shift in his expression and sighed.
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You looked.”
“I am allowed to look.”
“Not like that.”
“Like what?”
Carlos set the bottle down. “Like I am dying in front of you.”
Jannik looked away. There it was. Too soon. Too visible. Carlos came closer, still watching him.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“No.”
“Carlos.”
“No. You got angry yesterday when people wanted to manage you. I am not managing you. I am asking. What?”
Jannik rubbed a hand over his face.
He could lie. He had lied easily enough for years about small pains, about tiredness, about whether pressure existed. But Carlos had found him in a hotel room because the news had betrayed him. Carlos had driven him to an empty house. Carlos had written don’t panic on a note. Lying now felt like disrespect.
“I feel like shit,” Jannik said.
Carlos blinked. “Because of breakfast?”
“No.”
“Because of the book?”
“No.”
“Because of me?”
Jannik did not answer quickly enough.
Carlos’s face changed. “Why because of me?”
Jannik stood, restless now, and walked toward the living room. Carlos followed.
“It’s stupid.”
“Probably. Tell me anyway.”
Jannik stopped near the sofa, arms folded loosely, eyes on the floor.
“I am here because I lost one match,” he said.
Carlos stared. “Jannik.”
“One match,” he repeated. “After winning for months. Indian Wells. Miami. Monaco. Madrid. Rome. I lose one match because I’m tired and I run away like everything is broken.”
Carlos opened his mouth, but Jannik kept going.
“And you-” He gestured toward Carlos’s wrist, then immediately regretted it. “You are actually injured. You haven’t played since Madrid. You can’t play Wimbledon. You went out this morning to train because you’re trying not to lose tennis, while I sit here being sad because I lost for the first time in months. It feels...”
“What?”
“Wrong.”
Carlos’s jaw tightened. Jannik continued, softer now.
“Unfair. To you. I don’t know.”
Carlos stared at him for one long second. Then he grabbed a pillow from the sofa. Jannik had just enough time to frown. Carlos swung.
The pillow hit him in the chest with a soft, ridiculous thump. Jannik blinked.
Carlos raised the pillow again. “If you look at me like a kicked puppy one more time, I will call the news and tell them exactly where you are.”
Jannik stared at him. Then, despite himself, laughed once.
“What?”
Carlos hit him again. “I mean it.”
“Carlos.”
Another hit, this time to the shoulder.
“I am not a kicked puppy,” Carlos said.
“I did not say-”
“You looked it.”
“I was feeling bad.”
“Feel bad for yourself. You deserve it more.”
“That sounds terrible.”
“You know what I mean.”
Carlos tossed the pillow at his face. Jannik caught it this time, his reflexes sharper than his mood.
Carlos pointed at him. “You do not get to decide my injury makes your pain fake.”
Jannik held the pillow against his chest. Carlos’s voice stayed sharp, but not cruel.
“Yes, my wrist is bad. Yes, I miss Wimbledon. Yes, I hate it. I hate it so much sometimes I want to bite something.”
Jannik’s mouth twitched.
Carlos pointed harder. “Do not laugh at the biting.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“A little.”
Carlos narrowed his eyes, then continued. “But that does not mean you are not tired. That does not mean what happened in Paris did not hurt. We are not in a competition for who is allowed to feel worst.”
Jannik looked down. Carlos stepped closer.
“You won everything for months and nobody let you stop. I stopped because my body forced me. Different problem. Same lesson.”
Jannik looked up. Carlos’s expression softened, though his voice remained firm.
“And if you pity me, I will be angry. If you treat me like I am broken, I will be very angry. If you use me to tell yourself you are weak, I will be impossible.”
“You are already impossible.”
“Good. Then I am training well.”
Jannik looked at the pillow in his hands.
“I don’t pity you,” he said quietly.
Carlos watched him.
“I don’t,” Jannik repeated. “I just...I know what tennis means. And I know what it means to you.”
Carlos’s anger faded a little.
“Yeah,” he said.
“And I hate that you cannot play.”
Carlos looked away. For the first time since entering, the brightness slipped from him. Not completely. Carlos rarely lets it disappear in front of people. But it dimmed, enough for Jannik to see the bruise beneath the joking.
“I hate it too,” Carlos said.
The room quieted. Outside, sunlight pressed against the curtains. The house hummed gently. Carlos leaned back against the arm of the sofa.
“This morning I stretched. Did bands. Legs. Some footwork. No hitting.”
Jannik looked at the wrapped wrist.
Carlos lifted it slightly. “I am not stupid.”
Jannik said nothing.
Carlos added, “Not always.”
That got him. Jannik smiled faintly.
Carlos relaxed a little in response. “I need to feel like I’m not losing everything. Even if I’m not playing, I need to feel like I’m still...there.”
“In tennis?”
Carlos nodded. “In myself.”
Jannik understood that too well.
“So,” Carlos said, “I train what I can. I rest what I must. I complain a lot. My team suffers. My family suffers more. Everybody survives.”
“You make it sound easy.”
“It is not easy.” Carlos looked at him. “But it is easier when people don’t look at me like I am tragic.”
Jannik lowered his eyes. “Sorry.”
Carlos nudged his shin with one foot. “No sorry face either.”
“What face am I allowed?”
“Normal Jannik face.”
“That is just one face.”
“Exactly. Use it.”
Jannik tried to arrange his expression into neutrality.
Carlos studied him. “No, that is funeral face.”
Jannik’s mouth twitched.
Carlos pointed. “Better.”
“This is ridiculous.”
“Yes. You were being ridiculous first.”
Jannik sat on the sofa with the pillow still in his lap. Carlos dropped beside him, close enough that the cushion dipped under both their weights. For a moment, they sat in easier silence. Then Carlos turned his head.
“Also, you did not run away because you lost one match.”
Jannik glanced at him.
“You ran away because you were tired before the match. The match only made it visible.”
Jannik looked at the floor. Carlos leaned back, staring at the ceiling now.
“I watched. Not all, because I was angry with you. But enough.”
“You were angry?”
“Yes.”
“At me?”
“At the situation. At everyone who will say smart things after, as they knew before. At the heat. At the calendar. At you a little, because you are stubborn.”
Jannik huffed. “You are also stubborn.”
“Yes, but charming.”
“No.”
Carlos put a hand over his chest. “You wound me.”
“You will survive.”
“I am injured.”
“Not there.”
Carlos grinned.
It was too easy, then. Too warm. Jannik felt the edges of the morning soften. The guilt did not vanish, but it loosened its grip. Carlos was beside him, wrist wrapped, legs stretched out, alive and irritated and very much not a kicked puppy.
Maybe pain did not cancel pain. Maybe two people could sit beside each other with different kinds of hurt and neither had to become smaller.
Carlos reached suddenly for the pillow in Jannik’s lap.
Jannik tightened his grip. “No.”
“Give it.”
“You will hit me.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
Carlos grabbed one corner. Jannik held the other. They were both smiling now.
“Give,” Carlos said.
“No.”
“You are in my house.”
“This pillow is mine now.”
“You have been here less than twenty-four hours.”
“I adapt fast.”
Carlos tugged harder. Jannik, still tired but competitive by instinct, pulled back. The pillow stretched between them like a flag in a very stupid war.
Carlos laughed. “You have no racket, so you fight with cushions?”
“You started.”
“I am injured.”
“You keep saying that only when useful.”
“Strategy.”
Carlos tugged again, but his wrist angle must have felt wrong because he released suddenly with his right hand and shifted awkwardly. Jannik loosened immediately.
“You okay?”
Carlos groaned. “Do not start.”
“I asked normally.”
“You asked with kicked puppy eyes.”
“I did not.”
“You did.”
Carlos reached with his left hand this time, lunging for the pillow. Jannik moved it out of reach. Carlos overbalanced. It happened quickly and stupidly.
His knee slid on the sofa cushion. His left hand caught the back of the couch, but not enough. Jannik instinctively reached to steady him, grabbing his shoulder with one hand and the pillow with the other, which helped no one. Carlos toppled sideways with a surprised sound and landed half on top of Jannik, one knee pressed into the sofa between Jannik’s legs, his left hand braced near Jannik’s shoulder, his wrapped wrist held carefully away from impact.
The pillow fell to the floor. Silence. Jannik stopped breathing. Carlos was close. Too close for the joke to remain a joke.
His body was warm from training, from the shower he apparently had not taken yet, from the sun outside. His hair had fallen forward over his forehead. One of his hands gripped the sofa near Jannik’s shoulder. Their faces were only inches apart, close enough for Jannik to see the small gold flecks in Carlos’s eyes, the line of sweat drying near his temple, the quick rise and fall of his chest as the laughter died between them.
Carlos blinked. Jannik’s hand was still on Carlos’s shoulder. He should move it. He did not. For one suspended second, neither of them moved.
Then Carlos’s gaze dropped. Not far. Just enough. To Jannik’s mouth.
Panic shot through Jannik so fast it was almost physical. Not fear exactly. Something more dangerous because part of him did not want to move. His fingers tightened on Carlos’s shoulder before he realized it. Carlos’s eyes flicked back up.
The air changed. The house became too quiet, the space between them too small, the joke suddenly transparent over something neither of them had agreed to see. Jannik’s heart hammered.
He thought of Wuthering Heights on the side table. People loving each other terribly and doing nothing useful about it. He thought, absurdly: no. Not this. Not now. Not while Carlos’s wrist was wrapped and Jannik’s life had collapsed sideways into Alicante. Not on a sofa after a pillow fight. Not when he did not even know what he wanted except that Carlos was very close and his mouth was very close and the thought of either distance or contact made him panic.
Carlos swallowed.
“Sorry,” he said, voice rougher than before.
Jannik released his shoulder immediately. “It’s okay.”
Carlos pushed himself up too quickly, then winced because of his wrist.
Jannik sat forward. “Careful.”
Carlos stood. “I’m fine.”
The words were automatic. Too fast. Jannik recognized the lie because he used it often. They stood in the living room, not looking at each other properly. The pillow lay on the floor between them like evidence. Carlos bent to pick it up, then seemed to remember his wrist and kicked it lightly instead.
“Stupid pillow.”
Jannik almost laughed, but it came out as a breath. Carlos ran his left hand through his hair.
“I need a shower.”
“Yes.”
“And we need food.”
“We have yogurt.”
Carlos gave him a look, grateful perhaps for the return to normal subjects.
“I trained. We need actual food.”
“Pizza leftovers.”
“For lunch? No.”
“You were proud of pizza yesterday.”
“Yesterday was emergency pizza. Today we cook.”
Jannik raised an eyebrow. “You cook?”
Carlos lifted his chin. “I can cook.”
“What?”
“Many things.”
“Name three.”
Carlos opened his mouth. Closed it. Jannik waited.
“Tortilla,” Carlos said.
“That is one.”
“Pasta.”
“That is boiling.”
“Still cooking.”
“Okay. Two.”
Carlos narrowed his eyes. “Toast.”
Jannik stared at him.
Carlos pointed. “Do not disrespect toast.”
“I think we need groceries.”
“Yes.” Carlos seized the statement like a lifeline. “Exactly. Groceries.”
“You want to go out?”
Carlos nodded. “Small shop nearby. Quiet. We go fast. Hats. No drama.”
Jannik looked toward the window.
A day ago, going out had felt like freedom. Then it had become exposure. Now the idea made him uneasy again, but not unbearable. Carlos would know where to go. Carlos would know how to move in his own space.
Still, Jannik said, “What about the news?”
Carlos shrugged. “News knows Murcia. Not Alicante. And nobody expects you to go grocery shopping with me.”
“That is true because it is insane.”
“Perfect hiding place. Reality.”
Jannik considered this. Carlos watched him with a slightly too-careful expression, like he was trying not to push and failing only a little.
“We need lunch,” Carlos said.
“You already said.”
“And if we stay here with only yogurt and pizza leftovers, Simone will fly here and kill us both.”
“That is possible.”
“And my wrist needs food.”
“Your wrist needs food?”
“Yes. Special wrist nutrition.”
“That is not real.”
“You don’t know. You are not a doctor.”
“Neither are you.”
Carlos grinned, and the awkwardness eased another fraction. Jannik bent and picked up the pillow. He placed it back on the sofa with unnecessary care. Carlos watched the motion. Their eyes nearly met, then both looked away at the same time. Too obvious. Too not obvious.
Carlos cleared his throat. “I shower. Ten minutes.”
“You can take longer.”
“I am very efficient.”
“You are never efficient.”
“In showers, yes.”
“I do not need details.”
Carlos laughed, more natural now, and moved toward the stairs. Halfway up, he turned.
“Jannik?”
Jannik looked up. Carlos stood with one hand on the railing, his wrist held close to his body. His face was still flushed, but his eyes had settled.
“You don’t have to feel bad because I’m injured.”
Jannik’s mouth tightened. Carlos continued before he could answer.
“And I won’t feel bad because you’re tired. Deal?”
Jannik held his gaze. It was not that simple. But maybe it could start that way.
“Deal,” he said.
Carlos nodded once. “Good. Also, don’t read too much angry moor literature while I shower. It makes you dramatic.”
Jannik picked up Wuthering Heights from the side table and held it up.
“It is a classic.”
“It is bad vibes.”
“You watched Twilight.”
“Twilight has vibes.”
“Bad ones.”
Carlos pointed at him from the stairs. “Take that back.”
“No.”
“I will fight you after groceries.”
“With one wrist?”
“With emotional power.”
“That is not intimidating.”
“It should be.”
Carlos disappeared upstairs. Jannik stood in the living room for a moment, book in hand, listening to his footsteps overhead and then the sound of water starting in the bathroom.
The house felt different now. Not less safe. More awake.
The strange moment on the sofa remained in the air, faint but undeniable. Jannik could still feel the weight of Carlos half over him, the warmth, the pause, the way Carlos had looked down and then back up. He could still feel his own panic, too sharp to be ignored, and beneath it something else he did not want to name.
He looked at the book. Now the question felt less theoretical. He set Wuthering Heights down, face down this time, as if the book had seen too much. Then he went upstairs to change.
If they were going outside, he needed to look invisible. Or as invisible as possible for a six-foot-two Italian tennis player hiding in the empty Alicante house of his Spanish rival. He chose a plain shirt, a cap, sunglasses. He checked himself in the mirror and looked, unfortunately, exactly like a famous person trying not to be recognized.
“Great,” he muttered.
By the time he returned downstairs, Carlos was already in the kitchen, freshly showered, hair damp and curling at the ends, wrist wrapped again, wearing a cap backwards and looking far too pleased with himself.
Jannik stopped in the doorway.
Carlos looked up. “What?”
“You look suspicious.”
“I look normal.”
“You look like Carlos Alcaraz trying to look normal.”
“And you look like Jannik Sinner trying to disappear into a hat.”
“That is the goal.”
Carlos grabbed the car keys from the counter.
“Good. We are both terrible at this.”
“We could order groceries.”
Carlos shook his head. “No. You need air. Also, I need to choose tomatoes personally.”
“Why?”
“Because tomatoes are important.”
Jannik stared.
Carlos opened the front door. “Come on, number one.”
Jannik froze. Carlos turned back immediately, face changing as he realized what he had said. For a second, the old weight threatened to enter the room again. Then Carlos corrected himself.
“Come on, Jannik.”
Just Jannik. Soft. Deliberate. Jannik breathed out. He stepped forward.
“Okay,” he said.
They left the house together into the bright Alicante morning, not exactly free, not exactly hidden, but moving toward lunch, groceries, and whatever fragile normality they could build before the world found them again.
── ⋆⋅𖤓⋅⋆ ──
The first problem with grocery shopping with Carlos Alcaraz was that Carlos had opinions. Many opinions. About everything. Jannik discovered this before they even reached the car.
“No,” Carlos said, stopping in the driveway.
Jannik looked at him. “What?”
Carlos pointed at his cap. “Not that one.”
Jannik glanced upward as if he could see his own head.
“What is wrong with the cap?”
“It is too you.”
“It is a plain cap.”
“It is a plain cap that says, ‘I am Jannik Sinner trying to be invisible.’”
“That is because I am Jannik Sinner trying to be invisible.”
Carlos shook his head with exaggerated disappointment.
“Bad strategy.”
“You are wearing your cap backwards.”
“Yes, because I am normal.”
Jannik stared at him.
Carlos spread his arms. “What?”
“You are Carlos Alcaraz.”
“Here, I am just Carlos.”
The words landed more sharply than Carlos seemed to intend. Jannik looked away first. Carlos noticed. He always noticed when Jannik wished he would not.
The teasing faded a little. “You know what I mean.”
“Yes.”
“For the shop, I am more normal than you.”
“I do not think this is true.”
“In Alicante? Yes.”
“People know you here.”
“People know me everywhere. But they expect me to be here. They do not expect you to be here.”
“That is not comforting.”
Carlos smiled. “It is tactical.”
Jannik sighed. “Fine. What cap should I wear?”
Carlos opened the car door and reached inside, rummaging through something in the front seat. He emerged with an old dark cap, faded at the edges, with no logo except a tiny stitched shape that might once have been a wave.
“This.”
Jannik took it suspiciously. “Whose is this?”
“Mine.”
“It looks old.”
“It is old.”
“Did you wash it?”
Carlos looked offended. “I am not disgusting.”
“You did not answer.”
“I washed it at some point.”
“At some point?”
“Do you want to be recognized or do you want fashion history?”
Jannik looked at the cap, then at Carlos. Carlos raised his eyebrows. Jannik took off his own cap and replaced it with Carlos’s.
It fit differently. Slightly looser. The fabric was soft from use, warm from the car and smelled faintly of laundry detergent and something that was simply Carlos: sun, soap and a trace of the cologne he probably denied wearing.
Jannik pretended not to notice. Carlos stared.
“What?” Jannik asked.
“Nothing.”
“You are looking.”
“I am checking disguise quality.”
“And?”
Carlos looked away too quickly. “Better.”
Jannik narrowed his eyes. “You are strange.”
“You are hiding in my house. I am not the strange one.”
“That was yesterday.”
“It is also today.”
Jannik opened the passenger door. “Are we buying food or having another emotional conversation in the driveway?”
Carlos grinned. “Food.”
“Good.”
“But I drive.”
“I assumed.”
“You assumed correctly.”
“I am injured,” Carlos said, suddenly solemn, holding up his wrapped wrist. “But I can still drive.”
“Comforting.”
“With one hand, if necessary.”
“Less comforting.”
Carlos laughed and climbed into the driver’s seat. The car smelled faintly of warm leather and mint gum. Jannik sat beside him this time, though Carlos had made a face about it.
“You sure you don’t want the back seat, prince?” Carlos asked.
“I am sure.”
“More space for your long, tragic legs.”
“My legs are fine.”
“You walked like a grandfather yesterday.”
“I was tired.”
“You are still tired.”
“I am also an adult.”
Carlos looked at him while reversing. “Debatable.”
Jannik leaned back and pulled the cap lower.
“Drive.”
Carlos drove.
The roads near the house were quiet in the late morning, washed in bright sun. Alicante stretched around them in clean white walls, low buildings, flashes of sea between streets, palm shadows flickering across the windshield. It felt less dense than Murcia, more open, the light bouncing differently off everything. The air had a soft coastal sharpness that made Jannik want to breathe deeper despite himself.
Carlos kept the music low. Not Spanish pop this time, but something guitar-heavy and loose, a summer song with a beat that made his fingers tap on the steering wheel. Jannik noticed the tapping.
“Your wrist,” he said.
Carlos stopped tapping immediately. “It is my left hand.”
“Still.”
Carlos glanced at him. “You are going to become worse than my physio.”
“I am practicing.”
“Bad idea.”
“Someone has to watch you.”
Carlos’s mouth twitched. “That is usually my family’s job.”
“They sent you alone with me.”
“Because they trust me.”
“Do they?”
“No. But Álvaro had plans.”
Jannik laughed quietly.
The supermarket was small, tucked into a street that looked residential enough not to attract attention but busy enough that two tall athletes could slip into the flow of ordinary life if they were careful. There was a narrow parking area, a row of sun-bleached carts, and a sign promising fresh produce, bread, cheese, household goods, and several things Jannik suspected Carlos would insist were essential.
Carlos parked near the side.
“Rules,” he said, turning off the engine.
Jannik looked at him. “Rules?”
“Yes. One, stay near me.”
“I am not a child.”
“You got discovered by a bakery.”
“I was photographed from outside.”
“Bakery.”
Jannik said nothing.
“Two,” Carlos continued, “if someone recognizes one of us, we act normal.”
“What is normal?”
Carlos paused. “Good question.”
“That is not reassuring.”
“Normal means we say hello, maybe a photo, maybe not, then leave.”
“No photo.”
“No photo,” Carlos agreed immediately. “Good. Three, do not argue with me about tomatoes.”
Jannik stared. “That is very specific.”
“It is important.”
“We have not even entered.”
“And already I know you will be difficult.”
“I have said nothing about tomatoes.”
“You have an energy.”
“I have an energy?”
“A canned sauce energy.”
Jannik turned slowly toward him. “I am Italian.”
“Yes, but you are also tired and practical.”
“That does not mean I buy bad sauce.”
Carlos raised both hands. “We will see.”
They got out of the car.
The heat outside settled instantly on Jannik’s arms and neck. He adjusted Carlos’s old cap and put on sunglasses. Carlos did the same, though with the cap backwards, he looked less disguised and more like himself on holiday.
“This is not good,” Jannik said.
“What?”
“You.”
“What about me?”
“You look exactly like you.”
Carlos grinned. “I cannot help being beautiful.”
“I meant recognizable.”
“Same problem.”
Jannik rolled his eyes and followed him inside.
The supermarket air was cool and smelled of fruit, bread, floor cleaner, and coffee from a little machine near the front. A few shoppers moved through the aisles: an older couple choosing oranges, a woman with a toddler in the cart, a man comparing laundry detergent, two teenagers whispering over snacks. No one looked up for more than a second.
Jannik’s shoulders lowered slightly. Carlos noticed and said nothing. At first.
Then he leaned closer and whispered, “You look like a spy who has never spied before.”
Jannik kept his eyes on the produce section.
“And you look like a spy who would announce himself.”
“I would be charming.”
“You would be caught.”
“People would forgive me.”
“That is unfortunately true.”
They took a basket. Carlos took it with his left hand. Jannik immediately reached for it.
Carlos pulled it away. “No.”
“Your wrist.”
“It is my left.”
“The basket will get heavy.”
“Then you can take it later.”
“I can take it now.”
“You paid for nothing yet. You don’t get basket privileges.”
“Basket privileges?”
“Yes.”
Jannik stared at him. Carlos walked ahead, triumphant.
The produce section was bright and abundant: tomatoes piled in red clusters, green peppers shining under mist, onions in papery skins, garlic, basil, lemons, peaches, melons cut open to show orange flesh, lettuce, courgettes, eggplants, herbs bundled in little plastic sleeves.
Carlos stopped in front of the tomatoes with the seriousness of a man approaching a sacred object. Jannik watched him. Carlos picked up one tomato, inspected it, smelled it, put it down, picked up another.
“No,” he said.
Jannik looked at the tomato. “It looks fine.”
Carlos did not even look at him.
“It is not fine.”
“How can you know?”
Carlos held it out. “Feel.”
Jannik did. It felt like a tomato.
“Well?” Carlos asked.
“It is a tomato.”
Carlos closed his eyes as if in pain. “You are impossible.”
“I am being honest.”
“Honesty without knowledge is dangerous.”
“About tomatoes?”
“Especially about tomatoes.”
Jannik picked up another one. “This one?”
Carlos looked at it for half a second.
“Too hard.”
“This one?”
“Too soft.”
“This?”
“Bad color.”
“This?”
Carlos took it, considered, then placed it carefully in a bag.
“Acceptable.”
Jannik smiled. “One acceptable tomato. Lunch is saved.”
Carlos pointed at him with a tomato. “Do not mock the process.”
“You are very dramatic.”
“I am making sauce.”
“You could buy sauce.”
Carlos froze. Jannik knew immediately he had made a tactical mistake. Carlos turned slowly, sunglasses lowering slightly on his nose so Jannik could see the full offense in his eyes.
“What did you say?”
Jannik kept his expression neutral. “I said you could buy sauce.”
Carlos looked around as if witnesses might need to be protected.
“You are Italian and you say this?”
“I did not say I prefer it.”
“You suggested it.”
“As an option.”
“A bad option.”
“A practical option.”
“A tragic option.”
Jannik reached toward a jar on the nearby shelf. “This says tomato sauce.”
Carlos physically put himself between Jannik and the jars.
“No.”
“It is right there.”
“No.”
“It has basil.”
“It has sadness.”
Jannik raised an eyebrow. “Sadness?”
“All ready-made sauce has sadness.”
“That is not true.”
“It is true enough.”
“Sometimes people are busy.”
“Today we are not busy.”
“You trained.”
“I stretched and suffered. Now I cook.”
“You cannot cut tomatoes with your wrist.”
“I have another hand.”
“You will cut your finger.”
Carlos scoffed. “I am not five.”
“You behave like it near tomatoes.”
Carlos put more tomatoes into the bag, aggressively now. “We are making fresh sauce.”
“Fine.”
“With garlic.”
“Obviously.”
“And basil.”
“Yes.”
“And good olive oil.”
“Of course.”
“And pasta.”
Jannik nodded. “Now we agree.”
Carlos looked suspicious. “What shape?”
“Spaghetti.”
“No.”
Jannik blinked. “No?”
“Too messy.”
“It is pasta.”
“Penne.”
“For tomato sauce?”
“Yes.”
“Carlos.”
“Fusilli.”
“Are you naming shapes randomly?”
“Rigatoni.”
Jannik rubbed his forehead. “Spaghetti is classic.”
“Spaghetti is dangerous for eating on a sofa.”
“We are not eating on a sofa.”
“Maybe we will.”
“Why?”
“Life is unpredictable. You should know this.”
Jannik looked at him for a long moment. Carlos grinned. Jannik pointed toward the pasta aisle.
“We will decide there.”
They continued.
They fought over garlic. Carlos wanted two heads. Jannik said one was enough. Carlos asked if he hated flavor. Jannik said he wanted to taste tomatoes, not survive an exorcism. Carlos put two heads in the basket anyway.
They fought over onions. Jannik wanted a small one. Carlos said onions did not belong in this particular sauce. Jannik said many sauces had onion. Carlos said not his. Jannik said he was not aware Carlos had an ancestral pasta sauce tradition. Carlos said he did now.
They fought over basil because Carlos wanted the plant instead of the packet.
“The plant will live,” Carlos said.
“With you?” Jannik asked. “Unlikely.”
Carlos held the little basil plant to his chest. “You are cruel.”
“I am realistic.”
“We take the plant.”
“You will forget to water it.”
“You will remind me.”
“I am not staying here to be responsible for your basil.”
Carlos went very quiet. The sentence hung between them unexpectedly. Jannik realized what he had said a second too late. He looked at Carlos.
Carlos was still holding the basil plant.
His expression had shifted, only slightly, but enough. The joke had opened onto something neither of them had prepared for: how long Jannik would stay, what staying meant, whether this house was a pause or a beginning of something unnamed.
Jannik’s mouth tightened. “I mean...”
Carlos looked down at the plant, then back up. “You can remind me while you are here.”
“Okay,” Jannik said softly.
Carlos nodded once and placed the basil carefully in the basket. They did not fight for almost an entire aisle after that. Then Carlos tried to buy three kinds of cheese.
“We do not need cheese,” Jannik said.
Carlos looked genuinely wounded. “Everyone needs cheese.”
“Not for this pasta.”
“For after.”
“We are not planning a banquet.”
“We have guests later.”
Jannik paused. “Guests?”
Carlos pretended to examine manchego. “Maybe.”
Jannik narrowed his eyes. “Carlos.”
Carlos looked at him too innocently.
“What?”
“What guests?”
“My brothers asked if they could come by.”
Jannik’s stomach performed a small, nervous movement.
“Álvaro?”
“Álvaro and Jaime.”
“Jaime too?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“This afternoon.”
Jannik processed this. The supermarket around them continued: wheels rattling, a child asking for biscuits, the beep of checkout scanners, someone laughing near the bread. Carlos watched him carefully.
“They don’t have to,” Carlos said quickly. “I told them maybe. I didn’t say yes. It is your quiet house too, right now.”
That sentence did something to Jannik. Your quiet house too. He looked down at the basket. Tomatoes, garlic, pasta, basil plant, olive oil, cheese Carlos absolutely did not need but would win anyway.
“It’s okay,” Jannik said.
Carlos studied him. “Really?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t have to say yes.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
Jannik gave him a look. “I am trying to be honest, as ordered.”
Carlos almost smiled. “And?”
“And I think it is okay. I know Álvaro already. Sort of.”
“You hid from him behind a menu.”
“That is a strong bond.”
Carlos laughed.
“And Jaime...” Jannik hesitated. “He is young.”
“He will be excited,” Carlos warned.
“That is okay.”
“He might ask many questions.”
“About tennis?”
“About everything.”
Jannik considered this, then nodded. “It is okay.”
Carlos’s expression softened. “He likes you.”
“He doesn’t know me.”
“He likes your tennis.”
“That is different.”
“Maybe. But he is a good kid.”
“I know.”
Carlos tilted his head. “You know?”
“You talk about him sometimes.”
Carlos’s face changed in a way Jannik could not quite read.
“I do?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“At tournaments. In locker rooms. In cars. You say, Jaime did this, Jaime said that, Jaime thinks he can beat me soon.”
Carlos smiled, surprised and pleased despite himself.
“He does think that.”
“He is wrong.”
“For now.”
“For a long time.”
Carlos laughed. “Careful. He will challenge you.”
“I have no rackets.”
“You keep saying this, as it will save you.”
Jannik smiled. “Maybe.”
Carlos put the manchego in the basket. Jannik did not protest. They moved to the pasta aisle. This became a war. Carlos picked up penne. Jannik shook his head. Carlos picked up rigatoni.
Jannik said, “Too heavy for this sauce.”
Carlos picked up fusilli.
Jannik hesitated. “Acceptable.”
Carlos gasped. “Really?”
“For tomato sauce, yes.”
“But now I want to disagree.”
“You cannot disagree with yourself.”
“I can.”
“You are impossible.”
Carlos put the fusilli in the basket, then added spaghetti.
Jannik stared. “Why both?”
“Because we are free.”
“We are two people.”
“Four later.”
“Jaime is not eating a whole packet of pasta.”
“You have not met Jaime at lunch.”
Jannik allowed this. They fought over dessert next. Carlos wanted ice cream. Jannik said ice cream would melt before they got home. Carlos said the car had air-conditioning. Jannik said ice cream did not trust air-conditioning. Carlos said ice cream trusted him. Jannik said nothing should trust him after the pillow incident.
Carlos went still for half a second. Jannik felt heat rise at the back of his neck. The couch flashed between them: Carlos over him, breath close, eyes lowering. Carlos looked at the freezer. Then he opened it and pulled out ice cream.
“Then we rebuild trust,” he said.
Jannik took the ice cream silently and put it in the basket. They did not look at each other for the next thirty seconds. At the bread section, Carlos recovered first.
“Bread,” he announced.
“We are making pasta.”
“And sauce.”
“Yes.”
“What cleans the sauce from the plate?”
“A dishwasher.”
Carlos looked horrified. “Bread, Jannik.”
“Fine.”
“Good bread.”
“Obviously.”
“You say obviously now, but earlier you suggested jar sauce.”
Jannik picked up a loaf and put it in the basket before Carlos could inspect it. Carlos took it out.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking.”
“It is bread.”
Carlos squeezed it. “It is acceptable.”
Jannik smiled. “High praise.”
They bought fruit because Jannik insisted and Carlos pretended to be annoyed. They bought yogurt because Simone’s ghost haunted both of them. They bought eggs, water, coffee, and more olive oil than Jannik thought two people could reasonably use.
Then they reached the checkout. This was where Jannik won.
He had planned it from the moment Carlos became distracted by arguing with himself over whether they needed more basil.
Carlos placed items on the belt with his left hand, careful of his wrist. Jannik helped, quietly arranging tomatoes so they would not be crushed, then pasta, bread, cheese, yogurt, fruit, water. The cashier, a woman in her thirties with dark hair pulled into a bun, scanned without much interest. She glanced at Carlos once, then again, recognition flickering, but she said nothing except the price.
Carlos reached for his wallet. Jannik was faster. He tapped his card before Carlos fully understood what was happening. The machine beeped. Paid. Carlos froze. The cashier handed Jannik the receipt.
“Gracias,” Jannik said.
Carlos turned toward him slowly.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No, Jannik.”
“Too late.”
Carlos pointed at the card machine. “Cancel.”
The cashier looked between them. Jannik shook his head.
“No need.”
Carlos said something rapid in Spanish to the cashier, who smiled politely in the way of people refusing to be involved in rich athlete grocery disputes.
“It is paid,” she said.
Jannik took the bags.
Carlos took one back immediately. “Why did you do that?”
“To pay for groceries.”
“I know what paying is.”
“Then why ask?”
Carlos followed him toward the exit, voice low but intense.
“This is my house.”
“Yes.”
“My groceries.”
“Our lunch.”
Carlos stopped for half a step. Jannik kept walking because if he stopped, he might have to deal with what he had said. Our lunch. Carlos caught up outside, where the heat wrapped around them again.
“You tricked me,” Carlos said.
“Yes.”
“That is rude.”
“Maybe.”
“I invited you.”
“And I am saying thank you.”
Carlos opened the trunk with more force than necessary.
“You do not have to pay to thank me.”
Jannik placed the bags inside carefully. “I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Because if you think this is like a hotel-”
“It is not.”
Carlos stopped. Jannik looked at him across the open trunk.
The street was quiet around them. A scooter passed at the end of the block. Somewhere behind them, supermarket doors opened and closed with a soft mechanical sigh. The sun lit Carlos’s face from the side, catching the damp curls near his forehead, the tension in his jaw.
Jannik chose his words carefully.
“It is not a hotel,” he said. “That is why I wanted to pay.”
Carlos’s anger faltered.
“I can’t give you back the quiet,” Jannik continued. “Or the trouble. Or the fact that my face was on the news and you had to come get me like...” He stopped.
“Like what?”
“Like I had no idea what I was doing.”
Carlos raised an eyebrow.
Jannik sighed. “Okay. Like I had no idea what I was doing.”
Carlos’s mouth twitched.
“So I bought tomatoes,” Jannik said. “Let me have this.”
Carlos looked at him for a long moment. Then he closed the trunk.
“You bought bad tomatoes.”
Jannik blinked. “You chose them.”
“I was emotionally compromised.”
“You are unbelievable.”
Carlos tried to stay mad. He lasted perhaps three seconds. Then he laughed. Not loudly. Not the full bright laugh from the car. But enough that the tension broke and slid away into the heat.
“You are still annoying,” Carlos said.
“Yes.”
“And next time I pay.”
Jannik got into the passenger seat. “We will fight.”
“Good. I will win.”
“You never win arguments with me.”
“I always win. You just do not understand.”
“I understand perfectly.”
Carlos started the car. “No. You are Italian. Very stubborn.”
“You are Spanish and also stubborn.”
“Yes, but charming.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because it is true.”
They drove back without anyone noticing.
No one followed them. No one called out. No one snapped a photo through a windshield. The supermarket became just another errand, the bags in the trunk just food, the road back to the house just a road.
Jannik found himself relaxing by degrees.
It was strange how quickly danger could teach the body to value boredom. Red light. Roundabout. A cyclist. A dog crossing ahead with its owner. Carlos complaining about people who did not signal. Jannik correcting his pronunciation of “fusilli” because Carlos said it with too much confidence and too little accuracy. Carlos arguing that Spanish pronunciation improved everything. Jannik calling that offensive to pasta. Carlos calling him pasta police.
By the time they reached the house, both of them were smiling. Inside, the cool air welcomed them. Carlos carried two bags despite Jannik’s protest. Jannik carried the rest, including the basil plant, which Carlos insisted must not be tilted because “it has suffered enough.”
“You bought it ten minutes ago,” Jannik said.
“And already I love it.”
“You love easily.”
Carlos glanced at him. Jannik felt the words echo in the room. He looked away and set the basil on the kitchen counter. Carlos busied himself with unloading groceries, perhaps too quickly.
Tomatoes into a bowl. Pasta on the counter. Garlic beside it. Bread wrapped in paper. Cheese in the fridge. Yogurt stacked. Fruit washed. Ice cream in the freezer before it could become another argument.
For a while, the kitchen filled with movement instead of words.
Then Carlos clapped his hands once. “Sauce.”
“You need a shower after training,” Jannik said.
“I already showered.”
“You trained again in the supermarket.”
“Emotionally.”
“That does not count.”
Carlos washed his hands at the sink, carefully avoiding too much pressure on the wrapped wrist.
“You boil water.”
“I am allowed near the stove?”
“For water, yes.”
“Honored.”
Carlos took a cutting board from a cabinet and a knife from the drawer. Jannik immediately looked at his wrist. Carlos pointed the knife at him.
“No.”
“That is not safe.”
“Then don’t annoy the man with the knife.”
“Your wrist-”
“My right wrist is injured. I cut with my left hand enough.”
“You are right-handed.”
“I am talented.”
Jannik stared.
Carlos held the knife up proudly in his left hand. “Ambidextrous enough.”
“That is not a phrase that inspires confidence.”
Carlos picked up a tomato. “Water.”
Jannik surrendered because arguing further would probably lead to Carlos cutting something out of spite. He filled a pot with water and set it on the stove. The kitchen was bright now, sunlight falling across the tiles, catching the red skins of the tomatoes and the green leaves of the basil plant. Outside the window, the garden shimmered in the heat.
Carlos cut the first tomato. Slowly. Very slowly. Jannik watched from the stove.
Carlos looked up. “Stop watching.”
“I am not.”
“You are.”
“I am checking technique.”
“No. You are waiting for blood.”
“That is dramatic.”
“You think I cannot cut tomatoes.”
“I think you should not.”
Carlos sliced another piece, cleaner this time. “See?”
“Bravo.”
“Do not patronize me.”
“I would never.”
Carlos threw a tomato seed at him. It landed on the counter halfway between them. Jannik looked at it. Carlos looked proud.
“That was very intimidating,” Jannik said.
“My aim is affected by injury.”
“Of course.”
Carlos cut the tomatoes into rough pieces and pushed them into a bowl. His movements were careful but determined, and after a few minutes, Jannik stopped watching so closely. Not because he stopped worrying, but because Carlos was right. The attention made him look like a kicked puppy, or worse, like a coach.
The water began to heat. Jannik added salt.
Carlos turned sharply. “How much?”
“Enough.”
Carlos came over to inspect. Jannik blocked him with one arm.
“No.”
“I need to see.”
“You trusted me with boiling water.”
“I did not trust you with salt.”
“I am Italian.”
“You suggested jar sauce.”
“That will be on my grave.”
Carlos leaned around him, trying to see into the pot. Jannik moved with him. Carlos reached again. Jannik shifted.
For a moment, they were too close again, shoulder against shoulder in front of the stove, the old awkwardness threatening to return under the joke. Carlos’s arm brushed Jannik’s side. Jannik felt it through his shirt like a question.
They both stepped back at the same time.
“The salt is fine,” Carlos said quickly.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Carlos returned to the tomatoes. Jannik exhaled slowly through his nose. He opened the pasta.
“Fusilli or spaghetti?” he asked.
Carlos looked relieved by the normal question. “Fusilli.”
“You are choosing fusilli?”
“Yes.”
“After all that?”
Carlos shrugged. “I am unpredictable.”
“You bought both because you are chaotic.”
“I bought both because you paid.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It makes emotional sense.”
Jannik decided not to ask.
Carlos finished cutting the tomatoes and moved them to a pan with olive oil and garlic. The smell changed almost instantly when the garlic hit the heat. Warm, sharp, rich. Jannik closed his eyes briefly. It was remarkable how quickly a house became a home when garlic cooked in olive oil.
Carlos stirred with his left hand.
“You are good at this,” Jannik said.
Carlos glanced at him. “Surprised?”
“A little.”
“Rude.”
“You said toast was one of your three dishes.”
“I was under pressure.”
“You forgot eggs.”
Carlos paused. “I do make eggs.”
“You forgot your own skill.”
“That is how humble I am.”
Jannik laughed quietly and poured the fusilli into the boiling water. The pasta hit with a rushing sound, then disappeared beneath the surface. Steam rose into his face. He stirred automatically. Carlos watched him now.
“What?”
“You look less dead when you cook.”
“Thank you?”
“It is a compliment.”
“It needs work.”
Carlos smiled and turned back to his sauce. He added the tomatoes, salt, pepper and tore basil leaves with unnecessary reverence. Then he took a hand blender from a drawer and held it up.
Jannik looked alarmed. “Are you allowed to use that?”
Carlos sighed. “Everything I do is now medical drama for you.”
“With blades, yes.”
“This is not a blade.”
“It is literally a blade.”
Carlos plugged it in. “Stand back if you are afraid.”
“I am not afraid.”
“Then stand here.”
“No.”
Carlos grinned and blended the tomatoes just enough to turn them into a rough sauce, still textured, bright red-orange, dotted with basil. Some splashed near the edge of the pan.
Jannik leaned over slightly. “That looks good.”
Carlos preened. “Of course.”
“Very humble.”
“I am an artist.”
“You are making lunch.”
“All art begins somewhere.”
Jannik tasted the pasta. “Almost.”
Carlos dipped a spoon into the sauce, blew on it, then held it toward Jannik. Jannik blinked.
“Taste,” Carlos said.
Jannik leaned in and tasted from the spoon. For half a second, Carlos’s eyes stayed on his mouth. Jannik looked down immediately.
The sauce was hot, bright, sweet from the tomatoes, sharp from garlic, softened by basil and oil. It tasted like the morning outside and the kitchen around them and something uncomplicated enough to trust.
“It’s good,” Jannik said.
Carlos’s gaze lifted back to his eyes. “Only good?”
“Very good.”
“Better.”
“Maybe a little more salt.”
Carlos gasped.
Jannik pointed at the pan. “You asked.”
“I asked for praise.”
“You asked to taste.”
“Same thing.”
Jannik took a pinch of salt and added it himself. Carlos watched, offended but allowing it.
“Now it is our sauce,” Jannik said.
Carlos stared at him. Jannik realized too late. Again. Our sauce. Our lunch. Our groceries.
He turned to check the pasta as if the pot had become urgently fascinating. Carlos said nothing, but when Jannik glanced sideways, he was smiling down at the pan. Softly. Privately. The phone on the counter buzzed.
Carlos picked it up. “Álvaro.”
Jannik drained the pasta. “What does he say?”
Carlos read aloud. “‘Are you alive? Did Jannik escape? Is lunch edible?’”
“Tell him no, no, yes.”
Carlos typed. “He asks if he and Jaime can come around four.”
Jannik moved the pasta into the sauce. “Of course.”
Carlos looked at him. “You sure?”
“Yes.”
“You can say no.”
“I know.”
“And you can change your mind later.”
“I know.”
Carlos leaned against the counter. “I mean it. Álvaro is easy. Jaime will be excited. He might ask about Paris without thinking. He is not cruel, just young.”
“That is okay.”
Carlos searched his face. “Is it?”
Jannik stirred the pasta slowly through the sauce. Was it?
He imagined a younger brother, Carlos’s brother, arriving with curiosity and the kind of unfiltered energy that came from being too young to dress every question in caution. He imagined hearing his own loss mentioned in this kitchen, in this house, after a lunch made from tomatoes Carlos had chosen like jewels.
The thought pinched. But it did not terrify him.
Maybe because Carlos had warned him. Maybe because the house no longer felt like a hiding place only. Maybe because being around Carlos’s family, even in small doses, sounded less like exposure and more like being folded into something warm and chaotic.
“It is okay,” Jannik said. “Really.”
Carlos nodded. “I will tell them the rules.”
“Rules?”
“Yes. No photos. No telling anyone. No asking stupid things.”
“Álvaro will ask stupid things anyway.”
“Álvaro asks stupid things professionally.”
Jannik smiled. “And Jaime?”
“Jaime will try not to. Then fail.”
“I can handle that.”
Carlos watched him.
Jannik looked up. “What?”
“You look calmer.”
Jannik considered this.
“I feel calmer.”
Carlos’s face softened. “Good.”
“Do not say it like you are proud.”
“I am proud.”
“Carlos.”
“What? You slept, showered, bought groceries, and did not flee when my brothers wanted to visit. Big day.”
Jannik shook his head, but he was smiling.
Carlos took plates from the cabinet. “Lunch.”
They ate at the kitchen table.
The pasta was better than Jannik expected, though he did not say it that way because Carlos would become unbearable. The sauce clung to the fusilli, fresh and vivid, with little pieces of tomato still intact. The bread, declared acceptable in the supermarket, became excellent when used to catch sauce from the plate. Carlos insisted on grating a little cheese over his own portion and then looked personally betrayed when Jannik declined.
“You are missing joy,” Carlos said.
“I have joy without cheese.”
“That is not possible.”
“I am experiencing it now.”
Carlos shook his head and grated extra cheese over his own plate. They ate in the bright kitchen with the basil plant sitting between them like a small green witness.
Outside, the day had settled into heat. The garden looked still, leaves barely moving. Inside, the air was cool, the food warm, the silence between them easier than it had been the morning before. Carlos ate quickly, then remembered to slow down because Jannik looked at him.
“What?” Carlos asked around a mouthful.
“Nothing.”
“You are judging.”
“You eat like you are racing.”
“I am hungry.”
“You trained.”
“I moved.”
“You trained.”
Carlos pointed his fork at him. “Do not tell Simone.”
“I already told Simone you were out.”
Carlos froze. “You did?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“He said coffee is not breakfast.”
“That was about you.”
“Yes.”
Carlos relaxed.
“I did not mention the training details,” Jannik said.
Carlos squinted. “You are learning diplomacy.”
“I am Italian.”
“That is not the same.”
Jannik smiled into his glass of water.
For a while, they talked about the brothers coming over. Carlos described Jaime’s current obsession with improving his serve, which apparently involved serving at walls, doors, his bedroom curtains, and once, disastrously, a lamp. Álvaro had filmed the lamp incident and threatened to use it at Jaime’s future wedding.
“Your family keeps evidence,” Jannik said.
“All families do.”
“My brother has terrible photos of me.”
Carlos leaned forward. “Show me.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because they are terrible.”
“That is the point.”
“Absolutely not.”
“I will ask him.”
Jannik’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t have his number.”
Carlos smiled slowly. Jannik remembered.
“You remember my mother’s phone number,” he said.
“Yes.”
“You do not remember my brother’s.”
Carlos’s silence was suspicious.
“Carlos.”
“I remember many numbers.”
“Why?”
“I told you. I remember things.”
“That is terrifying.”
“It is useful.”
“It is terrifying.”
Carlos grinned. “Maybe I can ask your mother.”
“Do not involve my mother in embarrassing photos.”
“She would send them.”
“She would.”
They both laughed, and the laughter made something in the kitchen brighter. When the plates were empty, Carlos leaned back with satisfaction.
“I told you fresh sauce,” he said.
“It was good.”
“Very good.”
“It was very good.”
“Better than jar.”
“Yes.”
“Say it.”
Jannik sighed. “Fresh sauce is better than jar sauce.”
Carlos smiled like he had won a Grand Slam.
“Happy?” Jannik asked.
“Very.”
“You are easy.”
“About pasta, yes.”
“That is not true. You are very difficult.”
Carlos rested his wrapped wrist carefully on the table and stretched his fingers. The movement was small, but Jannik noticed. He looked away before Carlos could accuse him of kicked-puppy behavior.
Carlos noticed anyway. But this time, he did not scold.
He only said, “It does not hurt much right now.”
Jannik looked back at him.
“Really,” Carlos said.
“Okay.”
“It is annoying. Not terrible.”
“Okay.”
Carlos studied him. “That was good.”
“What?”
“You did not make the face.”
“I am improving.”
“Slowly.”
Jannik picked up his plate and stood.
“I will clean.”
Carlos got up immediately. “No.”
“Yes.”
“You paid for groceries.”
“And now I clean.”
“This is my house.”
“And I am staying here.”
Carlos reached for the plate. Jannik lifted it out of reach.
Carlos stared up at him. “Using height is unfair.”
“I use available advantages.”
“You are a guest.”
“I am a grateful guest.”
“You are an annoying guest.”
“Yes.”
Carlos tried to grab the plate with his left hand. Jannik turned away, collected Carlos’s plate too, and walked to the sink. Carlos followed, complaining in Spanish under his breath.
“I understand some of that,” Jannik said.
“Good. It was about you.”
“I guessed.”
Jannik turned on the water. Carlos stood beside him, arms crossed.
“At least I dry.”
“You should rest your wrist.”
Carlos’s head turned slowly.
Jannik corrected himself immediately. “You can dry.”
“Good.”
“I was only-”
“Puppy.”
Jannik shut up. Carlos grabbed a dish towel with theatrical dignity and stood ready. The domesticity of it should have felt strange. It did not.
Jannik washed. Carlos dried. Water ran warm over Jannik’s hands, carrying away tomato sauce, oil, flecks of basil. Carlos took each plate from him, dried it carefully, and placed it back in the cabinet where it belonged, or where Carlos claimed it belonged, because he opened the wrong cabinet twice and blamed the house.
“This is your house,” Jannik said.
“I don’t live here all the time.”
“You do not know where plates go?”
“They move.”
“Plates do not move.”
“Maybe in Italy.”
“In Spain, plates migrate?”
“Yes. Seasonal.”
Jannik handed him a glass. “You are impossible.”
“You say that a lot.”
“You earn it.”
Carlos dried the glass, then paused. “You say it as you like it.”
Jannik’s hand stilled under the running water. The kitchen seemed to hold its breath. Carlos looked at the glass in his hands as if surprised by his own words. Jannik turned off the tap.
For a second, the only sound was the air-conditioning and the faint drip of water from the faucet. Jannik could have made a joke. He almost did. Instead, he took another plate from the sink and handed it over.
“I do,” he said quietly.
Carlos looked at him. Jannik kept his eyes on the sink, pretending there was something left to wash.
“Most of the time,” he added.
Carlos laughed softly. Not loudly. Not in triumph. Just a small, warm sound that settled between them without demanding anything.
“Good,” Carlos said.
Jannik glanced at him. Carlos dried the plate slowly, smiling down at it.
“Because you are also impossible.”
“I am very reasonable.”
“No.”
“I am calm.”
“No.”
“I am quiet.”
“Yes, but in a suspicious way.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It makes emotional sense.”
“You keep using that when logic fails.”
“Because logic is boring.”
Jannik smiled and washed the last pan. Carlos dried it with exaggerated care, then placed it on the counter because neither of them knew where it belonged and both were tired of pretending otherwise. The kitchen was clean.
The basil plant sat near the window now. Carlos had moved it into sunlight and given it a little water, too much according to Jannik, exactly enough according to Carlos. The leftover pasta was in a container in the fridge. The bread was wrapped. The plates were mostly in the right place.
Jannik leaned against the sink, drying his hands. Carlos leaned beside him, shoulder nearly touching his. Neither moved away.
In a few hours, Álvaro and Jaime would arrive, bringing noise, questions, family, and the outside world softened by familiarity. Later, maybe, the news would continue without them. Darren would text. Simone would ask about stretching. Jannik’s mother would send hearts and practical reminders. Paris would still be behind him. Wimbledon would still be missing Carlos. The summer would still be complicated.
But for now, there was only the clean kitchen after lunch. Tomato sauce still in the air. Sunlight on basil leaves. Carlos, beside him, drying his hands on a towel with one wrist wrapped and the other moving carefully. Jannik felt tired. He also felt fed.
It was not the same as healed. But it was something. Carlos bumped his shoulder lightly against Jannik’s.
“See?” he said. “Fresh sauce.”
Jannik looked at him, then at the quiet kitchen, then back.
“Yes,” he said. “You were right.”
Carlos’s smile bloomed instantly, bright and unbearable.
“Say it again.”
“No.”
“Please.”
“No.”
“Jannik.”
“I already said it once.”
“I was not recording.”
“Good.”
Carlos laughed, and Jannik found himself laughing too, softly, helplessly, the sound blending with the warm afternoon light as the last dish dried on the counter between them.
── ⋆⋅𖤓⋅⋆ ──
By four in the afternoon, the house had changed temperature. Not physically. The air-conditioning still kept the rooms cool, and outside the garden remained bright and still beneath the Alicante sun. But something in the house had begun to wait. Jannik noticed it first while pretending not to.
He was sitting on the sofa with Wuthering Heights open in his lap, though he had read the same paragraph three times without absorbing any of it. The book had become less a book than a shield, something to hold so his hands would not seem restless. Across the room, Carlos moved around with the strange, unnecessary energy of someone expecting guests but determined not to look like he cared.
He had straightened the cushions twice. He had moved the basil plant from the kitchen window to the dining table, then back to the kitchen window, then slightly to the left on the sill. He had checked his phone every few minutes. He had opened the fridge once, looked inside, and closed it without taking anything.
Then he had asked, “Do we have snacks?”
Jannik had looked up slowly from the page.
“We bought groceries two hours ago.”
“Yes, but snacks.”
“We bought fruit.”
Carlos gave him a look of deep disappointment. “That is not a snack. That is fruit.”
“It can be both.”
“No.”
“We bought bread.”
“Also not a snack.”
“Cheese.”
“Closer.”
“Ice cream.”
“For later.”
Jannik closed the book around one finger.
“Are you nervous?”
Carlos spun around from the kitchen doorway. “No.”
“You look nervous.”
“I am not nervous.”
“You reorganized basil.”
Carlos glanced at the plant as if it had betrayed him. “It needed better light.”
“You moved it three centimeters.”
“Three important centimeters.”
Jannik watched him.
Carlos folded his arms, then immediately unfolded them because of his wrist. The wrap was still there, clean and snug, but he seemed to forget it and remember it in cycles. The forgetting worried Jannik more than the injury itself. Carlos had always moved like his body would answer him forever. The hesitation that came after certain gestures looked wrong on him, like a wrong note in a familiar song.
“I just want it to be normal,” Carlos said finally.
Jannik softened. “It will be.”
Carlos huffed. “You have not spent enough time with my brothers.”
“I met Álvaro.”
“You hid from Álvaro.”
“I also survived Álvaro.”
“Barely.”
“Jaime is young. It will be fine.”
Carlos made an uncertain sound.
Jannik tilted his head. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“No.”
Carlos looked toward the front door, then back. “Jaime really likes you.”
Jannik blinked. “Okay.”
“No, like really. He watches your matches. He asks me things.”
“About tennis?”
“Yes. About how you hit so clean. How do you return? Why do you look like you are bored when you are destroying people?”
Jannik stared at him.
Carlos grinned a little. “His words.”
“I don’t look bored.”
“You sometimes look like someone told you tennis is a tax obligation.”
“That is not true.”
“It is a little true.”
Jannik lowered his eyes to the book to hide a smile.
“And you look like someone invited you to a party in the middle of a baseline rally.”
Carlos pointed at him. “Because tennis is fun.”
“It is work.”
“It can be both.”
The words, simple as they were, carried too much.
Jannik looked down at the page again. Carlos seemed to realize what he had said only after the silence had changed. He cleared his throat and wandered back toward the kitchen.
“Anyway,” he said, too casually, “Jaime may be excited.”
“I can handle excited.”
“He might ask to play tennis.”
“I have no rackets.”
“You keep believing this protects you.”
“It has worked so far.”
Carlos laughed, and the sound helped the house breathe again. At exactly four, the doorbell rang. Carlos looked at Jannik. Jannik looked at Carlos.
“You look more nervous than me,” Carlos said.
“I am not nervous.”
“You are holding the book upside down.”
Jannik glanced down. The book was not upside down. Carlos grinned.
“That was cruel,” Jannik said.
“Effective.”
Carlos went to answer the door. The quiet house split open.
Álvaro entered first, carrying a paper bag and wearing a smile that suggested he had arrived prepared to be entertained. Jaime came behind him like sunlight given human form, all eager movement and bright eyes, taller than Jannik expected but still young in the way he occupied space: quickly, fully, without asking permission from the room.
“Buenas,” Álvaro called.
Carlos held the door. “You are loud already.”
“I said one word.”
“It was loud.”
Jaime ignored them both and looked past Carlos. His eyes found Jannik immediately. For half a second, he froze. Jannik stood because it felt polite and because staying seated made him feel like a visiting exhibit.
“Hi,” he said.
Jaime’s face lit up. “Hi.”
Álvaro stepped in, closing the door behind him.
“Careful, Jaime. Do not look directly at the number one. You may be blinded.”
Jannik’s shoulders stiffened almost imperceptibly. Carlos turned so fast that Álvaro lifted both hands.
“Sorry,” Álvaro said immediately. “Bad joke.”
Jannik forced a small smile. “It’s okay.”
Carlos did not look convinced. Jaime, apparently deciding that silence was worse, stepped forward and held out his hand.
“I’m Jaime.”
Jannik took it. “Jannik.”
Jaime’s grip was firm, slightly too enthusiastic.
“I know.”
Then he seemed to realize what he had said and flushed. “I mean, obviously. Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“I watched your match against Carlos in Roland Garros, like, five times.”
Carlos groaned. “Why that one?”
“Because he lost.”
“I know why. I meant, why say it now?”
Jaime grinned at him. “Because it is funny.”
Jannik looked at Carlos. “I like him.”
Carlos pointed at Jaime. “Do not encourage.”
Álvaro walked into the living room and dropped the paper bag onto the coffee table.
“We brought snacks because Carlos told me there were none.”
Jannik said, “There is fruit.”
Álvaro looked at him with pity. “Oh, Jannik.”
Carlos threw up his left hand. “Thank you.”
“It is fruit,” Jannik said, feeling suddenly surrounded.
Jaime sat on the sofa and pulled open the paper bag.
“Fruit is what parents say when they don’t want you to eat snacks.”
“This family is very anti-fruit,” Jannik observed.
Álvaro took the armchair. “We respect fruit in its place.”
“And its place is?”
“Not where chips should be.”
Carlos sat beside Jannik on the sofa, close but not touching. Jaime took the other end, leaving Jannik between them for approximately three seconds before he stood again and moved to the floor, cross-legged, with the paper bag between his knees.
“You don’t have to sit on the floor,” Carlos said.
“I always sit on the floor.”
“That is true,” Álvaro said. “He is half human, half carpet.”
Jaime threw a packet of chips at him.
Álvaro caught it one-handed. “Good reflexes. I could have gone pro.”
Carlos snorted. “In what?”
“Catching chips.”
Jannik sat back down slowly. The room filled quickly.
That was the thing about family, Jannik thought. It did not enter a space politely. It occupied it. Álvaro’s dry comments, Jaime’s restless energy, Carlos’s half-irritated, half-delighted responses. The living room that had been so quiet only an hour before now seemed to have ten people in it, though there were only four.
For a while, they talked about nothing. And everything.
Jaime’s school. Álvaro’s girlfriend, who had apparently forgiven him for abandoning lunch the day before but was now calling him “agent secreto” in every message. A neighbor who had reversed into someone’s mailbox. Carlos’s terrible habit of leaving shoes in places where people could die. Whether the basil plant would survive. Whether Jannik was responsible for it now because he had bought groceries. Whether Carlos should be allowed near knives. Whether Twilight was good cinema.
“You watched Twilight?” Jaime asked, delighted.
Carlos pointed at Jannik. “He judged it.”
“Because it was bad,” Jannik said.
Jaime gasped. “It is not bad.”
“Thank you,” Carlos said.
“It is terrible,” Jaime added. “But good, terrible.”
Carlos threw a cushion at him.
Álvaro leaned back, watching them. “This is nice. I expected more emotional crisis.”
Carlos glared. “Álvaro.”
“What? I said nice.”
“You also said crisis.”
“It was implied.”
Jannik laughed despite himself. Álvaro’s eyes moved to him, softer now.
“You okay?”
The room quieted slightly. Carlos looked at his brother, then at Jannik, ready to intervene if needed. Jannik appreciated that. He also did not need it.
“Today?” he said. “Better.”
Álvaro nodded. “Good.”
Then he leaned forward, elbows on knees. “I saw you on the news again.”
Carlos made a sound of warning. Jannik’s stomach tightened, but Álvaro lifted a hand.
“Not bad,” he said. “Just the same thing. Murcia, mystery, after Roland Garros, all that. They don’t know Alicante. They are still talking like you are hiding in a hotel somewhere.”
“I was hiding in a hotel somewhere,” Jannik said.
“Exactly. Old news.”
Jaime looked between them. “People are still outside the hotel?”
Carlos frowned. “Maybe.”
Álvaro shook his head.
“I passed nearby before coming. A couple of journalists near the entrance, I think. Maybe not even for him, but probably. The hotel is saying nothing.”
Jannik looked down at his hands. The guilt returned, quieter but familiar.
Álvaro added, “Simone reached out to me.”
Jannik looked up quickly. “Simone?”
“Yes. Carlos gave him my number. Or Darren did. I don’t know. Someone official and serious.”
Carlos said, “Darren asked if there was a local contact in case something happened. I gave Álvaro’s number because he answers his phone more than me.”
Álvaro placed a hand on his heart. “I am reliable.”
Carlos snorted.
“What did Simone say?” Jannik asked.
“He asked if you were safe, if anyone followed us, if the house was private, if Carlos was making you do anything stupid.”
Jannik glanced at Carlos.
Carlos looked offended. “Why does everyone assume this?”
Álvaro and Jannik answered at the same time.
“Because it’s you.”
Jaime laughed so hard he nearly knocked over the chips. Carlos pointed around the room.
“Betrayal. All of you.”
Álvaro continued, “I told Simone you were safe. I also told him Carlos’s wrist was wrapped and he was not allowed to challenge you to tennis.”
“Good,” Jannik said.
Carlos threw his hands up. “I am right here.”
“Yes,” Álvaro said. “And historically unreliable.”
Jaime turned to Jannik with sudden intensity. “Can you play tennis with me?”
Carlos said, “Jaime.”
Jaime ignored him. “Not now. I know. No rackets and Carlos will be annoying about resting. But one day?”
Jannik looked at him. Jaime’s face was open and hopeful in a way that made refusing impossible, even if Jannik had wanted to.
“One day,” Jannik said. “Yes.”
Jaime’s eyes widened. “Really?”
“Yes.”
“And you can teach me how to beat Carlos?”
Carlos sat up. “Excuse me.”
Jannik looked at Carlos, then back at Jaime. “I can reveal the secret.”
“There is no secret,” Carlos said.
Álvaro leaned in. “There is definitely a secret. I have been waiting years.”
Carlos pointed at him. “You are not included.”
“I am family.”
“That is why.”
Jaime moved closer, lowering his voice dramatically.
“What is the secret?”
Jannik matched his seriousness. “Patience.”
Jaime frowned. “That’s boring.”
Carlos laughed. “Exactly. That is why it works against me.”
Jannik nodded. “You wait. You make him play one more shot. Then one more. Then he gets bored and tries something impossible.”
“I do not get bored,” Carlos said.
Álvaro said, “You once tried a drop shot during a family ping-pong match.”
“It was tactical.”
“You hit the net.”
“The table was bad.”
Jaime looked fascinated. “So patience.”
“And depth,” Jannik added. “Do not give him angles when he is feeling theatrical.”
Carlos looked betrayed. “Theatrical?”
“Yes.”
“You are giving away state secrets.”
“I promised.”
Jaime sat up straighter. “What else?”
Jannik lowered his voice further. “Never admire the good shots too much.”
Carlos groaned. “This is personal.”
“Because if you admire them,” Jannik continued, “he gets energy.”
Jaime nodded seriously. “Starve him.”
Jannik nodded back. “Exactly.”
Carlos stared. “I have invited a traitor into my house.”
Álvaro was laughing silently now, shoulders shaking. Jaime looked at Jannik like he had been handed a map to buried treasure.
“One day we play. You teach me.”
“One day,” Jannik promised.
Carlos leaned back with a sigh. “This is how dynasties fall.”
“You are very dramatic,” Jannik said.
“Me? You escaped a restaurant because you heard Álvaro.”
Álvaro sat up immediately. “Ah, yes. We need to discuss this.”
“No,” Jannik said.
“Yes,” Jaime said, delighted. “Tell me.”
Carlos grinned. “He hid behind a menu.”
“I did not hide behind a menu.”
Carlos looked at him.
Jannik sighed. “I used the menu strategically.”
Álvaro clapped. “Strategically!”
Jaime was nearly crying with laughter. “Why?”
“Because I did not want Carlos to find out from his brother.”
Carlos’s grin faded slightly. The room softened. Jannik realized what he had said. His ears warmed. Álvaro, to his credit, did not tease that part. Jaime, who was young but not careless in every way, lowered his voice.
“But he found out from the news.”
Jannik looked at him.
Then he nodded. “Yes.”
Carlos’s gaze had settled on the side of Jannik’s face.
“I should have told him,” Jannik said.
“You did,” Carlos said.
“After you knocked on my door.”
Carlos shrugged. “Still counts a little.”
Jannik looked at him. Their eyes met. It was an accident only for the first second. Then neither of them looked away. Something in the room thinned. Álvaro’s expression shifted immediately. Jaime looked from one to the other.
Carlos’s gaze held Jannik’s with that strange, steady focus he sometimes had across the net before a point, except this was quieter. No crowd, no racket, no ball. Just the sofa, the afternoon light, the smell of chips and basil from the kitchen and Carlos looking at him as if the rest of the room had blurred.
Jannik should have looked away. He did not. Jaime broke the silence with spectacular timing.
“Will you two ever play doubles together?”
Carlos blinked. Jannik looked down immediately. Álvaro made a small choking sound that he disguised badly as a cough.
Carlos cleared his throat. “What?”
“Doubles,” Jaime said, innocent and not innocent at all. “Together. Like the same side of the net.”
Jannik reached for his water. Carlos rubbed his left hand over his face.
“Why are you asking this now?”
“Because I want to know.”
Álvaro leaned back, smiling slowly. “The whole family wants to know.”
Carlos turned toward him. “Do not start.”
“Oh, I am starting.”
Jannik paused with the glass halfway to his mouth. “The whole family?”
Álvaro looked delighted. “Yes.”
Carlos groaned. “Álvaro.”
“No, he should know. We have a bet.”
“A bet?” Jannik repeated.
Jaime bounced slightly on the floor. “About when you and Carlos will play doubles.”
Carlos looked at the ceiling. “I hate all of you.”
Álvaro counted on his fingers.
“My father says it will happen for charity first. My mother says an exhibition, because official tournaments are too complicated. Jaime says Davis Cup somehow, which makes no sense because you are from different countries.”
“It could be a special event,” Jaime said defensively.
“That is not Davis Cup.”
“It could be new.”
“No.”
Jannik’s mouth twitched. Carlos looked at him sharply.
“Do not laugh.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“A little.”
Álvaro continued, “I said you would both avoid it for years because you enjoy making people suffer.”
“That sounds accurate,” Jannik said.
Carlos pointed at him. “You are not helping.”
Jannik took a sip of water to hide his smile. Jaime leaned forward.
“Would you?”
Jannik swallowed. “Play doubles with Carlos?”
“Yes.”
Carlos looked at Jannik. For the second time that afternoon, the room narrowed.
Jannik could have made a joke. He should have. Something about Carlos stealing all the balls, or Jannik not trusting him near the net, or their combined stubbornness causing international collapse. Instead, he answered honestly.
“Yes,” he said.
Carlos went still.
Jannik looked at him. “I would.”
Carlos’s expression shifted: surprise first, then something warmer, then caution as if warmth itself had become risky.
“Really?” Carlos asked.
“Yes.”
“You hate doubles.”
“I don’t hate it.”
“You look like someone forced you into group work.”
“I do not like chaos.”
Carlos laughed softly. “I am chaos.”
“I know.”
“And still?”
Jannik held his gaze. “Still.”
Álvaro’s smile widened dangerously. Jaime looked ecstatic. Carlos seemed to forget they were not alone. His eyes moved over Jannik’s face, soft and bright and then again down. Not for long. Just a flicker. To Jannik’s mouth. But this time, Jaime saw it.
“Oh,” Jaime said.
Jannik inhaled wrong. Water, air, panic and his own saliva all betrayed him at once. He choked. Not dramatically at first. Then very dramatically.
He coughed so hard he bent forward, one hand over his mouth, the other gripping the glass as if it had personally attacked him. Carlos immediately reached toward him, then pulled back because Jannik was coughing and Álvaro was laughing and Jaime had both hands over his own mouth in delighted horror.
“Are you okay?” Carlos asked, half-standing.
Jannik waved one hand while coughing.
Álvaro wheezed, “Jaime.”
“I didn’t say anything!”
“You said ‘oh.’”
“That is a word!”
Carlos glared at both of them. “He is choking.”
“He is embarrassed,” Álvaro said.
Jannik managed, “I am dying.”
Carlos took the glass from him and patted his back with his left hand, carefully but firmly.
“You are not dying.”
Jaime, eyes bright with mischief, said, “You looked at his mouth.”
Carlos froze. Jannik choked again, this time on pure mortification. Álvaro lost the battle entirely and started laughing out loud.
Carlos’s face flushed. “Jaime.”
“What? You did.”
“I did not.”
“You did.”
“I was checking if he had sauce on-”
“You ate hours ago,” Álvaro said.
Carlos threw a cushion at him with his left hand. It missed by a meter.
Álvaro applauded. “Injury has affected your aim.”
“Shut up.”
Jannik finally stopped coughing, though his eyes watered and his face felt hot enough to heat the room. Jaime looked at him with the solemn expression of someone pretending innocence very badly.
“Sorry.”
“No, you’re not,” Jannik said hoarsely.
Jaime grinned. “No.”
Carlos sat back down, muttering in Spanish. Jannik stared at his knees. The room had become impossible. Also, somehow, easier.
The teasing gave the moment shape. It turned the frightening, unnamed thing into something that could be laughed around, if not exactly at. Álvaro and Jaime did not seem shocked. They seemed delighted, as if this were not a rupture in the universe but a family joke that had finally found evidence.
That realization unsettled Jannik almost more than the look itself. Carlos’s family had a bet about doubles. Maybe not only doubles. No. No, he was not thinking about that. Álvaro, mercifully or strategically, shifted the conversation after another minute.
“So,” he said, “who would take the forehand side?”
Carlos answered immediately, grateful for technical ground.
“Me.”
Jannik turned to him. “Why you?”
“Because I am better there.”
“You think I cannot play forehand side?”
“You can. But I am Carlos Alcaraz.”
Jannik stared. “That is your argument?”
“Yes.”
“It is a bad argument.”
“It is a winning argument.”
Jaime looked between them, thrilled.
“This is why the doubles would be amazing.”
Álvaro nodded. “They would argue before every point.”
Carlos said, “No, we would dominate.”
Jannik said, “We would need a strategy.”
“I am strategy.”
“You are improvisation.”
“Improvisation is a strategy with charisma.”
Jannik looked at Álvaro. “Does he always talk like this?”
Álvaro nodded. “Unfortunately.”
Jaime leaned back on his hands. “I think you would win.”
Carlos smiled. “Thank you.”
“Unless you fought.”
Jannik said, “So we would lose.”
Carlos kicked lightly at his ankle. The afternoon loosened after that.
They talked about tennis, but not the dangerous parts. Favorite courts. Worst hotel food. Which player had the strangest pre-serve routine? Why did Carlos refuse to admit that his hair after a five-set match looked like he had survived a natural disaster? Why did Jannik’s calm face make ball kids nervous? Whether Jaime’s serve technique needed work, which led to him standing up in the living room to demonstrate without a racket.
Carlos immediately began correcting his feet. Jannik corrected Carlos’s correction.
Carlos turned. “Excuse me?”
“You are making him too open.”
“I am not.”
“You are.”
Jaime froze mid-motion, delighted. “Are you both coaching me?”
Álvaro took out his phone. “This is historic.”
“No video,” Carlos said.
Álvaro lowered the phone with a sigh. “Fine.”
Jannik stood and adjusted Jaime’s stance gently, careful and precise.
“Here,” he said. “You need balance first. Power comes after.”
Carlos folded his arms, watching. “That is what I said.”
“You said many words. I made it useful.”
Jaime laughed.
Carlos muttered, “Traitor.”
Jannik stepped back. “Now, shadow serve. Slowly.”
Jaime did. Carlos nodded despite himself.
“Better.”
Jaime beamed.
And for a moment, Jannik understood why Carlos had wanted them to come. Family made sadness harder to worship. It interrupted it. It demanded snacks, demonstrations, gossip, laughter, opinions. It did not erase pain, but it refused to leave a person alone with it for too long.
Around seven, they ordered more food because Álvaro declared leftovers were insufficient and Jaime was “actively growing.” Carlos complained that they had cooked lunch and now civilization was collapsing into delivery. Jannik pointed out that Carlos had ordered emergency pizza the night before. Carlos argued that it was different because of the crisis. Álvaro said his hunger was also a crisis.
They ate outside on the terrace when the heat softened.
Evening came slowly, coloring the garden gold. The bougainvillea deepened toward purple as the light changed. Jaime told a story about Carlos trying to drive a kart too aggressively as a child and nearly crashing into a barrier. Carlos denied key details. Álvaro confirmed the worst ones. Jannik listened with his elbows on the table, smiling more than he spoke.
He liked watching Carlos with his family.
It was different from watching him on court. On court, Carlos’s energy radiated outward, demanding a stadium come with him. Here, it bounced between people who knew exactly how to catch it, mock it, return it, soften it. Álvaro deflated him when he became too dramatic. Jaime adored him openly and challenged him recklessly. Carlos complained about both and looked happier for it.
At some point, Álvaro caught Jannik watching. He said nothing. Only smiled in a way that made Jannik look quickly at his plate. At ten, they finally left. Or began leaving.
The process took twenty-five minutes because Jaime kept remembering things to say, and Carlos kept telling him to put his shoes on, and Álvaro kept standing at the door with keys in hand but making no move to actually exit.
“You are terrible guests,” Carlos said.
Álvaro clutched his chest. “We brought snacks.”
“You ate most of them.”
“That is quality control.”
Jaime turned to Jannik. “You promise, right? One day tennis?”
Jannik smiled. “I promise.”
“And the secret to beating Carlos?”
“The secret changes depending on the surface.”
Jaime’s eyes widened.
“There are multiple secrets?”
Carlos groaned. “Stop teaching him.”
Jannik nodded solemnly. “Many secrets.”
Jaime looked at Carlos. “You are finished.”
Carlos pointed at the door.
“Out.”
Jaime laughed and hugged Carlos carefully, mindful of the wrist. Then, to Jannik’s surprise, he hugged him too. It was quick, impulsive, and warm.
“Bye, Jannik.”
Jannik’s arms came up a second late, but they came.
“Bye.”
Álvaro hugged Carlos, then offered Jannik a handshake that turned into a brief shoulder pat.
“Take care,” Álvaro said quietly.
“You too.”
“And answer your phone sometimes.”
Jannik sighed. “Everyone says this.”
“Because everyone is right.”
Carlos said, “Finally.”
Álvaro looked at his brother. “You too.”
Carlos opened his mouth. Álvaro pointed at him.
“No.”
Carlos closed it.
Jaime called from outside, “Bye! Don’t play doubles without telling us!”
Carlos slammed the door before Jannik could answer. The house fell quiet.
Not immediately. Family noise lingered for a while after departure, like dust in sunlight. The cushions were displaced, empty glasses sat on the coffee table, chip crumbs dotted the floor near where Jaime had sat, and the terrace door remained half open to the warm night.
Carlos leaned back against the closed door and exhaled.
“Still alive?” he asked.
Jannik looked around the room. The quiet felt different now. Less fragile.
“Yes,” he said. “Still alive.”
Carlos smiled. “They were a lot.”
“They were nice.”
“They teased too much.”
“Yes.”
Carlos winced. “Sorry.”
Jannik looked at him. The apology covered several things. Jaime’s “oh.” Álvaro’s family bet. The doubles teasing. The mouth glance neither of them had discussed and both remembered.
“It’s okay,” Jannik said.
Carlos searched his face. “Really?”
“Yes.”
“You choked.”
“I swallowed wrong.”
Carlos’s mouth twitched. “Of course.”
“I did.”
“Sure.”
Jannik walked past him toward the kitchen, mostly to escape the way Carlos was looking at him again.
“We should clean.”
Carlos followed. “You cleaned after lunch.”
“And now there is more.”
“We can leave it.”
Jannik turned. Carlos lifted both hands.
“Or clean.”
They cleaned slowly.
Not with the efficient rhythm of lunch, but with the tired drift of night. Glasses to the sink. Plates stacked. Crumbs wiped. Leftover food wrapped and placed in the fridge. Jaime had left a hoodie on the armchair, which Carlos picked up and smelled suspiciously.
“Why smell it?” Jannik asked.
“To know if it is clean.”
“That is disgusting.”
“It is brother science.”
“I do not want to know more.”
Carlos tossed the hoodie near the door. By the time they finished, it was nearly eleven. Neither seemed ready to go upstairs.
Carlos opened the terrace door fully, letting night air enter. It was warm, but softer now, carrying the faint smell of plants, distant sea, and pavement cooling after the sun. He stepped outside.
Jannik followed.
They sat on the low outdoor sofa beneath a covered part of the terrace. The garden was mostly in shadow, the bougainvillea dark against the wall. A few lights glowed along the path, small and amber. Somewhere beyond the property, voices rose briefly from the street, then faded.
Carlos leaned back, careful with his wrist, and looked up at the sky.
“Do you miss skiing?” he asked suddenly.
Jannik turned his head. “What?”
“Skiing. You did it when you were little, no?”
“Yes.”
“Do you miss it?”
Jannik considered. The question was simple, but it opened a door in him he had not expected to find tonight.
“Sometimes,” he said. “Not competing. Not really. But the feeling.”
“What feeling?”
Jannik looked toward the dark outline of the garden wall.
“Cold air,” he said. “The sound of skis on snow. The silence in the mountains when you stop. Everything very white. Very clear. Tennis is loud even when nobody speaks. Skiing was...” He searched. “Cleaner, maybe.”
Carlos listened with unusual stillness.
“You were good,” he said.
“I was okay.”
Carlos laughed softly. “You were Italian champion, no?”
“As a child.”
“So good.”
Jannik shrugged, uncomfortable. “I liked going fast.”
Carlos smiled. “Of course.”
“It was different. In skiing, you are alone in another way. The mountain does not care about you. The time is the time. You finish, or you fall.”
“That sounds terrifying.”
“Says the man who slides on clay like physics is optional.”
Carlos grinned. “Clay is friendly.”
“Clay is not friendly.”
“To me.”
“To you, maybe.”
Carlos looked out at the garden again. “I wanted to be a footballer when I was small.”
“I know.”
“And a Formula One driver.”
Jannik turned to him. “Really?”
Carlos’s face lit up instantly.
“Yes. I loved it. Still love it. The speed, the noise, the cars, the strategy. Everything. When I was a kid, I would watch and think, this is freedom.”
“Driving in circles?”
Carlos gasped. “Do not disrespect F1.”
“I am asking.”
“No, you are provoking.”
“Maybe.”
Carlos leaned forward, animated now.
“It is not circles. Every corner is different. Braking, timing, risk. You have to feel the car, the tires, the track. You fight, but also calculate. And the sound-” He made a vague gesture with his left hand, frustrated that language could not do what engines did. “It gets in your chest.”
Jannik watched him.
This was Carlos, as he liked him best, perhaps. Talking about something he loved with his whole body, even tired, even injured, even at nearly midnight. His eyes brightened. His words sped up. His face forgot to be careful.
“You’ve gone to races?” Carlos asked.
“Once.”
“Which?”
Jannik told him.
Carlos stared. “You went alone?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to see it.”
“But alone?”
“I do many things alone.”
The sentence came out too quietly. Carlos heard it.
The excitement softened. “Did you like it?”
“Yes. Very much.”
“But?”
Jannik looked at the garden. “It is different alone. You see everything, but you don’t share the reaction. Something happens, and you turn, but there is no one there.”
Carlos was quiet.
Then he said, “I’ll take you.”
Jannik looked at him.
“To a race,” Carlos said, as if this were obvious now. “Properly. Not alone. We go together. I explain everything you pretend not to understand.”
“I understand some.”
“Some is not enough.”
“You would talk the whole time.”
“Yes.”
“That might be worse.”
Carlos smiled. “No. Better.”
Jannik looked at him for a long moment.
The promise seemed too easy for Carlos. Too natural. As if a future together at an F1 race required no negotiation with ranking, schedule, injury, secrecy, or whatever had happened on the sofa and in all the glances since.
“You promise?” Jannik asked before he could stop himself.
Carlos’s expression steadied.
“Yes,” he said. “I promise.”
The night seemed to hold the words. Jannik nodded slowly.
“Then I teach you how to ski,” he said.
Carlos blinked. “What?”
“You take me to F1. I will teach you how to ski.”
Carlos’s eyes widened. “I will die.”
“You will not die.”
“I am from Murcia.”
“People from Murcia can ski.”
“Not naturally.”
“No one skis naturally.”
“You did.”
“I fell many times.”
Carlos looked suspicious. “Will you laugh if I fall?”
“Yes.”
“Then no.”
“I will also help you up.”
Carlos considered. “Before or after laughing?”
“After.”
“Cruel.”
“Honest.”
Carlos leaned back, smiling. “Where would you take me?”
“The Dolomites.”
Carlos let out a low whistle. “Serious.”
“Yes.”
“Would it be cold?”
Jannik stared.
Carlos laughed. “I know, I know. Snow is cold.”
“You ask strange questions.”
“I am preparing mentally.”
“You would complain for the first hour.”
“Only first?”
“Then you would get competitive.”
“Yes.”
“Then you would try to go too fast.”
“Yes.”
“Then I would stop you.”
Carlos looked at him. “Could you?”
Jannik’s smile was slow. “On skis? Yes.”
Carlos’s answering smile changed the air again. Not intentionally. Maybe. The garden went quiet around them.
Carlos’s gaze held his, dark and bright at once in the low terrace light. Jannik could feel the conversation shifting, slipping from jokes into something with less protection. He looked away first, toward the basil plant visible through the kitchen window.
“It needs water tomorrow,” he said.
Carlos blinked, then laughed under his breath. “The basil?”
“Yes.”
“You are using basil to escape.”
“Maybe.”
“I see it.”
Jannik did not deny it.
They sat outside until the night deepened and the house behind them cooled further. They talked in fragments after that. Childhood. Tennis academies. Homesickness neither of them had called homesickness at the time. The strange loneliness of hotel rooms. The first time Carlos realized people expected him to win. The first time Jannik realized silence could be mistaken for confidence.
At some point, Carlos said, “When I was younger, I thought if I smiled enough, pressure could not catch me.”
Jannik looked at him.
Carlos shrugged. “It catches you anyway.”
“Yes.”
“And you?”
“I thought if I stayed calm enough, pressure would not know where to enter.”
Carlos turned his head. “And?”
Jannik’s mouth twisted. “It entered everywhere.”
Carlos nodded slowly. The words did not require comfort. Only witness.
Around midnight, they moved inside because mosquitoes had discovered them. Carlos made tea badly. Jannik drank it anyway. They sat at the kitchen table, then the sofa, then drifted upstairs sometime close to one in the morning, neither saying they were tired until the staircase forced the truth from both their bodies.
At the top of the stairs, the hallway was dim. Carlos’s room on one side. Jannik’s guest room across from it.
The same arrangement as the night before, but different now. Everything was different now. Álvaro’s teasing, Jaime’s “oh,” the late-night promises, the F1 race, the skiing, the sofa, the mouth glance: two mouth glances, if Jannik was honest, which he was trying very hard not to be.
They stopped between the doors. Too close to say goodnight casually. Too far to pretend the distance meant nothing.
Carlos leaned one shoulder against his doorframe, just as he had the night before. His hair was messier now, his eyes tired, his wrist wrap loosened slightly at the edge. He looked softer in the hallway light, younger and more dangerous for it.
“Today was okay?” Carlos asked.
Jannik nodded. “Yes.”
“My brothers were too much.”
“They were good.”
“They teased.”
“Yes.”
Carlos looked at the floor. “About...”
He did not finish. Jannik’s heart began to beat harder.
“Doubles,” Jannik said, because it was safer.
Carlos looked up. A smile touched his mouth.
“Yes. Doubles.”
“Your family is very invested.”
“They are annoying.”
“They care.”
“That too.”
Silence. The hallway seemed narrower than it had in daylight.
Carlos shifted his weight. “You meant it?”
“About what?”
“Playing doubles.”
Jannik met his eyes.
“Yes.”
Carlos’s expression warmed slowly, as if the answer mattered more than it should.
“Good,” he said.
Jannik could have said something else. Maybe about tactics. Maybe about Jaime’s bet. Maybe about how Carlos would need to obey instructions at the net, which would lead to an argument and rescue them both.
He said nothing. Carlos did not move. Jannik looked at him and felt the thought arrive with terrifying clarity. If I keep looking, I will kiss him. It did not come as a fantasy. It came as fact.
A simple, practical observation, like the water is boiling or the pasta needs salt.
If he kept looking at Carlos standing there in the hallway, tired and warm and alive, with the house quiet around them and the memory of his mouth still burning from earlier glances, Jannik would step forward. He would touch Carlos’s face or shoulder or the edge of his T-shirt. He would close the space. He would do something impossible to take back.
And he did not know whether Carlos would stop him. That was worse. Or better. He could not decide. Panic rose, but beneath it was want, and that frightened him more than panic ever could. Carlos’s gaze dropped again. Not fully. Not as obvious as before. But enough.
Jannik’s breath caught.
“Goodnight,” he said quickly.
Carlos blinked, startled. “Goodnight.”
Jannik opened his door.
He stepped inside first because he had to. Because one more second in that hallway would undo whatever restraint he still possessed. Because he had survived Paris, Murcia, the news, a secret flight, a family ambush, and Jaime Alcaraz detecting things no teenager should be allowed to detect, but he did not trust himself to survive Carlos looking at his mouth in a quiet hallway at one in the morning.
He turned back only once. Carlos was still there, hand on his own doorframe, watching him with an expression Jannik could not safely interpret.
“Sleep,” Carlos said softly.
Jannik nodded.
“You too.”
He closed the door before either of them could say anything else. The guest room was dark and cool. Jannik stood with his back against the door, eyes closed, breathing too fast for someone who had done nothing but say goodnight.
Across the hall, Carlos’s door closed a moment later. The sound was soft. Final. Not final enough.
Jannik undressed for bed mechanically. T-shirt. Shorts. Phone on the table. Water beside it. He did not check messages. He did not open Wuthering Heights. He did not want any more stories about people who loved badly and failed to speak. He had enough confusion in his own chest.
He lay down and stared at the ceiling. The house settled around him. Somewhere across the hallway, Carlos moved once, then quieted. Jannik turned onto his side, facing the door.
He thought of Carlos promising F1. Of snow under skis. Of Jaime asking about doubles. Of Álvaro smiling as he knew too much. Of Carlos’s eyes dropping to his mouth. Of his own hand on Carlos’s shoulder the day before. Of the hallway. Of the fact that he had run from Paris because he needed rest and had found, instead, something far less restful.
If I had looked longer, I would have kissed him. The thought should have kept him awake. Instead, it settled over him with strange, frightening gentleness.
Jannik closed his eyes. And with Carlos across the hall, with the promise of engines and snow somewhere in an impossible future, he fell asleep.
── ⋆⋅𖤓⋅⋆ ──