Young Writers Society

A/N: Let me know if this is too long. It's about 1500 words, which is my current upper limit for posting works.

Given my general reluctance to leave France – and my mum’s – we decided to hang around in Montpellier for a while after I got beaten in the quarterfinals by the World Number Nine, Nico De Blanco. So I was sitting in my hotel room small – cosy – hotel room, eating a beautiful plate of French bread, cheese and grapes, when the unthinkable happened. Camillo got beat.

Ironically he also lost to De Blanco, which made me feel a lot better about my own defeat. But as soon as Camillo hit a backhand into the net on match point, I got a text from Ron that was literally just the shocked face “:O”. Then my attention went immediately to Camillo. I guessed that break-up was worse than he’d made it sound.

About half an hour later, as I was lying on the narrow but wonderfully soft bed and drinking a nice hot cup of tea, there was a knock on my door.

“Come in,” I shouted, not looking away from the news. The day had been rather uneventful, but I was so relaxed I couldn’t even be bothered to get up. I didn’t let myself feel relaxed often. Only when in France. Don’t ask me why – I’m just glad my weird superstitions aren’t on court, like many other players’.

The door rattled but then I realised I’d locked it because I hadn’t wanted disturbed. I sighed and rolled off the bed onto my feet.

I opened the door to my younger cousin Christina, who lived about ten miles outside the city.

“Uh, hey, Kiki.” I frowned and inspected her pale face and long, dark hair, as if they would provide clues about what the hellshe was doing in my doorway.

“Léo! It’s so good to see you!”

She pushed past me and ran through to my ensuite bathroom.

“Uh, okay…” I murmured as I turned round. The door slammed closed and I hummed to myself while I waited.

“Okay, so,” she said as she threw the door back open, “Aunt Ella says you won’t stop moping about a boy so I’m taking you to a club and you’re going to find someone else to distract you.”

I just stood there doing nothing but breathing and blinking for a few moments.

“I … uh … what?” My voice came out much louder than I’d intended. I looked from wall to wall of my room and hoped I wasn’t disturbing anyone’s sleep. Quieter, which may have given me more gravity, I said, “Christina, I’m a professional tennis player. I don’t go to clubs.”

“Pfft…” She leaned on the chair next to the table the kettle was on and it nearly slid out from under her. “Ha! Oops!”

She stood back up straight but, of course, she was still swaying. Oh dear. Maybe professional tennis players did go to clubs every so often, such as when their nineteen-year-old cousins had been pre-drinking and probably wouldn’t be able to get to the club without an arm to hold themselves up on.

“Come on,” she said, walking towards me. “You don’t have to drink, or make out with anyone. You just look so serious on the TV all the time… I want to see you smile.”

Her eyes were sort of… flatter than I’d noticed at first. She was looking past me. But her voice sounded strained, like she really wanted me to come. I sighed. God, this was stupid.

“Alright,” I said. “When in France…”

She grinned and her eyes brightened a bit – and for a moment I was worried it had been an act – but then she practically fell onto my side and I had to drag her out of the room.

We found some of her friends on the way, who had been waiting outside a fast food place for her to return. They were all as pissed as her, as far as I could tell. Or maybe they were just loud. I’d never been around alcohol all that much and I really, really wasn’t good at the whole partying thing. I think I’d have liked it. You sort of lose yourself and all your consciousness and just do whatever. That seems nice. But like I said, professional tennis players don’t go to clubs.

It was quite early in the night, so the queue wasn’t too short. Before I knew it, Christina’s friends were dragging me onto the dancefloor. I moved my arms around a bit, but I couldn’t force a smile on my face, or the frown off my brow. I just kept watching Christina and waiting for her to keel over. But she seemed to be getting energy out of thin air, kind of like tennis players deep into a fifth set.

Somebody shoved at my back and I tried to get out of the way but ended up stepping on Christina’s toes. She laughed at me – a sort of, look how goofy my tee-total older cousin is. And then all her friends were laughing too, and as far as I could tell so was everyone around me. I started breathing fast, my eyes darting from face to face. Why was everyone more relaxed than me? Why couldn’t I just let myself go and be normal for once?

I started to stagger towards the toilets, only remembering at the last second to tell Christina. God, I’d only come here to look after her. Now I was making sure she could keep track of me.

I sang along to the music because it was one of those pop songs that even weirdo alien tennis players who lived under rocks had heard from adverts. There was a whoop in it, which I screeched out at the top of my lungs, trying to force the tension out of my body and just try to bloody relax.

Then I barrelled head-first into someone, because this night totally needed to get worse.

“Sorry!” I yelled in a desperate attempt to be heard over the music, actually turning more heads than my screech had.

The person pushed me away and shook their head, staring at the floor. I think I made out an apology from them, then they started to sway forwards. My reflexes leapt into action – my body had always been more competent than my brain – and I held my balance as I caught them. This turned even more heads, so I figured I might as well make myself useful and drag this person to the toilets to see if they were okay. The person, whose flat chest as they fell on me suggested they were male, put up no protest.

There was a queue for the toilets of course, so I tried a shouting conversation to see if I could help the guy.

“Are you okay?”

The guy’s head had been hanging forward this whole time, so I was expecting a no. Instead, he looked up, immediately into my eyes and said, “Léo! You beauty! What are you doing here?”

My legs went numb and I nearly staggered backwards, but I was pretty much leaning against the wall. Even with Camillo in the state he’d been in probably making it sensible to protect him from passing dancers, I wanted to be as far from the crowd as possible.

“My cousin!” I shouted.

He nodded, but looked straight past me at the wall. I’d never had less of a clue what was going on in his head. He’d looked serious before, sure, but his eyes were darting about, just like mine had been. Something serious must have happened.

We didn’t say much more until we got into the toilets, at which point I looked over him properly and made him let me smell his breath.

“Of course I’ve not been drinking!” he yelled. Of course he didn’t need to do this now, but nobody else seemed to realise this either, so his was just one amidst a flurry of shouts. He added, “Or drugs, you moron! I’m just fucking heartbroken!”

I tensed and drew away from him. I should have thought of that. He wasn’t drunk, just emotionally inept. I wondered if he was thinking the same about me.

“But thanks for checking,” he said, “Oh also shit I came in here to pee and you took us out the queue, dumbass!”

He was grinning as he said all this though. Which I guess made things better? I don’t know. It certainly assured me he wasn’t actually mad at me, but it did make me start to draw resemblances between him and that baddie from Batman with the weird smile.

As I was thinking this Camillo had slipped back into the queue by stuffing a five euro note into the hand of the person third in line. His breath had certainly smelled clean, but now I was really curious to see him when he actually was drunk.

“Is there somewhere quiet around here?” I asked, “We can talk about your break-up, if that would help.”

Camillo shrugged. “I dunno. This is your country. And I never come to clubs. I don’t know how any of this works.”

“Yeah, me neither,” I murmured.

Once we’d both finished and washed our hands, we swapped numbers in case we got lost and I told him he could call me whenever he needed to talk. He gave me a small but much less terrifying smile and put an arm round my shoulder as we made our way back out onto the dancefloor.