My alarm goes off at 6.30 in the morning, just as it always does.

Leah rolls over, groaning loudly, begging me to stop it while she presses her face into a pillow to drown the sound out. Waking up fully-clothed is worse than being naked, because there is no alcohol or adrenaline to blame for her being in my bed. And, while that has been the best night's sleep I've had since July, I'm going to have to get up now anyway.

"Again?" Leah huffs as my phone makes more noise. It's an important call that I have to take. "It's so early."

I kiss her forehead to shut her up because it is unprofessional to discuss a documentary that people want to make about me while I am lying in bed with a woman who served as a human teddy bear when I clearly wasn't thinking straight. "I've got to answer. Do you want me to get out of bed?" There is no reason for her to be awake yet, and I feel bad for cutting her sleep short.

She crawls on top of me. "No, stay in this exact position. I'm going back to sleep."

It's the morning here, it's the afternoon in Amsterdam, and the night in Melbourne, hence why such a time was agreed upon – equally awkward for all participants. My agent, Charley Preston, informs me of the Zoom details while I quickly download the app. She also tells me that my cars are intact back home, so to stop worrying about their well-being.

Once logged onto the meeting, I turn off my camera. Otherwise, all they would see is a snoozing English captain's messy blonde hair tickling my face.

After I won the Roland-Garros, Charley was approached by many production companies with offers to make biopics about me. As far as Dutch tennis players go, I'm currently the best. No one else has been ranked first in the world during the open era.

They like my story, and the general public like me. Fleur and I are regarded as a very successful pair of sisters.

I originally disagreed with the prospect of cameras following me around for a year, but Charley has convinced me that it will serve to inspire people. Right now, we are talking about the basic ideas surrounding the mini-series they want to make; what aspects of my life they want to explore, what part of next year's tour we should start filming from, and things like that. It's looking like we will start in January at the moment.

A big factor is what primary language to have the documentary in, considering they want to explore both parts of my heritage. One of the producers also asks about Fleur, and how big of a role she would have. She's our country's footballing pride and joy, along with Vivianne Miedema, and her coming second in the Ballon d'Or has only made her more of an inspiration. She'd hate knowing that, because she didn't win it, but she got close enough for it to be an achievement in the eyes of others, nevertheless.

The call finishes just as Leah stirs, having taken three hours of my life that I will never get back.

"That was the least soothing thing to fall asleep to," Leah deadpans as I message Fleur to see whether she and Scarlett have made up yet. The croak in her voice makes me smile. "Dutch isn't a romance language."

"Sorry that I'm not Spanish," I reply, basking in the sunlight pouring through the windows of the room. "Goedemorgen. Would you like some breakfast?"

Her smirk is so very immature. "Depends what you mean by breakfast." Still on top of me, she sits up, bunching the covers around her waist as she straddles me. I let my phone drop to the floor.

━━━━━━━

Despite Leah feeling very satisfied with how she spent her morning, I know that I need to order room service. While they are on their way, I shower (Leah comes with), get dressed, and check to see whether Juan was lying about how low-intensity the workout is that he's sent me to do while I'm in LA. It isn't too bad, and Leah says that she'll accompany me to the gym so she can do her rehab exercises for her ankle.

We agree on a time and place for dinner after a pleasant gym session that would have gone very differently if the hotel's gym hadn't been occupied by other people as well as us, and then Leah leaves to spend time with her friends on the last day of their holiday. Her flight is this evening, but not until nine o'clock.

It seems as though my day pauses until it is time for me to leave for the restaurant.

It's not a date.

(We aren't dating.)

I will admit that it feels a lot like a date as I get to the restaurant. I check my blazer into the cloakroom, leaving me in my dark green, silk dress that I think might be Fleur's. It is quite long, but the heels I'm wearing ensure it does not drag along the floor.

Leah's already sat down at our table. Her suit reminds me of the one she wore to Scarlett's birthday party. That was the first time we met.

She looks really good. She always looks good.

"Hi." She perks up as I pull out the chair opposite her and sit down, eyes flitting from the menu to my face to... Well. I raise my eyebrows, though she isn't focusing on anywhere that high up.

"Leah," I say, amused. "My eyes are up here, babe."

It takes her a moment to respond, which is a spluttered "huh?" followed by a blushing apology. "How was your day?"

Boring without you, I think. "How's your ankle feeling?" Her head tilts to the side ever so slightly, wondering why I'm asking her that. I hate to talk about my injuries, and may have assumed that Leah did too. When I put more thought into it, I realised it could be perceived as a lack of caring. "Injuries suck," I offer, awkwardly.

"We don't have to talk about it. I know you don't like talking about it." She must have been thinking about it as much as I have, then. I wait for her to answer my question anyway. "It's annoying and inconvenient. Everything was going so well, and now I'm stuck on the sidelines. I missed camp. I feel like I'm going to be left behind."

"I don't think that's possible because you're their captain," I try to rationalise, wondering if she will appreciate logic as something to be comforted by. Fleur hates when I'm right, so I think it's a hit-or-miss trait of mine. "You will come back stronger, and that will make you better. It's an unwanted method of improvement." Mumma has taught me that injuries are just hurdles you were not prepared to jump over. "But improvement is improvement, Lee."

"How many sports psychology sessions have you had to sit through?" she jokes, lightening the mood. The dim lighting of the restaurant does very little to hide how her eyes have filled with tears.

"Many." I sigh, and she changes the topic to something so trivial that it is hard not to listen and engage and admire how beautiful she looks when she is talking about dinosaurs with such passion. Never would I have imagined Leah Williamson to have a secret obsession with palaeontology.

Our orders mirror that of the night we first met: Leah's is criminally bland and mine is about as exotic as eating sautéed grasshoppers in comparison. This is a Mexican restaurant, and it turns out that the chef is a fan of tennis. We are gifted a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc in congratulations.

Leah is talking about dinosaurs still, and I am happily sipping my wine. Our food arrives and tastes amazing. I coax her into having a bite of mine, which she regrets instantly, not expecting it to be so spicy. It gives her reason to down the last of her glass of wine, so I am sure she is not too annoyed.

"Can you be drunk on your flight or will your friends tell you off?" I ask as the waitress refills my empty glass. She looks at me with a heavy gaze that makes me want to squirm in my seat. "Leah, wine. Ja of nee?"

"Ja," she says proudly. She has admitted to downloading Duolingo, but says she hasn't got very far with learning anything of use. "But only half a glass." I smile at the waitress, expecting Leah to continue ranking the Jurassic Park movies, but she stays quiet until we are left alone again.

The air seems to have changed.

"I saw your passport," Leah states. I furrow my eyebrows. I thought I had explained the Dutch name thing already, after the concierge had called me something that wasn't Jaimie. She sighs. "You didn't tell me that your birthday was during the Euros. No one did."

"No one posted anything," I say, not blaming her for her confusion nor frustration.

Her face softens with pity. I shift uncomfortably. "You should have told me. I wouldn't have forgotten your birthday."

"No one forgot my birthday, Leah."

"No one posted anything," she repeats as if her point is proven and completed. I do not want to have this conversation. "Do you have a rule about privacy on the day or something? I would have sent you a text." Is she genuinely hurt that I didn't tell her when my birthday is?

I decide how I should tell her this. It's usually a difficult concept for people to get their head around.

"I don't celebrate my birthday," I tell her slowly. She opens her mouth to interrupt, but I hold up my hand. "I don't like to. It just was something I never did when I was younger, and it falls on such an important part of the season so it is always the last thing on my mind. It's a distraction."

Leah squints at me. "It's your birthday." I knew she wouldn't understand. "That's not a distraction. Birthdays are a celebration."

"Celebrations are for achievements that are earned by hard work."

She blinks.

It's a mentality that Papa drilled into me. You work hard, you play hard. Birthdays are, what? A party for living another year? It takes nothing but the bare minimum to accomplish that.

I stopped having birthday parties when I was ten. A decade of living – what an achievement. Mumma thought I was strange and that I had suddenly become shy and avoidant of attention, but Papa saw me as the brightest star in the sky from then on. Every time it got to the 21st of July, we would go to the tennis courts and play a match that lasted the whole day. He would play stupid dropshots and tell me that I'd win the match if I managed to hit the ball square on the nose.

Those days were more rewarding than any party games could ever be. It was just Papa and me, without Fleur wanting to tag along or Mumma attempting to convince us to join an athletics team.

When we got home, we'd sit at the dining table, all four of us, and build a tower of cupcakes as tall as we could.

The towers toppled when my parents got divorced.

Birthdays were a day spent in Australia where Papa felt unwelcome and out of place. He'd visit for two weeks just so that we could play our fun matches, but he would never come back to Mumma's house. I used to get Fleur to blow out my candles and make a wish for herself.

"Not everything has to be an intense challenge that you overcome," Leah replies, rather indignantly. "You're allowed to let yourself simply... exist."

"But how can I be the best if I am just breathing in and out in one place? I don't know about you, but I would sacrifice anything for my sport. For my career." It is my top priority. Being the best is my top priority. I refuse to be nothing. "I am at my happiest when I'm winning. Aren't you?"

"There is more to life than football and tennis." The waitress briefly interrupts to take my payment for the meal, though Leah puts up a decent fight to have her card be the one charged. "Jaimie, you can't just let your sport consume you."

"You can't tell me what to do," I retort. It catches her off guard.

Realisation dawns on her face, and it is torture to watch. "This is why you said you couldn't give me a chance. I am like a birthday. I'm a distraction." I wish she sounded offended, but her voice is nothing other than hurt. Her eyes harden like she has bolstered them with steel and iron. "Do you... Do you see me as a distraction?"

When I heard about Leah's injury, I wanted to fly to London and help her.

I stayed up to watch her game, and it cost me a title.

I am in LA for no fucking reason other than to see her. Because I missed her. Because I...

This has got to end.

"Yes, I do."

I am not good at relationships. I should stick to tennis. When I have won everything there is to win, I can sit in my trophy room and have hundreds of Jaimies reflected in the shiny metal. I won't be alone, but if I am, at least I will be the best to ever have been.

Leah leaves, barreling out of the restaurant in a hurricane of fury. I bite my tongue as I find myself wanting to tell her to come back. I did a great job at staying away, didn't I?

notes: 

still hungover, still haven't proofread

sorry about this one x

thanks for reading!