When my dad got in, I stared at the glove box, trying to hold back the tears that were forming in my eyes.
“Hablemos,” he said.
“You shouldn’t have made me play her,” I said, my voice catching and breaking.
My father shook his head. “Ni lo intentes,” he said. “That was not the lesson you should take from this. Try again.”
“I hate tennis,” I said, and then I kicked the glove box.
“Get your foot off my car,” he said. “You know better.”
I closed my eyes and tried to breathe. When I opened them, I couldn’t look at my father. I looked out the window and watched as, across the street, a woman came out of her house and got her mail. I wondered if she was having a terrible day too. Or maybe her life looked nothing like mine. Maybe she lived free from all this pressure, this sense that she lived or died by how good she was at something. Was she burdened by the need to win everything she did? Or did she live for nothing?
I looked up at my father, but he didn’t turn back at first. And that was when I suspected that I had finally failed him, that I had proven myself unworthy of all the faith he had in me.
“Are you done?” he said as he turned to look at me. “With the hysterics?”
“Do you still…want to coach me?” I asked.
My father’s face contorted in ways I could not read. He shook his head and put his hand on my cheek, wiping away my tears with his thumb. “Cari?o, how could you ever ask that?” He lowered his gaze until he caught mine. “I am prouder to be your father and your coach today than I have ever been in my life.”
“How is that possible?”
“I know you’re upset because you lost,” he said.
“I lost,” I said. “Which makes me a loser.”
Dad shook his head with the smile still on his face. “You are so much like me, hija. But listen now, please,” he said. “I have been so focused on teaching you how to win that I have not taught you that everybody loses matches.”
“I’m not everybody. I’m supposed to be the greatest.”
My father nodded. “And you will be. Today you proved that. You played the best you’ve ever played in your life today.”
I looked up at him.
“Have you ever hit that many groundstrokes that bounced just in front of the baseline?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
“Have you ever served three aces in a row like you did today?”
I started tapping my foot as I listened to him. “No,” I said. “My first serve was great today.”
“You were on fire, cari?o,” he said. “You ran down the ball almost every shot.”
“Yeah, but then I hit it into the net half the time.”
“Because you are not yet who you will one day be.”
I looked up at him, my guarded heart opening ever so slightly.
“Every match you play, you are one match closer to becoming the greatest tennis player the world has ever seen. You were not born that person. You were born to become that person. And that is why you must best yourself every time you get on the court. Not so that you beat the other person—”
“But so that I become more myself,” I finished.
“Now you’re getting it,” my father said. “You played the best tennis you’ve ever played in your life.”
“And you’re happy,” I said. “With me. Because I played great.”
“Because you played the best you ever have.”
“And every day I will play better and better,” I said. “Until one day, I am the greatest.”
“Until you’ve reached the fullest of your potential. That’s the most important thing. We don’t stop for one second until you are the best you can be,” he said. “We don’t rest. Until it’s finally true. Algún día.”
“Because then I will be who I was born to be.”
“Exacto.”
My father turned back to the steering wheel and put the car in drive. But before he pulled out onto the road, he looked at me one more time. “Do not wonder again, hija, if I would stop coaching you,” he said. “Do not ever wonder that. Nunca.”
I nodded, smiling. I thought I understood perfectly what he was trying to tell me.
“Since today went okay,” I said a few moments later, on the drive home, “I was thinking, about what I did. You know, that worked.”
My father nodded. “Contame.”
I gave him a list of the strategies I’d used, a few of my split-second decisions. And then the last one, “También, just before the match, I cleaned the tops of my shoes.”