Leaving Fabio with a plan to follow for the next week, he flies back to London to get his things together before they start travelling. The weather is cold and damp and miserable, and his house takes ages to heat up despite the fancy floor heating he had spent a fortune on.

He puts the kettle on and rubs his knee absentmindedly in a futile attempt to ease the dull ache. Something unpleasant feels stuck in his throat. He settles on the sofa with his tea, scrolling through Deliveroo listlessly when his phone buzzes with a notification, then another, then another — Fabio has the annoying Gen Z habit of sending a single sentence as three separate texts.

just finished practice, he writes. it was boring. i hit every forehand perfectly by the way

You're a liar, Julian replies.

i never lie, Fabio writes back without missing a beat.

Point proven, Julian replies, not realising he's smiling into his cup.

They text every day, after practice. Fabio complains and makes jokes, and getting any relevant information out of him is like pulling teeth, but Julian sort of gleans that things are going well.

I hope Luca is making notes though, he writes one night, you're impossible to talk to

i'm an open book, Fabio writes, and tops it off with a winking emoji. Julian rolls his eyes and drops his phone to the sofa, resolving not to encourage his impertinence.

Not long before he's due to fly back to Sicily, he receives a text late at night,

what are you doing?

Just reading, he replies. Why are you awake?

you're always reading, Fabio writes, and then,

just thinking. two more days until you're here to yell at me

You should leave the thinking to the experts, Julian teases, to which Fabio reacts with an emoji that's crying laughing. His next question is unexpected.

who do you live with in london? do you have a gf?

Good lord, Julian thinks, where did this come from? He hesitates before replying,

I live alone.

Fabio takes a moment to reply,

is it boring?

It's quiet, Julian types.

i'll make sure it's not quiet when you come back here

Julian can't stifle his laugh. I have no doubt about that.

On the practice court in Sicily, Fabio greets him with an enthusiastic hug, throwing his entire bodyweight into Julian's. Julian laughs and puts his arms around him, pats him on the back. This is not normal for him by any standards, but part of him has accepted his fate. Fabio smells like sweat and citrus, bitter and fresh, not unpleasant. His cheek is warm against Julian's.

"Julian," he says seriously after he pulls away, "I want you to have dinner with my family before we leave." It sounds like he's rehearsed this, likely on the instructions of his father. Julian finds it endearing.

"Sure."

"What are we doing today?" Fabio sounds eager, swinging his racquet around to make lightsabre noises with it. "I finished all the homework you gave me."

Julian smiles. "Very good. Let's just hit for now."

They play for points but go easy on each other. Julian wants to see if Fabio can surprise him, if he can manipulate where Julian is on the court. Instead, Fabio sends out a forehand winner that Julian could not have reached in his glory days.

"Bravo," he says, clapping his palm against the rim of his racquet. "That was lovely, Fabio. Well done."

Fabio grins and gets ready to serve again, but Julian stops him.

"How did it feel?"

"What?"

"Can you close your eyes for a moment and remember how hitting that forehand felt? When your racquet hit the ball?"

"What's this—"

Woo woo bullshit? Julian agrees with the provocation that Fabio doesn't quite have the vocabulary to articulate.

"Just try it for me," he insists. Fabio stops by the net and closes his eyes. Julian sees his chest rise with a deep breath, his eyebrows drawn tight in concentration.

"Now can you make that feeling bigger? So you can remember it?"

Fabio gives a nod that's barely there.

"I want you to do this every time you make a good shot. Just quickly, in your head. Make the feeling bigger, tell yourself well done. Then move on to the next point. Can you do that for me?"

Fabio opens his eyes and stares at Julian without saying a word.

In just a few days, they will head to Portugal and then Spain for the last two clay challengers of the season for which Luca has serendipitously secured spots for Fabio. Julian arrives at Fabio's family home for the dinner that he promised. He didn't quite know what to bring, so he's carrying a bottle of wine. Although he doesn't know the town very well, he recognises a rough neighbourhood when he sees one. Still, the house is tucked away on a quiet street and looks very neat on the outside, with a lush row of potted herbs, basil, rosemary, parsley with curled leaves. An assortment of Adidas and Nike t-shirts are fluttering on a clothesline. He knocks on the door. Fabio's father, Salvatore opens the door with a gesture that could be described as dramatic and ushers him in.

He steps into the room that seems to be the entrance hall, the living room, dining room, everything. The Virgin Mary looks back at him from the wall across, from above the washing machine. Every single centimetre of the room seems to be utilised, schoolbooks, football cleats, tubs of tennis balls among porcelain decorations and doilies of actual lace. There's a commotion in the kitchen, raised voices and a clatter of pots. Fabio pokes his body through the kitchen door, wearing a faded black t-shirt, joggers and socks. A small troupe of siblings files out after him, a teenage girl and two smallish boys. Fabio's mother is the last in the line, wiping her hands on her apron.

"You're early," Fabio says, grinning, and reaches for the wine. He introduces his family in the form of a list while he sets the table — his mother Lucia, his sister Gabriella, and the two boys are Matteo and Nico, 12 and 9. Julian helps Lucia carry the food out of the kitchen and hopes that his Italian will not let him down.

They try to enunciate carefully for him, avoiding mixing in Sicilian words, but they are enthusiastic, they slip up. Salvatore tells him stories from Fabio's childhood — how he washed the cars of rich tourists, at the age of seven, to raise money for his first racquet and a pair of shoes that he would outgrow in three months anyway; how he used to skip school to play and Salvatore pretended he didn't know; how once Salvatore had to collect him from the police station because he snuck into a fancy tourist resort to try out their tennis court.

"You're exaggerating," Fabio says with a frown, picking at his pasta alla Norma. As if cued in, Lucia and Gabriella join in with a running list of stupid things teenage Fabio has done. Matteo talks about the football team he's in, while Nico asks technical questions like,

"Can you hit as big as Fabio?"

"Not anymore, no," Julian laughs. He's full by now and warm from the wine, reluctant to tackle the cannoli on his plate.

"Are you going to eat that?" Matteo asks wistfully.

"Matteo, behave!" Fabio scolds, but Julian pushes the plate to the boy anyway.

After dinner, the boys play cards with Salvatore while Fabio shows Julian his room. The walls are painted sage green and there's a bunk bed in one corner, Fabio's narrow single bed pushed against the wall in the other under a massive poster of Thiago Navarro and a slightly smaller one of AS Roma. A half-packed suitcase and a duffle bag are lying at the foot of the bed.

Fabio looks down under his long lashes.

"It's so surreal that you're here in my house," he says quietly. "I wasn't sure if I wanted you to see it. Not ashamed but... you know. It's difficult."

"Oh, Fabio." Julian suddenly feels clumsy and inadequate. He thinks something along the lines of there's nothing embarrassing about having a loving family and working hard, but he has a hard time wording it right, and doesn't quite know how to comfort with physical touch. He tentatively claps Fabio on the back anyway. "Your family is lovely. And I understand better now what it all means to you."

"You do?" Fabio's face lights up. "I would do anything to help them. So my dad doesn't have to work that much and my brothers have better chances. Better than I did anyway."

Julian can't find the right words to say, but he doesn't have to. Fabio suddenly smiles at him with his whole face and presses a socked foot to the top of Julian's toes.

"Now get out of my room," he teases. "We need to get back to work."

After a cup of espresso, Salvatore walks Julian out.

"Grazie, Julian," he says, and Julian feels hollow, like he hasn't earned it yet.