"I'm not going out there," are Tashi's first words as you enter her dorm, the atmosphere tense as she glowers on her bed. It doesn't take a genius to deduce that she and Patrick fought from her rumpled braid and his shirt over her shoulders, but you enter the dorm anyway with a sigh.

You knew he'd come to visit her this week, and you knew he was going to piss her off at some point. God, he's painfully predictable, but that predictability has come at the worst time possible. You've come to collect her— Stanford's playing Pepperdine in about an hour— but Tashi's eyes only narrow as you step further into the room like you're encroaching on enemy territory.

"I'm not going out there," she repeats while she stands, "not when I'm thrown off. Not when I'm like this." Angry, upset, not laser-focused like she needs to be to play a flawless game. "Patrick, he— he's such an idiot. He can't take a fucking critique? Imagine what they're probably saying about him when he slips up in the third set—"

Her fingers toy with the gold cross necklace at her collarbone nervously, and that's the only thing that gives away just how unsettled she is. That, and the far-away look in her eyes as she stares at her yoga mat beneath her feet. Fuck. They must've broken up, as there's no other explanation for her demeanor. She may have broken his heart, but he's broken hers too.

Tashi flinches when you approach, and your chest aches at how closely she resembles a wounded animal. So unlike the girl you know and love. "I only told him the truth," she grits out, but it's merely a façade as her eyes water. "I only said what everyone else is thinking."

Because she's probably not wrong— the next face of women's tennis is hardly wrong about these things, even if she gets mean when she discusses them— but she accepts your hug nonetheless and hides her face in your neck.

No unaffected façade she could show you would convince you she's not heartbroken right now... but you really need to get her to the court. Now.