“So Dana dear, what are your plans now?”

Dana looked up suddenly to see an old family friend standing in front of her. She willed herself to act sober for five minutes and tried to the best of her ability to answer his question.

“Um. Yeah well you see… I’m not too sure. More tennis I guess. There is a tournament in Ju-” Her words were caught in her throat as Dana caught sight of the lovely reporter who she had been so rude to that morning. Dana wasn’t quite sure what Alice was doing here, but excused herself at that moment and walked over to her, ready to fully apologise for her behavior.

“Ali-, ah Ms Pieszecki,” Dana stammered, fumbling on the reporter’s difficult last name. The blonde turned around, somewhat irritated to see the tennis player.

“Ms Fairbanks. Congratulations on your win. Your comments this morning seem to have been right on the ball,” Alice said dryly, remembering Dana’s cocky words before the game.

“Yes, well no, no actually. Ah look, I just wanted to apologise for my behavior this morning.” Dana looked down at the floor, fully aware that she had begun to blush. “I-I didn’t mean to act the way I did. It wasn’t fair on you and I’m sorry.” Having finished her rather clumsy apology, Dana looked up to face Alice, who looked rather surprised.

“You are?” Alice‘s expression still held the tiniest trace of sarcasm, the journalist not ready to forgive Dana’s behavior just yet.

“So much so. I know it’s no excuse but my um, my trainer suggested that I …” Dana trailed off, realising how much of a push-over she came across as if she told the truth. “My trainer had been pumping up my confidence before you showed up, and I guess it came through in the interview.”

Alice looked at Dana unimpressed.

“I know many confident people Ms Fairbanks, and none of them have ever appeared as rude or self-interested as you did today. Regardless of whether you had a big game or not, if you were going to act like that I would have saved my breath and just left to begin with.” Alice didn’t quite know why she was giving Dana a mini-lecture, her words had tumbled out of her mouth before she could think, resulting in a very uncomfortable silence afterwards. Dana heard her name called out in the distance, and grabbed it as her chance to leave.