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He tells Roger in the locker room, when it's just the two of them again, as the Kids' Day stuff winds down, and Roger - who's learnt to keep his emotions in check so well - pulls on a clean shirt as he thinks. "I'm sorry," he says, finally, dropping onto the bench next to Andy.
Andy shrugs. "I'm not. It feels right."
"What are you going to do next?" Roger asks, like he genuinely wants to know, like they've had more than a handful of real conversations in the last few years (they were friends, once, Andy knows) and Andy makes a show of checking his bare wrist.
"Dude, it's been like ... an hour since I decided," he kids, and Roger turns his head away to laugh. "Radio, I guess, for a bit," he says, eventually, because Roger's still waiting.
"With - uh, Bobby?" Roger half-asks, and when Andy raises an eyebrow at him, he adds, mock-defensively, ""I - I pay attention, Andy."
Andy snorts. "Stalker." Roger smiles a little, and Andy bumps him with his shoulder and lets the silence hang for a moment. "I want to set up a tennis centre back home." He shrugs again, and Roger nods.
"There's more-"
"I swear to God, if you say that there's more to life than tennis, I'll punch you and every one of your records in the face," Andy says, fast and clipped - and even though they both know he's kidding, Roger closes his mouth and shrugs, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "I know what you're saying," Andy says, normally and, mercifully, Roger changes the subject.
"We've had some good matches," Roger says, a little wistfully, and this - no. Not now, not yet, maybe not ever.
"Yeah, you'd say that. You won them all," he's half-shouting and Roger's laugh is strangely familiar, even though he hasn't heard it regularly in almost a decade
(and he misses that, if he lets himself think about it - which he won't, for a while, not until the lead ball of uncertainty disappears from his stomach - misses when it was the two of them and Everyone Else, the two of them in the awkward suits that Roger probably wouldn't look out of place playing in, these days, but Andy never really grew into. Andy, who still hates being out of his cap, who still is never going to be the guy - never could've been the guy - that looks good in a white blazer).
"Best one," Andy challenges him, and, for once, they're actually on the same page.
"Wimbledon," Roger says, immediately, and Andy snorts again.
"Which time?"
"2009." And, of course. Roger's smile is small, but real. "Tightest one we ever played."
Andy's reply is dry. "I remember."
"You?" Roger asks, cocks his head to the side.
"Miami. This year."
Roger squints a little as he tries to place it. "Was that ... the last time you beat me?" he asks, smile growing, because he knows it was.
"Uh huh," Andy's unapologetic and Roger's laughing again.
"Nice, Andy," he says, and Andy shrugs, but lets himself be led down memory lane.
"I think it was ... the second time we played in Basel ... that I knew I wasn't going to like you very much," Andy says, leaning forward to brace his elbows on his thighs, and Roger squints as he tries to remember. "I put away an overhead - I thought I put it away," Andy says, mock-indignant, and he can feel Roger nodding beside him.
"And I hit a clean winner," he says, and Andy doesn't need to look at him to know that he's smiling, all soft and nostalgic and crap, "and you threw your racquet at my head."
"It wasn't at your head," Andy mutters, and Roger's shaking with laughter.
"That's a lie, anyway," he says, easily, after a beat, and Andy turns his head to look at him, raises his eyebrows expectantly, "You like me just fine," Roger says, confident, in a way that doesn't irritate Andy half as much as it used to.
"Can't stand you," Andy says, with a dismissive shake of his head, and Roger's smile is that genuine, almost-toothless grin he stopped hating years ago.
"It won't be the same without you," Roger says, like he says everything, like it's a fact.
"Yeah," Andy replies, dryly, "be damn near impossible to get that good a head-to-head against anyone else."
Roger waves a hand. "Not that. Just - being on tour without you." He shrugs, self-conscious and lost for words in a way he so rarely is in public anymore (and before Murray, and before Novak, and before Rafa, there was Andy; he and Roger were 1 and 2, and 2 and 1, and for a few months in the fall of 2003, they each had one Slam, and if he were the kind of guy to wonder what if, that's the point in time he'd go back to.
But he's not. So he doesn't).
Andy adjusts the collar of his shirt, like he's between points, before he can catch himself.
"Do you ever think about it?" Andy asks - has an almost superstitious fear of using the word itself (asks that instead of what he really wants to know; How do you still want it so much?)
Roger cocks his head to the side, chooses his words carefully. "I can't," he says, simply, "I think if you - if you let that seed plant..."
Which, weirdly, Andy kind of gets (once you let yourself think about it seriously, you can't un-think it, he knows; once you imagine life after tennis - After Tennis - you can't un-see it, and once you start rehearsing how you'll break it to your coaches you're so far gone there's no coming back).
Andy pats Roger's leg, friendly and mock-comforting. "You're not playing that badly, anyway. You've probably got a few more months ... weeks ... in you," and Roger shoves at Andy, laughing.
"You're awful."
"You think I'll get through a press conference without being asked about you?" Andy asks, and when Roger smiles, a little sheepishly, Andy adds, "Yeah. Me neither."
"Sorry."
Andy shrugs. "Not your fault."
There's a pause, then. "Andy," Roger says, "Thank you."
Andy barks out the beginning of a laugh. "For what?" he asks, incredulously.
"For," Roger waves a hand as he searches for the right words. "Telling me."
Andy digs around in his bag for his water bottle and drains it, to kill a few seconds.
"You're welcome?" he half-asks, because Have a heart-to-heart with Roger Federer was not on his To-Do List for today. He stands, hoists his bag over his shoulder, empty bottle dangling from his fingertips. "I'll catch you later," he says, and he hasn't taken two steps before Roger's speaking again-
"You've said a lot of nice things about me over the years-"
"Lies," Andy says, loftily, turning back to face him, "All of them."
"I don't know if I would've been so - kind. If it were me." (And Andy hears what he's trying not to say; if it had been Roger who'd always been second best, and he almost wants to laugh, because, Christ, he hasn't had a bad career, really, and yeah, there are losses that won't ever not hurt (16-14 in the fifth), but he's going out with less than a handful of regrets, which he can deal with).
"You would've." It's confident and final and Roger hears it, nods a little. "Anyway. I would've been a pretty shitty champion," he jokes, and Roger isn't smiling.
"You were, you know," he says, and Andy narrows his eyes and waits for the punch line.
"What?" he asks, warily,
"A champion," Roger says, seriously, and Andy groans, and tosses the water bottle at his head.
"Stop that," he says, holding up a finger, as Roger bats the bottle away. "I'm not dead. God." He stalks towards the locker room door, tossing over his shoulder an incensed, "Ridiculous!" and, "What is wrong with you?" and he can still hear Roger laughing as the door swings shut behind him.