Chapter Six Luca
SIX LUCA
Clay season rolls around after Indian Wells, and Luca dreads it.
She doesn’t like sliding and slipping on the red dirt.
Her game isn’t built for the slow balls and grinding rallies.
She doesn’t win any of the tournaments, but at least she doesn’t embarrass herself.
Eventually, the clay swing finally culminates in the French Open, Roland-Garros.
It rains on and off during the first week of the tournament. Playing tennis in the rain on clay should be a crime. Still, Luca considers herself lucky because she gets scheduled early and on the court with a roof.
With the court enclosed, it’s humid and sticky. The clay clumps beneath her shoes and the ball moves even slower through the air. Luca still wins but it takes hours, and she’s drenched like she just stepped out of a pool by the time it’s over.
Sweat slides down her temples and cheeks as she bends down to put her racket into her bag.
She impatiently brushes it away, irritating her skin and making her throat tight.
She rips off her wristbands and tosses them at a cluster of girls cheering her name.
She smiles at them, and they squeal to each other in rapid French.
She grabs her Rolex out of the side compartment of her bag and shimmies it onto her wrist, snapping it closed.
She likes the money that comes from the sponsorships, but it has been a hassle remembering to put on the watch after her match.
A tournament manager approaches her with a purple pen and a smile.
Luca takes it and turns to the camera. In quick scrawling letters, she signs her name on the plexiglass over the lens and adds a smiley face that is objectively terrible.
She tries to fix the edge of the smile but smudges it.
She shrugs and hands the pen off. As she glances up at the jumbotron, she sees herself signing the camera, a few seconds delayed.
Ice sears through her. She’s forgotten to put on her wrist wrap and her watch isn’t nearly wide enough to hide her soulmark. It stands out, brilliantly black. The first three letters wink from behind the gilded edge of her Rolex band.
She wraps her left hand around her wrist and hurries back to her bag, crouching down and shoving her hand into it so no one can read more letters.
She finds her real wrap, a strip of black wide enough to cover the black block lettering, and twists it around the mark with trembling fingers.
Sweat trickles down the back of her neck, prickling and itchy.
Slowly, Luca stands. She rubs her face with her towel again, trying to calm the rattling nerves in her chest. The last thing she wants is someone prying into her private life or even intimating that her soulmate is Juliette Ricci.
Spiky panic cuts into her lungs like shards of glass, but she forces herself to throw her towel into the crowd too before heading onto the court again for another interview.
Luca’s phone buzzes, and she swipes it open.
A screenshot sits beneath a message from Nicky.
Her stomach twists, humiliation and anger spiraling in her throat.
Ricci has quote-tweeted the grainy, blown-up image of Luca’s soulmark with a winking face.
Nicky’s only message is a few grimacing emojis.
He’d been the first one she called after winning the Australian Open.
Even jet-lagged and yawning, he’d consoled her about how terrible Juliette Ricci had been and talked through every second of the interaction with her until she finally let him go to sleep.
The sound of her name snaps her back into the room, staring at a sea of faces.
Unfortunately, this fourth-round win means she has to sit in another dreadful press conference and pretend she doesn’t hate the clay.
And pretend she didn’t notice that her soulmark was halfway on display after her match.
A careless mistake she is still agonizing over even though no one has mentioned it to her face so far.
Luca has been diligent in trying to ignore Juliette Ricci.
Sometimes when she sees Ricci, she’s right back in that locker room.
She can feel the hand-warmed metal of her trophy against her arm, smell the light citrus and coconut of whatever products Ricci used, and remember the hope that maybe Ricci would apologize for her words and want to get to know Luca.
Then the bile of humiliation rises in her throat, and she has to forget the rest.
“Sorry, can you repeat the question?” Luca stares at the bright phone screen showing the audio waveforms rippling with her voice, capturing its slight quaver.
“Have you seen Twitter yet? The speculation about your soulmark?”
Luca swallows, trying to keep her expression neutral.
At least she had a heads-up from Nicky. Still, her heart hammers against her chest like she’s been in a long rally.
Which, in Paris, is unfortunately often.
“Why would I want to comment on that?” she asks, glancing away from the reporter audacious enough to ask it.
“What does that have to do with my tennis?” She wishes Twitter didn’t even exist. Maybe she should delete hers—not that it matters, now that the picture is out on the internet.
“There is speculation that your soulmate is your most competitive rival, Juliette Ricci. That must make playing tennis complicated. Especially after the Australian Open and the rest of the hard court swing.”
Luca wishes the ground would open up and swallow her whole. No other reporters jump in to save her, which isn’t surprising; they’re all sharks with gleaming, hungry eyes.
Even the sound of Ricci’s name makes Luca’s skin prickle.
She stares down at her hands and spots freckles of red clay on her forearms that she didn’t wash off properly.
Juliette Ricci loves the red clay of Paris.
She basks in her moniker as the Princess of Clay, and the luxury of being an expected favorite at Roland-Garros.
Luca scratches at her itchy skin and swallows the sharp, unpleasant feeling nagging in the back of her throat.
“We’re both professionals and nothing outside of tennis matters. I do not wish to comment on my soulmark. It is no one’s business but my own.” Luca hopes the answer satisfies the hungry reporters.
No such luck. The reporter narrows his eyes, latching on to something that Luca must’ve stumbled over without realizing it. “Well, with the Connolly Cup coming up, I’m sure we all would love to know how it feels to be on the same team together. Do you feel as though you’re rivals?”
Luca sucks in a breath through her teeth. She should play it cool and even, but unless she’s on a tennis court with a racket in hand, Luca has never been cool or even. “I don’t care. In order to be rivals, I would think that Ricci would have to beat me first.”
The reporter grins. “Thank you, Ms. Kacic. That’s all.”
Luca hates herself for snapping back, even though it’s true. She doesn’t want to care, and she doesn’t want to talk about Ricci. There’s no point. Ricci has made it clear that she has no interest in any type of relationship.
JULIETTE
“As your PR manager,” Livia begins, and Juliette groans.
“You’re my publicist, not my—”
“I have to say this is stupid,” Livia plows on as if Juliette never spoke.
Juliette lets her phone fall to her stomach as she lies on her ridiculously plush hotel bed. For the last two hours, she’s been scrolling through posts about Luca Kacic’s accidental soulmark reveal.
@HewittLover_69
wouldn’t it be ironic if kacic’s soulmate was ricci?
@idemoluca
there are millions of people with JUL- names. it’d be such a scam if it were ricci
@riccisbackhand
nah y’all remember AO? their faces after that handshake? there is something going on
Soulmarks get revealed all the time, even if people are diligent in hiding them. It’s especially hard for sweaty athletes with watch brand contracts to keep. What Twitter seems to find the most fascinating is that there aren’t that many Jul- names, and Luca had seemed very eager to cover hers up.
Juliette simply posted a winky face.
Now Livia has taken up residence on the adjacent love seat and is staring at Juliette, thoroughly disappointed by her choices.
“Come on, you have to admit it’s kind of funny,” Juliette says after a beat of deliberate silence.
She kind of likes that Kacic had her soulmark revealed and will probably have to answer awkward questions about it.
It might throw her off her rhythm, and Juliette isn’t above fanning the flames a little hotter.
Livia levels her with a brow raise that would make their father proud. She lifts her blue light blockers and nestles them in her messy bun. “I don’t like it.”
“Why not?” Juliette asks.
Livia sighs. The frown is not at home on her face. Usually, she’s into Juliette’s antics. It’s Octavia who frowns intensely at any sign of fun, taking her role as the oldest seriously.
“It’ll come back to bite you in the ass, for one. Also, I still don’t understand why you don’t like her.” Livia’s voice warms, her deep brown eyes becoming soft and inquisitive—a surefire way to get anyone to do whatever she wants, but Juliette holds firm as her good mood sours.
“You don’t understand, Livie,” Juliette says, bitterness like ash in her mouth.
Livia huffs and pulls her glasses off her head, but they catch in her wild curls, and she has to thread them out of the loose strands, skewing her messy updo. “But you never even gave Luca a chance,” Livia says as she returns to the laptop resting on her knees. “What if it’s worth it?”
Livia can’t understand. She isn’t a tennis player and never has been. Juliette fiddles with the bracelets on her right wrist, ignoring the wrap on her left one. “Nope,” she says stubbornly, popping the word in a way she knows frustrates Livia.
“You’re impossible,” Livia says, snapping her laptop closed and swinging her legs off the chair.
Juliette wriggles into the downy pillows. “Bye!” she calls after her, and she doesn’t need to look up to know Livia’s flipping her off as she stalks out of the room. She reopens her feed and scrolls through unhinged fan posts to amuse herself.
In the months since the Australian Open, Juliette has won a few tournaments, including Monterrey. As much as she enjoyed the early season, this is the portion of the season that she loves the most. She feels at home on the clay, and she has no time to think of Kacic. She has a French Open to win.