Chapter Twenty-Three Luca
TWENTY-THREE LUCA
Other than her anxiety, the only trait Luca got from her mother is the tendency to avoid uncomfortable things. Which is most likely related to her anxiety, but Luca refuses to acknowledge that.
Luckily, Juliette is easy to avoid after the sprinkler incident. They’re on opposite sides of the Wimbledon draw, so they don’t even go to the grounds on the same days. She tracks Juliette’s progress through the tournament, but she is diligent in never turning on her matches.
The Connolly Cup was an anomaly. She never spends time with other players, unless it’s Nicky, and usually, Nicky is the one barging into Luca’s life unannounced and occasionally unwanted. But Juliette doesn’t attempt contact, for which Luca is grateful.
Maybe a part of her is oddly sad. But now that she’s back into the groove of her routine, her anxiety lessens, and she can almost forget the complicated web Juliette entangled her in.
Wimbledon shouldn’t be difficult for Luca, but the pressure of playing on grass when everyone tells her that her game is suited for it gets to her head.
After winning the Australian Open, she feels like Wimbledon is hers to take.
At Roland-Garros, she could excuse her poorer performance because clay isn’t her surface.
And even though her game technically is made for grass, she feels awkward and graceless on the slippery surface, perhaps even more so than on the uncontrollable clay.
The only good part is that Luca can serve dozens of aces and win free points.
With that tactic, she manages to skate by the first three rounds of Wimbledon without dropping a set.
She doesn’t feel great about any of the wins, her body aching in familiar ways.
She knows Twitter must be talking about how lucky she is to have won six straight tiebreakers thus far, most by the skin of her teeth.
On her off day, she wakes up early for a morning practice session with Vladimir. The courts are quiet, and the grass is a little slippery with morning dew. By the time Luca warms up her legs and unzips her sweatshirt, the sun gleams overhead and burns away any remaining slickness.
They start slow. “Focus on your hit point on the forehand side,” Vladimir tells her. After a few easy balls, Vladimir starts to hit harder and farther out into the court.
The muscles in her legs ache. She stretches her racket out for one of the balls that is slightly too far from her reach, taking a full swing and regretting it immediately. A muscle spasms in her back. She had assumed her aches were just fatigue, but this is so much more.
Luca grabs the offending muscle and digs her fingers into it in a desperate hope that the pain will go away. Of course, injuries don’t work like that. Her body lashes out, the throbbing pain radiating up her spine now.
“Oh, God,” Luca mutters with a sharp intake of breath, leaning on her racket as her muscle spasms again.
“Luca?” Vladimir’s worried voice washes over her. His warm hand lands on her shoulder, grounding and gentle. He crouches, coming into Luca’s line of sight. “What’s wrong?”
“My back,” Luca says through gritted teeth. She forces herself to straighten, but the muscle winces again, and she gasps. “Just a twinge.”
Vladimir’s mouth thins into a flat line. “It does not look like that.” He straightens and waves for someone to get a trainer.
“How long has it been hurting?” he asks, his mouth twisting. Luca’s guilt grows as she swears she sees a hint of hurt in Vladimir’s eyes.
“I don’t know. A little while. I thought it was just stiffness,” Luca says. It’s the truth, but she also knows she should have said something sooner.
Luca leans on Vladimir as they hobble over to the bench. The pain isn’t too bad, now that she isn’t lunging for a ball, but the muscle still throbs. A trainer drops a bag next to her and crouches down to examine her.
Vladimir turns away and Luca reaches for him, wincing in pain at the movement. “Don’t leave,” she whispers, and Vladimir blinks. For a moment, Luca hangs in suspended panic.
“I’m getting your water, Luca,” Vladimir says gently, and Luca forces her fingers to loosen from his forearm.
Vladimir isn’t leaving. Not yet at least. If it turns out she can’t play anymore, he’ll move on to another player.
She can’t breathe until Vladimir sits next to her and takes her hand.
By the time the trainers are done with her and have sent her scans off for a doctor to review, Luca has taken enough painkillers that she’s numb.
Vladimir takes her back to the hotel and forces her to lie down on her stomach instead of pacing.
He plants a bag of ice on her lower back and reads out her texts from Nicky.
She can almost hear Nicky’s panic in the tone of the texts, but she tells Vladimir to leave them unanswered.
She doesn’t know what to say—to Nicky or herself.
Luca’s stomach twists in nauseating knots.
She wants to throw up, but she buries her face into the pillows instead.
She curls and uncurls her fingers into the sheets, trying not to think about this catastrophic injury.
“You probably won’t be able to finish Wimbledon, Luca,” Vladimir says, sitting next to her.
One of his hands cards gently through her hair as he says what Luca’s unable to admit to herself.
Luca feels like a failure. After not winning the French Open, Luca had hoped she could prove she wasn’t a one-Slam wonder during Wimbledon.
That she is more than just lucky . Too often she sees the comments online saying that she had an easy draw in Australia, or that she won because she broke Juliette’s concentration.
She knows, intellectually, both of those things aren’t true and that she won fair and square.
But the thoughts still seep into her mind as she wallows about having not won another Grand Slam.
To cement her place in history, she’ll have to win much more than just one Australian Open.
She groans and claws her fingers into the mattress.
“I know,” Vladimir says, his fingers never stopping the slow and even track over the top of Luca’s head and to the back of her neck.
Luca breathes in the fresh scent of cotton and lavender and wonders if she should smother herself. She turns her head instead and tries to look up at Vladimir. He’s sitting back against the pillow, and she can’t see his face from this angle, which is probably for the best.
“What if my career is over?” Luca whispers, finally voicing the worst of the thoughts that have been nagging in the back of her head since she first sat down and realized this wasn’t just a sore muscle.
She hates the way her voice shakes, small and fragile.
Tennis is the glue that keeps her life together; has been since she was six years old and realized it made her father look at her with pride instead of disappointment.
“Don’t think like that. Which I know is easier said than done, but it’ll be okay, I promise.” Vladimir’s rumbling voice is soothing, and even though the thoughts don’t disappear, they do shrink. “A back strain is relatively minor. And you’re young.”
“Hardly,” Luca scoffs. Twenty-four is young by a “normal” life’s standards, but she still feels like time is slipping through her fingers. She’ll be twenty-five in October and theoretically in the twilight of her career.
“Some of the greatest players were in their midthirties when they retired, and they were still playing at the topmost level,” Vladimir points out. “Karoline played until thirty-seven.”
“What if I’m not one of the greatest?” Luca hates saying one of her biggest fears out loud.
“You probably won’t be.” It’s the stark, hard truth, and oh , it hurts. “But as long as you do your best, then you’ll be happy.” Vladimir squeezes her neck gently.
Luca huffs. Vladimir is right, as always.
Even now there are articles over which of the Fierce Four was the best. But the greatest of all time isn’t a single statistic or match.
And it’s much more than winning championships.
The Fierce Four are great outside of the court because of their philanthropic endeavors and continued efforts to help their communities.
Maybe if she couldn’t play tennis anymore, she could coach.
Find another young Croatian girl with big dreams and help her get to the topmost level.
Perhaps that could be enough, even if it isn’t what Luca wants right now.
“Thank you,” she whispers after several beats of silence.
Vladimir’s hand pauses, resting on the crown of her head. “What for?”
“Being here,” Luca whispers. Her throat is tight and clogged, her eyes prickling with an aching sting that she doesn’t want to give in to.
Vladimir hums, and Luca falls asleep with her coach’s hand grounding her to reality.
JULIETTE
Juliette gets roped into another late lunch with Remi after practice. Remi is the last match on Center Court today, so she’s scarfing down food like she’s been starving for weeks.
“Do you think that collision at the Connolly Cup has anything to do with Kacic’s injury?” Remi asks as she devours a bagel smothered in avocado and salmon.
Juliette’s fork clatters to the plate. “What?”
Remi chews as she stares at Juliette. With deliberate slowness, Remi swallows before asking, “You didn’t hear?”
“Hear what? What happened to Luca?” Juliette demands, half-tempted to reach across the table and throttle Remi for dragging this out.
It was only a week ago that they’d been forced to practice against each other at the indoor club.
Juliette had taken a chance, tried to reach out and get to know Luca as Octavia suggested.
And for a moment, staring at each other, Juliette was convinced she’d broken through to Luca.
But then her father had dragged her away, and she hadn’t been brave enough to reach out again.