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“Spotted: Luna Aldridge Photographed for the First Time in Eight Months—Everything We Know About Her Return”
—Pop Culture Weekly
MY “SPOTTED SIGHTING” was a morning run through my secluded neighborhood. At least I had worn my good sports bra.
But the headline felt like some mistake; had it truly been eight months?
Eight months ago, I couldn’t fathom returning to professional tennis, not after everything that happened with Jeremiah. I felt like a wrung-out towel left to dry in the sun after spending too many hours in the water, every fiber of my being whittling away and flaking off, leaving me hollow.
They—my team—had given me six months after I left Jeremiah. Six months to breathe and peel my anxiety and sadness off like some stubborn Band-Aid before reentering the limelight.
I was going to convince them to give me a few more weeks once the six months were up.
Just another month hiding in my childhood home, allowing mornings to blend into afternoons, and afternoons to nights.
Of granting my body the permission to bleed as many tears as I wanted and practice my sport like it wasn’t my job. Like it wasn’t supposed to be perfect.
Then everything exploded two months ago.
Deidra showed up on my doorstep and played me an unaired interview that would be released in hours, given to us early to prepare.
My skin iced over. My joints stiffened and my mouth dried up, and it felt as if I were watching myself from afar, like Scrooge witnessing his foreseeable future. But this wasn’t fear for the future or some teaching lesson. It was happening simply because my existence bothered Jeremiah.
She played the interview. His voice was the same. Of course it was the same. And suddenly, there was mine too. He had pulled a sound bite from our argument to justify his stance. I vomited at the sound of my voice.
I went from empty and evasive to hated and pushed out when Jeremiah participated in that insane interview and released that recording.
It seemed like there wasn’t a person in the world who hadn’t watched it.
Which meant that there wasn’t a person in the world who didn’t hate me.
He turned me into a commodity for his personal amusement, using the one thing that scared me most to keep me hidden:
Ruining my reputation.
I wanted to hide for another six months—years—as I read people’s reactions.
My PR team flooded my messages with game plans and prepared responses. My foot bounced and my lip bled under the weight of my teeth as I read and listened and watched, praying that someone would speak up.
But they all believed him.
I didn’t respond; I didn’t leave my home.
Yet colleagues and fans and the media repeated the names he called me, as if in solidarity.
Within one night, the whole world decided I was worthy of their anger.
Hate mail, lost sponsors, spammed social media accounts with criticism.
I was suffocating in an empty home with their words.
Almost two months had passed since then. Two months that allowed fury to curl around itself and build.
I wanted my goddamn sport back.
Jeremiah was a resurrected nightmare that had returned one more time to stab me in the back. But I didn’t feel like crying with the knife in my back anymore, so I yanked it out and handed it to Deidra.
If she said Kieran would be my answer, then I’d do whatever it took to get my life back.
“Don’t do this, Luna, this is ridiculous.”
Sweat was forming its own river down the side of my temple. I cut its path short, wiping it with the back of my hand.
One more mile to go.
“Dad, it’s happening, it’s already been decided.”
He grumbled. “Then why did you call?”
I rolled my eyes. “Because we always talk on Saturdays at seven.”
“Well, it’s noon in Lisbon.”
“What’s in Lisbon?”
“My newest investment.” There was a jolly note in his tone. I could hear his smile through the phone. “I’m currently walking around a vineyard outside my newest restaurant with a glass of wine. Did you know the Portuguese make the best wine in the world?”
“I can hear Nonna rolling in her grave at that remark. Also, I thought Walt cut you off from any more investments?”
“Your brother may be my financial advisor, but that doesn’t make him any less my son. I know a good investment when I see one.” His voice moved in and out of the speaker, which meant he was waving his hands around.
“What about that wine that sparkles when you pour it?”
“God forbid I make one mistake out of eighty-nine investments!”
“It was a fifty-thousand-dollar investment,” I corrected him. Turning a corner, I caught my breath outside a small bakery before returning to a jogging pace. It was often quiet this time of day in Scarsdale.
“If my mind serves me right, you were a pretty big investment too,” he grumbled. But it was a fatherly grumble, the kind that emerged when he gave in to his children.
“This investment has had a pretty big return,” I pointed out.
“Not if you’re going to frolic around with some actor.” Here we go again.
“Dad, this is so they’ll get off my back, so I can do what I do best, remember? We’re doing this Deidra’s way,” I explained.
“This is Jeremiah’s fault, so we should be making this his problem.” My foot slipped at the sound of his name, my phone taking the fall so I could catch myself on the pavement. The beat of my heart sat in my throat as his name rang in my ears.
I scrambled to pick up my phone, brushing the gravel off my knees. Fortunately, Dad was still busy talking. “If we were doing it my way, there’d be a lawyer on that douchebag’s steps and an interviewer on yours for a tell-all.”
“This will work,” I decided, running again.
“Nowhere in this plan is there a strategy to put Jeremiah six feet in the gr—”
“I don’t think people are fond of letting criminals invest in their businesses, so I’d lower your voice.”
“Criminals invest more than you think.”
“Well, let’s not add that to your portfolio, Walt himself would swim to Lisbon to kill you. Now I have to go; I just got home.”
There was a sigh of unrest on his end. “Next Saturday?”
“Next Saturday,” I confirmed and hung up.
When I walked inside, I kicked the mail on the floor to the side, ignoring the one on top from Jeremiah—it would go straight in the trash anyway.
Walt was still asleep on my couch. I gave the man a whole guest room, and he still managed to fall asleep in the living room every time he was visiting with one of Dad’s investors.
I pushed my sneakers off before I approached the couch.
He was curled up like his orange cat; his dress shirt untucked, resting above plaid pajama pants.
How he found the energy to change his pants but not his shirt, I had no clue.
We had very different ideas of a nighttime routine.
His: work on your laptop until enough is done that you can nod off and slip into REM.
Mine: matching striped pajama set, only the nightstand lamp on, and a shortbread cookie on a cocktail napkin in bed.
Extremely different habits and personalities, but you’d never know.
We looked like we were picked from the same litter.
We had the same brown hair. The same straight bridge of a nose.
The same oval face. Mom always said we looked like each other rather than her or Dad.
As kids, she’d even give us the same haircut until I was five (him seven).
Unfortunately, the decided haircut suited him more than me. But I’d never admit that to him.
“Walt,” I said, nudging his shoulder. Nothing. “Walt,” I repeated. He groaned on the third nudge, picking his head up from the armrest.
“Sleeping Beauty, I have to get ready,” I warned. “So if you’re going to shower, it needs to be right now.”
“Okay, okay, I’m getting up,” he muttered.
“I just got off the phone with Dad—heard you’re giving him a hard time,” I teased.
“If he considers not going bankrupt ‘a hard time,’ then sure. It’s not like I fly out to meet with a board every time he finds something interesting.”
“What time is that meeting?”
He reached for my phone. “Hour fifteen.”
“At least you get free lodging.”
“Not free meals.”
“You want me to cook for you?”
“Ew.”
“That’s what I thought.” Neither of us got that gene from Mom. “Get off my couch so I can clean up.”
He stood from the rearranged cushions to collect ruffled papers from the coffee table. “Why are you in such a rush?”
“I have a meeting in the city too.”
“Perfect, we can drive in together.”
“Not if you’re going this slow.” I whacked him with a cushion.
“Wait, what do you have a meeting for?”
“I’m rejoining the WTA tour.”
His hands paused on a stack of papers. “You’re serious?”
“Completely.”
“You’re sure?”
“Completely.” I picked the pillows off the floor.
“You don’t think you’re rushing into this?” he asked. “Seeing as everything just blew up like… two months ago.”
“It’s embarrassing enough that I’m jumping in in the middle of a season. I’m not going to wait until next year and prolong this. Then it’ll be a whole thing.” Tournaments began as early as January, and it was already the end of May.
“I think this is already a whole thing.”
I stopped and stared at him. “Thank you for your support,” I deadpanned.
He rolled his eyes. “I’m not supposed to be back in the city for a bit, but I can always find a reason if you wanted to go over a plan or needed help making a statement of some kind?”
That was Walt—a plan of attack, a spreadsheet, a formal pre-planned statement.
He never knew what to say, but he sure could help you figure out what to say.
Ensure things went smoothly. Avoid future catastrophes.
Hence why Dad (a man who dropped catastrophes behind him like pieces of pocket lint) caused him so much stress.
Walt always inserted his opinion. You’d think getting a word in was a personal achievement for him. But his words had a melancholic edge, dripping with protectiveness.
It reminded me of when we were kids. We’d go from bickering over the shower before school to him giving me a head start to the bathroom by pretending to sleep in, knowing I had had a disappointing practice the night before. Even as an adult he didn’t know what to say.
“It’s okay, PR has a plan, so I’ll let them handle that while I handle winning,” I reassured him.
“And that plan would be?” he asked, moving so I could place another pillow back.
“A public relationship with Kieran Alexander.”
He spun. “The guy who called you an excuse for a tennis player?” Evidently a rhetorical question. “You’re actually going to entertain this?”
I huffed, throwing the last pillow down. “It’s just business. I’m not happy about it either, trust me, but it’s just temporary.” Or at least that’s what I’m telling myself.
I left the room and walked upstairs past my trophy display: five Wimbledon trophies, three from Roland-Garros, two from the Madrid Open, and one from the Australian Open.
It wasn’t much compared to what others achieved at twenty-six in pro tennis.
But the one that taunted me most was the missing US Open trophy. I managed to lose it.
Every. Time.
A dress shoe hit the floor before a foot was shoved into it, tapping up the stairs behind me. “You’re being oddly calm about this,” he said.
“I have no choice but to be calm. I’m doing what I can to smooth out this scandal. That way I can return to tennis without worrying about people shouting at me from the stands.”
There was a fist closing around my heart. All I could picture were the headlines saying I should never step outside, let alone on a court.
“It’s just a PR stunt. People in the industry do it all the time, it’s like a rite of passage,” I said. Everything will be fine. I exhaled, trying to alleviate the tension in my chest.
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, Luna,” he stated firmly. “Mom would say the same thing.”
He was right. She would. But she wasn’t here, and she didn’t know the situation.
“It’s me versus Jeremiah right now, and I’m not going to let him win by continuing to hide. Now go shower or we’re both going to be late.”
I finished the steps and closed my bedroom door.
Two hours until hell froze over.