23
“Luna Aldridge Looks Breathtaking at Private English Countryside Ball”
—Enigma
ONE FOOT IN front of the other. One foot in front of the other.
One foot in front of the other. Focus your body weight on the balls of your feet as you move; it was the first rule they taught you in tennis on the starting stance.
Who would have known the same worked for walking in heels?
Not me. Apparently, there was a lot I didn’t know!
As someone who thought she knew a lot at the ripe age of twenty-six—how to make French toast that didn’t taste like eggs; when the right time was to send a text after an argument; how to decipher when your opponent was going to hit a drop shot; when a sweater was made of a polyester blend rather than cotton—I sure knew nothing about how to control myself.
All of the signs were right in front of me. God, rule number one was the first to take place!
Rule Number One to Controlling Oneself: Never get into an argument with a man who wore pinky rings, called you a narcissist, and enjoyed knowing you thought he was handsome.
It’d only end with him thinking he was right.
And what would you know—Kieran was right!
I should have left that conversation with Jeremiah the moment it started!
Inhale for four seconds through the nose and hold. Exhale through the mouth for eight seconds. Again and again and again.
Coach would be proud if he knew I was rehearsing breathing techniques on my weekend off.
I could hear his voice: “You’re telling me all it took was for you to kiss that Kieran fellow to practice your damn breathing exercises?”
Shit, shit, shit. Nope, no, we weren’t going to think about that.
Just walk straight to your room where you’ll sleep and pretend like nothing happened. Definitely don’t stop at a window to stare outside and comb through all your panicky thoughts in a monologue Shakespearean-style.
Luna, Luna, Luna. You’re breathtaking.
“No!” I ordered myself to stop, finally reaching the correct hallway and shoving the door open. I let my back rest against the hardwood, heaps of air circulating through my body in disarray.
I kicked my heels off in frustration and marched to the other side of the bedroom, throwing the window open. Air, that’s what I needed.
Droplets of rain created a whip, throwing themselves at the glass. I let them hit my face and ruin the smoothness of my updo. My grip on the wrought iron window frame weakened, and my shoulders fell.
Luna, Luna, Luna. You’re breathtaking.
No.
He didn’t get to say that. He didn’t get to call me by my last name like some colleague in the financial district and then throw my first name at me like some—some romantic gesture.
He didn’t get to call me uptight, narcissistic, calculated, stuck-up, bossy, controlling, and then that.
He didn’t get to say I was an excuse for a tennis player and then watch me dance like I created the footsteps.
He didn’t get to say I was incapable of loving and then trace his hands over my skin and grip my waist like it was something he wanted to familiarize himself with.
He didn’t get to say I could never think less of you when I brought my divorce up, especially when he hadn’t heard the recordings of me screaming. He didn’t get to make me feel like me. Only for me to shout at him for no reason other than the feeling of Jeremiah’s temper still making my skin crawl.
Luna, Luna, Luna. You’re breathtaking.
I ripped the clips from my hair, along with the hundreds of bobby pins. Running my fingers through my scalp, I tried to scrub out every thought of him: the dazed look in his blue eyes after we kissed; the grasp he had on my neck to tilt my head up; the greedy way his lips captured mine.
This entire night had already been a complex kerfuffle of stubborn memories I never wanted to recall. I wanted to cement my fake relationship. Prove to Jeremiah that I didn’t need him.
I didn’t want to see stupid Kieran get more handsome, and then leave knowing what it was like to kiss him.
The way I imagined this weekend going was shredded into long, wispy strips that made the leaves outside look durable.
And Jeremiah. I knew Kieran and I would fight, but Jeremiah and I… I had meant to keep my distance from him.
The rain droplets hitting my cheeks slowly joined hot tears. I pressed my fingers into the corners of my eyes as our dance together replayed in my head.
“How are you?” Jeremiah had asked, his voice as warm as the day’s sun.
“Good, you?” I asked, my tone civil.
“I’m good now.” He smirked.
“Are you capable of not flirting?”
“Can you blame me?”
“I can, because I’m here with someone else.”
“Ah yes, the actor. I saw you two together earlier—epitome of romance,” he said sarcastically.
“And we were?” I countered.
“Do you not remember how we celebrated after the Madrid Open, two years ago?”
I shouldn’t give in to his manipulation.
But my hand fell across my face to cover an unexpected laugh.
Two years ago, we were at a retired tennis player’s party.
His house was massive, but not sizable enough to move an elbow or find a corner to kiss in because of the massive guest list. Jeremiah and I were squished against a window when he spotted a pool in the neighbor’s yard.
He was out the door before I had a chance to convince him otherwise.
A minute later, I was in a stranger’s pool and Jeremiah’s lips were on mine.
I didn’t even have time to pull my heels off before he was pulling me in.
He nudged my side. “Don’t try and tell me that wasn’t romantic!”
“I wouldn’t call sneaking into a stranger’s pool romantic!”
“I was more so referring to the kissing that took place in the pool,” he whispered. The corner of his mischievous mouth lifted. A familiarity. Jeremiah, happy. A sign of the man I married. Not the one I divorced.
“Romance isn’t all that makes a relationship, Jeremiah.”
“It is for you, though.”
“Trust is too,” I reminded him.
“Of course, and I want to earn that back. I took off practice, found a suit, and drove all the way here just to see you. I’m trying.”
“But why now? Why not put the effort in before? You never took practice off.”
“Because my career is my life. Taking days off means the competition getting a leg up. You should understand that more than anyone.”
“I know, I was taking off entire tournaments to see you.”
He shook his head. “I wasn’t asking you to do that, Luna.”
“I didn’t say that. I was doing it because I loved you. I wanted you to know I loved you. Taking the time off was worth it to me.”
“Loved?” he asked, bypassing my point. “Are you saying you don’t love me anymore? Simply because of a kiss?”
The image of him in bed with Ava flashed when I blinked.
“Luna, please, please just listen. It was nothing, she’s nothing. I was stressed, I had a drink, she kissed me.”
Bile threatened to rise.
“Don’t do that.” I closed my eyes.
“Don’t do what?” he asked, offended.
“Invalidate my feelings. Invalidate what I saw. That was more than a kiss. It wasn’t only the… the cheating either, Jeremiah.”
“Then what’s the big deal?”
“The big deal? You pushed me away constantly. You didn’t respect me as an athlete anymore, let alone a partner.
Did you know I’d wait for you after your tournaments in your hotel room to see you?
But you’d never show up. You’d never come back.
I had no idea where you were. I’d fly back home and you’d never notice because you didn’t know I was there in the first place. ”
“I was celebrating! I was always stressed and wanted time to have fun, okay? I have the entire world watching to see if I can maintain the number one spot, or if I’ll lose it, my success becoming this blip no one will remember.
I can’t be a minute piece of this sport, one that’ll fade away, not after everything I’ve put into it. ”
“You don’t think I’m shouldering the same battles?
My ranking has completely collapsed, and I’ve lost the ability to function in public and social settings because every person in the world hates me because of something you said—let alone the pressure I put on myself to play well.
” My sentiment wasn’t new. I had said the same thing when he started calling after the scandal.
But this time he couldn’t hang up when he ran out of words.
“I told you how much I regret that decision,” he reminded me. “I wasn’t in the right head space, and it was the only thing I could think of that would get you to answer my calls.”
My skin itched. “Do you hear yourself—‘the only thing you could think of’?”
“It was one mistake. You wanted to pretend I didn’t exist. What else was I supposed to do?”
“Let me go. You should’ve let me go.” My words were solid, but my voice was wavering.
“So you could go find another guy?” His face twisted.
“Do you think Kieran Alexander loves you?” He completely bulldozed over my half of the conversation the way he used to.
He didn’t care. His intention was to offend me.
Expect me to burst into tears and tell him how right he was about the contaminated dating pool.
To hear that I was secretly pining over him.
Fortunately, he didn’t know that Kieran could never love me, and that I couldn’t care less.
“This has everything to do with the public favoring you and the media printing your name and nothing to do with you getting me back.”
“Everything has been to get you back.”
“It’s been to get back your image—the way it looked to have tennis’s top star dating another athlete, one that was close to being better than you but not quite.
It made you look more committed to the sport.
It made people idolize you more. And I think when we first got married, you did love me, but since your brother…
I… I think it’s been about repairing something that’ll always be broken because you won’t take the time to work through your grief. ”