Chapter 36
Landon
WEEK THREE OF TRAINING CAMP
Everything’s clicking for the team, with a nice win in our first preseason game at home on Tuesday afternoon. Unfortunately, we also have some painful goodbyes as cuts continue.
The biggest one that impacts my guys is Chad.
He’s been a step slow over the first couple weeks of camp, something the coaches don’t miss.
It blows, because he’s got so much to offer off the field, but if you can’t keep up with the speed of the top offensive players, you aren’t going to stay on the linebacker roster.
“Man, tough situation,” I say as he cleans out his locker, having gotten the news after the game. “I really appreciate everything you’ve done for me the last three years, for all of us.”
“It’s okay,” he replies. “I’ve been expecting it. I don’t have the pace right now.”
I nod. “What’s next? You going to try to make another team?”
“Nah, I think I’m done on the playing side,” he says. “I’m going to meet with Bruce in a couple of days about starting to coach instead. See if they’ll give me a chance to be an assistant linebacker coach and get my feet wet.”
“You’d be incredible at coaching, Chad. Seriously.”
“Yeah, I think that’s the direction I’m headed.”
Shaking hands, we promise to stay in touch, no matter what happens for him.
In the meantime, we’re all business in our linebacker meetings now. The energy this year is more serious team wide, as well. There’s a sense that our time is coming, all the pieces falling into place with young talent in so many positions.
On Tuesday night, Rori has her first match in the Canada tournament. The fact that she’s the night’s featured match shows how much her celebrity’s grown. And I appreciate that she’s competing on the same continent as I’m practicing, letting me stream the match live from home.
She wins her first match handily, and we FaceTime late that night.
Her face is elated when the call connects. “It feels so great to be playing matches finally after the weeks off,” she says. “One more win and I get to take down Tessa.”
“Take on Tessa, you mean?” I tease.
“Oh no, I’m taking her down,” Rori says fiercely.
We talk about our days a little more, her peppering me with questions about how it works when the defense and offense are tackling each other in practice.
“How in the world do you get to beat up your own teammates and stay friends?” she says with an awed chuckle. “No way is that normal team behavior.”
“Football, babe,” I say. “It’s football.”
Her next match isn’t until Thursday, so she has a break on Wednesday. We make plans to spend more time talking tomorrow night, streaming a show together again.
At this point, I’m realizing that we’re going to wait to have the conversation we need to have a little while longer. Neither of us seems to be willing to go there on our FaceTimes.
But it’s only a few more days and camp will be done, which will let us see each other when she’s home between tournaments.
And hopefully have a real conversation about the gala, which is now about three weeks away.
As long as the outside world doesn’t keep throwing curve balls our way, that is.
Unfortunately, this week is about to be no different than the last two on that front.
The next evening, Rori FaceTimes me at seven like we planned. Only when I accept the call, all I hear is her crying.
Rori isn’t a crier. If anything, she holds back her emotions too much. What the fuck is going on?
“Landon, I’m so sorry, I’m a mess,” she manages to get out before sobs erupt again on the other end. Her eyes are red and panicked looking.
My heart’s in my throat. Can we not catch a break?
“What is it? Tell me,” I say, trying to speak in soothing tones despite the anxiety I feel.
“There’s so much,” she says, trying to slow her sobs, but looking absolutely miserable. “Some paparazzi caught a picture of my Dad and Julie kissing. Like full on kissing.”
I hold back from responding because I’m not sure what the problem is. She’s obviously had suspicions about them being together and wasn’t too upset at the prospect.
“I don’t care—I want them to be happy, and you know that I’ve felt basically for the whole summer that something is going on. But Hot Stuff is making it into a salacious story. That Julie somehow seduced Dad inappropriately.”
“What?” I can’t mask the shock in my voice, not expecting that turn.
“Yep, and they even mixed the story together with the pictures of us from the Triumph shoot to slut-shame both Julie and me at the same time. They brought in the Trinity story, too, to smear me by association with you.”
What the hell?
Rori breaks off to cry again. I quickly google, and see the headline: Tennis Star & Coach – Getting Around More than the Tennis Tour.
Shit. This story doesn’t even make sense when you know the truth, but sex sells, and that’s obviously the objective here.
I’m not worried about myself in this situation, just Rori. I’ve never seen her this upset. She’s so sensitive to any press at all, let alone this BS. A sick, twisting feeling rises up in my stomach as I think about how the article must feel for her.
Unfortunately, all I have to lean on is the reassurance that the gossip will die down. “Rori, this sucks, especially when you’re at a tournament. But it’ll blow over. Have you talked to Julie and your dad?”
She pauses and looks at me through the camera with devastated eyes. “That’s why I’m crying more than anything. Julie’s mortified by this article. She just resigned as my coach, apologizing for causing so much trouble.”
“Wait, she quit?” I ask. I don’t even know what not having a coach would mean for a tennis player.
Rori wipes her eyes before answering. “Yep, she left my room like forty-five minutes ago. I tried to tell her that I don’t care about any of it—her relationship with Dad, the bad press. She said she didn’t feel like she could continue, regardless. She’s flying back to Florida as soon as she can.”
I try to think of what to say. I know what Julie has meant to her during her comeback from the injury.
“I don’t think I can do this without Julie, Landon. We did all of this together, the last year wouldn’t have happened without her,” Rori gets out before crying again.
I’m at a loss. I’m halfway across the continent and totally unable to help her in any real way. I hate it.
“Is your dad there? Maggie?” Maybe one of them can come help her. Oh wait, her dad didn’t come on the trip, shit.
“Actually, Nina’s involved now, from New York,” she explains, misunderstanding the reason for my question. She’s still choking out small sobs. “Nina’s trying to talk Julie off the ledge, saying it’ll make everything worse. It’s so unfair. No one did anything wrong.”
I sigh. This is a fucking terrible situation, but that’s exactly why Nina is probably the right person to step in and play hardball to fix it.
“You’re right,” I say. “No one did. Hopefully Julie will feel validated enough after talking with Nina to stay on as your coach.”
There’s a pause while Rori takes some deep breaths. Her eyes, when she turns back to me, look different. A little closed off?
“After Julie left my room, Dad and I had a long talk on the phone, Landon. He finally admitted that he’s dating Julie, and told me more about how they got together. It’s actually quite a sweet story. Nothing like in the article. And then, I told him…I finally told him about us.”
“Oh?” I’m not sure where this will head. Her face seems a little frozen, like she’s locking up her emotions tight, trying to reclaim control.
“I think…well, we both think that you and I should hold off on going public after your training camp, for certain.” Her voice is more rigid than I ever remember hearing.
“I won’t be able to come with you to the gala.
There’s been so much media heat on all of us.
And the last thing I want is for anyone to be more focused on who I’m dating than my tennis achievements. Who my boyfriend is.”
“Anyone? Or you?” I ask, worried about what she really means.
My question triggers some emotion back into her expression, but not in the way I wanted. Her eyes look a little angry, defensive.
“Me too. Me too, Landon,” she says, her tone matching the look in her eyes.
“If we make things official, the media attention could drown out anything happening with my tennis, your season. The thought of that is messing with my head. My sole focus right now should be winning the U.S. Open. I’ll only have so many chances. ”
“I hear you, Rori,” I say, sighing again. “I guess, I mean…what does this mean for us? These stories have been tough, but we are stronger than them. We have something more, even if it needs to stay the way it has been, and private, a bit longer.”
“Uh huh,” Rori says, distance back in her voice, eyes looking away from the camera. “Look, I’m a total mess. I’m going to get off and regroup before my match tomorrow. I need to win so I can get to play Tessa.”
What am I supposed to say to that?
“Okay, but call me later if you need to.”
“Okay. Bye.”
She abruptly hangs up, disappearing from my screen. It doesn’t escape me that she didn’t answer my question about where we stand.
This doesn’t feel good.
It’s only a quarter past seven. I flip on the TV and zone out, not processing what I’m watching. Lost in my thoughts. Lost in the sinking feeling in my chest.
Even though we normally keep texting after our early evening FaceTimes, I don’t feel comfortable reaching out to Rori again right now. Not with how she ended the call.
I have to wait for her to reach out first. Roughly two hours later, she does send a short text.
RORI: Going to have to play without Julie tomorrow. She’s on a plane back now.
Shit. I text her back some words of encouragement, hoping it may trigger more of a conversation. But other than a “thank you,” I get nothing.
Rori’s shut me out, it seems. Whatever she’s going through, she doesn’t want me to be a part of it.
I wake up the next morning with a heavy weight on my chest.
After I get ready in my hotel room, I sit back down on my bed for a minute, about to head to breakfast to fuel up for a full day of team activities. I decide to send one more text, if only because it feels like the right thing to do.
LANDON: Good luck today, beautiful. You got this.
Rori puts a heart emoji on it but doesn’t reply otherwise.
At lunch, I try to follow the score of her match on my phone, but before it’s too deep in the first set, I’m getting pulled in different directions by teammates.
By the time my afternoon duties are over, her match is done. My phone has managed to die too, after I kept it by me instead of charging it last night. I head to my hotel room as quickly as I can to get it charged so I can check in on Rori.
As I wait for my phone to power up, I click on my laptop, realizing I can at least check the score there.
I hit the tennis subheader on and scroll down to find Rori’s score.
My head droops. She lost 6-2, 7-5. Damn.
I sink down onto my bed, hurting for her. She definitely didn’t want one of her key warm-up tournaments for the U.S. Open to end so soon, frustrating her goal to play Tessa next too.
Not to mention, all of the surrounding circumstances must have contributed to her losing early. She’s probably pissed.
I notice in the score lines that Tessa won. They would have played each other in the next round. That’s gonna irritate Rori more. She missed her chance to take one back from Tessa.
After another three minutes, my phone comes back on. Several notifications come up at once, but there is only one set of texts that matters.
They are from an hour ago, after Rori’s match.
RORI: Landon, I don’t think this is going to work with us anymore. I’m so tired of the public drama. I think the heat from the press that we’ve both been dealing with has broken me.
RORI: On top of which, our schedules are crazy. We’ll hardly be able to see each other, and everything would have to miraculously stay a secret.
RORI: I just want to lock in on the U.S. Open. I’m sorry.
I sit there for at least twenty minutes, trying to figure out what to say.
All I can come up with is a one-word answer.
LANDON: Ok.
What the fuck just happened.