Natalya’s laugh snapped her back. “Oh wait, I think he already has a girlfriend. Don’t worry, I’ll keep thinking.”
Usually it was her mother’s voice she heard, reminding her to take the high road, be polite, rise above the conflict. Charlie tried hard to follow the advice, she really did, but today it was Todd’s voice that reverberated in her head. Mental toughness. No more sweet girl. Stop being a doormat. Do you think Natalya sits around every day wondering how to make more people like her? You shouldn’t either!
The elevator doors went to close, but they swung open again when Charlie stuck her hand between them.
“What are you doing?” Natalya snarled, all of her fake niceness evaporating in an instant.
“Watch yourself,” Charlie said in a voice so low it could have been mistaken for a growl.
“How dare you even—”
Charlie threw the train bag that she’d been holding in a dumbfounded shock through their entire run-in straight into Natalya’s arms, who caught it with a loud oomph.
“I hope you have a great time with your boyfriend tonight, Natalya,” Charlie said, leaning in through the doors she held open. She was pleased to see that Natalya looked downright afraid. “Because I’m coming for you. I may not beat you next week, or the week after that, but mark my words: it’s going to happen. And I am going to love every second of it.”
With that, Charlie stepped backward out of the elevator and watched Natalya’s mouth hanging open as the doors swept shut. She glanced quickly around the lobby to make sure no one else was watching and then she allowed herself a small, satisfying fist pump.
• • •
As she swung open the white picket fence and let herself into the Ivy’s front porch area, Charlie heard the unmistakable clicking of cameras and flashbulbs. All at once, a crowd of paparazzi had gathered in a small swarm on the sidewalk, and with them, a group of young, highly groomed Sunday afternoon shoppers. Not knowing what was happening, exactly, Charlie froze.
A moment later she felt Todd’s hand on her back. “They’re not here for you yet, sweetheart. But they will be soon.”
Charlie felt herself flush, first with embarrassment, followed quickly by annoyance. “I didn’t think that,” she huffed, following him to a round table on the patio. She took a seat facing the street and saw what all the commotion was about: Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, pushing their daughter in one of those strollers that cost as much as a used car.
“Seriously, feast your eyes, Charlie, because that is exactly what it’s going to be like for you when Meredith does her thing.”
“Are we talking about me already? Good, that’s exactly how I like it.”
The woman standing in front of their table was in her mid-thirties and only five feet tall because of her heels, but it was the mane of cascading red curls that caught Charlie’s attention.
“Your hair is amazing,” Charlie breathed, before remembering they hadn’t even been introduced.
“You think? Mostly I hear that I look like Orphan Annie,” Meredith said, yanking on a red lock.
“I was thinking more like Merida from Brave.”
Meredith laughed. “I like you already. I’m Meredith Tillie, and you are obviously Charlotte Silver.”
“It’s really nice to meet you,” Charlie said, finally remembering to stand and shake Meredith’s hand.
Todd motioned for everyone to sit just as his phone rang. “Get to know each other,” he barked, heading for the picket fence.
“He’s just so charming, isn’t he?” Meredith asked, and batted her eyelashes like a southern belle.
“Adorable. Truly.”
The women smiled at each other. Maybe Todd’s whole image makeover idea wouldn’t be quite as terrible as Charlie had been anticipating. Meredith seemed likable. They each took a sip from the fruit smoothies the waiter had brought, and Meredith explained how she’d gotten started in the business, moving from FIT into a design house, PR firm, crisis management, and into her own image consultation company. Charlie couldn’t imagine having six careers before age thirty. Or even two.
“Who have you worked with?” Charlie asked.
Meredith smiled coyly. “Well, I sign a lot of NDAs, as you might imagine, so no specifics, but let’s see. There was the woman who left Scientology after decades, and she hired me to take her from cult whack-job to respected author. The teenage pop star who got knocked up at seventeen while hooked on meth; she’s now the face of L’Oreal and about to appear on an upcoming season of Dancing With the Stars.”
“Wow, is she really? I know exactly who you’re talking about.”
“No names, please,” Meredith said with a raised hand. The other she tapped on the table in concentration. “Who could forget the actor who broke into the biz by giving blow jobs to every movie exec in town and unfortunately developed a bit of a reputation as a male hooker. We reworked some things with him and he was just featured on the cover of GQ as the embodiment of a twenty-first-century Renaissance man—speaks Mandarin, volunteers at a women’s shelter, dates a Victoria’s Secret model, blah, blah, blah. Oh, and the revered and respected mother of four and highly respected politician who must have been the only woman in all of history with a debilitating gambling problem? I mean, seriously, a female blackjack addict? It’s ridiculous. Anyway, it took a lot of hard work, but I just got her elected for a second term. So you see, it’s a mix.”
“What’s a mix?” Todd asked, as he wedged his pear-shaped bottom into the petite chair between the two women. He waved his hand at a busboy and asked him for a martini.
“My clients. I’m giving Charlotte a little background.”
“She likes when you call her Charlie,” Todd said.
“She can call me whatever she wants,” Charlie said.
“Relax,” Todd crooned, flipping through the menu. “Don’t get bitchy. Everything’s fine.”
“At the risk of sounding rude, I am a little stressed out. Being that I don’t have a gambling problem or a meth addiction or a penchant for prostitution, I’m not sure what’s so horrible about me that it warrants Meredith’s services.” She turned to Meredith. “Forgive me for saying so—and you certainly seem nice enough—but I think this is a waste of everyone’s time.”
Meredith and Todd glanced at each other.
Todd rolled his eyes. “Of course you’re not some crackhead. No one’s suggesting anything of the sort. But let’s be real here. We need—”
“I think what Todd is trying to say is that, yes, I am probably overkill for what we’re trying to accomplish here. You don’t need me to tell you you’re great just the way you are—pretty girl, sweet as they come, stellar reputation, hard worker, great potential, huge crowd pleaser. Plus your background—poor girl from the wrong side of the tennis tracks who lost her mother so early—plays really well with fans. It’s all great, Charlie. But if we can make it even better—and trust me, we can—it’s only in your best interest to do so.”
So there it was. Charlie’s whole persona, neatly summarized for public consumption by a complete stranger. She would have been upset this woman invoked her mother’s death so casually if she weren’t so shocked by the entire summary, a little glimpse into how the world perceived Charlie whether or not it was the truth.
Todd must have been able to see the distress stamped plainly on Charlie’s face. “Don’t go getting all pissy, Charlie. This sport of yours isn’t just a little hobby. This is a huge industry, with all sorts of opportunities, and pardon my French, but you’d be an asshole for not taking your piece.”
Meredith cleared her throat and shot Todd another look. “It might be easier if you think about the fact that everyone, regardless of their career, has a public persona and a private one, right? We aren’t here to tamper with your private life, or change who you fundamentally are as a person. But it’s naive to think that your public
persona can’t—or shouldn’t—be manipulated to maximize the benefit to you.”
The waiter appeared and began to lower a bread basket onto the table, but Todd barked, “Get that out of here!” Not missing a beat, the man tucked it under his arm and took their order, looking unsurprised when they all ordered the exact same salad.
Charlie waited for him to leave and said, “Okay, my public persona needs some ‘manipulating.’ Can you be more specific?”
With this, Meredith’s smile was beneficent. “Of course, darling. Keeping in line with Todd’s plan to make you more aggressive and confident on the court, we would do our best to mirror that boldness off the court. To that end, we’d like to do away with Charlie as Good Girl and make you into . . . are you ready for this? The Warrior Princess.”
“The what? Oh, come on.” Charlie laughed.
Neither Meredith nor Todd cracked a smile.
“It’s brilliant, Charlie. It’ll give you a rock-solid identity that fans and media alike can attach to. And let me tell you, it’s exactly what you need.”
“The Warrior Princess? You’re serious?”
Meredith continued as though she hadn’t heard Charlie. “First, we’ll eliminate the brightly colored tennis dresses in favor of something dark, sexier, edgier. We’ll lose that childish ribbon you weave through your hair. We will work with great hair and makeup people to update your look—without affecting your performance, of course. I’ll bring in a stylist to help redo both your look on court, which is the most important, but also overhaul your off-court wardrobe for player parties, interviews, charity events—really anywhere you’ll be seen. You’ll need a quick session with one of our media trainers so you can better control your own message, but we’ll be doing all the behind-the-scenes work to get the media clamoring to cover you. Your brother is already hard at work securing an additional endorsement deal, one that would add a little interest, a little seduction, to the usual sporty brands everyone represents. Overall, there is very little to do.”
Charlie’s eyes widened. Very little? Meredith had just outlined an entire image overhaul that required a bulleted list and no fewer than five people to execute it.
Todd took a slug of his drink. “Remember your promise that you were going to lose the sensitive-girl crying crap? We’re way ahead of the game here, Charlie. In your five full years on the women’s tour, you have remarkably never done a single fucked-up thing that we need to undo. No scandals to clean up. All peaches and cream. So we reverse engineer this.”
Meredith nodded. “It’s true. It’s a lot easier going the other way, weaving in some intrigue and interest, than it is trying to expunge years of bad decisions.”
The waiter set their salads in front of them. Todd shoveled a forkful into his mouth before the women had even been served.
“I told her you’re fucking Marco,” Todd said through a mouthful of food.
Charlie inhaled so sharply she nearly choked on her salad. “My own brother doesn’t even know!”
Meredith placed a warm hand on Charlie’s. “I’m a vault. Todd told me because it’s definitely something we can use to our advantage. I already have—”
“Wait a minute. I am not using my . . . situation with Marco as some sort of image thing.” Charlie couldn’t bring herself to use the word “relationship” to describe whatever it was she and Marco had between them.
“Of course we understand that’s not why you’re involved with him,” Meredith crooned soothingly. “But we’d be remiss if we didn’t honestly acknowledge that this particular preexisting relationship could have a great deal of value to all of us.”
“It’s not a relationship,” Charlie said, despite herself. “It’s actually not something I want to talk about.”
Meredith nodded knowingly, her red curls bouncing in agreement. “Understood. For now, let’s all agree to keep this between us. You can trust me, Charlie. We’ll just see what happens. Perhaps things will develop naturally between you two, and you’ll be ready to raise the profile on this a bit more. We can take it a day at a time.”
Todd took a big swallow of martini and licked his lips. “Can you even imagine the optics on that one?” he asked as if Charlie weren’t sitting right there. “I mean, these two young hardbo—er, athletes, both of them hot stuff on and off the court? My god, it would be a media shitstorm. The good kind. Even when I coached Adrian and he dated that supermodel—this would eclipse that.”
Charlie looked to Meredith in a panic. “I already said it: bringing Marco into this is out of the question. It’s not like he’s my boyfriend, or that we even really have a . . . it’s more like an understanding, and even that’s not totally spelled out.” She knew she was rambling—and more so, that she didn’t owe them any explanations about her love life—but she couldn’t stop. “It could be over tomorrow for all I know. I don’t even know what ‘it’ really is, so there’s no way I’m going to—”
“Charlie. I’m reading you loud and clear. Marco is off-limits. Whatever you have is your business. We’ll respect that. For now.”
“Thank you,” Charlie said, hating that her embarrassment was spelled out for everyone to see in the warmth of her cheeks. She took a small bite of salad and a sip of her Pellegrino as she tried not to think about what the “for now” really meant.
8
hitting like a girl
UCLA
FEBRUARY 2016
“Welcome back,” a girl in a UCLA sweatshirt called to Charlie as she, Dan, and Todd made their way through the crowds gathered to watch the match.
“Thanks for coming home!” came another voice.
Charlie smiled and waved to the students. She was only a handful of years older than most of them, so why did she feel like she could be someone’s mother?
UCLA had heavily promoted the charity exhibition match as promised—all the viewing stands were packed with a crowd ten deep behind them. Charlie did a quick calculation and was thrilled with the amount of money they would be raising for metastatic breast cancer, the kind that had killed her mother swiftly and ruthlessly.
At charity matches, coaches were allowed on court, so Todd escorted Charlie now. As demanding as Todd was, Charlie felt some comfort having him there. It was one of the most challenging aspects of the sport: the solitude. No matter what was happening on that court, Charlie dealt with it alone. During a match, Charlie only had two things to depend on: the condition of her body and the toughness of her mind. Off the court wasn’t much different, since the girls were so competitive, plain and simple. She had Piper and Jake and her father—but confidantes were otherwise rare. After so many years of training combined with the insane travel schedule, the prevailing attitude was that no one was looking for friends. The girls from smaller, non-English-speaking countries might stick together a bit more out of necessity, but everyone else mostly went it alone. It was the only thing Charlie didn’t love about her sport, but she knew she was still better off than athletes from other sports whose coaches gave them three minutes to prove themselves before directing them back to the bench.
“Charlie? Charlie Silver?” a woman’s voice called from behind her. Charlie turned around and scanned the faces through the fence, but she didn’t recognize anyone. The voice sounded timid, like the woman didn’t want to interfere, but also oddly familiar.
“Charlie? Over here.”
It took Charlie a few seconds to locate the source, but when she finally saw the woman who was waving at her, Charlie almost dropped her racket.
“Eileen?” she asked, more to herself than to her mother’s long-lost best friend.
“It’s me!” The woman laughed, her nose scrunching up. “Not that you can probably tell with all this gray hair.”
It was true, the neat gray bob instead of the dirty-blond ponytail had initially thrown Charlie off, but now that she was looking, Eileen had otherwise barely aged.
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br /> “I can’t even believe it,” Charlie said, walking toward the fence. “It must be what? Twelve years since we’ve seen each other?”
Charlie hadn’t meant it as a criticism, but Eileen visibly recoiled. “I’m sorry,” she near-whispered, not even noticing all the students who were listening.
“No, I didn’t mean . . . just that it’s been a long time since . . . we saw each other. That’s all.”
Eileen leaned in, grabbed Charlie’s hand. “It was wrong of me to leave you and Jake and your father like that. I was just so . . . overwhelmed. And I was having problems with my—well, anyway, you don’t want to hear all this now.” She dropped back again. “I work as an executive assistant to the dean of admissions, and, well, I heard you were on campus today, so I thought I’d pop by and say hello . . .”
“Silver!” Todd’s voice hit her like a shovel. “Enough gossiping. Get your ass over here!”
On the court Dan was doing hamstring stretches while Todd paced back and forth. She held up her pointer finger.
“Go, I don’t want to interrupt. I just—I just wanted to say hello. And congratulate you on your tremendous accomplishments. Your mother would—” Eileen stopped herself, as though remembering that she didn’t really have the right to invoke Charlie’s mother when she’d dropped out of all their lives so soon after her death. “Anyway, good luck today.”
“Silver! Right now!”
Charlie pressed her hand to the fence and did her best to smile at Eileen. “Sorry, I have to run.”
“No, of course. Go. I have to get back to work, but it was, um, it was so good to see you, Charlie. It really was.”
Charlie turned around to wave once more on her jog back to the baseline, but Eileen had already vanished into the crowd. Charlie pulled a ball from under her skirt, dropped it, and smacked it to Dan’s forehand. She felt a little ridiculous for bringing her hitting partner to a college charity match, but Todd had insisted the day not interfere with her competition schedule. Which meant there would be a full-length, official practice following the exhibition match. She tried not to think about how sore her body would be after four straight hours of tennis and instead focused herself on loosening her muscles and warming up her limbs. The crowd oohed and aahed appreciatively as Charlie slammed overheads (Dan had kindly lobbed her easy ones) and lunged for layup volleys. Afterward, as she sipped water on the sidelines, her opponent walked onto the court.
The Singles Game Page 13