Chapter Text
Some tournament days are charmed from start to finish, and September fifth was one of them. Mel had already used more luck than she deserved in the qualifying round, during that first week of the U.S. Open. She had squeaked into the women’s bracket as one of the few NCAA wildcards—an insane stroke of luck, considering her low rating—and even eked out a singles win over Chanel Sutton in the main draw yesterday. It was a decent upset; a relatively unknown NCAA player freshly graduated (from Kansas, of all places) popping up to eliminate a top 100 player in the first round of bracket play.
That match had been held at one of the quieter courts on the grounds. There was hardly any audience and absolutely no media presence, which had allowed Mel to adopt her flow. After all, she played so much better when she kept to her routines. Mel’s mother had cried in happiness when she had called her after the match, which was a nice contrast to the other types of crying they’d been doing lately.
And then in their mixed doubles match, where they had a better seed, Mel and her partner John Shen had cruised to victory against a Danish team. Not quite as unexpected but still: two days into the U.S. Open and Melisa King was inexplicably still in both the Women’s and the Mixed Doubles tournament.
Mel arrived to the practice court precisely eleven minutes early on September fifth. The practice hours at the U.S. Open were highly regimented—of course, she had learned after three years of playing with Shen at KU that her partner was never going to be on time. She’d already overgripped her rackets this morning so she could be ready to go as soon as the clock struck nine. Black Yonex EZone, black strings, white overgrip.
She set her bag down, face up, on the bench. She unpacked her two bottles of water and one recovery drink, setting them in a line on the ground in front of the bench. Mel was alone as she waited for Shen, so she warmed up on serves from the baseline. After twenty minutes or so, she checked her watch.
Still no Shen.
“Typical,” Mel whispered. Shen was decidedly not a morning person, but the biggest match of their lives was later today. Mel twisted her racket in her hand, frustrated. She couldn’t even properly practice without him. It sucked that he had left her hanging like this.
Focus on what you can control, the voice inside her head instructed. It was her mother’s voice.
Mel walked her caddy of balls back to the baseline. Picked one up. Three bounces, just behind the baseline. Spun her racket rhythmically before settling into her continental grip.
She tossed the ball in a arc and swung, completing a perfect kick serve.
“Do you want me to warm you up?“ a voice called from the empty stands.
At least, Mel had thought they were empty.
She looked up and saw a man in a blue cap trotting down the bleachers, tennis bag slung over his shoulder.
“Oh, no thanks,” said Mel immediately. Her voice was gravelly and thick, which was how she realized those were the first words she’d spoken today. She’d woken up in a budget hotel room in Brooklyn, jumped on the 7 Train to Queens with her tennis bag in tow, and hustled through the U.S. Open grounds to the practice courts with her head down, earbuds in. “I couldn’t possibly—”
“You only have thirty minutes before your hour is up,” he pointed out, popping over the fence with an athletic leap. “Looks like you got stood up by your coach.“
Mel pursed her lips. Her coach was currently receiving a chemotherapy infusion a thousand miles away. “Not my coach. My partner.”
“Even worse. Are you playing later? You don’t want to go into your match with no hitting practice, do you?”
Mel cocked her head. This guy had a point. “Yeah, that would be great. If you’re sure you don’t have anything else to do.”
He gestured for her to take the baseline as he grabbed a Head racket out of his tennis bag. He started feeding her forehands from the balls in the caddy, and she immediately clocked that his feeds were perfect. Same place, every time, like a metronome.
Mel got into a nice rhythm, slapping each ball hard at the baseline. He said nothing, though he would whistle in appreciation when she cracked balls down the line, then cross-court on the diagonal. His icy blue eyes were sharp and assessing under the brim of his ball cap.
“Now backhands,“ the man called, and changed the direction of his feeds.
Mel repositioned and hit the balls with her signature one-handed backhand. It was rare to see on the WTA tour these days; as far as she knew, she was the only woman at the U.S. Open this year who didn’t use a two-handed grip. He whistled appreciatively and ducked smoothly out of the way as she cracked one down the diagonal.
Mel was enjoying herself now, getting into a cadence. But then her focus snagged on a loud, grating voice at the top of the grandstand. A blonde woman stood at the very top of the stands. She was speaking into her cell phone at full volume with dreadful vocal fry. She appeared to be videoing herself, gesticulating and smiling widely. Mel watched, glancing at her between backhand feeds, as the woman pointed down to the field with the phone.
Was the woman videoing Mel? Why on earth would she do that? Mel had barely cracked the top 1,000 on the WTA rankings; the only reason she’d even made it in the U.S. Open was because she’d been awarded a wildcard from her NCAA days. Even with the upset yesterday, she certainly wasn’t someone who attracted media attention.
The man in the blue cap kept feeding her balls, but Mel had lost focus. She hit one, then two, then three balls into the net, and let forth a frustrated groan.
“I’m sorry,” Mel called over the net.
“Don’t apologize,” said the man. The ball caddy had run dry. He rolled it to the net.
“I just get frustrated when I can’t do things right,” she said, tapping her racket against the net three times. Once for each error she’d made.
“You just did ten perfect one-handed backhands,” the man remarked.
For the first time, Mel really examined him. He was tall, easily over 6 feet, with dark hair. He was wearing a matching black Nike shirt and shorts with his blue ball cap. Mel noticed distantly that he was very handsome, with a cleft in his chin, sharp cheekbones, and bright blue eyes. His leg muscles (not that Mel was looking at his legs) could cut steel. Wiry quads and calf muscles. His legs were… really hairy.
Wait…
“You’re Frank Langdon,” Mel said in disbelief. The top American in men’s tennis, ranked #5 in the ATP. Mel had grown up watching him on the Tennis Channel.
“In the flesh,” he said with an easy smile. “But who are you?”
“Melisa King. Everyone calls me Mel,” she said. She wondered if she should add her WTA ranking like a badge behind her last name. ‘Melisa King, #997.’ Maybe she would have if she ranked higher.
“You playing today, Mel?”
Mel blinked in surprise. Why would he care? He was Frank Langdon, he would be playing for a packed crowd in the main stadium next week in the finals.
“Um, yes. My mixed doubles match is at two o’clock. And my singles match is at seven.”
“Mixed doubles,” Frank repeated. “Interesting.”
Mel squirmed under the weight of his gaze. Doubles tennis was a different beast than singles—more teamwork, more strategy, less stamina, less jaw-dropping feats of athleticism. It drew a smaller crowd and a smaller purse. Mixed doubles was an especially hard event for female players. Acceptable strategy remained the same after a century of professional play: headhunt the woman to win points. Mixed doubles was a niche, and Mel considered herself a specialist.
“Are you playing?” Mel asked, just to get him to stop staring at her as if she were under a microscope. His eyes were so pale that Mel found him a bit unsettling.
He shook his head. “Nah. I have a bye today. Hey, let me see you serve a few more times. I thought I saw something as I was walking down.”
He passed the caddy over the net like this was a very normal, casual thing to do. Like the #5-ranked men’s player in the world often gave out free clinics.
As Mel shagged the balls, she kept hearing that woman talking in the stands. Now she was perched in the green bleachers, holding her phone up over her head to get a good angle. She must have been doing an Instagram Live or something. It was distracting, and Mel kept looking over at her pointedly, hoping she would take the hint. But the woman was oblivious, totally glued to her device.
When she passed the caddy back over the net to Langdon, he said, “Just ignore Abby. Sorry about the noise.”
“Who’s Abby?” Mel asked.
“Oh, Abby is my girlfriend,” Langdon said, looking vaguely surprised that Mel didn’t know who his girlfriend was. “Over there.” He gestured to the blonde.
Mel fought a wave of inexplicable disappointment. Of course Frank Langdon wasn't single. Abby fit the part of a tennis girlfriend too: she was dressed in a glamorous mini-dress and wore an expensive-looking purse on her shoulder (not that Mel knew anything about purses).
Mel had grown up watching the ATP and WTA tours on the Tennis Channel, but actually experiencing the U.S. Open as a player was pretty surreal. Frank Langdon practicing with Mel was already a dream; why not imagine him single too? So it could be a really good dream?
Mel shook her head at the ground, distracted. Where had that thought come from?
She trotted to the baseline with the ball caddy. She tried not to be nervous but promptly served four balls into the net. Then she got a good flow going with her shoulder and started cracking them in. Langdon returned her serves easily—of course he did, he was #5 in the world—and then ran up to the net again.
“Try turning that kick over with more spin on the downswing,” he suggested.
Mel blinked. “It’s the U.S. Open. Not exactly the time to workshop my serve.” She’d already been foolhardy with her shoulder to serve so many times before two matches. Had her mother been here, she would have scolded her.
“Just try it a couple times. I think it could be good,” Langdon said nonchalantly, backpedaling.
So she took his suggestion, adding an angle to her racket on the downstroke. Her first three attempts went wide, then she hit one into the net, and then she aced him. She served another and aced him again.
Mel’s eyes widened under her visor. She had just aced Frank Langdon.
“Damn, that’s nice,” Langdon called. “Do that today. I’m gonna come to your matches.”
“You are?” Mel asked, bewildered.
“You are?” Abby repeated from the bleachers. “We have that Rolex event at lunch, remember.” Her voice sounded a little snappy, a little stern. “Are you ready to go, Frankie? You told me we were going to be in and out, just stopping by medical for your drug test. I still need to change at the hotel.”
Frank shrugged at Mel. “I’ll be there.” He hopped over the fence and jumped up the bleachers two at a time. “Let’s go then, honey,” he said, plucking the phone out of her hand and hauling her out of the bleacher seat. They walked away together, two lanky, attractive model types, Langdon holding his Head racket in one hand and Abby’s hand in the other.
Honey. Mel mouthed the word as she watched them leave, trying it out.
“Hey,” said a voice from behind her.
Mel spun around to see John Shen walking toward her on the court, tennis bag slung over his shoulder. He took a sip of his Dunkin coffee through a bright orange straw.
“Sorry I’m late. Was that Frank Langdon?” he asked. “I follow his girlfriend on Instagram. She’s so hot. Do you think I can catch them and get an autograph before we warm up?”
Mel looked at her Apple Watch. Five till ten. Their practice time was nearly over.
“Go ahead, John,” she said with a sigh.
—
Shen was a shitty partner in some ways, but after three years of partnership, they played beautifully together. Mel’s mom had often said that their pairing was yin and yang. Mel’s style was tenacious, meticulous, deliberate. Shen’s style was loose, relaxed, and patient. Together, they won matches quietly. Sometimes they went whole sets without saying a word to each other, though Shen was always ready with a centering touch if Mel got too in her head. They kept a relaxed play style, never tense or angry, and it worked for them. Even without a moment of warm-up on Shen’s part, they dominated their match at two o’clock.
Mel even tried that kick serve a couple times with good success, acing both players on the other court. After the point, Mel couldn’t resist scanning the sparsely-filled grandstand. Frank Langdon was easy to spot, a colossus in the fourth row. He raised a clenched fist and smiled broadly down at Mel. His teeth were perfect, bright white and evenly spaced, she noticed distantly.
Mel quickly averted her eyes to the court. A blush rose up her cheeks. What was happening to her?
She focused entirely on the match after that. Shen was really on fire today: he was cracking winners left and right, carrying her to an easy victory. So Shen and Mel advanced to the quarterfinals in the mixed doubles tournament. They’d play their next match tomorrow.
Mel’s match in the women’s tournament was more daunting. She had preferred doubles tennis to singles for years now, specializing in doubles as a college athlete at KU. There was a stereotype that less athletic players gravitated to doubles. Mel didn’t think that was necessarily true, but she did believe that singles tennis was a mind-bender in a cruel and unusual way. High-level singles matches were a guaranteed three-hour hike through the seven layers of hell as your opponent systematically tore you down. It was mentally and emotionally laborious. In doubles, Mel could lean on her partner. In singles, she was alone on the court.
Mel was aware that the list of behaviors she had adopted to cope with the mental pressure of singles matches had grown increasingly long and bizarre. Maybe she hadn’t completely come to terms with it, though, until she exited the locker room, stepped onto the court with her right foot, set her player’s card face up on the bench, lined her water bottles up in a neat line, and looked up to find ice blue eyes watching her…
She jumped, startled, although Langdon had said he would attend her matches today, plural.
“You scared me,” she blurted out.
He waved at her with a big paw of a hand. He was sitting in the first row of the stands, directly behind her bench, with a bright smile on his face. “I’m just sitting here, Melisa.”
Mel half-heartedly wondered if she had time to go back to the locker room and do her walk-out again from the beginning. “Mel,” she corrected.
“You did great earlier,” he continued. He was so close to her player area that he could speak in a normal volume. “I even learned a few things from you.”
“Really?” Mel asked in disbelief. She reached down and adjusted her third water bottle a few millimeters so it fell back in line with the others.
Ultimately, she didn’t have time to revisit her walk-out. Her opponent was one of those child ingenues from the juniors league named Victoria Javadi. Victoria was an Australian player who also had a famous tennis player mom (way more famous than Mel’s, not that it was a competition). She had been playing in the juniors circuit since she was nine years old. She was just seventeen now.
It was a hard match. Javadi had a wicked serve and an aggressive play style. She kept shorting the ball, sending drop shots to the front court that made Mel sprint and slide around the court for balls. Mel did a fair job of it; she even won a few points that way with impressive slides. (After she won her second point like this, she didn’t dare glance at the stands. But she could hear Frank Langdon, hooting and cheering like an animal.)
Mel and Javadi were evenly matched, trading games back and forth. Mel took the first set, then Javadi took the second. What made the match mentally difficult for Mel was that Javadi’s mom was coaching from the sidelines. This was technically against the rules in the WTA tour, although every coach did it to some degree. It was impossible to regulate, after all, when a player could simply look over at a coach and know exactly what they were thinking through the lift of their eyebrows or turn of their frown. Eileen Shamsi was a little more obvious than most, though. She was actually yelling and shouting at Javadi through the match, which disrupted Mel’s flow.
After she lost, Mel didn’t spare a look for the sparsely-filled grandstand. She packed her bag and stomped to the locker room.
She felt strangely upset. Losing singles tennis always made her upset, but she really should have beaten Victoria Javadi—Mel knew she was better than her. She’d gotten in her head about Javadi’s mom. Her own mom should have been there. Her own mom wouldn’t have yelled and screamed from the sidelines like that…
Mel kicked the locker with her court shoe. The bang reverberated through the room.
“You okay?” asked a low voice.
Mel jumped, startled. She looked up to see Frank Langdon, leaning casually against the row of lockers. “What are you doing here?“
“I came to check on you. That was a hard match.”
“I should have won.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “You should have.”
“I get frustrated when I drop games to players I shouldn’t lose to.”
“You and me both,” he said.
“Yeah, but my frustration manifests itself emotionally, and then, uh, I get upset and it looks like I can’t handle things. The stress.” Mel’s next inhale was long and shuddering, perfectly illustrating her point.
Silence fell between them, as he walked farther into the locker room and perched beside her on the bench.
Mel felt compelled to explain. “My coach… She should’ve been here today. Javadi and her mom… it just hit a little too close to home.” She knew she wasn’t giving him enough information. She knew that this didn’t clarify the real reason she was upset.
Mel was upset because her missing coach was also her mom, who was currently undergoing a chemotherapy regimen so intense, so brutal, that it just seemed to be killing her faster.
Mel didn’t even like singles tennis, but her mom had wanted her to give the pro tour a real shot the summer after she graduated (‘since it might be my last,’ was the part that went unsaid). Mel always wanted to please her mother.
So she had reluctantly pushed back the MCAT for the second time and packed her bags for New York.
And now here she was, crying in a locker room to Frank Langdon after losing in the U.S. Open main draw.
Obviously Langdon didn’t know all that, but he nodded anyway. “This game is hard.”
Mel nodded, fighting back the pain in her throat that heralded tears.
“You’re, uh,” he paused, searching for the right words. “You’re sitting here, feeling like maybe you’re not up to it?”
“Yeah,” Mel said.
“Been there. We’ve all been there,” Langdon said, and Mel’s eyes shot up to him. He came off as so implacably confident. Like he’d never experienced a day of anxiety in his life. The devil-may-care persona he donned in his televised matches was so opposite to the gentle one he had on now.
“Mel, you’re a sensitive person,” he continued. “The tour is a tough place for sensitive people.”
She snorted. She pulled her sport glasses down over her mouth and let them hang by their neck strap, reaching up to rub her eyes. “I’m hardly the only tennis player with an attitude after losing.”
He peered at her carefully. “But that’s not what you’re upset about, is it?”
Mel stared at the wall in front of her, trying to keep from tearing up. “No,” Mel agreed with a long sigh.
Langdon nodded. “You’re out of the WTA tournament. But you’re in the mixed doubles quarterfinal tomorrow. Mel, you can take the tournament.”
Mel turned to look at him. “You think Shen and I can win the U.S. Open?”
“Absolutely. Now, if you’re ready,” he said, a grin slowly spreading across his face. “I need you to do that kick serve when you play Trinity Santos. I hate that woman. I have to see her face when you ace her.”
—
Mel and Shen trounced Jereme and Helen Spencer the next day in the mixed doubles quarterfinals, which earned them a day to rest and recover before the semifinal match. Unfortunately, their opponents in the semis were the #1 seed: Trinity Santos and Donnie Donahue. Trinity Santos ranked #3 in the WTA, the highest-ranked woman remaining in the mixed doubles tournament. Mel had no idea what Langdon meant when he said he hated her, but she did know that Santos had a reputation for being a hothead. Yelling at umpires, smashing rackets, general unruly behavior.
Mel took it easy on her day off, FaceTiming Beca and her mom. The couple of days following the chemotherapy infusions were always the worst, so her mom was really beat. But she was already reviewing Santos and Donahue’s matches for a play strategy.
“Santos is a showboater,” said her mom through the screen, propped up in bed and surrounded by pillows. “They’re not a team the way you and John are. You need to hit straight down the middle. It will split them.”
Mel nodded. Langdon had told her the same thing yesterday, when he’d caught her and Shen walking back to the subway stop after their match. They were staying at a budget hotel in Brooklyn, just a few stops away on the 7 train. When he realized they were walking toward the metro, Langdon made a face, called his car (Shen and Mel exchanged a look: snob), and then trundled in behind them in the backseat of the black Lexus.
It had been a tight squeeze, with the guys on either side and Mel stuck in the middle, but Langdon had talked animatedly about their upcoming match against Santos for the full twenty-minute commute. He had learned Shen and Mel’s play strategy surprisingly well over the last two days, and his suggestions were sharp and erudite, so much so that Mel hadn’t even been distracted by the sensation of his hairy leg brushing against her thigh below her tennis skirt. Mostly.
He’d dropped them off at their hotel with a genial wave and then headed back to Queens for “this dumb influencer event” at the Arthur Ashe clubhouse that “Abby is making me go to.”
Mel and Shen had unloaded their bags from the trunk and watched from the curb as the sleek black car reversed and headed back from whence it came.
“Damn,” Shen had said mildly. “That guy really hates Trinity Santos. It’s great that we get to benefit from their beef.”
“Oh yeah, totally,” Mel had agreed. It was an easy explanation for Langdon’s sudden and sparkling interest in her. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and all that. It didn’t completely fit, but Mel wasn’t interrogating anything too closely.
She was trying to convince herself that Frank Langdon, a total stranger to her two days ago, didn’t actually know her better than anyone else in the world. He oozed so much charisma she figured he did this chronically. Like, met people and completely turned their worlds upside down through the sheer force of his personality. He would probably forget all about her as soon as the tournament wrapped up.
Unless you win, a little voice suggested. Unless you get your name engraved on that silver cup. And—yeah. Maybe that was more motivating than it should have been.
“What do you know about Yolanda Garcia?” Mel asked her mom now. She was going to mine her mother’s wealth of knowledge for everything she could. It would have been so much better if she were here in person, but Mel would take what she could get.
Her mom hummed. She grabbed the phone as Beca went to the kitchen to pop popcorn. “Yolanda Garcia. She’s young. Spanish. I think she coaches out of Mallorca. There was a big stink earlier this year when Santos dropped her old coach, Robinavitch, out-of-the-blue and started training with Garcia. People say she’s one of the young coaches to watch.”
“Do you know if something happened between Santos and Langdon?”
“Frank Langdon?” Her mom cocked her head, and her scarf slipped back, exposing her bald head. “I wouldn’t know. You know I only follow the WTA, not the men’s tour. But I do know that players don’t leave Robinavitch. He’s very selective about who he accepts to the Pitt.”
—
The mixed doubles semifinal was played in the at Arthur Ashe stadium. It was the first time Mel had played in that hallowed venue—the largest tennis stadium in North America. Blessedly true to its stereotype as the sleepiest bracket, mixed doubles didn’t draw a huge crowd under the sweltering noonday sun. Half of the seats were empty, and the fans who were willing to sweat it out in the September heat were largely there to watch Trinity Santos. But Mel knew that every seat would be full for the evening match: the men’s semifinal with Langdon against Krakozhia.
Mel followed Shen through the player’s area, through the dark tunnel, and into Arthur Ashe Stadium. Mel kept her headphones on, eyes on Shen’s back, and didn’t even glance up at the grandstand. She set out her water bottles carefully. Removed her headphones. Stepped onto the court with her right foot.
Trinity Santos was the highest-ranked player Mel had ever gone up against. She was precisely the same height as Mel (a surprise, seeing as how 5’5” athletes in the WTA were at a significant disadvantage) but whereas Mel was wiry, Santos was muscular. She had the fastest serve speed on the WTA tour. She was intimidatingly pretty with sharp features and a tough tilt to her pointed chin.
Mel and John played their hearts out from the first to the last point. More than that: Mel had fun. She did exactly what Langdon and her mother had told her to do, placing balls down the middle to split the difference between Donahue and Santos. She tried to sow chaos between them as best she could. But what Mel had not accounted for was just how massively talented Trinity Santos was.
Playing against her was exhilarating. On some points, it felt like it was just Mel and Santos on the court: like they had left Donahue and Shen behind. And maybe Santos felt the same way, because after a point where both she and Santos had volleyed at the net aggressively, and Mel took the point, Santos let out a loud, boisterous laugh and held her hand up for a high-five. When Mel accepted the high-five, Santos actually grabbed her across the net and pulled her in for an embrace.
“That was so fucking fun,” crowed Santos in Mel’s ear. “Why haven’t I played you on the WTA until now? Where have you been hiding?”
“Uh, I’ve been in college,” Mel stammered, scampering back to the baseline.
It was so unusual: typically professional tennis was a war, a battle to be won, but Trinity Santos acted like it was a party. The joy was infectious. Weirdly, it reminded Mel why she loved the sport. When the joy was gone, that’s when she hated tennis.
Mel did end up acing Santos a couple times with her kick serve. It wasn’t enough, though. Somehow Santos scented out Shen’s weak right knee and targeted him mercilessly. Shen and Mel ended up losing in three. But it was the type of loss where Mel could take. Santos had the type of athleticism people wrote books about (and Donahue didn’t hold her back too much). Mel knew that with their poor preparation, and Shen’s weak side, she and Shen simply weren’t the better team today.
Mel hadn’t looked up into the grandstands during the whole match. Shen’s brother and nieces and nephews had flown out from California to watch him play, but Mel didn’t have any family or friends in their shared player box.
But after Santos took the final point, Mel watched Santos look into the crowd searchingly and then, after she found her target, make a crude gesture. Specifically, she raised her middle finger. Mel’s jaw dropped; Santos was definitely going to get fined for that. She followed the direction of the gesture and found Langdon sitting in one of the court boxes next to his girlfriend.
Langdon had a look on his face that Mel had never seen in person. She had only experienced fond smiles and laugh lines at the corners of his eyes. He’d always acted softly in front of her. But now she saw the aggressive player she’d grown up watching on the Tennis Channel: the guy who’d smashed four consecutive rackets on international television at Roland Garros two years ago. He immediately moved his shoulder—likely to return the rude gesture to Santos—but Abby neatly clamped his hand to her lap. She raised her pouting red lips to Lagdon’s ear and whispered furiously, round, buggy sunglasses hiding her emotions. Langdon’s expression remained flinty, jaw clenched as he stared down toward the pit at Santos, but he didn’t make another move.
“Enjoy your match tonight, Langdon,” Santos called loudly. Then, in a murmur that Mel just barely overheard: “It just might be your last, motherfucker.”
Mel suddenly got the feeling that she was eavesdropping on something intimate, though really it wasn’t her fault that Santos and Langdon were airing this beef in the middle of Arthur Ashe. She shook hands with Donahue over the net and sat next to Shen on the bench to pack up her bag.
“We’ll play for third tomorrow,” he said, taking a swig from his recovery drink.
“A win wasn’t going to happen for us, but I think we can take either team on the other side of the bracket. No way that Santos doesn’t take it all,” said Mel.
Shen nodded. “Well, look at the bright side. You can finally get out from the middle of this thing between Langdon and Santos.”
“Yeah,” Mel agreed, hoisting her bag back to the locker room. Internally, though, she wilted. She wasn’t brave enough to look at Langdon in his box as she walked past, partially because she lost. And maybe the other part was that he was sitting next to Abby, and Mel had always found it confusing to interact with men around their partners. There was nothing inappropriate about Langdon’s relationship with her—it was just a tennis mentorship, especially since her coach was gone—except perhaps the way that Mel was internalizing it.
Mel spent an early night at her hotel, reading and re-reading the same Kaplan MCAT prep chapter three times until seven o’clock when the men’s semifinal started. Langdon was ranked #5 and Krakhozia #8 on the ATP rankings, so it would be an excellent match. Djocovic and Sinner had played earlier that day, with Sinner taking the win, ready to play the winner of this match tomorrow.
Mel took seven trips to the hotel ice machine to make an ice bath in the tub. It was perhaps a bit risky to lay down in the hotel tub, but as an NCAA athlete, she had lived through much worse. Mel lowered herself into the icy water, breathing through the cold. Once her hands stopped shaking, she pulled up the semifinals stream on her phone.
Langdon’s play style was aggressive. He was famous for his tenacity; coming up close to the net with his intimidating frame and slamming balls back into his opponent’s court. He didn’t have the efficiency of movement that some other professionals had. Rather, Langdon was boisterous and energetic. Krakhozia played a good match, more cautious from the baseline, and they traded games in the first set, going to a tie break.
The stream kept cutting to Abby, who was sitting with perfect posture in Langdon’s player box, surrounded by a pack of minor celebrities. After every couple of points, the commentators would note the stars in attendance, and Abby got the most face time out of anyone. Today her white-blonde hair was slicked back in a low ponytail, her pouting lips painted a bold red.
“And here’s Frank Langdon’s partner, Abigail Ritchie…she’s probably the most well-known WAG, as they call themselves—tennis wives and girlfriends. She’s an influencer-turned-journalist who has received a lot of acclaim for her fashion coverage at Wimbledon. She has already confirmed she is going to be covering Wimbledon next year…”
“That’s right, John, and you might remember that the New York Times ran a piece last year calling her ‘the most famous woman in men’s tennis.’ This lady has six million followers on TikTok. They absolutely eat up her ‘Day in the Life at a Tournament’ videos. If I had to guess, she probably brings in as much money through sponsorships as her boyfriend Frank Langdon does. Now that’s what I call a power couple...”
Mel’s jaw dropped as she stood from the ice bath, cold water sluicing down her reddened thighs. She set her phone down on the toilet cover and turned the shower head on, hissing in pleasure-pain as the warm stream of water hit her skin.
She hadn’t realized Abby was so accomplished in her own right. Now she felt guilty for being so irritated on that day Langdon had warmed her up on the practice court. Abby hadn’t been trying to sabotage her; she had probably been working. But still, it seemed patently unfair that Abby could be so beautiful and so successful.
“Langdon has had a great year on tour, winning the French Open in June and Cincinnati just a few weeks ago. Of course we all remember how he lost at Wimbledon after a grueling five-hour match to Sinner, which would be the same matchup we’d get tomorrow if he wins today. Hard-court is his preference, isn’t it, Mary Joe?”
“Yes, he definitely has an edge on hard court, and don’t underestimate the home-field advantage, either. Langdon loves the boisterous crowd at the U.S. Open, and American tennis fans adore him. After all, we’ve seen him grow up on the ATP tour, since he started hitting tournaments at the young age of sixteen and went pro full-time at nineteen. He’s never won the U.S. Open before, and if he manages it, he would be the first American man to win since 2003.”
“He’s really bulked up over the year. Looks really healthy.”
“It’s impressive when these guys are able to maintain muscle, considering how much exercise and sweating they’re doing every day. My hat’s off to his physio. And here’s a blazing serve from Krakhozia—they call him the Kraken, maybe for the way that he cracks that serve…”
Langdon won handily, of course. After the final point, the stream zoomed in on his handsome face as he played the crowd, smiling and encouraging their cheers. The crowd in Arthur Ashe stood unanimously on their feet, cheering for the final American at the U.S. Open. They absolutely loved Langdon. The camera followed a drip of sweat that rolled down his temple, his cheek, down the column of his neck. Mel blinked, entranced.
He leaped over the barricade into the grandstand to reach Abby. She stood waiting and embraced him like they were in a movie, turning both of their faces turned away from the cameras. She was whispering in his ear and kissing him on the cheek, and when he finally turned back to the cameras, red lipstick was all over his face.
Mel watched this tableau very carefully, bringing her phone even closer to her face so she could see every part of their interaction. For research, she told herself, when she finally got a boyfriend. If she ever got a boyfriend.
The following day, Shen and Mel easily won their match for third place. Afterward, they watched Santos and Donahue dominate the championship mixed doubles match, just like Mel had predicted yesterday. It wasn’t nearly as challenging as their match-up yesterday. So that was perhaps a bit disappointing: If she and Santos had been on opposite sides of the bracket, Mel figured they would be playing in this championship game right now.
But Mel still didn’t think she could win against Santos; not without a whole lot of training. Maybe she still had it in her, though, if she really wanted to.
But you don’t really want to, said that voice in her head. You’re just doing this to mark it off your mom‘s bucket list.
Still, a third-place showing at the U.S. Open from nobodies like Shen and Mel was pretty unbelievable. They would get some media coverage from coming in third at the U.S. Open, when both of them were barely in the top 1,000 ranking in the WTA and ATP respectively. This could be meteoric for both of them, and Shen was already schmoozing with brands for sponsorships.
Mel wished him the best but didn’t participate. She knew she should care about brand deals—it would be smart to capitalize when she could, maybe try to save up for tour next year, or for med school—but she really couldn’t stomach selling herself as a product.
Following the mixed doubles finals match, John and Mel were trundled out to the pit for the awards ceremony. Santos and Donahue were both crying, kissing the cup: everything that you would expect from winners, except twenty percent more obnoxious. The second-place team looked resigned. Shen, a solid force beside Mel, was just happy to be there. He’d been bragging to her earlier that brand reps had already approached him with sponsorship opportunities.
But Mel felt on display. She wished she had her sunglasses on rather than her dorky sport glasses with the cord that looped around the nape of her neck. She got in her head about the cameras that clicked furiously. These photos, which Mel’s mom would definitely want to frame and hang in her office, were doomed to be unflattering. But Shen, bless him, knew her all too well. He put his arm around her shoulder on the third-place podium and inhaled and exhaled exaggeratedly so she could match breaths. It helped.
Once she’d centered herself, Mel finally allowed herself to do what she had wanted to do all day: scan the grandstand looking for Frank Langdon. He wasn’t playing until later tonight—surely he had watched the match. She sighted Abigail Ritchie seated in one of the VIP boxes, but there was no sign of her boyfriend.
Abby was talking on the phone, a little frantically. The ever-present pouting smile of her ruby lips was gone, replaced with a hard line. Mel watched as Abby raised a manicured hand to her temple in distress, jaw dropping in shock. Then she abruptly stood and exited the box.
Mel blinked. The clicking of the press cameras were overwhelming. Santos was playing in the women’s final tomorrow—it was truly mind-boggling that she had gotten to the final in both events. Whatever her new coach was recommending, it was clearly working for her.
The mixed doubles awards ceremony was always a snooze-fest. The majority of the audience had filed out after the match. Now the grandstand was only sparsely populated. As the directors of the board and tournament organizers droned (an executive was retiring, and they’d chosen this awards ceremony to present them with some trite gift for years of service, bla bla bla), Mel watched, in slow motion, as the reporters started squinting at their phones. Some of them turned away and started walking out of the stadium right then and there. The atmosphere became a little chaotic, and by the time the organizer wrapped up their meandering speech, there was a slow, rumbling murmur within the stadium.
“It’s happening,” Mel overheard Santos whisper to Donahue on the podium.
Shen got his phone out to look, and Mel didn’t have the presence of mind to tell him to put it back. “Oh, shit,” Shen said, and tried to show her his screen covertly. “Mel, look.”
Mel shook her head, still combing through the grandstand for a glance of that shock of dark hair, those bright blue eyes.
None of the cameras were even pointing at the mixed doubles podium anymore. Something had clearly happened; some new story must have broken. Phone notifications—chirps and buzzes—sounded all around. The stadium was breaking into chaos.
But standing on the third-place podium, at the highest level of tennis she’d ever been at, Mel found herself irrationally disappointed for one reason and one reason only.
Frank Langdon wasn’t there.
“He didn’t say goodbye,” Mel murmured.