Page 4 of The Challenger

And he had smiled so charmingly.

I glance at the elevator, my chaotic thoughts tumbling like socks in a dryer.

Do not go back,I tell myself.You did the right thing.

Flynn Dryden Truth #1: Every decision brings you closer or takes you farther away from your goals. Nothing would come of Chavez other than another night of wishing for something different. I would be just another number to him.

End of story.

Except his story piques my curiosity.

Madison's gossip might sound believable to an untrained ear, although no tennis player gets kicked off the tour for displaying emotions. They can be penalized, fined, or, at worst, defaulted from a tournament, but if every player who ever threw a racket got the boot, no one would be left playing. So, what naughtiness has Mr. Delgado been up to? Only one way to find out. I pull out my phone and type his name into the browser, unprepared for a next-level visual assault.

My heart rate ticks up a notch.

Lord have mercy.

I understand now why I had trouble recognizing him. The flowing, shoulder-length locks he rocked for years are gone. His shorter haircut makes him look younger than twenty-five, but the endless shirtless pictures are deeply troubling for a breathing woman of any age. Jeez. Six-pack. Forearms corded with muscles. He’s too young to have character lines etched on his face and if his hair follicles could talk, it would be in a smug whisper—We will never be bald.Chavez is a blueprint for freaking perfect. Except no one is, as his mile-long Wikipedia page proves.

Still, what a career.

Florida or Monaco comes to mind when people think of tennis players. Or the great academies where young prodigies get groomed into superstars. No one thinks about the son of Mexican immigrants who taught himself tennis on the public courts of Fresno, California, a city better known for cultivating almonds than tennis stars. With his blistering lefty game and charisma of the gods, the lore of Chavez grew, as did his fanbase and the pressure to succeed. After a long drought of bankable American male tennis stars, the expectations seemed to derail him when he turned pro. A few sources cite his father, Rodrigo, as a questionable coach with no tennis background and no control over the volatile personality of his son. Whatever the case, Chavez flirted with the top twenty now and then but never made it any higher.

The personal section of his Wiki is where it gets interesting. An engagement went up in smoke at the tender age of twenty-four, and seven months ago, something else went down that he still refuses to discuss. Whatever happened precluded his decision to step away from the sport. The timing feels strange, considering he was in the midst of his best pro career year and tipped as a contender to win Roland Garros.

Huh. I chew on my thumb, stripping off the remains of my scarlet manicure. I have always loved mysteries, and leave it to Chavez to be tall, dark, gorgeous,andintriguing. He threw me off in a way almost no man does by exposing me for who I am—a conflicted disaster with the opposite sex. But I’ve honed my confidence front to the point it’s a second skin most people rarely question, including my BFF June Allison. Her name and number suddenly pop onto the screen, and I curse quietly. I completely spaced on her picking me up for brunch.

I start speed-walking toward my Escalade. “Hi, I’m…”

“I’m late,” June says, steamrolling over the rest of my words. “Malibu traffic was grim, but San Vicente is moving at a good clip. I should be there soon.”

Unchangeable as her British accent, late is her permanent state, only this time I am grateful for it. “Oh, no worries,” I say. “I had an errand I forgot to mention. Let's meet there instead. I’m just around the corner in Beverly Hills, and someone should be on time to meet Vandana.”

Vandana Hillman is part three of our bestie crew, and we all share, among other things, the destiny of successful women—full bank accounts and empty wombs. High-strung is a polite way of saying she vibrates at a frequency that would make most dogs yelp, although she’s been much better since her old life blew apart. Still, Vandana is our ringleader, the queen who expects her subjects to do as told and show up for brunch at noon on the dot.

“I can feel the poor lass pulsing from here,” June jokes. “Yes, you arrive on time and spare me the grief. I’ll be there at quarter past at the latest.”

Vandana and I call June the Quarter Past Queen because she inevitably is always that late. But I love my friends and accept their flaws as they accept mine. If I could change anything, it would be telling them the truth back at Stanford when we first met. Unfortunately, trust was in short supply at eighteen, so I ran with my initial story and never changed it, not even when it went into print. Fast forward twelve years, and I still hide behind the same lies.

But no one can hide forever.

“Are you still there?” June asks.

What the hell?

A flutter rises in my belly, staring at what has to be the mother of all coincidences.

“Uh-huh, I’m here.”

“You sound a little preoccupied,” she says, “and there are a million slow dimwits on the road today, so ta ta for now, while I focus. See you in a few.”

“Yeah,” I say slowly. “Bye.”

I tuck my phone away, feeling out of my element for a second time. Three hundred parking spots to choose from and Chavez picks the one beside me? I take a good hard look at the yellow Ferrari gleaming like a buffed M&M in the sun, and yup, the custom plates say it all.

TORNADO

The Talented Tornado.

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