Page 27 of Carrie Soto Is Back

“Sí, claro, papá,” I said. “I would love to go out on a date with Brandon Randall. But he’s married. To Nina Riva, a swimsuit model.”

“Mick Riva’s kid?” my dad said. “I cannot stand that guy. Oh. Well, someonelikeBrandon, then. A nice guy. Go for a nice guy. Please.”

1983

Brandon Randallwasmarried. And he wasnotas nice a guy as my father thought he was.

I know because I went back to his hotel room with him in Paris after the final of the French Open in 1983.

I’d never won the French Open before. It’s a clay court, which is the hardest kind for a fast-moving serve-and-volley player like me. Plenty of greats have gone their entire careers without winning it.

But then I defeated Renee Levy in the final that year, and in that moment, I felt the breathtaking joy of knowing I had the rare distinction of claiming each and every Slam.

Brandon and I ran into each other in the elevator the weekend we each took our singles titles. When we stopped on Brandon’s floor, he took a step out but then put his arm out to stop the elevator door from closing. He looked me in the eye and said, “Do you want to grab a cocktail in my room? A toast, maybe? To our success.”

I searched his face for some clue as to what he wanted—what he was really asking. I wasn’t quite sure. But I still said yes.

As he made me a drink, he told me his marriage to Nina was on the rocks. “She doesn’t understand me,” he said. “Though I get the distinct impression you do.”

I am embarrassed by how unoriginal it all was.

In the morning, as we lay underneath the bright white sheets, Brandon told me he thought that I might be the only person in the world who made him feel less alone.

“I try to tell the people around me the pressure I feel, just how low the lows are sometimes. But they can’t relate. And I’m kicking myself because it seems so obvious now: Who else but you, my equal, could ever truly understand?”

It was presumptuous of him to call us equals. I had significantly more Slams than he did. Still, I let him compare us.

Lying in his bed, with the sun shining through the big windows, I felt like maybe I wasn’t destined to be alone after all. Maybe I was the sort of woman who was so singular, so exceptional, that I could only form a connection with someone like Brandon, someone as driven as me.

I feared it might still end up a one-night thing. But Brandon kept calling. He kept calling! This closeness between us, it continued growing, like a balloon filling with air.

There was a moment, there in the middle of it all—when he and I were together in secret and winning titles and taking Wimbledon side by side—that it felt like fate. I could look back at my own history with men and see that every single one of them had been a domino that had to fall in order to trigger this one.

For the months we were together, I finally belonged to somebody. And it was just as good as I’d made it out to be.

During the summer of 1983, I demolished Paulina Stepanova every time we played each other. Her shoulder, once just an excuse, was now deteriorating rapidly. She’d fallen thirty spots in the rankings.

Just before the US Open, she announced she was retiring. I was shocked that the woman who had once been my greatest adversary would become a footnote.

Upon retirement, Stepanova had only nine Slams to her name. I had twelve. And now she was done.

The morning after the announcement, Brandon called down to room service and had them bring up breakfast. When it arrived, he congratulated me on burying Stepanova once and for all.

“It’s over,” he said. “There’s no more rivalry. There’s no question who came out the victor.”

I put my hands over my face, my smile so wide I had to containit.

He kissed me, and I thought,I have everything.

Like a complete fucking dope.

We got caught in late July. He left Nina shortly after, and the tabloids reported it all that August—which was when the cruelty of what I was doing became obvious.

It was on the cover of every magazine in the checkout aisle.Love–Love: Brandon and Carrie Set Up Love Nest at Beverly Hills Hotel, Leaving Nina Riva BrokenheartedandBrandon and Carrie Take a Battle Axe to Nina Riva’s Heart.

And yet I didn’t end it.

Not when the paparazzi started following us or whenNowThisshowed a photo of Nina crying outside a grocery store in Malibu. Not even when he tried to go back to her and she rejected him. He came crawling back to me, and I stuck with him then too. I was too far gone, too desperate to believe I’d found the real thing.

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