Page 12 of Backhanded Compliments

“Why not?” Juliette asks.

Livia sighs. The frown is not at home on her face. Usually, she’s into Juliette’s antics. It’s Octavia who frowns intensely at any sign of fun, taking her role as the oldest seriously.

“It’ll come back to bite you in the ass, for one. Also, I still don’t understand why you don’t like her.” Livia’s voice warms, her deep brown eyes becoming soft and inquisitive—a surefire way to get anyone to do whatever she wants, but Juliette holds firm as her good mood sours.

“You don’t understand, Livie,” Juliette says, bitterness like ash in her mouth.

Livia huffs and pulls her glasses off her head, but they catch in her wild curls, and she has to thread them out of the loose strands, skewing her messy updo. “But you never even gave Luca a chance,” Livia says as she returns to the laptop resting on her knees. “What if it’s worth it?”

Livia can’t understand. She isn’t a tennis player and never has been. Juliette fiddles with the bracelets on her right wrist, ignoring the wrap on her left one. “Nope,” she says stubbornly, popping the word in a way she knows frustrates Livia.

“You’re impossible,” Livia says, snapping her laptop closed and swinging her legs off the chair.

Juliette wriggles into the downy pillows. “Bye!” she calls after her, and she doesn’t need to look up to know Livia’s flipping her off as she stalks out of the room. She reopens her feed and scrolls through unhinged fan posts to amuse herself.

In the months since the Australian Open, Juliette has won a few tournaments, including Monterrey. As much as she enjoyed the early season, this is the portion of the season that she loves the most. She feels at home on the clay, and she has no time to think of Kacic. She has a French Open to win.

SEVENJULIETTE

Juliette does not win Roland-Garros.

Luckily, neither does Luca Kacic.

They both lose in the quarterfinals, narrowly avoiding a Grand Slam rematch.

Juliette grinds through the press conference with no quippy remarks for Twitter to blow out of proportion. She sticks to the script, even as the questions grate on her last exhausted nerve. Livia told her she would cut all the strings on her rackets if she didn’t follow the perfunctory bullet points.

Whenever she has to take a breath to compose herself, she thinks of her sisters’ latest messages in the group chat.

CLAUDIA

shit luck, Jules. finish your presser quick and we’ll eat ice cream.

OCTAVIA

We have matches tomorrow. Eat whatever you want, I’ll be sleeping.

CLAUDIA

more for us!

She wishes she could breeze through, but it’s hard to talk about how high her expectations were for the French Open. She wishes she would have had a new chance to beat Kacic, get to another final, and prove she is just as good—no,better—than Lucky Luca Kacic.

Juliette fumes the entire way back to her hotel room and slams the door open.

“Uh oh, here she comes!” Claudia’s singsonging voice carries through as Juliette shuts the door with more grace.

“Shut up!” she shouts back, letting her bag drop by the door despite the tripping hazard.

She stomps into the living space, bombarded by the scent of skincare products. Her hotel room has been overtaken by her three sisters. Octavia glowers on the couch, ice wrapped around her slightly bum knee. She looks like a ghost with the sheet mask on her face. Her dark hair is expertly braided—courtesy of Livia, no doubt. Claudia is on the floor in front of the coffee table, putting together a puzzle with a painful-looking charcoal mask on her face. She looks up as Juliette arrives and grins, cracking the mask around her cheeks. Livia lounges in the desk chair, still on her laptop. She’s sans face mask, but she has a large glass of red wine, which she delicately lifts to her lips as if she’s sixty-five and not twenty.

“What is happening here?” Juliette asks.

Claudia rolls her eyes. “A girls’ night, obviously,” she says, waving her hands. “Take off your shoes, you heathen. Who raised you!” She shoves the coffee table back and fishes her long legs out from underneath it.

“She’s on a warpath,” Octavia bemoans with her eyes closed.

Juliette shucks her sneakers off before Claudia shoos her into the love seat. She plants her hands on her shoulders. “Sorry about your loss today,” Claudia says, so sincere that Juliette feels her eyes prickle again. “We’ll get them next year. You’ll win Roland-Garros, I know it.”

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