Page 57 of Backhanded Compliments

The alarm chirps and Luca jumps, stumbling back from Juliette a moment before the sprinklers flick on with a hiss, and water rains down on them. “Seriously?” Luca mutters as she’s soaked through with water within moments. It’s warm like spring rain, but it still makes her feel slimy and gross.

She zips her bag closed, the zipper slippery against her fingertips, and hoists it onto her shoulder.

Juliette’s palm slams into the glass of the revolving door. “It’s stuck.”

“Great,” Luca mutters, feeling like a drowned rat. She shakes her now wet braid off her shoulder and straightens her visor. It’s drenched and a few droplets slide underneath it. She brushes them off and blinks a drop out of her eye, then looks at Juliette.

Droplets of water slide down her cheeks and drip off her nose.Her white tank top and shorts cling to the dip in her waist, her sculpted abs, the flare of her hips.

“You never gave me an answer,” Juliette says.

“What was the question?” Luca asks, every coherent thought in her head drowning at the sight of Juliette in a see-through tee and shorts. She flexes her fingers, intimately reminded of Juliette’s warm skin beneath her hands, the shift of her muscles as she massaged the tight knots from her back.

Juliette steps closer, and Luca takes a half-step back on instinct.

She does not have the energy or strength to do this while her brain is overwhelmed. She shakes her head. “Sorry, you’re—it’s—the water, I mean. It’s distracting,” Luca says, waving her hand at Juliette to try to explain that it isn’t so much the water as it is that Juliette is in front of her, dripping wet in see-through white clothes.

Juliette moves into her space, and she holds her hand over Luca’s visor, as if to protect it from getting any more rain on it. Her lips twitch into a smile, and Luca can see a shimmer of hope in Juliette’s expression. Luca should crush it and move away, but her limbs are numb, and she can’t make her lead feet move. She wants nothing more than to run away, but she can’t. She’s trapped without any way out. Her breath constricts, and she shakes her head.

“Luca, are you okay?” Juliette’s playful hope softens into concern.

Luca shakes her head again. The water against her skin feels like needles, too much stimulation. “I…” She trails off with a hitched breath. She closes her eyes and tries to gather her spiraling thoughts.

For months, the pressure has been mounting, bending her bones and threatening to crush her beneath the weight of her own expectations and dreams. She knows, intellectually, that Juliette would be the final weight that would snap her in half, and she would fall apart.

She opens her eyes, feeling as though she’s standing on the edge of a precipice, staring into a whirlpool that would drown her. But just as she’s about to step away from Juliette, her fingertips lightly brush Luca’s temple, down her cheek to her jaw, cradling her face with more gentleness than Luca ever thought Juliette was capable of. “What can I do?” Juliette asks, barely audible above the hissing sprinklers.

“Kiss me,” Luca murmurs on impulse. Juliette’s touch is like a ray of sun, and while she’s touching her, Luca isn’t thinking of the prickling anxiety that’s about to collapse her lungs.

Juliette blinks. “Really?”

Heat from a mixture of desire and embarrassment coils in her stomach. Luca nods, unable to form a simple yes.

The sprinklers cut off, and Juliette shifts forward, her eyes closing. Her lashes are thick and dark, clumped with water. Relief washes through Luca along with the glittering sweetness of excitement.

“Juliette!”

Antony Ricci’s voice cuts through the moment.

They snap apart. Luca breaks out of the dizzy, feverish haze that possessed her. Antony is speaking in loud, rapid Italian, his hands flying as he complains. Luca is sure her face is bright red if the heat scalding her cheeks is anything to go by, but Antony doesn’t even look at Luca as he grabs Juliette’s shoulder and drags her toward the revolving door.

Within a few seconds, Juliette is gone, vanishing with a whoosh of air.

Vladimir replaces her as the door swings around. “Oh, shit, Luca, sorry about the sprinklers.”

Luca swallows. “Not your fault.” She stares after Juliette.

Vladimir says something else, but Luca’s mind is replaying the last few moments on a loop.

She never did respond to Juliette’s lunch question.

TWENTY-THREELUCA

Other than her anxiety, the only trait Luca got from her mother is the tendency to avoid uncomfortable things. Which is most likely related to her anxiety, but Luca refuses to acknowledge that.

Luckily, Juliette is easy to avoid after the sprinkler incident. They’re on opposite sides of the Wimbledon draw, so they don’t even go to the grounds on the same days. She tracks Juliette’s progress through the tournament, but she is diligent in never turning on her matches.

The Connolly Cup was an anomaly. She never spends time with other players, unless it’s Nicky, and usually, Nicky is the one barging into Luca’s life unannounced and occasionally unwanted. But Juliette doesn’t attempt contact, for which Luca is grateful.

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