Page 32 of Love, Amy

I shake my head. Sleeping next door to my father will only make the hives worse. My brain is still buzzing.

His thumb traces a soothing pattern on my shoulder. “Would you like to come back with me? I’m staying down the street from your hotel.”

I look up at his face. “Yes.” And then, because it has to be said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to ruin things—”

He shushes me. “Nothing is ruined. Come.”

Back out into the streets of Paris, pastries forgotten, I feel embarrassed. I don’t want Aurelio to see this version of me—covered in hives, mute in the face of fans, anxious at the idea of seeing her father. But that is the real me, isn’t it? Sooner or later, I’ll have to tell Beck or quit Aurelio. Those are the two paths before me.

The more time I spend with Aurelio, the farther I walk down the path that leads to a future with him. But in that future, is Beck Bowman even there? Without him, I am alone. I have no family. Both paths promise pain.

So, when Aurelio offers me a moment to stand still, to really breathe, just the two of us, I take it. The ride to his hotel is quiet, but I lean my head on his shoulder the whole way there.

CHAPTER 12

Roland Garros: May 2026

Aurelio abandons me as soon as we get to his hotel. He gently nudges me into the elevator with his hotel key, the room number, and a soft kiss on the cheek. He disappears around the corner, heading towards the lobby. I can hardly even ask where he’s going before the quiet elevator is lifting me up to the fourth floor.

Like all players, Aurelio stays in a nice hotel. Even the elevator is gilded. I can see my reflection clearly in the mirrored doors. The floor numbers change as I study myself in the glass. There are still a few lingering hives on my forearms, a particularly angry one on the side of my neck. They aren’t itching nearly as much as they were in the patisserie, but they’re still marking me. It’s like Amy Bowman’s version of a Scarlet A. They’re a sign of weakness that’s so much worse to Beck than if his daughter was a whore.

Whores still practice every day after their bedhopping. Women in love waste his time and lose championships.

I’m curious when I enter Aurelio’s hotel room. After nearly two weeks in Paris, my room still looks hardly lived in. Beck and Suzy trained me since I was a junior player to keep on top of it. I would send laundry down every few days and make sure to unpack the day I arrived. I know a lot of other players’ rooms are practically destroyed by the time they leave a big tournament. I once heard Angelina lecturing Fernanda about the state of her room at Wimbledon. Now, after seeing how much of her wardrobe she brings along, I’m not surprised.

I’m also not surprised at the state of Aurelio’s room. It looks lived in, but tidy. The bed is made, but there are a few pillows askew or on the floor. His favorite electric green hoodie hangs over the chair in the corner. I take a few steps into the room, feeling like an intruder without him. The desk sitting under the window is piled high with a surprising number of papers and a computer. Since I’m a women’s player, I see no harm in sifting through the notes. I don’t understand most of them, as Aurelio and his team primarily work in Italian, but I recognize a lot of scouting information and statistics that Beck and I use as well. I turn away from the desk and head to the bed, exhausted. My skin feels tight and used. I’m about to sit down when I notice a small gold frame on Aurelio’s bedside. I reach over and pick it up gently, barely holding the edges of the frame.

I know instantly that it’s Aurelio’s mom. She has the same golden curls, though hers fall loosely around her shoulders. She’s laughing in the image, head tilted up towards the sun. A small hand clutches hers, a young Aurelio just out of frame. A lump starts in my throat. My mother is hardly worth a damn, but she’s still around. I’d be devastated to lose her, and I’m under no illusion that we’re as close as most parents are to their children. I wish I could understand Aurelio’s joy, his optimism, his hope for people when he struggled through so much darkness.

I’m setting down the frame exactly where I found it when the door opens. I turn to see Aurelio holding a mysterious brown bag with the hotel’s lettering on the outside. His dark gaze darts to the frame and back to me. I speak before he can. “She looks like you.” I glance back down at the beautiful woman in the frame. “A lot like you.”

He walks into the room fully, shutting the door behind him. He sets the brown bag on the bed and walks to my side. “Thank you.” His gaze drifts from my face to hers. “I think it used to cause my father pain that I looked so much like her. A constant reminder that I was here and she wasn’t.” There’s a tightness in his voice that I’m not used to hearing. My hand drifts to his arm, rubbing gently. The gesture pulls him from his memories. He smiles softly at me. “But now, time has softened the blow, and we only find a bittersweetness in any reminders of her.”

“Was she like you?” I ask, curious. “Did you have the same personality? Same temperament?”

Aurelio grins. “No. I take after my father. He is the gentle one. My mother was spirited and loud. She liked to talk and captivate the room with her stories. My older brother, Alessandro, does not look as much like her, but he acts just as she does.” He catches himself. “Just as she did.”

I can’t imagine a world where I’m like my mother. Or my father, for that matter, though I’ve wished for it in the past. “That’s nice. You both have a piece of her. And your father has both pieces.”

Subconsciously, we’ve both leaned into each other, staring down at his mother’s picture. Eventually, I break the silence to ask. “Where did you go? What’s in the bag?” My curious gaze snags at the small bag sitting on the edge of the bed.

Aurelio walks over to it, as though to show me what’s inside. Instead, he hesitates, hands hovering over it. “The hives,” he pauses, “You’ve had them before, yes?”

I shiver in the hotel’s A/C, even with Aurelio’s sweater on. His gaze lingers on my neck, the only place where he can still see the angry spots. I decide to go with honesty. “They’re stress-related,” I admit, shifting from one foot to the other. The lights in the room seem too bright, Aurelio’s gaze too searing. I wish he wasn’t looking at me so closely, but that’s how he always looks at me. “I’ve been getting them every once in a while, for the past year.”

Aurelio is quick. “Since you became number one in the world?”

I shrug. “I guess the pressure does get to me sometimes.” Am I really that ice woman the commentators say I am? I always thought so, but my body betrays me.

Aurelio nods, keeping his tone casual. “My mother got hives, too.”

My eyebrows shoot up. “When she had cancer?” There’s a strain to the words which I try to hide.

Aurelio immediately puts up his hands in a “stop” gesture. “No, no.” He rushes to explain. “This is from before she was sick. She got them sometimes after a particularly grueling race. Her doctor said it had something to do with the heat.”

I’m struggling to follow. “After her races? What races?”

Aurelio’s surprised by my confusion. “I thought I told you. My mother was an athlete, too. A runner, mostly. By the time she had me and my brother, she was semi-retired, but she still ran in local races sometimes.”