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“The gate is ten feet away.” Kendra chuckled.

“I’m impatient and impulsive. I thought you knew that about me by now.” She walked up to the sliding glass door and waited for Kendra to walk in first.

“I have milk but not half and half. Is that okay?”

“I’m not picky,” she revealed.

“I’ll start it. You can sit in the living room, if you want.”

“Okay.”

Aspen walked through the kitchen into the living room and sat on the sofa, feeling like she was on a first date right now. Somehow, it really felt like they’d gone back to that date’s house, and after the goodnight kiss at the front door that had turned into an invitation inside, that date was now making her coffee because they were going to do that awkward thing where they sipped coffee and talked while they both wondered if they were going to go any further.

“Here you go.” Kendra carried a tray out and set it on the table in front of Aspen. “I just brought everything. Add what you want.”

Aspen picked up the mug in front of her and added some of the milk from the regular-looking glass.

“I’m not really that fancy in general, but I still haven’t unpacked everything. Do other adults have a creamer pourer thing? Is that what they’re called?” Kendra asked.

“I have no idea. I’ll tell you when I finally feel like I’m a real adult, and that knowledge naturally gets instilled in me. I think that’s what I imagine will happen, anyway.”

Kendra laughed and dressed her coffee.

“So, how was your practice today?” she asked.

“Good. We’re still without a coach, which is proving to be a problem, but we’re doing our best.” Aspen leaned back and brought her coffee with her.

“Not all teams have coaches, though, right?”

“No, but the best ones do. It’s not always possible for teams who aren’t winning to afford a top coach, but it’s also not always possible to win without one. When I first started out, I didn’t have one, but we had some good wins and got some attention, so I decided it was worth the investment, even though I couldn’t really afford it. My parents helped me pay for my first coach, and I told them I’d pay them back when I started making money. I did, by the way. And here I am now, so it’s worked so far.”

“I’d say it has. You just won another tournament and will probably win the rest this season.”

“Don’t put that out there. You’ll jinx us,” Aspen said with a laugh. “We go into every match believing we can win, yeah, but we’re never overconfident.”

“Probably a good philosophy,” Kendra replied and sipped her coffee. “So, how did you and DJ end up partnering together?”

“I knew her from my college days. She was at UCLA and had had some success on the beach in the league, but not much yet, and I had, so I asked her if she wanted to leave her current partner and join me instead. You know how hard it is to find a good partner. First, there’s the physical stuff. Some teams can go with the whole same height, same kind of skill thing, and it works for them when they have good communication and chemistry, but most teams go with a taller and a shorter player; one to focus on defense and passing and the other to handle the blocking and the hitting. DJ is taller than me and is a great blocker. She has an amazing hitting percentage, and she’s a good server. But on top of the physical thing, you have to get along. You don’t have to be best friends or even a couple, like Monica and Selena, but you need to have trust and solid communication. You have to know that the person you’re out there with is going to be with you every step of the way. And if you don’t have that trust, it’s not going to work.”

“You have that with DJ?”

“Yes, we’ve got that. She knows I’m always going to have her back. I know she’ll always have mine. In private, I might tell her that she played like crap because she needs to hear it and responds well to it, but I’d never do that in public. She does the same for me. We balance each other well out on the court, too.”

Kendra took another drink of her coffee, but her eyes remained on Aspen.

“Did you not have that with your first partner?” she asked. “I don’t remember her name.”

Aspen took a drink of her own coffee to stall because she hadn’t planned on talking about that tonight.

“Alex. Hard to forget that, huh? Aspen and Alex.”

“Right. Alex Bartell. I remember now. She’s on Team USA, isn’t she?”

“Yeah, she switched back to indoor years ago. I always suspected she liked playing indoor more than beach, but a few of her friends from college had decided to try their luck on the beach, so she’d joined them. We met, became partners, and now, we’re not. She’s hoping to make the team for their World Cup and the Olympics for the first time.”

“What happened, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Is this an interview or something?”