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Saturday, April

I KNOW INSTANTLY that the man rushing into the hospital emergency room ahead of me is an asshole.

Even though he clearly sees me just steps behind him, he does not pause to hold the door. Instead he shoves it open with a grunt, letting it swing shut just as we make direct eye contact. It’s a fraction of a second but long enough to register two swirling dark storm clouds below eyebrows that arch skeptically against his olive skin. He glances down at the bubble I’ve blown between my lips, grimaces for a split second, and then hustles inside as the smudged glass door closes in my face.

I’m not hung up on chivalry or antiquated, sexist gender rules. I’m fully capable of taking care of myself. Hell, I’ve been running the Sunset Springs Racquet Club completely on my own for the last two years, since my mom passed away. I have no problem opening a door for myself.

It’s just the principle of it all. When you’re born with a mom whose life mantra is “How you treat strangers is a direct reflection of who you are as a person,” you learn to pay attention to this stuff. You become acutely aware of who speaks kindly to servers in restaurants and who presses the Open Door button on elevators as people rush toward them, and who does not.

So far, this guy’s scoring a zero on Mom’s scale of “How Not to Be a Jerk,” and he’s only making an already hard day worse. It’s like he somehow knows my car battery just died minutes ago after barely making it to the hospital, and he’s decided to really rub it in.

“Thanks a lot,” I mutter sarcastically under my breath, which is minty-fresh, courtesy of Trident, but short-winded from jogging the entire way from the parking garage. I’ve sped here from Santa Barbara, where I was attempting to do the last thing my mom had written on her “What to Do After I Die” wish list: Sprinkle my ashes somewhere that means a lot to both of us.

Now is not the time to complain about my mom’s lack of specific details when it came to her posthumous requests. The last month of her life had been a dark, miserable blur, and I will be forever honored to carry out these requests. But if I’m being honest—and really, when am I not?—I would have appreciated some details. The last thing I wanted was to get her wishes wrong.

I’d agonized and hyper-fixated on this one and finally landed on Santa Barbara, her home during college and the place she’d met my dad. I was literally about to twist the lid open when a phone call from Deb, the club’s part-time receptionist, interrupted the moment.

“Bex, it’s Deb, calling from the club,” she’d hollered in her thick Long Island accent.

“Deb, I have caller ID. I know it’s you,” I’d replied, trying not to chuckle. Deb is super savvy about social media, but her boomer vibes really come out every time she calls me on the phone.

“Loretta fell on the court playing pickleball,” she said, and my smile dropped. “With one of those snowbirds from Michigan. You know, the guy with the terrible hair plugs?”

“Michael?” I asked, trying to nail down exactly who she was talking about. Sunset Springs is a retirement town; there are a lot of questionable hair plugs.

“I don’t know. Michael, Steve, they’re all the same.” She sounded panicked. “The X-ray shows her wrist is broken in two different places.”

Even as an eternal optimist, it’s hard for me to spin this injury. Deb is Loretta’s best friend, and she said it’s bad, a complicated break. Surgery will be required, followed by months of physical therapy. There is no bright side to be found—except when I hustled off the beach and bumped directly into a police officer cruising along on a Segway, who eyed the plain wooden urn suspiciously.

“You know it’s against the law to scatter ashes on California beaches?” It was a half question, half accusation, and I nodded convincingly.

“Of course,” I lied. Satisfied, he gave me one more skeptical, stern look and then rolled on his merry way.

Once I was inside my car, I hurriedly checked Google on my phone and discovered that Loretta’s injury—and Deb’s phone call—had saved me from incurring a five-hundred-dollar fine and possible jail time. It was the smallest of silver linings, but I’d take it.

The racquet club and its members are my entire world. I’ve always felt this way to some degree; growing up in a family business will do that to you, I think. I worked the front desk long before it was legally permitted, handing out fresh towels and charming members with tales of elementary school shenanigans. I learned to ride my bike on the empty courts and snuck my high school boyfriend in after hours to make out in the upstairs office that is now my apartment.

Still, it feels different today, as the sole owner. The members are the closest thing I have to family, and I always try to be there for them during an injury. But Loretta, who I’ve been teaching for the last four years, has been like a wise, nurturing grandmother figure, especially in the months right after my mom passed away.

I don’t make a habit of playing favorites, but Loretta is undeniably the one I adore the most—not that I’d tell any of my other students that. Anyone who thinks older folks don’t get pissed about trivial stuff has never seen four seventy-year-olds go up against each other in a pickleball match. In my world, the older you are, the fiercer you are—even if your bones and bodies don’t always cooperate.

Just about everyone who frequents the club is sixty or older; hell, the entire town of Sunset Springs is qualified to be in the AARP except for me. I’ve spent just about my entire life there, so I am well versed in the kind of injuries that befall seniors. A broken wrist in your seventies is a massive pain in the ass. And, you know, the arm.

Back inside my beat-up old Prius, I buckled my mom’s urn into the passenger seat and patted the lid affectionately. Grief sure as hell makes you do weird things, and for me, that includes talking to her like she’s still right here, alive and next to me.

“I promise I’ll find somewhere really good to sprinkle you,” I said to that small box. “But I know you’d want me to try to go help Loretta out.”

Mom devoted decades to the club and its members and left it all to me in her will. I’m not just honoring her legacy in this moment, but trying to walk in her footprints all the darn time. She was pure goodness, and she would have immediately loathed this handsome asshole, who was still steps ahead of me inside the hospital.

I watch as his very attractive backside storms the reception desk with a demanding energy, leaning his elbows on the counter without greeting the older man behind it.

“My aunt,” I hear him say, but I miss the rest. I study him as he impatiently taps his long, tanned fingers along the lip of the counter. Deciphering what people are like based on their clothes is one of my innate skills, and this guy is an easy read. He’s giving casual vibes in loose-fitting joggers, a crisp white T-shirt, and spotless sneakers. But each item clings to his body just so, like every thread had been told exactly where to land. The simplicity of it all highlights how impeccably in shape he is. The lines of his body are entirely lean, tight muscle. Even his tousled dark hair seems perfectly in place. The only thing that is even the slightest bit imperfect about him is the very faint hint of a five o’clock shadow on his face.

He rushes off down a corridor to my left, and then it’s my turn to check in with the front desk of the hospital. Every time I come here, my body clenches like a fist about to land a punch. I know this place well because it’s where I got stitches at eight years old after slipping and slicing my forehead open in the dry riverbed behind my house. When I was twelve, I walked out of here with a fractured arm decked out in a neon-pink cast after I hit a curb on Annie Paige’s skateboard and went flying.

But these childhood memories have all been overshadowed by Mom’s cancer.

Now, every time I’m here, I feel the weight of her illness like a boulder against my back. She’s been gone for two years now, but time isn’t the healer we all make it out to be. Even now, the grief—already raw and reignited from this morning’s activities—eats away at me, grating at my skin like a scratchy wool sweater.

“I’m here to see a patient,” I say with a smile, ignoring his confused look as I place Mom’s urn on the counter. “Loretta Karras.”

The silver fox behind the desk checks me in and waves me down the same nondescript hallway as the guy before. I take a quick detour to use the restroom. The drive from Santa Barbara to Sunset Springs is a good five hours with traffic, and I hadn’t stopped once. Lucky for me the vending machine is directly next to the bathroom, and I grab a Diet Coke and some extra-spicy Takis and set off to find Loretta’s hospital room.

After navigating my way through endless hallways, I finally pass the nurses’ station and come to her room. The door’s cracked just so, and I pause, listening to an angry voice inside rant on about something. I make out only a couple of words, like unacceptable and lawsuit .

Something about the low rumble of the person on the other side of the door is familiar, but I can’t place it, and when I hear Loretta’s sharp laugh cut through the air, it makes me grin. She’s the epitome of no-nonsense, and I take that as my cue that it is safe to go inside.

“Knock-knock,” I say in a singsong voice. Just inside the door is Loretta, propped up in her hospital bed, and she shifts her face toward me with a broad smile as I walk in.

“Bex!” she exclaims in that raspy voice I’ve grown to treasure. Her eyes are the color of black coffee, and they sparkle like gemstones. Even though her hair’s a shocking grayish white, her brows are dark and thick, and they match those of the tall man hovering just by her bedside, contorting his handsome face into a scowl. The same one who had so unceremoniously barged into the hospital just before me.

Of all the people in the world who could claim Loretta as their aunt, did it really have to be this guy?