Page 15

AFTER WILSON HAS walked away, satisfied with our plan, I drag Niko over to a high-top table set up on one of the tennis courts, next to two women gushing about the new line of pickleball bags they’re designing.

“Shouldn’t we have discussed this first?” Niko says, his voice clipped. He weaves his arms tightly in front of his chest, clearly exasperated with the entire situation.

“Oh, you mean like how we thoroughly weighed the pros and cons of this plan before deciding to become doubles partners who are dating?” I ask, giving him an incredulous look. “Come on, Niko. This is basically how you and I make decisions as a team.”

He presses his eyes closed a beat too long, brow clenched in quiet thought. It’s the face someone makes before they’re about to say no to something, and so I decide not to give him the chance.

“Did you hear how much money he’s offering, Niko?” I’m as close as I can get to yelling while also trying not to draw attention to ourselves. “If we can win the tournament and the exhibition match, that could cover the cost of court repairs, easily. And maybe other stuff.”

This is my meal ticket, my escape from this hole I can’t seem to crawl out of.

“Please,” I beg, reaching up and grabbing onto his forearms. His muscles, like the look on his face, are unmoving, firm. “I need this. The club needs this. Think about how much Loretta loves the place.”

His jaw relaxes a bit. “See, now you’re just trying to manipulate me, Princess.”

“I am,” I agree as he inches just a little bit closer to me. “For a good cause. And you can show the world how incredible you are at your favorite game. Isn’t that your dream?”

I’m trying to butter him up, but it’s also the truth. Niko had effortlessly grasped pickleball in a matter of days.

His lips part into something that barely resembles a smile, but for Niko it might as well be a grin. “Okay,” he relents. “I’m in. But—”

Before he can finish his sentence, his phone buzzes in his pocket and we break apart.

“It’s Angela,” he says, glancing down at the screen. He paces as he types out a reply, distracted as he walks along the edge of the table. When he finishes he moves closer, and wraps an arm around my shoulder, fake-boyfriend mode activated. “She’ll be here in a couple of minutes. Can we discuss this later?”

He feels solid behind me, like I could fall back and trust that he’d catch me. I spin around to face him, and all I can see are the geometric angles of his face. He looks like he’s cut from ice, cheekbones razorblade sharp.

“No, we can’t,” I tell him, poking him in the chest with my index finger. “If I’m going to have to sit here and lie to Angela, you can do this exhibition match with me.”

“I watched you lie to Angela the other night with flying colors,” he says as his lips curl into a sly smile. “You’re very good at it.” He’s leaning close to me, and every now and then, I can catch waves of his scent. It’s crisp and minty, like a chilled mojito on a blisteringly hot day.

“I was panicking then,” I say, suddenly flustered. “We had just…”

I swallow, the weight of his gaze causing me to perspire. Why does everything he does have to be so intense? He couldn’t even have a conversation casually. “You know.”

Niko chuckles, his eyes searching through the crowd and then landing directly back on me. “You don’t have to lie about anything. Have you felt like you’ve been lying to Deb or Loretta?”

He has a point. Something about this has started to feel natural, shifting without me entirely realizing it. “Not really,” I admit.

“Just be your regular charming self, Bex. You’re very hard to dislike.”

I stare up at him, waiting for him to follow this up with some sort of snark, but instead he looks at me expectantly, and so I let out a nervous sigh. “I’ll try my best.”

“Princess, we both know we’re in way too deep for you to blow this up now,” he says, giving my wrist a squeeze.

I hate that he’s right, and I hate that I lace my hand through his and play along when Angela arrives a moment later, clutching two phones against her chest. “One’s for recording,” she explains off the bat, like she gets the question a lot. “Should we grab something to eat first?”

“Sounds great,” Niko says with a relaxed, cool look on his face. “Bex and I are excited to chat with you.”

He tucks an arm around me as we meander over to one of the tables covered in platters of sliced cheeses and mounds of grapes and berries, and we make mindless chitchat as we pile paper plates with food. We scoop up some napkins, and each of us grabs a drink from the bar before finding a table to crowd around.

Angela slides a phone in between our plates, and she and Niko fall into an easy conversation about his time at UCLA and that iconic moment he arrived at the US Open as a nobody and left a star. He’s downright animated as he retells the story of growing up playing tennis against his father, who coached him through high school, and qualifying for the US Open as an unknown college player. There’s a lightness to his voice that’s new to me, a spark of joy that seems both completely foreign to the Niko I know but intrinsically a part of him and who he is. I’m in the middle of wondering how I’ve completely missed this side of him when I see it shift away in an instant.

“Does Freddie Alwin’s rise in professional pickleball have anything to do with your new interest in playing?” Angela inquires. “Surely you’ve been following the way he’s exploded onto the scene?”

His jaw clenches the tiniest bit before he takes a small sip of his beer. “You know, I’ve been so focused on my own recovery since my injury that I haven’t had time to give anyone else’s career much thought,” he says diplomatically. “But I’m happy to know that my old friend is doing so well in his new sport.”

“Old friend?” Angela pushes. “You two were rivals for quite some time. He was your opponent during your last match at the French Open.”

“Ah, well, I tried to leave all that behind on the court. And I hope to keep it that way in pickleball too.” Niko’s face doesn’t change as he speaks, but there is an edge to his voice, and it’s all right there for me to see. There is way more to their connection, and I have a feeling it played a bigger part in the reason he’d roped me into being his partner than I realized.

“And besides,” he continues smoothly, “I try to never hold on to the past. I’m more interested in the future. Like what Bex is doing to try to save the racquet club.”

He’s giving me an opening, and I push my suspicions about Niko’s motives aside for now to put on a good show for Angela.

“Yeah, my parents were looking to start their own club but couldn’t afford anything on the market,” I say, finding my voice. “Then they stumbled onto this place in foreclosure and took it on. When my dad died twenty-two years ago, my mom did it all herself. She was the first person to bring pickleball out to Sunset Springs. She was amazing, and now I’m just trying to live up to, like, a fraction of her legacy.”

Niko and I may be pretending to be partners, but there is nothing even remotely fake about my love for the club and its storied past. I speak directly from my heart, and by the time I’m done, describing my mom in her hospital bed, computer on her lap as she ran through the ins and outs of the club just days before she died, Angela appears to be on the verge of tears, and Niko’s face is hard and focused only on me. I’ve rarely shared these intimate moments with anyone outside of my core circle of friends. They’ve long been too raw to even mention. But now they feel vital and important, a crucial part of my story and the club’s.

“I know most people don’t think a twenty-six-year-old with no business experience can handle taking over a family business, much less one that requires you to operate on all cylinders all the time,” I say, “which is why I want to prove them wrong. But first I need to save the place from falling down.”

A lump has formed in my throat. I’m choked up with emotion, but strangely, it’s not grief. I blink as it settles in. I’m proud. Confident. I don’t just want to do this. I really, truly believe that I can. For the first time in days, thirty thousand dollars feels like a hurdle I can actually leap over.

Angela leans forward and taps the red button on her iPhone screen, ending her recording. She looks between the two of us and then shakes her head in a way that tells me we did a good job, giving her exactly what she needs for her story. Relief rushes through me, just like it did when I was a kid and got a decent grade on a test, knowing I didn’t let my teacher down.

“Both of you have such incredible stories,” she marvels. “In many ways, Niko, your path as an underdog mirrors exactly what Bex is going through right now.”

He nods, though I can tell by the way he squints his eyes in thought that he’s not totally sure what she’s getting at, which is a relief, because I’m not either.

“Look.” She glances between the two of us eagerly. “I need to get my editor to sign off on this, but after talking to you both today, I think the only way to do this story is to make it about the two of you, together.”

“What?” Niko says, as I blurt out a loud “Huh?”

Angela slowly shakes her head with determined purpose. “Two people, both trying to salvage their past by forging into the future,” she says, her vision taking shape as she talks. “And you’re not just a couple but also partners on the court as well? It’s too good not to tell as one connected story. We can have our photographer come out, shoot the two of you playing at the club, and then we’ll document the tournament as well.”

“Well, things have kind of changed,” Niko starts.

“We just agreed to a one-off exhibition match, too,” I tell Angela. “We’re playing against Freddie and whoever bids the most to be his partner.”

“Well, hell, if you win that ?” A pleased smile creeps across Angela’s face. “It’ll make the story even better.”