Page 18

Friday, May 5

NIKO AND I meet up again in the morning to practice and immediately get to work. There’s no talk of Freddie, or meditating, or our parents. Instead we’re solely focused on the game. All business.

Or at least I am. Last night, I’d been annoyed with Niko, pissed off that he’d withheld this huge thing from me. But today, it is driving me, a motivating force. We both have reasons to try to win this exhibition match; we both have something to prove. The flirting, our getting closer—it was only throwing me off course. It is time to refocus.

We’ve been volleying back and forth at the net for at least ten minutes when he finally thwacks a ball so far to the right of me that I miss the return completely and lose our scrimmage by a point.

“Fuck,” I spit, as I flop over my knees, soaked in morning sweat and completely out of breath. We’ve been practicing daily for an hour every morning and then sometimes again once the last members leave the club, and I’ve never seen anyone skyrocket in skill the way Niko has. He’s already infinitely better than me, not that I’d ever tell him.

“You told me to look for your weak spots!” he shouts from the other side of the net, where he’s watching me with utter satisfaction. “Which is obviously your backhand.”

“Okay, Mr. Pickleball Expert.” I sit down on the court and scowl back at him, but the triumphant smile on his face lets me know he doesn’t buy my dagger eyes. I give up being annoyed with him and smile back.

“It’s not my fault that all your good coaching advice just so happens to work against you, too.” Niko walks over to the bench where we’ve left our bags, picking up his giant water bottle off the ground. “Changing the pace, observing when my opponent gets too comfortable…” He trails off as he pauses to take a sip, and I can’t help it—I let my eyes linger. We’ve been so focused on playing, most of our conversations now about all the technical details of the game, that the thought of his mouth against mine feels like a fever dream and not real life, even though we are still very much in a real fake relationship.

Which is as it should be. I don’t need an actual boyfriend, and I don’t need a distraction. I need to concentrate completely on turning around the future of the racquet club, everything else be damned.

“People pay big money for this expertise, you know,” I say, dragging the hem of my tank up to my face to swipe the pooling sweat from the corners of my eyes.

“Trust me, I know. My theia won’t stop going on and on about you,” he says, and he keeps his eyes on me for just a second too long. His words feel dangerously intimate, like a verbal caress, and I blink hard, forcing any possible tender thought about Niko out of my mind. He was dishonest about why he wanted to play in this tournament , I remind myself. You’re mad at him.

“About how much she misses her lessons,” he clarifies, taking another swig of water as the moment slips right past us.

“She’s going to lose it over how good your serve is,” I say, steering the conversation back on track to the game, and only the game. “Just wait until her cast is off and she can play you.”

“She’ll probably let me win,” he says, the sincere affection for his aunt evident in the way every part of him softens when he talks about her, and it’s undeniably endearing. “She’s too nice to me.”

You’re mad , I try to remind myself, but it’s no use. I’m not mad anymore.

“Speaking of being too nice,” I tell him before blowing a bubble with my now flavorless gum, “I’m shocked that you haven’t complained once today about the grating sound of pickleball driving you crazy.”

My legs still feel slightly like noodles, but I push myself up to stand and stretch. Deb should be arriving soon for her shift, and I don’t teach any lessons for a couple of hours. Still, there’s a full backlog of bills to go through and invoices to log.

“I still hate the sound. I’ve just learned how to tune it out thanks to the constant sound of you popping bubbles and yelling at me to relax my swing.” Niko swaggers closer to where I’m standing, and I let out a loud gasp as I study him mid-stretch.

“No way.” I furrow my brow, letting my jaw drop open to give him the most shocked face I can muster. Even though I’m still sore about last night, I can’t help but tease him, just a little bit.

“No way what?” he asks. The way he positions himself—with his hands on his hips, one leg bent just so—gives him the look of a statue of some brash, confident explorer who’s about to galivant off into the wilderness.

“I think you’ve started to”—I gulp and glance back and forth in shock, as if I don’t quite believe what I am seeing—“ like pickleball.”

I am giving him the performance of a lifetime, the hammiest, hackiest acting job ever seen. I’ve gotten good at detecting when something amuses him, even when he tries not to let on. He may be a powerhouse on the court, but his tells are all in his movements, the two lines that crease down from his eyes, the way the corners of his mouth tug upward just a little. They’re subtle, the tiniest hints of something, like that one flower that blooms a little too early in March but signals that spring is indeed on the horizon.

“Don’t mistake my love of competing with a love of pickleball, Bex,” he says, as he twirls his paddle in his hand. “Or you’re going to be sorely disappointed.”

I rib him about it as we walk toward the lobby, and to his credit, he chimes in and plays along, like the intensity of the game has relaxed him. For all the back-and-forth we’ve had about the virtues of tennis versus pickleball, I’ve never once asked him what he actually loves about his chosen game, and now something in me is curious.

“Hey,” I say as I pull the door open to the reception area. “How did you get into tennis anyway?”

Just as he’s about to reply, Deb pops her head over the edge of the desk. “Karl had to cancel his lesson at the last minute today,” she says. “Food poisoning.”

“Oh no,” I say, glancing down at my watch. That gives me a free two hours, which I can fill with all the crap I didn’t get done last night.

“Let’s go get a coffee,” Niko says before I have a chance to reply to Deb. “My treat.” He cocks a brow at me. “ Princess ,” he adds, and I know he’s doing it because Deb’s standing right there, ogling us, her eyes even larger thanks to the magnifying power of her glasses.

“All right, Tennis Prince,” I say, grabbing hold of his hand. If he’s going to perform this little sham relationship for our audience of one, then I’m going to commit and go all in. I just wish the sensation of his fingers sliding around mine didn’t feel so genuinely nice. He gives me a reassuring squeeze, probably to confirm that we’re pulling off this fake couple routine well, but it softens the heavy weight of stress that is housed all across the tight muscles of my back, the gnawing anxiety of the business that I carry with me always. I haven’t ever done this with the support of anyone but myself, and something about the simple gesture sends a wave of sadness rippling through me. It’s not longing for my mom as much as it is longing to have someone else to lean on. I wish I had it, and I hate that faking it feels so close to what I imagine the real thing is like.

I settle into Niko’s car, and the energy between us is calmer than the last time I was here. That pack of Trident is tucked into the compartment under the control screen, and I reach for it and open it up to discover it’s completely full.

“I think you got this to troll me,” I say when he catches me tugging out a piece. “You were plotting to get me in here and then see this pack of gum, which I know you hate when I chew.”

Niko just stares straight ahead at the road, turning the car down the main street of Sunset Springs toward my favorite local spot, the Caffeinated Cactus. “Or maybe I just like having a little reminder of you wherever I go,” he says.

“Yeah, right.” I cough out a laugh, but then I flash back to that squeeze of his hand just minutes earlier, and I begin to question everything.

“I guess you’ll never know,” he says, shrugging his shoulders as he rotates on the front seat to look out for the car behind him as he parallel parks. He does this even though his rental car is brand-new and comes with a fancy back-up camera that’s offering a zoomed-in close-up of the pavement and the car behind us. I wonder why he doesn’t use it. There’s something about Niko that seems to always choose the harder option, never taking the easy way out.

“So,” I say as he shifts into park, “tennis. You. The Life Story of Nikolaus Karras. Let’s hear it.”

He shuts the car off and pauses, his hands still on the steering wheel. “Honestly, I only started playing because tennis was the one thing my dad loved, and I just wanted his attention when I was little.”

He says this matter-of-factly, but his words strike me as so sad that I fight the urge to wrap my arms around him in a bear hug. Instead I follow his lead and open my door, meeting him out on the sidewalk.

“Did it work?” I ask as he swipes his credit card into the parking meter.

“Oh, hell yeah, it worked,” Niko says with a bitter laugh. “If I was interested in tennis, he was interested in me.”

The meter beeps its approval, and our eyes meet. “Daddy issues,” he says, calling back last night’s conversation, and I nod in agreement.

“We’ve all got ’em.”

Niko’s hand brushes up against the curve of my back for a split second as we walk toward the café, and I relish the sensation.

“And then,” he continues, “I fell in love with it, and soon it was the only way for him to get my attention.”

“That kind of breaks my heart,” I tell him honestly.

“Eh, it’s not that sad,” he says as we make our way down Sunset Springs’ main drag. “It’s kind of—what do they call it, a love language?—between the two of us. And he was a great coach.”

I think about how I spent my formative years toddling around after my mother around the club, riding my bike with training wheels around the courts on quiet days after school or helping her to fold towels before she unlocked the front doors to welcome people in on the weekends. I’d never thought about how so much of our bond was built through our time at the club, and only recently had I begun to dig into what she must have felt, losing a husband young and having to shoulder the responsibility of a kid and a business all on her own.

“That actually sounds a lot like my mom and me,” I say. Niko jogs a couple steps ahead and gets to the Caffeinated Cactus first, pulling the door open. It hits me that, aside from that first time at the hospital, he’s always done this, making a point to grab every door. I’d let that one moment sour my opinion of him for weeks when, really, maybe this person here now, the one who speaks plainly about vulnerable things and always grabs for the door handle first, is not the asshole I had originally thought he was.

I’m about to tell him so when he reaches out and grabs my shoulder to stop me, bumping his chest into my back. I turn to look at him, and he’s staring at the first table tucked just inside the tiny, cramped coffee shop, and I follow his gaze only to discover Ed and Loretta, locked deep in an intense conversation, his hands clasped around her uninjured one. They look comfortable, more like lovers than friends, and the realization hits me like a belly flop into the rec center pool: They don’t just look like lovers; they are lovers.

“Hi!” I say in an unnaturally high-pitched voice.

The way their eyes practically pop out of their heads tells me that they’d never considered what might happen if they were found out, even though they’re sitting knee to knee at the coffee shop everyone at the club visits on the regular.

“Oh, hello there, you two,” Ed says, shoving his hands in his lap. He is always the epitome of casual—threadbare old T-shirts and Birkenstocks that look like they were purchased during Reagan’s presidency—but I notice he’s made what looks like an effort, dressing in a rumpled, collared shirt. He’s flushed, like a teenager who’s been caught making out with their date, and Loretta’s beaming so brightly that it almost hurts my eyes to look at her. They both look so damn happy, and the sight of them, swept up in the joy of each other, makes me match their giddy, happy energy.

“Hey!” I say enthusiastically, as Niko hovers just behind me. “What are you up to?”

I know damn well what they’re up to, but there’s something so cute about seeing the two of them squirm a little that I feign ignorance.

“Just grabbing some coffee,” Loretta says, eyes twinkling. “You all seem awfully cozy this morning.”

We do? I think, just as I feel the weight of Niko’s arm loose around my waist. It’s been there since we stepped over to say hi, but I am only now registering it and how comfortable and natural it feels for us to stand like this.

“We just won a bunch of games,” Niko says playfully, as he presses his fingers against my body with just the slightest hint of pressure. “So Bex is in a good mood.”

“I’m in a good mood because you are finally showing some promise as a pickleball player,” I joke, grinning up at him.

His body moves as he laughs, and it feels like a gentle morning wave in the ocean against me. “You mean I’m way better than you?”

I swat at him playfully. “Okay, rude.”

It takes a second to realize we’ve just been bantering back and forth as Ed and Loretta stare up at us.

“Well,” Loretta says, watching the two of us with an amused look on her face, “we were just finishing up here.”

Ed clears his throat and begins picking up their cups and napkins from their table.

“All right, well, see you at home,” Niko says to Loretta, before steering me toward the register, arm still draped around my waist.

“They’re adorable,” I say as we wait in line to order. “They looked like two teenagers caught sneaking out of the house in a 1950s sitcom or something.”

“Loretta hasn’t even mentioned anything going on between the two of them,” he says, cocking his head as he takes one more quick peek in their direction. “I wonder how new it is.”

“Well, can’t be more new than this,” I joke, gesturing between the two of us. Niko chuckles.

“Yes, our relationship is definitely still the talk of the over-sixty crowd,” he says. “I think they’re buying it.”

I nod in agreement. With the way we’re laughing and standing just a little too close, I can almost see how someone might confuse this for the real thing.