Page 26

Monday, May 15

NIKO SLEEPS ON his stomach.

It’s the first thing I notice as my eyes adjust to my still-dark bedroom. The clock on my phone reads 5:24 a.m., and I know the second I open my eyes that this is going to be one of those mornings where my body and brain are going to refuse to let me fall back asleep, so I turn off my alarm. Travis is scheduled to be here at seven with one of his workmen to do a more detailed walk-through and estimate based on the resurfacing we need to do, so I might as well just stay awake.

It’s Niko’s fault that I’m restless, of course. I can’t stop staring at him, thinking about last night, together on the court and then again after, in my shower. He is a devious and generous lover, but now, tangled up in my sheets, he looks downright innocent, especially with one leg peeking out from under the blanket. Up close, I can see the small snowflake-like scars that dot his knee. They’re mostly faded, pale white and unassuming, but they also hint at something, a cataclysmic event that disrupted his entire life, changing everything. It’s strange to think that just around the time Niko was stumbling on the court, tossing his racquet and tearing up his knee, my mom was checking into the hospital, my world on the verge of changing in ways I never imagined.

How is it possible that our lives can exist in parallel worlds until one day they crash together through some strange twist? What was it that brought Niko here, to me, I wonder. Was it Loretta breaking her wrist? Was it the moment he fell on the court? Or did something set off this chain of events earlier, years before?

My brain is churning through these kind of exhausted, emotional thoughts as I watch him sleep, one arm wrapped around Baleen, the stuffed whale that my grandparents gifted me when I started kindergarten. He’s the same man who stormed into the hospital and scolded me over Loretta’s bed, but he’s become someone new, a person I want curled up next to me every night.

Everything is going exactly as we planned it, and I can’t help but let my optimism take over. Sure, we have to actually win at the Paddle Battle, but Niko’s skill is unmatched, the stuff pickleball pros dream about. Angela seemed constantly charmed by our conversations, especially when Niko jumped in to care for me when I fainted, just like a real boyfriend would. Loretta’s physical therapy is going well. Soon the courts will be repaired, I’ll be able to focus on the club, and I’ll get back to my quiet existence here in Sunset Springs.

But a giant except looms over me, a dark cloud blocking my sunshine. Except now that Niko’s a part of it, it’s hard to imagine my days without him. I’ve settled into Niko, or maybe Niko’s settled into Sunset Springs. His presence, once a nuisance, is now a comfort, and I’ve gotten used to having him here, battling the ball machine, taunting Ed into volleying with him, chauffeuring Loretta around, and being there for me, like, well, an actual boyfriend.

I scoot up against the pillows, taking my worries out on the cuticles around my thumbnails. Niko’s not my boyfriend, and it was because of me and my one lapse in kissing judgment that got us stuck into the charade in the first place. But in just a few short weeks, it feels like we’ve gone from playing these roles to really living them. Especially after last night’s date and having him here now, spread out in my bed. He’s making one final attempt to get back on the tennis pro circuit. I have a business to run, and not into the ground. That’s what we both want, why we’re doing this. Once the tournament is over and the profile’s out, both our paths will hopefully be back on their correct tracks.

I reach down and tug the blanket up over his bare shoulder, running the back of my knuckles against the soft expanse of his skin. It’s pointless, stupid even, to acknowledge the voice in my head that won’t shut up. It started as a whisper but is now screaming like a blaring siren.

I like Niko. More than I ever imagined I could. And I especially like him here, in my bed, with me. As my partner, my boyfriend, the person I fall asleep next to and wake up with every day.

I lie back down and snuggle myself up against him, letting my fingers rest on top of his. If only, I think, as I let my eyes close for just a second, he was the real thing.

I wake up with a start to the sound of my phone ringing. The clock reads 7:10 a.m., and I have three missed calls from Travis.

“Shit!” I throw the covers off and leave Niko—who is still out cold—asleep in my bed, pulling on some sweatpants, a sports bra, and a T-shirt I find in the clean pile of laundry I have yet to fold and put away. I had big plans of greeting Travis at the door with some freshly brewed coffee, but instead, I am a chaos tornado, stumbling down the stairs while pulling my hair back into a messy ponytail.

I reach the front door and rush through the usual twisting of locks and button pressing before ushering him inside. Travis is alone, and I glance behind him, confused by his solo appearance.

“Hey there, Bex,” he says, adjusting the sun hat on his head. For some reason, he’s averting his eyes as I peek behind him one more time.

“Are we waiting for your guy?” I ask, pinching my nose just between my eyes, hoping I don’t look as exhausted as I feel.

“Listen, Bex, this is awkward,” he says, not moving an inch out of the doorway. “But I’m not going to be able to take the job.”

Half of my body sinks into the floor. “What do you mean, you can’t take the job ? The whole point of you being here is to update your estimate, for the job.”

“Listen, you know I’ve always tried to cut your mom fair deals, but I’m about to put the twins through college in a couple of years.” His face looks genuinely regretful, like he hates giving me this news. “Wilson’s offered me triple to do some stuff for Starlight, and I can’t turn it down.”

I can feel the panic kick on inside my chest, like someone just turned the burner on the stove up to high.

“Starlight was literally just renovated like two years ago,” I say, confused, scrambling to find some reason for Travis’s about-face. “What could Wilson possibly need you to do?”

“I don’t know what to tell you.” Travis shrugs awkwardly, his face pained. “The money’s too good to pass up, and the one stipulation he gave me was that I had to pull out of any upcoming jobs.”

“But the contract—”

“We haven’t signed anything,” he says, and I immediately feel foolish, once again a clueless kid who stumbled into running this place and thought she could handle it. “It’s not binding. You haven’t even put down a deposit.”

Wilson is trying to ice me out, I think immediately, even though that seems like something a movie villain would do, and not some sixty-year-old tennis club maven. But it makes perfect sense. He’s already offered to buy the club, and now he’s backing me into a corner.

“So what am I supposed to do now?” I ask, my clothes itchy against my skin. It feels like everything is closing in on me—the walls, the bills, the cotton of my shirt. “Every other estimate I got was more than I can afford.”

And even Travis’s offer was more than I have right now. But at least it was what I can handle if we win at the tournament, something I could stick on a credit card and then pay off quickly. Now I am back at a very expensive square one.

“I can refer you to some folks,” he says kindly, but it does nothing to assuage the dread shaking me to my core. “I’ll reach out to some people I know, see what they’re charging these days.”

“This is really screwing me over, Travis,” I say, unable to hide how furious I am, my lip quivering. Something about this feels like it’s all too much. I’ve been juggling so many things for years now, and I don’t want to carry this stress anymore. I just want something, anything to be easy.

Last night with Niko felt easy, but that peace was short-lived.

“I know, and I’m sorry.” I can hear the sincerity in his voice, but it’s a tiny bandage that barely covers this giant, open wound of a situation. “It’s not personal.”

But everything about it feels deeply, pointedly personal.

“Oh yeah? Tell that to Wilson,” I snap as I force a pinched smile. “I’ll figure it out.”

“Your mom always did,” he says with a look on his face that I know he intends as kind, but appears way more like pity. “If you got anything from her, I know it’s that.”

I manage to hold it together as I let Travis out the door and lock up behind him, but once I check my watch and see I have exactly forty-five minutes to fall apart before we open for the day, the tears come sliding down my face. I lean over the desk, elbows bracing me as I sob into the palms of my hands.

“Why didn’t you do any of this?” I ask my mom out loud, though I know it’s impossible to get an answer. For all the ways my mom taught me to play pickleball and run the club, the finances were a thing she kept tight to her chest. I always thought it was because she didn’t trust anyone else to handle it, but now I wonder if she was trying to protect me from the reality of our precarious financial situation.

“Goddamn it,” I swear at her, at our dwindling bank account, and the universe. I can’t help it. I’m angry that she didn’t better prepare me and mad at myself for all the ways I didn’t pay attention, didn’t learn.

I know it’s no one’s fault, not hers, not mine. And I know the anger isn’t really about any of this. The anger is my grief. I can’t shake it, even two years later. I am just so mad she’s gone and furious at myself for not knowing how to pull myself out of this situation.

I’m peering into the darkened bedroom at Niko, still rumpled in my sheets and out to the world, when a text pops up on my phone. Hilariously, my first instinct—even though I am staring directly at him laid out in my bed—is to hope it’s from Niko. Over the last few weeks, seeing his name appear on my screen has been a bright spot, a shiny little moment that breaks up the mundane stretches of my day-to-day.

The last name I expect to see on my phone is Freddie Alwin.

Hi Bex , it reads, as a photo of Freddie grinning in his BIG DINK ENERGY shirt pops up underneath. How are things? Loving the shirt!

I stare at the words, unsure of how to even reply. How are things? Well, for starters, I have a man in my bed who I’m pretending to date when actually I’m developing very real feelings for him. That’s how things are right now. Thanks for asking!

As if he knows I’m thinking about him, Niko lets out a half groan, half yawn, dragging a hand across his face as he leans up on his elbows and surveys the room. It is undeniably sweet, like watching a baby deer try to walk for the first time.

“Hey,” he says in a scratchy morning voice as his eyes land on me standing in the doorway. “You need to get naked and get in this bed with me.”

“You’re bossy when you wake up.” I shuffle into the room and flop down next to him. His hand finds my stomach, and it’s warm and comforting against my skin. I roll closer and hook my leg over his hip as I press a kiss to his nose.

“I’m bossy all the time,” he corrects, snuggling in closer to face me.

“That’s very true.” I tweak his earlobe, run a finger over his eyebrows, and smooth out his hair. “You’re also a cute sleeper.”

Now that I can touch him freely, I can’t get enough. I’m like a kid who’s just had a soda for the first time and now won’t stop asking her parents when she can have a Coke again. Niko’s mouth finds my neck, and his lips flip on every switch in my body.

“Have you been up for a while?” he asks.

“I had to meet Travis about the court repairs,” I say and immediately my body sags with the stress of it all.

“Oh good,” he mumbles into my skin, lips electric against my collarbone.

“Not good. He just pulled out of the project. Wilson hired him and is paying, like, triple what the job here would have paid. He was the most affordable contractor by a mile.”

I feel him pause, and then he shifts to look at me, concern evident in his face. “What are you going to do?”

“What can I do?” I shrug, defeated. I dig around for some optimism, a glimmer of hope in my chest. Normally, I can find a silver lining somewhere. But right now, I come up empty. “Wilson’s already offered to buy the place, and I refused. I’m sure this is all part of his plan to push me out somehow.”

“Oh no.” He brushes a strand of hair away from my face, and once again I’m reminded of how nice it feels to be tended to, cared for. “Until a month ago, I really had no idea how cutthroat pickleball was. You all are like the mafia.”

I snort out a laugh. “He’s gonna make me an offer I can’t refuse,” I say, doing an absolutely abysmal Godfather impression.

“Seriously though,” he says, “how can I help you fix this?”

I fall back onto the pillows. “I don’t know,” I admit. “I have to think of something, because even if we win at the Paddle Battle, that money’s not going to cover everything I need to do here.”

He strokes the inside of my arm, a quiet touch of reassurance.

“I could ask Freddie Alwin,” I say and immediately feel Niko’s body stiffen and his hand pause. The panic is causing me to spitball, shooting out ideas I’ve never let myself think before. The desperation I felt a few weeks ago is nothing compared to the sinking feeling wrecking my insides.

“Bex, trust me,” he says, sounding resigned. “That guy is no good.”

“I know you don’t like him, but he’s practically pickleball royalty,” I explain. “Maybe he has some ideas on how I can raise the money for this place. Besides, you know, letting us kick his ass.”

“First of all,” he says, his voice returning to something slightly more playful, “ you’re the Pickleball Princess. He’s not deserving of any title other than King Asshole.”

“Okay, Tennis Prince.” I ruffle his hair affectionately. “But at this point, I need to try to work every connection I have. I can handle him.”

“I know you can.” He pushes himself up to sit, and it’s hard not to be completely distracted by his bare chest and the way his stomach muscles literally ripple as he moves. If we weren’t in the middle of this slightly awkward conversation, I’d straddle him and beg for a replay of last night. “I just wish you weren’t even entertaining the idea.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Because he, because we’re…” he starts, and then goes silent for a second before starting again. “I want to be the one to help you.”

He’s stumbling over his words like he’s not sure which one he wants to say first.

“You have helped me,” I say, squaring myself so that I’m sitting, legs crossed, directly across from him. “But this is something I need to figure out for myself.”

“But we’re in this together.” He says this with a touch of frustration, like I’m just not getting his point.

“But we got into this whole mess together based on a lie,” I remind him.

“Last night wasn’t a lie,” he says, and I can tell he’s exasperated. “That wasn’t me trying to pretend to date you for Angela’s sake. That was me, the real me, wanting to take you out. To do something special for you.”

“Yeah, and it was amazing,” I insist. “It was the best date of my life. If I’m being honest, it was kind of the only date I’ve been on, unless you count, like, tagging along to frat semiformals in college, which I don’t.”

Niko watches me, his fingers twisting with mine. He gives my hand a tug, and my eyes shoot up to his. “When you kissed me, that wasn’t a lie.”

He’s got me there. “No, it wasn’t. I’ve wanted to… I don’t know. You’ve maybe always been under my skin in some way. But you’re leaving soon to go off to that qualifier, and then what? Do you even know where you’ll be in a month? Because I’m going to be here. I’ll probably always be here.”

Niko is quiet, and for someone who puts so much thought into everything he does, I can tell he hasn’t actually thought about this.

“I am going to be as plainly honest with you as I can,” he says finally. He’s all flustered now, dragging his hand across his face. “I don’t know where I’m going to be in a month, no.”

Even though I’d just said this exact thing, the words sting more coming out of Niko’s mouth.

“I don’t know what I want to do with my life, Bex,” he says. “I don’t even know about next month.”

“You want to go back to playing tennis,” I tell him, because isn’t that what this whole thing has been about? “You’re going to get some publicity from this article, and the Paddle Battle, and then go do the qualifier in Miami, try to get into the draw. Go back on the road. Isn’t this the plan?”

He looks absolutely miserable. “I thought so, but then I met you and…” He pauses. “I’ve spent my whole life trying to prove something. When I was a kid, all I wanted was to show my dad that I was worthy of his attention. Then that worked too well, and I became a better player than he ever thought I could be, and so I kept going, because I wanted everyone to know that I deserved to be there. I fought so hard just to be considered worthy, and then just when it was all starting to happen, my brain betrayed me, and my body…”

He trails off and looks up at me, and it registers on his face that I’m not totally following. “What does your brain have to do with your knee injury?”

“In that match, I didn’t throw my racquet because I was angry with Freddie,” he explains with a pained look on his face. “That’s what I tell everyone, because it’s easier to explain…”

He lets out a long breath before continuing. “I was angry with myself. A few weeks before that, it just started happening. I knew what plays I needed to make, but I couldn’t get my body to cooperate.”

“You had the yips?” I ask, as parts of Niko’s story that never quite clicked for me suddenly fall into place. Immediately, I ache for him, a deep and raw sympathy that makes me want to scoop him up and hold him in my arms.

The yips are a real and painful thing—your anxiety basically stops your body from being able to play—and are still so stigmatized. I remember my mom explaining it to me at a Dodgers game when I was a kid, when the pitcher just suddenly started walking every batter, failing to throw in the strike zone. They were the reason Simone Biles pulled out of the Tokyo Olympics—in gymnastics it’s called the twisties—and she’d received so much unfair criticism for simply taking care of herself. They are a mental health crisis still often treated as a joke, and that persistent stigma must have made it that much harder for Niko.

“Had, or have,” he says with a bitter laugh. “I guess I’ll find out at the qualifier.”

“You know you could have told me this, right?” I tell him. “I’d never judge you about it.”

“I know you wouldn’t, that’s why I like you,” he says. “But you’re not the rest of the world. You’re not the press or the guys I used to play against, like Freddie. You’re not my dad.”

“Thank god for that,” I say, trying to lighten the mood. It’s a protective move, one I did so often when my mom was having an especially hard day.

“Can you believe that my dad was mad when I called and told him I wanted to stay here to help out Loretta?” Niko is visibly upset now, pent-up anger seeping out of him. “She’s his sister . He literally said to me, ‘What about your training?’”

I suck in a breath, remembering that phone call at the hospital, Niko muttering in Greek. I’d assumed he’d been the one trying to get out of staying. “Your dad sounds like a real jerk.”

“Yeah, he’s a piece of work.” He lets out a sad laugh. “You’d think his move across the ocean would make me less stressed, but I guess it’s hard to let go of wanting to make your parents proud.”

His words hit me instantly, reminding me of my mom wrapped up in blankets, sitting out on the court one last time. I’d been doing all of this for the very same reason.

“It is,” I say, stroking his arm. “You’re not the only one who has something to prove. But I also don’t think this is necessarily about Freddie, or old rivals, or bad news stories, or even your dad. Maybe you’re trying to prove something to yourself.”

“So what are you saying?” He looks up at me through soft, hooded eyes, and the sight of him like this, so unguarded and raw, threatens to split my heart right open.

“I think we both need to figure out our own shit.” My voice cracks, the words physically painful to say out loud. “And not by lying or pretending to be something or someone we’re not.”

“What about the Paddle Battle?” he asks.

“It can be our last hurrah,” I tell him. “But I don’t think it’s the solution to my problems. If we lose, then what? I need to figure out a real way to save this place. And I think Freddie can help.”

“Bex,” he says, wincing, “this is not how I want things to go between us.”

“I know,” I say, putting on a brave face. The urge to cry rushes through me, catching me off guard. “But it’s okay. You’ve helped me figure out what I need to do, and that’s been a huge gift.”

“Are we breaking up?” he asks me, and even though he’s got a slight smile on his face, his eyes look defeated, sad.

“I think so,” I say, nodding. I swallow the lump in my throat, pushing it down and trying to hide it away next to all the very real feelings I have for this man. “Though I’m not sure we can when we were never really dating.”

“Well.” He leans forward to kiss me, and I duck so that his lips land on my forehead. I don’t want him to see me cry. He wraps his arms around my waist, and I lean against him one last time.

“This was the best fake relationship I ever had,” he says.