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Friday, April 14

MY MOM HAD a very simple philosophy for winning at pickleball.

1. The game is always played defensively, no matter which team is trying to get the point.

2. You don’t need to move fast; you only need to think fast.

. You must, at all costs, try to ignore the extremely sexy sounds Niko makes when he’s playing tennis on the court next to you.

Jesus, what? That’s not it at all. Get it together, Bex.

Ahem. The third rule is Think of the paddle as an extension of your arm.

It’s just kinda hard to remember Mom’s coaching advice with Niko grunting aggressively mere feet away, his damp black hair swept back away from his face with a white sweatband as he pounds the tennis ball with his racquet over and over and over again—

“Ten, eight, two!” Deb hollers the score of our lesson scrimmage from the other side of the court and snaps me out of my lusty daze. The neon yellow ball rockets over the net, demanding I pay attention to my actual job of teaching pickleball and not the way Niko’s snow-white collared shirt sticks to his broad shoulders in the sweltering Sunset Springs heat.

“Nice serve!” My paddle connects with the ball with a satisfyingly audible crack, a sound I instinctively know, after two weeks of playing next to him, that Niko can’t stand. He’s constantly whining about how loud pickleball is, and the thought of possibly chipping away at his serial killer focus reinvigorates me. I dash the last few steps toward the net, my bright pink skirt fluttering in the arid wind, as I stop just in front of the white line that marks the part of the court known as the kitchen.

Ed is already up at the net, and he dinks the ball—the pickleball term for a low lob over the net—back at me. It should be an easy shot to return. It’s one I’ve nailed a thousand times since my mom first dragged me out to play back in junior high, right after she herself painted the regulation lines of a pickleball court in almost the exact spot where I’m standing today.

Taking my time, I extend my paddle back behind me confidently, and for a moment, I can’t believe I was ever worried for a second about Niko distracting me today.

Clear eyes, full heart, can’t—

“ Uh! ” That voice rumbles low and deep somewhere off to my left, a guttural sound that drips with so much raw sex appeal that my whole body twitches in response. Unfortunately for me, this includes my arm, which is, as Mom always said, part of my paddle. It’s almost like she’s here right now shouting it in my ear.

Almost.

I whiff the ball awkwardly and pop it high up in the air, an amateur move. After Loretta, Deb is one of my most seasoned students, and she reminds me of this by smacking the ball with the kind of vigor I did not realize seventysomethings possessed until I started coaching pickleball. It whizzes by me like a bullet, and I miss the return shot completely, handing her and Ed the final point.

“Ugh, you guys win again!” I fall to my knees dramatically, play-acting like the sore loser tennis players I used to watch with Mom on TV as a kid. According to the tennis message boards I’ve picked through over the last two weeks, it’s the exact kind of move Niko was notorious for when he played on the professional circuit. Not that I’m surprised; no one who scowls as much as he does could possibly lose gracefully.

“That’s it, lesson over. I can’t handle this humiliation.” Groaning, I flop onto my back, the ancient, faded court warm with the seasoning of the sun as I blow a giant bubble of gum through my glossed lips. I’m a Trident Wintergreen obsessive, and there’s nothing my dentist can say to get me to stop chomping it constantly.

With a whoop, I fling my giant straw sun hat in the air, splaying my arms wide out by my side in defeat. My outfit has the air of a preschooler’s painting project—lots of color, minimal thought—just how I like it. Cropped vintage Rod Stewart T-shirt and the pink athletic skirt that I sewed specifically to complement the new fuchsia streak lighting up my otherwise bland, straw-colored hair. I’m pretty sure my socks are mismatched too, but luckily they’re low and barely visible from the electric-blue sneakers I scored on super sale at Tennis Warehouse in Riverside.

When I finally swing back around to sit, elbows on my knees, I find Deb packing up her bag and Loretta chuckling from the bench as she watches me, tipping a giant water bottle to her lips. She stayed away from the club immediately after her surgery, but on Monday, she texted me “I’m so bored!” and then next thing I knew, Niko was pulling up in front of the center, unloading her from the passenger seat of his rented Audi.

Niko. He peers at me from the adjacent court, and even though his eyes are unreadable, I can tell from the way his brows furrow downward that he’s judging me, as usual. I’ve diligently studied his movements since he showed up in Sunset Springs, hunting for some glimmer of something in him other than pure, unfiltered arrogance. My research thus far has been fruitless, even though his reputation as a difficult, stubborn a-hole on the court precedes him, especially after the video of his career-ending knee injury went viral online. “Temper-tantruming tennis star trips and busts knee after tossing his racquet, in a sure sign that karma is indeed real,” read one mocking internet headline.

And there were plenty more like that, an endless supply of Instagram posts, TikTok videos, and news articles that detailed everything from the fast rise of his professional career to one poorly played match he blamed on the quality of his socks. His socks! Almost every single one mentioned his moody, grumpy demeanor both on and off the court. A few even alleged that he planted such items himself in an attempt to craft his own notorious image.

But he was Loretta’s nephew, and I adored her, so how bad could he possibly be?

That bad, it turns out.

“What’s wrong, Nikolaus?” I hop up and offer him my most obnoxious grin before bending over to dust the fine desert sand off my knees. The stuff is everywhere out here. “Not used to seeing someone exhibit pure, unbridled joy before?”

His gaze slides down the length of my body, and a shiver runs through me despite all my better instincts. I would never admit it out loud, but these days, I feel desperate for any sort of hungry glance in my direction, even if it comes from the most miserable man I’ve ever met. My love life since moving back home after college is sadly a lot like Sunset Springs: a literal dry spell. My hometown may be a retiree’s paradise, but it’s a nightmare for a twenty-six-year-old single woman with a healthy sex drive.

Not that I didn’t want to be here. Moving back in with my mom immediately after graduating from college hadn’t exactly been part of my life plan any more than cancer had been a part of hers. But we were all each other had, and there was nowhere else I’d have rather been than by her side throughout the entire journey.

It was never a question of if I would take over the center. During that final summer of her life, before she entered hospice, we’d sit out on court 8—her favorite—in two old lawn chairs, watching the sunset over the jagged mountains. We’d talk about mundane things, club business mostly, but I knew that she was trying to set me up, in her own way, so that I could handle things when she was gone.

I just wish I had known then how much work it was going to be, how in over my head I would feel at times.

“God, your dad and I had no idea what we were doing when we redid the courts with asphalt,” she said to me on one particularly good night, just after the sun had melted into the horizon, leaving behind a trail of orange-pink sky. “We should have thought more about what would last long-term.”

“Yeah, but you guys didn’t have any money when you bought this place. That’s just what made the most sense at the time,” I said defensively, protective of the family lore I’d heard my entire life. “It was either asphalt or concrete.”

“Well, there’s nothing we can do about it right now.” She put on a rosy face, but it looked less like genuine optimism and more like masked panic. “We still don’t have the money.”

“You could always sell pictures of your feet,” I joked, and she recoiled with a horrified laugh.

“You’ve seen my bunions, Bex,” she huffed. “You’re just lucky you didn’t inherit them.”

“I just got your height and humor.” I stood up and slid my chair closer to hers, so that I could wrap an arm around her, my head tucked into her shoulder like a puzzle piece, proving my point. The exact same size, each topping out at a whopping five foot two.

“I like this,” she said, tugging at the strand of blue hair that framed my face. “But then again I like all your colors.”

“How did I end up with a mom who encourages experimenting with hair dye? I thought you were supposed to try to talk me out of such things.”

“Bex, you have always been colorful, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

There was a pause, a brief moment of sad stillness, and then she’d added, “Your dad too, I just know it.”

Sunset Springs Racquet Club was small but mighty, my parents’ pride and joy—and let’s be real, their other child—for almost thirty years. Mom once made a crack about how I was conceived on one of these courts after they celebrated closing on the place with a bottle of champagne, and judging from how in love my mom always described the two of them, I believed it.

My throat clenches ever so slightly as I try to let go of the memory of her, still so tender and raw. Just then Niko saunters over, pointing his racquet at the long crack that zigzags the length of the net, directly under my feet. “The court’s getting worse.”

“Yeah, well, we can’t all have U-C-L-A’s gold-star facilities,” I mug, deliberately dragging out the syllables of his alma mater’s name as slowly as possible. “Some people think it adds charm.”

“You would,” he says with a grimace, as he stretches a long, tanned arm across his chest, muscles flexing, and I feel that surge of frustration that always surfaces whenever I try to talk to him.

“I’m sorry, what’s that supposed to mean?” Sometimes he is such a classic, pompous jock that, if you told me he’d walked directly out of an eighties movie and right into present day, I’d believe you.

“You dress like a fireworks display,” he says with an aloof shrug.

Every time his eyes land on me, I feel the weight of his disgust hit me like an ocean current. It’s been obvious since day one what he thinks about me, the pickleball player stuck in her hometown, always a little too noisy, too bright, and too much. I like this about myself; I’m not ashamed of who I am or how I act. But I was mortified that I’d somehow allowed this random man, a mere stranger to me weeks ago, to have the power to make me feel like I should be.

I retaliate by doing something I know will drive him nuts and blow a bubble in his direction and then pop it loudly, delighting when he winces at the sound.

“So what you’re saying is that you’d rather I dress like…” I trail off, hands on my hips as I pretend to examine his outfit. “A human tablecloth? A virginal bride on her wedding day? A—”

“They’re tennis whites , Bex.” He shuffles on his feet, and when I look back up at his face I notice his brows shifting as he watches me. For a moment he even looks nervous. Good.

“They’re boring .” It’s not the best insult, but it’ll do.

“I think you’re just not used to seeing people in things that match.” He rubs a hand along the edge of his jaw, scratching at the shadow of a beard that somehow makes the angles of his face look even more razor-sharp.

“Rude!” I reply with a roll of my eyes. “Retta, did you hear what your nephew said?”

“Typical tennis player!” Loretta jokes, giving Niko a playful look. She adores him, but I chalk it up to them being blood relatives. No one on earth could voluntarily like Niko otherwise, especially someone as warm as she is.

“It’s almost five o’clock! We better hit the road,” Ed says with a smack of his hands on his thighs, as he slowly rises off the bench next to Loretta. “The grocery store calls.”

“I am expecting a charcuterie board tonight, Ed,” I tease. “You know I can’t play mah-jongg unless I’m stuffed full of cured meats, and I have a ton of emails to get through before I can come over. Expect a ravenous competitor.”

The words come out sounding overeager and excited to be invited, which, honestly, I still kind of am. When Loretta invited me to join their weekly game last winter, it had been my first social interaction since… well, forever.

“You know you’re welcome to join us,” he cajoles Niko, who’s still hovering a few feet away, arms across his chest. “I’m sure Bex is dying to beat you.”

Niko shakes his head, and I feel a twinge of embarrassment as he’s reminded of the fact that a group of septuagenarians picked up on my glaring lack of a social life and took pity on me.

“I’ve got conditioning tonight.” He gestures to the basket of tennis balls next to him. Conditioning, as I’ve learned in the two weeks that he’s been here, is something he does most nights, when it’s cool and crisp outside. It involves him doing a bunch of speed drills on the court, and then setting up the automatic ball machine and playing against it for hours, sometimes until the court lights shut off at eleven. “And then I have a call with a reporter who’s doing a story on me for the LA Times .”

This piques my curiosity, but I don’t indulge it, knowing it would almost surely crank up his ego another notch. Instead, I give him an overly pleasant forced smile. “Remind me, how many more weeks do we have the pleasure of you being here?” I ask.

“Six,” he says, giving me a wolfish scowl. “Are you already sad I’m leaving?”

“No, just counting the days and wanted to make sure I mark my calendar accordingly.”

The two of us pause as Loretta, Ed, and Deb leave the court, and it’s quiet for a moment, a silent standoff.

Niko is the first one to break. “Have a great time with your fellow old folks.”

He cracks into a smile that’s anything but warm.

“And you enjoy your hot date with the ball machine,” I quip, turning on my heel with a wave. “I hope you get lucky.”

“At least that’ll be one of us,” he mutters back at me, jogging off before I can get the last word in. I spend the rest of the walk to the front office trying to think of a comeback to put him in his place but come up empty and instead fixate way too long about the sounds he must be making out alone on the court.