Chapter One #2
“O-kay.” Lulu pinched the bridge of her nose. “You just sent that.” Carson Manning was probably jumping up and down on his bed or texting his classmates about his first A ever. “I better take back the wheel.”
“One more. Let me try one more.” Laverne fiddled with the mouse, scrolling through the student names and checking and unchecking boxes.
“You don’t have to do all that. Just click on another student. Here.” Lulu reached over and pointed the cursor on Kavya Bhatt’s responses. “Try Kavya. She writes well.”
From under the table, Zoe murmured, “I need to go potty.”
“One sec, sweetie.”
A light thunk sounded from beneath them, followed by several seconds of silence while Zoe waited for some kind of validating reaction. Then the toddler struck up a piercing wail.
Nipping back into the kitchen from, well, who knew where—Lulu had long since given up guessing how her uncle always seemed to be at the ready—Rooster found his granddaughter and ducked his head beneath the table. “I gotcha. Papu’s gotcha.”
“Oh, this student’s answer is much better than the other one,” Laverne said, invested in Kavya’s business plan.
“Listen to this.” She read, “ ‘There are many ways to attract consumers to products, but traditional advertising is not always the solution. Sometimes, stirring up bad press is a great way to get attention from your target audience. Like how “The Rocket” got himself kicked off the pickleball pro tour. On purpose, if you ask me. And now, everybody’s talking about his brand.’ ” Laverne squinted. “The Rocket?”
“The Rocket?” Rooster set his granddaughter on her feet. “Whoo, boy. She’s got that right. Everybody’s talking about Tyler ‘The Rocket’ Demming.”
At the mention of Tyler’s name, Lulu’s head snapped up. She shot her uncle a startled look. Rooster guffawed. “You didn’t hear about that? Tyler Demming. Your old tennis team friend, right? Hold on. Let me find it.”
“Rooster…” Laverne warned, shooting her husband a meaningful look. “I don’t think Lulu wants to see that.”
But Rooster had already pulled up the video and pressed the phone into Lulu’s palm. Heart jackhammering, Lulu’s mouth dropped open as she watched the action on the little screen.
There was Tyler Demming in all his long-haired, tatted-up glory.
Just as handsome, maybe even more so than when she’d last seen him in the flesh fifteen years ago.
Just as dreamy as the night when they’d lain on the cool pavement of the moonlit court and he had promised to never break her heart—and then instead went and crushed it to smithereens.
Sure, she had caught glimpses of him in the media over the years.
During the hype about his switch from tennis to pickleball and his subsequent rise to glory on the small court, it seemed Tyler Demming was everywhere.
Lulu would be going about her day when his famous physique would pop up online, advertising men’s cologne and boxer briefs and teeth whitener.
Or gracing the cover of the sports section of the Seattle Times when he took gold at pickleball nationals.
Or in those static images in tabloids at the supermarket checkout line, where she learned that the player had finally settled down and married the foxy sports commentator Sapphire Roe.
At that last thought, the residue of a thing she refused to call jealousy flitted through her brain. She pressed her lips into a thin line.
Now, as Tyler “The Rocket” Demming smirked at the camera in living, moving color, her nerves began to whistle.
Fifteen years had almost been long enough for her to get over her mixed feelings for him, a push-pull that felt like it was breaking her apart.
But the sensory reverberations still clung to her.
Tyler’s muscles glistened with a sexy sheen of recent exercise, and he beamed with his annoyingly charismatic grin.
“Winner, winner!” Tyler crowed as he pulled several paddles from his bag.
Laying the paddles on the pavement, he took his time swaddling the handles in cotton bandages.
The video caption scrolled. Wild-man Tyler “The Rocket” Demming Takes Gold but Gets Tossed Off Tour.
“Unbelievable.” Lulu shook her head in disgust. Of course he would go ahead and throw away a golden opportunity. Talk about on-brand.
“Just watch,” Rooster crowed, still absorbed in the video. “It’s a doozy.”
“Rooster. Turn that racket off,” Laverne urged, but by now, both Lulu and Rooster were hypnotized by the action.
Lulu glared at the screen in disbelief as Tyler, a mischievous gleam in his eyes, held the paddle heads and took a lighter to the wrapped handles.
Whooping with glee, the pro player began juggling the flaming pickle paddles.
Mid-toss, he called out, “This is for you. You know who you are!” He beamed and shouted, “And now, the spin maneuver!”
Lulu scolded the part of her brain that wanted to stare, not at the spectacle, but at his sculpted limbs and fluid athleticism.
Because she was over him. Enough of her precious months had been wasted pining over that lost love.
Tyler Demming was nothing more than a pinching reminder of a difficult time.
But just look at him. Look at him! If ever she needed a reminder of Tyler Demming’s flaws, it was right there in front of her. In that full-of-himself, overconfident, bullshit artist with the tattoos drawing her attention to his glistening, muscled biceps. Dammit!
His skin had been untouched when they were together. Now tattoos moved with each flex of his perfectly conditioned muscles. Yep. He was still hotter than a baked potato thrown in a hot-oil fryer and then nuked in the microwave.
Lulu swallowed hard. “Idiot,” she mumbled.
“Idiot,” Zoe parroted from somewhere near the refrigerator and then added, “Look! I pottied all by myself.”
“Code yellow. Code yellow,” Rooster called.
But Lulu could not take her eyes off the miniature screen.
Paddles a-flyin’, Tyler executed a 360. Mid-twirl, he glanced up at the windmilling flames, shrieked, and jumped backward without catching a single one.
Noisily, the paddles scattered across the pavement, where they sparked and smoldered—all except one, which flew onto the straw-colored grass of the empty spectator area.
The spark caught, and in seconds the flame rolled across the dry grass.
Another caption rolled. Demming Charged with Reckless Endangerment and Destruction of Property. Whoever was holding the camera yelped, and when the video righted itself, Tyler was aiming the lens at himself. “I promised that if I won gold, I’d juggle fire. And I keep my promises.”
Rooster chuckled, and the reel started again. Lulu felt her hands curl into fists. Tyler Demming. Lighting the paddles. Juggling them. Setting the field on fire. Again with his swagger, his smugness, those damned taut buttocks.
Her head swam with the fury and disappointment that she had managed to keep at bay for fifteen years.
But now, here was Tyler Demming butting into her life again when she was simply minding her own business.
Lulu watched, her attention trapped in the looping video, finding the whole spectacle seriously triggering.
Because there was no deeper betrayal, Lulu thought, than to draw in your rival, seduce her, then disappear in her moment of need without looking back.
Beneath the video, she caught a glimpse of the final caption. The Rocket Keeps His Promises.
Lulu’s eyes narrowed to slits and her back teeth clamped together.
Forget about him, she told herself. Take ten calming breaths.
One. Two…okay. Screw that. She may be over him now, but Tyler Demming had been the crush and the curse of a lifetime.
And right now, the curse had returned with a vengeance.
Her voice erupted like years of contained lava. “Keeps his promises! Ha!”
Wrath lifted her to her feet, but a rush of dizziness threw off her footing. Still, her tirade continued, even as she threw out her hands to steady herself. Even as she fell toward the keyboard that would seal her fate.
Even as the heel of her palm landed on the record button.
Her voice had reached a venomous peak. “Are you fucking kidding me?!” Lulu fumed. “That is the biggest load of bullshit I have read in my life.”
Ping, went her laptop. On her screen 153 check marks rippled down the line.
Message sent to all students.