Chapter Six #2
Ariana’s low, wry voice caught her off guard. “The Rocket…” she murmured, her voice laced with innuendo. “Looks like someone wants to see that rocket blast off.”
“What?!” Lulu’s gaze shot away from Tyler. “No. I was just…zoning out.”
Ariana’s brows leapt in mock surprise. “Mm-hmm.” The younger woman’s eyes twinkled. “So. Are you tapping that paddle?”
“Tapping that—? No!” Lulu sounded defensive. Tapping that fickle player? That married, self-centered, vacation-interloper? Not a chance.
Ariana regarded her curiously. “Ah,” she said, her expression full of newfound understanding. “Okay. I get it. You aren’t tapping that paddle yet, but you want to tap that paddle.”
“What? No!” Lulu sputtered. “There’s no paddle tapping. No tapping of paddles.”
“Hey.” It was Tyler, right behind her. Where had he come from? “Did someone say paddle tap?” Before she could register the full intention of his action, he thrust his paddle her way.
Lulu stared at him, confused. “It’s pickleball etiquette,” Tyler clarified. “Just tap the paddles together. That’s all. Just being friendly.” He took her in, his pupils dilating to the size of Oreo cookies. “Friendly” was not quite the right fit.
Realizing she was standing there like a dolt, Lulu reacted. Jolting forward, she clapped the plastic edge of her paddle against Tyler’s.
He gave a mock shiver. “Wow. Big tap action there. Have fun today,” he said, and swooped away, leaving Lulu wondering how much of their conversation he had overheard.
Ariana shot Lulu a smug look. “Yeah. It’s always awkward the first time you tap paddles, but you’ll get the hang of it.”
Nearby, a fit older woman sidled up to Gwendy and snagged her for a partner, marching her off to a far court.
Before she knew it, Lulu, too, was standing behind the baseline, paddle in hand, facing off against two teenagers.
Alejandro introduced Lulu to Fernando, an athletic, silver-haired guy who would partner with her, and Lulu, heart racing, tried out some of her high school Spanish.
“Soy Lulu. This is only my second time playing pickleball,” she admitted.
Braving it, she tried. “Mi segundo vez.” Turning to Alejandro and Ariana, she said, “I really want to work on my Spanish on this trip.”
“Well, Fernando here is a great one to start practicing with,” Alejandro remarked.
Fernando nodded at her efforts. As they began their game, she and Fernando made quick work of advancing against their opponents. Her tennis slice and his pickleball finesse outmatched their younger opponents’ speed and power.
Every so often, she caught sight of Tyler in her peripheral vision.
Across the courts, he played with Bill opposite a couple of local guys, stopping often to offer pointers.
In between points, Tyler demonstrated swing techniques and showed the players how to cover the center to give their partners time to move forward.
Two games in, the heat began to take its toll.
Lulu guzzled from her bottle and watched across the courts, her gaze fixed on Tyler, who crouched, sprang, and leapt across the court like a wild animal performing ballet.
And once, when she was ogling him, he turned his head between points and looked right at her.
His face lit when their eyes connected, and he gestured, You and me? Then swung a paddle at the air.
Lulu continued to stare, unmoving. The idea of playing with him instigated a fluttery nervousness, not just about him judging the level of her skills.
There was this strange whooshing sensation, a lightheadedness, at having been singled out for special attention by Tyler Demming.
Was she…swooning? Oh god. She did not want to swoon.
Biology, Lulu assured herself. Her reactions to Tyler were perfectly normal, biologically induced responses to the presence of a nearby male…who had just caught her staring and was now clenching his pecs for her benefit, bumping them in alternating beats against his thin T-shirt.
The nerve! He was so…so…full of himself! And the naughty recesses of her brain whispered, Now wouldn’t you like to be full of himself?
What?! Stop. Bad thoughts. Stop.
Beside her, a distant voice seemed to be calling out a score. Fernando cleared his throat, and she jerked her focus back to her own court.
At the game’s end, Fernando nodded his chin toward Tyler. “Tu novio?” he asked.
Her boyfriend? She shook her head, embarrassed that both Ariana and now Fernando had picked up on her unwitting glances. “Oh. No. He’s not…He’s…”
“Ah,” he switched to English. “As you say, ‘I think you are in denial.’ ” Before she could protest, he gave her a wistful smile. “People think there’s limited love in the world, that it costs us something to hand it out for free. But there’s lots of love, and when you give it away, it multiplies.”
Lulu smiled, reminded of her uncle Rooster’s armchair philosophizing.
Fernando gestured poetically. “Me? I love people, but I am saving the tenderest part of my heart for someone special. I know she is out there,” he continued, “so I come out here and play every now and then. And I keep hoping that one day, this woman, the pickleball player of my dreams, will be here, too. You never know, right?” His eye glimmered with his vision, and Lulu wished she had a list of contacts at her fingertips of fifty-something, pickleball-playin’ single ladies. She bet Fernando would be a real catch.
“Lu.” Tyler jogged up beside her, and Lulu brushed away the unbidden, nostalgic reaction to the sound of her childhood nickname on his tongue. He nodded his chin toward an empty court. “How ’bout I give you some pointers?”
“I’ll leave you to it,” Fernando said, his eyes narrowing knowingly. On the far court, Gwendy and Bill were already beckoning Fernando into their spiderweb. “If you’re still around tomorrow morning,” Fernando mentioned, “a few of us are meeting to play at eight.”
Lulu thanked him, but Alejandro’s itinerary had them leaving town that afternoon. She watched him depart and turned to find Tyler yanking a bright green pickleball from his pocket.
“You ready?” he asked, giving his paddle a playful swing and tilting his head in invitation. “How ’bout I drill you?” Tyler asked.
Her jaw dropped a sec before she rearranged her face to show she knew what he meant right off the bat.
Drill you. Come on. Why was pickleball so ripe with innuendo?
She knew he was doing it on purpose. Just like back in their high school days, when they would rib and one-up each other, he was just laying it out there.
But definitely flirty. And steamy-flirty at that. Player! her good sense reminded her.
Lulu pushed her brain past the middle school puns.
Tyler was, after all, a pickleball pro. She should grab hold of this opportunity.
So she pulled her focus to the game, and they began, keeping the ball low with basic hits at the net.
Straight dinks, diagonal dinks; she could keep it up all day long.
They progressed to quicker volleys at the net and she fell into the pattern of moving her body and reacting to his hits.
Back in high school, she and Tyler played on separate teams, but hitting together during the offseason had kept their games tight.
Now, with her attention on the ball, she steered clear of letting herself revisit the tingling magnetism that used to accompany those sessions. Mostly, she was successful.
Tyler caught the ball. He waved her to the net, and when they were close, he said, “I didn’t get a chance to say it earlier. I know us being on this trip together was a surprise to both of us. But”—he shrugged—“I was really happy to see that you were here.”
Lulu smiled politely, keeping her reaction cool. Civil.
Dropping his gaze to the ball that he was rolling between his fingers, he said, “It’s…
it’s really, really good to see you, Lu.
” Lulu watched the slow bob of his Adam’s apple.
“You know, you’ve got some pickleball skills.
Especially considering you’ve just started playing.
You must have kept up with your tennis.”
“Uh. Not really. No time. Not with work and motherhood and all.”
At the word motherhood, Tyler glanced up like he wanted to ask a question, but then decided against it. “So. What kind of work? I mean, if you don’t mind me asking.”
It was weird. She knew so much about him: his work, his marriage.
His life had been open to the public while hers was a private world.
But the chasm that separated the closeness they used to feel for each other had grown too wide.
She wanted to unburden herself about her precarious job situation, but Tyler was just asking in that polite way one would ask an acquaintance, How’s life been treating you?
So she answered in kind. “I’ve been teaching. Business classes. To high school kids.”
A smile sprouted on his cheeks. “Business, huh? I bet you’re a good teacher. Super prepared. I can picture it.”
Lulu gulped, working to mask the washing machine cycle of emotions spinning in her chest. It was true.
She was a good teacher, and she knew it.
How could she tell him that she was hanging on to her classroom by a thread?
In that moment, she was tempted to open up to him, but the Tyler who would have empathized with her had stepped out of her life years ago.
“So do you coach tennis at the school?” he was asking.
“Coach? No. This is the first time I’ve been on a court since we played back on Bainbridge.”
Shaking his head he said, “You wouldn’t know it. With a little work, you could transfer your net skills to pickleball, no problem. If you like it, just practice. You’ll get good, fast.”