Chapter Thirteen #3
Lulu’s brows dipped as she put herself in Sapphire’s shoes. Not the four-inch heels she wore to celebrity functions. Those would kill her feet. Just her day-to-day shoes. And Lulu found, to her surprise, that she would not want to find her ex in bed with a new lover, either.
Tyler opened his mouth. Hesitated. Sighed, and said, “I told her about you. Last night.”
The heavy pickleball bag she had picked up was causing an ache in her arms. She set it back into the van. “What did you tell her?”
“About you and me.”
“Is there a you and me?”
“I hope so.” He waited, searching her face for a reaction. “Lu, I’m sorry. I didn’t do right by you. Can you forgive me?” Lulu pressed her lips tighter. “Please?”
Lulu frowned, but she could feel the frustration seep out of her like a deflating balloon. Her face softened.
Seeing it, a half smirk worked its way up Tyler’s lips.
“What are you smiling about now?” she asked, amazed at how quickly Tyler could move on from tension. It was a real skill, and one that Lulu had not yet mastered.
“I’m just happy to see you wearing your SPGs.” Tyler gestured at Lulu’s goofy-looking, lens-less glasses. Safety over style, Gwendy had explained.
“Well, it’s so I won’t get hit in the eye with the ball,” she said, and stuck a finger through the empty frame from the inside. “Alright. I’ll bite.” Narrowing her lids, she asked, “Why do you call them SPGs?”
“Sex Prevention Glasses. You wear those and nobody looks good anymore.” That got a hint of a smile out of her. “But just so you know, they don’t work on me.”
And here he was, Tyler-ing it up again. “Oh. You think women want to sleep with you no matter what you wear?” She shook her head at his arrogance.
“No. I mean, they don’t work on me when you wear them.
You could wear a cavewoman pelt and a bone in your hair and I’d still wanna take you back to my cave and…
” He smiled, the heat in his eyes enough to spark wet wood.
But from what she remembered of Tyler, wet wood was never an issue in the first place.
A blush spread up Lulu’s neck. She cleared her throat. “I think I’ll go get my regular sunglasses—”
“The plastic ones with the white rims and mirrored lenses?” Tyler looked aghast. “Please. Not the regular sunglasses. Those are the sexiest!”
She tried to keep a straight face, but she could already feel his magic working on her.
What had Tyler been guilty of last night?
Being too sensitive to his ex-wife’s feelings?
Now that seemed pretty justifiable, when it came right down to it.
Kinda noble. And here was that same guy who found a way to turn around her own mood, to lighten her energy, to lift her spirits in that playful way.
Funny how that same annoying goofball-ness could also be his charm.
Honestly, Tyler was charming her.
And who knew? Give him some time to work his way back, and she might even let him charm the pants off her.
Lulu scanned the gym. Her tourmates had made quick work of putting the nets together, but there was scant space for more than two taped courts. How would they ever fit the whole student body in this cozy gymnasium?
When Gwendy expressed her concern, Tyler, unfazed, passed out paddles to the group. “Don’t worry. I’ve got a plan. Let’s warm up before the kids get in here.”
Lulu positioned herself cross-court from Tyler and they dinked diagonally over the tape.
By the time they began a practice game, an echo of that old ease had crept back into their play.
Outside the gym, she heard the rain begin to fall again, hitting the metal roof.
As the storm intensified, the sound blanketed them in a percussive cacophony.
Between the hypnotic noise and the rhythmic pickleball, she could have played and played, letting her body and her mind remember that comfort level, that athleticism, their connection.
Her heart rate pumped, she glowed with perspiration, and her adrenaline soared.
She matched his pace and lost herself in play.
With the push-pull balance of their practice match, it was not lost on Lulu how close she had come to a sexy parallel with the same man the night before…
But then, voices and laughter breezed into the little gym.
Tyler held up a paddle to pause their play and strode across the gymnasium to crack open the door to the courtyard.
A throng of students waited under an awning, half of them soaking in the pouring rain.
One of the teachers tried to hold off the press of the excited teens.
“They heard we have a celebrity visitor!” he explained.
“Come on in!” Tyler called, welcoming the sopping crowd with open arms and readying himself for his fans.
En masse, the students streamed around him and mobbed Ariana Mora. They shouted her name. They touched her auburn hair. They took selfies and fangirled and fanboyed her while she graciously posed for each shot.
From the corner of her eye, Lulu saw Tyler shake his head at the ground and chuckle, embarrassed at his own assumption. She smiled. Humility looked good on him.
Once the ruckus died down, the team passed out loaner paddles and pickleballs to the newcomers.
Lulu couldn’t imagine what Tyler had in store.
He eyeballed the group of about forty teens plus several teachers, with only the playing space for eight people, tops.
A free-for-all game of dodgeball played with pickleballs and paddles?
Even for Tyler, that seemed chaotic and irresponsibly dangerous.
Alejandro interpreted while Tyler gave instructions, asking the students to spread out around the perimeter in concentric circles.
There was confidence in Tyler’s bearing—and the kids accepted his leadership readily.
“We’re going to do a skills drill,” he told them.
“Just you, the paddle, and the ball. In a moment, you’ll just pop the ball on top of the paddle, as many times as you can. And why do you think we’re doing this?”
Hands went up and Lulu smiled. He was a natural teacher. “For coordination?” one eager kid asked. “To win,” a young woman with attitude offered.
“Yes,” Tyler agreed. “Both. But mainly, for fun!” He demonstrated, and the kids mimicked his movements.
The sounds of the balls hopping, the students laughing, the balls rolling across the concrete floor, and the groans of frustration and yelps of joy bounced around the echoey gym.
Tyler taught them the selfie-bounce: a ball drop followed by a forehand hit in place.
He explained the shuffling move and the forehand and backhand swing, and let them practice those, too.
Lulu also practiced the moves and found her control and focus heightened with the simple exercises.
One of the teachers conferred with Alejandro and their guide explained that the students wanted to watch the tour group play.
At this, Tyler rallied. He tagged Lulu by the elbow and gestured for Gwendy and Bill to play opposite.
“Play to five,” he told them and then whispered to Lulu, “Take it easy on them.”
“Me take it easy?” Lulu kidded.
Lulu fell into an easy pattern of hits and noted how quickly the drills had drawn her focus to her light paddle touch.
She kept the ball low and shuffled her feet to meet the ball instead of stretching out of range.
Tyler paced his hits, offering easy gets to keep the ball in play.
At 4–4, Tyler watched Gwendy’s floater reach its zenith, took the time to smirk at Lulu, and then smoked the ball down the center between the opponents’ paddles… just to show he could.
Tyler beamed, raised his arms in victory, and soaked in the throng’s adoration.
With characteristic showmanship, he urged the spectators to applaud for Gwendy and Bill, and then, mugging for Ariana’s camera, he tugged Lulu’s hand in the air and the group erupted in cheers again.
The space filled with raucous shouts, and Lulu could feel the buoyancy and electricity of their support.
So this was what Tyler thrived on, she realized. It made sense. It did.
Tyler selected eight of the students, including the sassy teen, and set them up to play.
Outside the door of the gym, another thirty or more students clamored to get a peek inside.
When Tyler noticed, he shuffled one of the groups out and rotated the new kids into the gym, only pausing to give tips to the students on the courts.
Lulu marveled at his capacity to juggle all the balls at once, and wryly thought it was much better than his ability to juggle flaming paddles.
“Lu,” he called to her over the ever-rising sound of rain on the roof. “Teach this new group the drills we just did. I’ll get this group back to their classrooms.”
And he skipped out the gym door like the Pied Paddler leading a trail of eager followers, Ariana following behind, keeping it rolling.
Plunging into her teacher role with ease, Lulu decided to push herself and try out her Spanish.
Speaking slowly, she explained the drills to the new students, and even though parts of the description were mimed, the kids picked up the instructions, and she gave herself props for effort.
Eventually, she switched out the players with the drillers and rotated new students into the gym.
Truth was, there was a thrill to teaching something, anything, especially when the students wanted to learn what she was teaching. And these kids were all over it.