20. Piper
PIPER
Was Judy punishing me? I scrubbed the mirror in the same bathroom I had deep cleaned only two days earlier. The marble countertops gleamed, the faucets sparkled, and I was pretty sure that someone could eat off the floor.
Three days ago, Gideon walked away from me in the driveway, and I still couldn’t force myself to eat.
I kept replaying the conversation, wondering if there was anything I could’ve said or done differently.
There wasn’t. Unless I could go back in time and tell him the truth the night we spent searching for Pussy.
The sound of heels clicking on marble brought me out of my cleaning hyperfocus. Judy appeared in the doorway, wearing a crisp white tennis outfit. “Kiddo, you’ve been cleaning that mirror for ten minutes. It’s not going to get any cleaner.”
Judy was a good person, but her contradictions were giving me whiplash. Did she want the perfectly clean bathroom cleaned again or not? I set down the spray bottle. “Sorry. Just being thorough.”
“Mmm.” She studied me. “Maybe you should take a break. Come and hit some balls with me at the club. Lisa mentioned you’ve been playing pickleball with the girls.”
“I went once. I’m sure there are much better players to dink around with.”
Judy’s lips twitched into a smile at the pickleball reference. “Lisa said you’re a natural.”
“Thank you, but I should finish the bathrooms.”
“The bathrooms are finished. They’ve been finished since yesterday.” Judy crossed her arms. “Go. Exercise will help with the moping.”
“I’m not moping.”
“You’re absolutely moping. And while I appreciate your dedication to making my toilets sparkle, you need some fresh air. It can’t be good breathing in these chemicals all day long.”
Sometimes Judy was out of touch, and this was one of those times. It wasn’t exactly my dream to inhale Mr. Clean all day long. “Judy, I need to get as many hours in as possible this week.”
“Ah, I see.” Judy nodded, her hand on her chin. “Well, I need a dinking partner, and I can’t find one. I’ll double your cleaning wage if you come to the courts with me.”
Twenty minutes later, we pulled into the club parking lot in Judy’s Mercedes. I breathed a sigh of relief when I didn’t see any of Gideon’s fleet of cars in the parking lot. Lisa was waiting by the valet stand, paddle in hand. “There she is. How are you holding up?”
“I’ve been better.” I grabbed Judy’s pickleball bag from the back seat and glared at her. “I thought you said you didn’t have anyone to play with?”
Judy shrugged. “We need four.”
We walked toward the courts, passing a group of women in matching tennis outfits clustered around a table at the clubhouse restaurant.
I recognized a couple of them as the group of ABCLWL club that had been on the jumbotron at the game.
Judy bopped off to network with her Ladies Who Lunch crew.
There were plenty of players here. I was Judy’s pity pickleball partner.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Lisa leaned into me as we passed the Desperate Housewives of the Azalea Bay Club.
“Not really,” I said, though that wasn’t entirely true. I wanted to talk, but every time I thought about it, I could only see myself as the pathetic liar who’d convinced herself she could be someone else for a few weeks.
Lisa stopped walking. “Piper. What happened?”
“I screwed up, Lisa. Really screwed up.”
“You?” Lisa’s eyes widened. “I thought for sure it was him who had done something.”
The judgment in his voice wasn’t exactly nothing, but if there was a bad guy in our story, I was it.
“It was me. He thought I lived in the Lockelhursts’ house.
Like, it was mine. He made assumptions, and I didn’t correct him.
He saw me as a person from his world, and…
I let him. I didn’t tell him about Olive or about my job.
I screwed up.” My voice trembled. “It was so good with him. But when he found out the truth, he was pissed. It’s probably a good thing anyway. We never would’ve worked.”
Lisa was quiet for a moment. “I know you really liked him. That must have been hard.”
“He looked at me like I was a stranger. Like everything between us had been fake. The only thing that wasn’t real was my address, job, and parental status.” I swallowed hard. “Maybe it was fake.”
“Was it? Fake, I mean.” A cacophony of laughter broke out from the table of women. Judy’s laugh was the loudest. Her arms flailed wildly as she continued with her story. We had a few minutes before whatever scene she was re-enacting was done.
“No.” The word came out sharp. I softened my tone and made sure no one was eavesdropping. “None of it was fake. Not the way we talked, or laughed, or…” My cheeks heated, remembering his hands on my body. “Not any of it.”
“Then maybe he just needs time to process.”
“Lisa, you didn’t see his face. He was done. Completely done.” I shifted my paddle to my other hand. “And honestly? Maybe that’s for the best. I mean, what was I thinking? That a professional athlete would want to date a single mom who cleans houses?”
“Hey.” Lisa’s voice was sharp. “Don’t talk about yourself like that.
I understand why you didn’t tell him. He’s the one who’s walking away because he can’t handle the truth of who you are.
That says more about him than it does about you.
It makes me sick. You’re a wonderful person, and any man would be lucky to have you. ”
“Right. That’s why I’m alone at twenty-three with a five-year-old and two jobs.”
“You have two jobs?”
“I’m about to. I need the money for a few lessons for Olive…” I trailed off as Judy sashayed over to us.
“Shall we play?” She gestured to the courts like a butler.
As we walked to the courts, Lisa turned to me. “Piper.” There was excitement in her voice. “I might have a solution for Olive. Nikki is spending the year in Switzerland, so her daughter’s spot opened up. It’s pricey, but it’s a hell of a lot cheaper than private lessons with the Myers sisters.”
My heart jumped. “Really? When?”
“Applications are due next week. It’s ten thousand for the year, but—”
“Ten thousand?” My heart didn’t just nosedive; it crashed into the pavement and exploded. “Per year?”
“It’s elite-level coaching, Piper. The best instructors, small class sizes, tournament travel…”
Ten thousand dollars might as well have been ten million. “Right. Of course it is.”
The pickleball game was a disaster. My muscle memory kicked in after the first few points, and soon, I was making points and remembering to stay out of the kitchen. The speed and close proximity to the other players was challenging, and I had to hold myself back from hitting all of Judy’s shots.
The disaster was that I was too good.
“Wow,” gasped Izzy, our fourth player and one of Judy’s ABCLWL friends. “Where did you learn to play like that?”
I’d just executed a perfect cross-court dink that dropped exactly on the kitchen line, unreturnable. The kind of shot that required years of training and natural talent.
“I used to play tennis,” I mumbled, trying to dial back my intensity, but once you’re a competitive athlete, it’s hard to play games casually.
“Tennis?” Izzy exchanged a look with Judy. “What level?”
“Just… college level.” I served the next ball with the intention of making it easy for Lisa to return. She did, but Judy fanned the ball on our side. She was too close to the net. I could’ve lunged and smashed it from her side of the court, but I didn’t, and we lost the serve.
Judy crossed her arms. “Piper, you’re holding back. Don’t you dare.”
If Judy wanted to win, I would make it happen. For the next twenty minutes, I played like the athlete I used to be. I covered the court like I owned it. Even Lisa, who was pretty good, could barely keep up.
When we finished, I was slightly winded while the others were panting.
“Wowza.” Izzy fanned herself with her visor. “I haven’t been schooled like that since I played Janice Winger n an exhibition match.”
“Janice Winter? The retired tennis pro?” I asked.
“Well, Chelsea and I played doubles against her and Lindsay Nichols at a charity event. We got pickled, but still.” She laughed. “What are you doing mopping floors? You should be teaching or even playing on the circuit.”
The comment stung, but I forced a smile. “Pickleball doesn’t pay the bills.”
After Izzy left, Lisa pulled me aside. “I take everything back about you being rusty. That was incredible.”
“Thanks.” I grabbed my water bottle, suddenly exhausted.
“How good were you back in the day? Really?”
A new foursome had taken their spots on the court. “Good enough I thought I had a future in it.”
We walked into the clubhouse to grab some water, and that’s when I noticed the bright yellow flyer on the bulletin board. “Annual Azalea Bay Doubles Pickleball Tournament,” it announced in bold letters. “Grand Prize: $25,000.”
I stopped walking. Twenty-five thousand dollars. Half of that was enough for camp.
“Lisa.” My voice came out strangled. “Look at this.”
She followed my gaze to the flyer. “Oh, that. It’s a big deal. They bring in teams from all over Florida. Very competitive.”
“Twenty-five thousand dollars.”
“For first place, yeah. But Piper, these are serious players. People who’ve been playing for years, some of them former tennis pros.”
Former tennis pros. Like me, except I’d quit before I’d had a chance to go pro. I stared at the flyer, my mind racing. I was rusty, sure. I hadn’t touched a racket in years. But muscle memory was a hell of a thing, and pickleball was just tennis with different rules.
“When is it?”
“Three weeks from Saturday. But you’d need a partner, and—”
“I’ll find a partner.”
Lisa looked at me like I’d announced I was taking up the playing the bagpipes. “Piper, I know you’re desperate for the money, but this isn’t some casual club tournament. These people are serious.”
“So am I.” I pulled out my phone and took a picture of the flyer. “I was good at tennis, Lisa. Really good.”
“I know you played in college—”
“I had a full ride. I was ranked in the top fifty junior players in the country.” The words felt strange coming out of my mouth. It sounded like I was bragging, and I was. “I would’ve gone pro if…”
“If what?”
“If I hadn’t gotten pregnant with Olive.” I touched my stomach reflexively, remembering how I’d hidden the pregnancy for months, playing through morning sickness and exhaustion until I couldn’t hide it anymore. “I lost the scholarship, and my parents disowned me.”
Lisa’s expression softened. “Zeesh, Pipes. Why have you never told me this? That’s super traumatic. What a sacrifice.”
“It wasn’t a sacrifice. Olive is the best thing that ever happened to me. But until Olive came along, tennis was my identity, my escape from…” I gestured vaguely to the opulent clubhouse. “From being poor.”
“Look, even if you enter the tournament, you still need a partner. And finding someone good enough to actually win…” Lisa shook her head. “I mean, I’m decent, but we’d totally get pickled in the first round.”
Before I could respond, the sound of male laughter erupted from the bar on the patio.
A group of men in golf clothes were ordering drinks, and one of them was huge, with shoulders like a linebacker.
I froze but softened when I realized the broad back didn’t belong to Gideon. “Hockey players.” I rolled my eyes.
“Yeah, some of the Barracuda players come here to golf. A few of them play pickleball too.”
My stomach clenched at the mention of Gideon’s team. “Do you work with any of them? As patients, I mean?”
Lisa’s gaze dropped, and then she looked at me with a neutral expression. “You know I can’t discuss my patients, Piper. Confidentiality and all that.”
Right. Professional boundaries. I turned back to the flyer, memorizing the details.
The entry fee was five hundred dollars per team.
Registration closed in two weeks. “I’m going to do this, Lisa.
I’m going to find a partner and enter this tournament.
” The entry fee money was going to be tricky, but there had to be something in my house I could sell.
How much was a Miami Barracuda jersey worth?
“Piper—”
“I have to try. For Olive.”
Lisa sighed. “Okay. If you’re serious about this, we need to get you back in shape. Real shape, not just casual pickleball shape. And we need to find you a partner who won’t hold you back.”
“Any ideas?”
“A few. But first, let’s see what else you’ve got.” She grabbed her paddle. “One game wasn’t enough to show me what a former top fifty junior player can really do.”
As we walked back toward the courts, I caught a snippet of conversation from the bar area.
“…that hit was brutal…”
“…wonder if he’ll be back this season…”
“…physio is tough, man…”
It was hard not to eavesdrop, but I reminded myself that whatever was happening with the hockey team wasn’t my business. This tournament, this chance to give Olive everything I’d lost, that was my future.
I just had to figure out how to win it.