Chapter 5
JASMINE KNEW SHE’D OVERSLEPT THE MOMENT HER EYES opened, the sun shining into her bedroom fully risen and blinding. She unplugged her useless phone and its nonexistent alarm from its charger and tucked it into her racket bag, ignoring the two missed calls from her dad and one from her mom.
She glanced around her bedroom to make sure she wasn’t forgetting anything, then lifted the strap over her head, laying it across her body. Down the elevator to the lobby, she groaned when she saw her dad sitting on the couch near the mailboxes, two cups of coffee in his hands.
“Off to practice?” he asked, though the answer was obvious. He offered her a cup, but she ignored it.
“I can’t stay. I’ll be late.”
She couldn’t hide her annoyance at seeing him and didn’t want to.
“Teddy won’t mind.”
She just looked away, so irritated that his knowing her new training schedule pissed her off.
“Did you mean what you said? You want us to stay out of your career? Do you not want us to come to London?”
“I want you there, but not if you can’t support me.”
He stood tall, his shoulders straightening, his voice rising in volume. “Of course we support you. We just want you to make the best choice for your future.”
“You don’t support what I want. You don’t support my dream, and I don’t need a reminder of that every time I see you guys from the court. Now I really am going to be late.”
She pushed past him, her shoulder colliding with the side of the doorway as her dad stood there, stunned at her words. He didn’t bother calling her back, and she flew down the pathway toward the practice courts but, more importantly, away from him.
She beat Teddy there, despite how late she was, but the grounds crew had already come and gone, the lines on the court meticulously painted and ready, as always.
Leaning against the chain-link fence, she caught her breath, staring out onto the water as the sun shined over the beach.
A perfect moment, the kind you see in movie montages where the athletes are training hard for the upcoming tournament, the big game, scene after scene of wiping sweaty foreheads, taking long sips from water bottles before putting them down and starting again, faces lit by the morning sun.
If only it were like that.
If only you could have a training montage and just be better.
In real life, you had to work for it, you had to feel every agonizing millisecond of every single training session for most of your life, and even then, sometimes, no matter how hard you tried, none of it mattered, and you had to push out the voices of your parents and coaches and friends who had lower expectations for you than you had for yourself. You just had to do it.
The chain-link fence shifted behind Jasmine and a shoulder bumped into hers. “Hey,” Teddy said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Nice view.”
“Same as always,” she said with a shrug. “You ready?”
“To kick your ass? Damn straight I am.”
They stretched out together, warmed up, and fell into their old routine even though they hadn’t met up in the morning like this in a long time, not since before Indy had arrived at OBX.
Teddy’s commitment to tennis began and ended with the fact that he happened to be good at it and that it was going to pay for four years at Duke.
As soon as he’d given a verbal commitment to the school in the fall of his junior year, his dedication to rising before the sun and meeting her on an empty practice court had waned, and so she’d compromised, moving their sessions to later in the day to allow him to sleep in.
Compromise, at least on her end, had pretty much defined their relationship for the last couple of years, right until the moment they’d drunkenly pressed their mouths together a few months ago.
Everything had changed that day, and they had fumbled to try to sort out their friendship.
But things were better now, and that was the important thing.
Even if he didn’t feel about her the way she felt about him, anything was better than losing him completely.
At least, that was what she was able to tell herself when she was in Paris and he was thousands of miles away.
Now, back home and seeing him every day, it was way harder, especially since he’d been the one to compromise this time, agreeing to meet up in the mornings because she had training with Indy in the afternoons. She couldn’t let herself read any more into that.
“What do you want to work on today?” he asked, rotating his left arm in large circles.
“Nothing. I just want to play. Let’s just play, okay?”
He flashed her a thousand-watt smile and her stomach tightened, but she fought the reaction. “All right, then, it’s on. You serve,” he said, tossing her a ball.
Jasmine flounced to the baseline. If he was going to be cocky enough to give her the advantage right off the bat, who was she to complain?
A few bounces of the ball at her feet, then she coiled down and let her body explode up and through the air, sending a well-placed serve up and out to his weaker backhand side immediately.
He returned it well enough and Jasmine saw him smile as his return mimicked her serve, forcing her to the backhand as well.
It was the look of someone who knew his opponent’s weakness.
Jasmine crossed over, compelling her shoulder to stay in, and fired a backhand up the line and out of his reach for a winner.
“Fifteen–love,” she said, not even bothering to check for the shock on his face, instead pulling a ball from the hidden pocket in her shorts and striding back to the service line.
By the time she looked up, ready to start the next point, he’d obviously gotten over it and was bent over, waiting for her to serve. He twisted the racket in his hands once, then twice. It was one of his tells. She’d pissed him off with that winner; he was playing right into her hands.
Her next serve was straight up the painted white T in the center of the court, and Teddy, letting his aggravation get the best of him, anticipated the serve, stepped around it, and fired a forehand ten feet beyond the baseline.
“Thirty–love,” she sang out as he retrieved the ball and tossed it back over to her side of the net.
“Don’t get cocky,” he shot back, twirling his racket again.
She piggybacked the serve up the T, then went charging up to the net, finally playing to her own strength, intercepting his return and spinning a short volley. It bounced twice, long before he could reach it.
A voice, familiar but completely unexpected, rang out from the sidelines. “Three in a row, Harrison. Maybe you should forfeit.”
She wore a bright red T-shirt with a bold white STANFORD across the chest. Amy Fitzpatrick, who hadn’t set foot on OBX grounds for four years, was standing at the gate to their court, looking just as gorgeous as the day she’d left for college and broken Teddy’s heart.
She was tall, extremely curvy in a way that Jasmine had always envied, with shining hair the color of warm honey.
Her generous mouth, perfectly glossed, was spread in a huge smile.
Jasmine’s racket slipped through her fingers, landing on the grass court with a soft thump. “Amy. Oh my God, what are you…?” She trailed off.
“Dom invited me down to work with the summer camps once school let out and I couldn’t say no.
As soon as I got here, I asked Roy where you were.
Not surprised to find you here, Jazzy, but Teddy Harrison out of bed at this hour?
That’s like some kind of miracle. The Teddy I remember liked to stay in bed as much as he could. ”
Stanford hadn’t done much for Amy’s subtlety.
“Amy,” Teddy grunted out. Jasmine flicked her gaze toward him, already knowing what she’d see. His jaw was clenched, the cords in his neck standing out and his shoulders high and tense.
“All this time and that’s all I get?” Amy asked, finally stepping through the gate and moving onto the court.
Not giving Teddy a chance to move away before she wrapped her arms around him and pressed her lips to the corner of his mouth.
Teddy stiffened and put his hands on her hips, moving her body away from his gently.
The corner of her mouth quirked up as she looked Teddy up and down. “You look good, Harrison.”
A choking noise escaped from Teddy’s throat. “Thanks, Amy, you too.” He looked to Jasmine and she opened her mouth to say something, but no words came out.
“And Jazzy. Look at you, exactly the same as I left you! Come here!” A split second later, it was Jasmine wrapped up in the arms of her former best friend.
The hug was soft and lingering. This girl who’d dumped Teddy before she left but simply faded from Jasmine’s life after a week or so away at school.
The loss of friendship had hurt, especially since Amy hadn’t had the decency to at least try to keep in contact, but Jasmine had gotten over it when the other OBXers had started to look up to her the way she had looked up to Amy.
Suddenly being at the top of OBX’s social food chain was a heady thing at sixteen.
Teddy, on the other hand, had been completely devastated and hadn’t settled into a relationship since, keeping things casual with as many girls as would have him. Just not Jasmine, apparently.
“I’ll, um, I’ll just leave you guys to it, then,” Teddy said, already moving away.
Amy pulled back from Jasmine immediately and reached out for him, grabbing his wrist. “No, you were in the middle of a session. Don’t let me interfere.”
“Nah, you two have catching up to do, I’m sure. I’ll just—I’ll see you later, Jas,” he said, but before he left, he leaned down and kissed her, his lips brushing the corner of Jasmine’s mouth, almost exactly as Amy had kissed him.
She flinched back and blinked at him, but he was already walking off the court, twirling the racket in his hand over and over again.