Chances for Serendipity

by Natalie Chung

  I grumbled as I went to collect it. My shorts lacked pockets to hold any extra balls. Why couldn’t I get anything right today?

  For my next serve, I didn’t even bother to bounce the ball. I straight-up flung it high like I knew what I was doing.

  Except my racket hit nothing but air. The ball grazed my arm before dribbling to a stop on the ground.

  “Double fault!” Liz yelled.

  “Bright observation, Liz!”

  She grinned, curving her hands around her mouth like a speakerphone. “Love–15!”

  “Stop embarrassing me!”

  “You’re doing a good job of that yourself!”

  From the benches behind Liz, Aiden threw his head back and laughed. His older companion wasn’t next to him; he stood with a mobile phone pressed against his ear, his attention elsewhere. At least someone was completely unaware of my incompetence. But that meant Aiden was most likely laughing at me.

  I slapped my thighs. Get a hold of yourself, Serena Tsang! Who cared if he laughed at me? I would show him. I went to pick up the ball again. Maybe the ball hated me, or maybe I hated the ball. Maybe we both hated each other. It didn’t matter.

  Squeezing the ball tight, I willed it to forget whatever grudge we had against one another. Let’s do this. Less force, more accuracy. Emotions could make or break you. In my case, frustration was breaking me. It made me hit the ball into the net or out wide. I needed to be calm.

  I relaxed my shoulders and straightened my arm, palm facing up. When I tossed the ball, I imagined it to be like a rising ocean wave. Calm. Smooth. This time when I hit the ball, it sailed over the net and into the service box. By sailed, I meant it was slow. Horribly slow. But I’d done it! A proper serve.

  That was where my positivity ended. While I was distracted by my small success, Liz returned the ball with a forehand that blitzed past my left side.

  “Love–30,” she announced in a sing-song voice full of glee.

  She broke my game fairly quickly after that. I tried to be more aggressive on her serve, but she held easily at 40–15. Miraculously, I managed to hold serve in my other games, but that was my only victory. Being down a break, Liz eventually took the win.

  “Nice game,” she said, high-fiving me.

  We went to cool off by the benches on my side of the court. Good thing it was further away from the bossy man and Aiden who were both still at the benches on the opposite end of the court. As cute as Aiden was, I’d already made the world’s worst first impression on him.

  Liz repeatedly tugged on her shirt collar, airing herself. “I’m going to the bathroom,” she declared. “I need a cool shower. Plus I have to check on something.”

  A shower sounded glorious, but I hadn’t brought any spare clothes or bathing essentials. Guess I’d live without one until I got home.

  As Liz left, my attention drew to someone walking my way. Oh my gosh. It was Aiden.

  Relax, Serena. Maybe he was going to the bathroom too. Not like he would come talk to me after I hit him in the head.

  I averted my gaze, fumbling through my backpack for my drink bottle. Finding it, I took a gulpful of water—and nearly spat it out.

  Aiden had covered the distance from his end of the other court to the end of mine in a matter of seconds. His eyes locked onto me, dashing all my hopes of avoiding him.

  Chapter 2

  “Hey.” Aiden waved at me with his drink bottle. “Do you always hit people in the head with a ball, or am I just the unlucky one?”

  “I, uh,” I stuttered, clutching tightly onto my own drink bottle like it was my only lifeline. With Liz gone, it kind of was. He spoke in a light manner, so I was pretty sure he wasn’t going to sue me or anything dramatic, but… I had no idea what to say. Did he want me to apologise? Beg for forgiveness? Get even and let him hit me in the head?

  He pushed back his tousled, damp fringe, his lips quirking into a lopsided smile. “Guess I’m the unlucky one, then.”

  Nerves stirred in my stomach when he dropped onto the bench beside me, bathed in a strong fragrance of deodorant with an underlying hint of sweat. I hoped he wasn’t planning on staying awhile to make idle conversation, because I was really bad at that. And I didn’t want to embarrass myself any more than I already had today.

  “Aiden!” his older companion shouted from across the court.

  “Can’t ever relax, can I?” He groaned and tilted his head forward to massage his neck. When the man called out again, Aiden yelled back, “Chill, I’m taking a break!”

  “Didn’t you take one?” I asked.

  “Yeah, because he thought I’d injured my head.”

  I winced. “Sorry about that.”

  He waved it off. “It barely hurt. Don’t worry about it.” I opened my mouth to protest, but then he added, “You know what hurts though? Watching you try to serve. No offence.”

  Surely I wasn’t that bad. “I’d like to see you do better.” The words tumbled out of my mouth.

  Geez. Why did I say that? There was no doubt he could serve better than me. From the way he’d practiced earlier, it seemed like he played tennis a lot. He might’ve even been better than Liz.

  He smirked and extended his hand. “You want a demonstration, then you’ve got a demonstration.” Confidence radiated in his every word. “Lend me your racket.”

  I reluctantly handed it over. When he blinked at me, still waiting, I belatedly realised my stupidity and passed him two tennis balls. My skin tingled at the contact of his warm fingertips brushing against mine.

  He pocketed one of the balls and rolled the other against his shorts as he walked to the baseline of the court I’d been using. I followed him, keen to see just how good he was.

  “You should get some new balls. These are so fuzzed up.”

  “They’re not mine. We’re renting.”

  “Oh.” His nose crinkled. “Guess they’ll do since we’re not playing.”

  His right foot slid closer to the white paint of the baseline in a sideways stance, the racket gripped in his left hand.

  “Leftie?” I asked.

  “Yep. Quiet, please. Player is ready to serve,” he said in a voice that mimicked a standard chair umpire.

  A giggle escaped from my lips at the accuracy of his imitation, and he smiled in response.

  Without further ado, he tossed the ball in the air and swung the racket like a whip. The ball hit smack-bang in the middle of the strings and whizzed over the net in a blur of yellow-green, then barely clipped the white line marking the middle of the tennis court. An ace down the T.

  “Wow.” Just wow. That was the only word that would come out of my mouth.

  He turned to face me again, grinning at my wide-mouthed gape.

  “You’re good.” No, not good. He was great. Brilliant. Unless that was a fluke. “Do that again!”

  Aiden raised his eyebrows, but he plucked the other ball from his shorts pocket and repeated the manoeuvre. This time, the ball curved into the left corner of the service box.

  I clapped my hands. “You’re like a pro!”

  He wiped his forehead with his wristband. “I’m not that good. Tennis for pros is a whole other world. It’s a life commitment until you retire.”

  “But a life playing tennis professionally seems like a great job.” Travelling the world, seeing the sights, playing in front of crowds. Plus being paid to do all that. It was as nice as I imagined life could be.

  His jaw tightened as he handed me the racket. Then he crossed to the other side of the court and collected the balls.

  I went to sit on the bench by the wall, wondering if I’d somehow offended him. Was he jealous of professional tennis players or something?

  When he came back, he dropped the balls into the open canister. “Most tennis players don’t choose that life,” he said suddenly. It took me a moment to realise he was continuing the conversation from before. “Who chooses to start playing tennis when they’re only three or four years old?”

  I
considered his argument. “True. But people aren’t three or four years old when they’re playing in Grand Slams. By then, I’m pretty sure they should know whether they like tennis or not.”

  “You reckon? How about the players who smash their rackets?”

  My face scrunched in distaste. “People shouldn’t do that. A racket is meant to be your partner in tennis. It’d be like kicking your friend in the head. Not to mention how much a racket costs.”

  I’d worked my butt off a few years ago, doing house chores and odd jobs for neighbours, eventually accumulating enough money to buy a racket. The mere thought of destroying such a valuable possession didn’t sit well with me. “I mean, tennis players get sponsored, but normal people pay a lot for one.”

  “I never thought of it that way.” Aiden folded his arms, gnawing on his bottom lip. “So you think all pros play tennis because they like it?”

  “Or they do it for the money.” Who knew?

  “How do you know if you actually like something if you’ve been doing it for so long? It just becomes a part of your life.”

  That was a good point, but it was also a question I could answer with utmost confidence. “Try living without it. If you feel like you can’t, and keep thinking about it even when you’re not doing it, that probably means you really do like it.” I’d learned that the hard way after I’d stopped baking a few months ago.

  Aiden drummed his fingers along the edge of the wooden bench. He made a humming noise that sounded like approval. “Where did you learn such good advice from?”

  “My dad.”

  Oh, crap. I hadn’t meant to say that. I mean, it was true in a loose, indirect way. Plus it sounded too obnoxious to say I learned it myself. But I hadn’t meant to mention Dad.

  Aiden chuckled, oblivious to my mistake. “Your dad sounds wise. I’d love to meet him.”

  “I…” My throat locked up, refusing to let me speak. I took a big swig from my drink bottle and swallowed, then grit my teeth together, trying to suppress my rising desire to curl up and cry. Breathe in. Breathe out. It wouldn’t do me any good to drown in a flood of tears. Knocking a fist to my chest, I mumbled, “He passed away this year.”

  “Oh God, I’m so sorry.” Aiden clamped a hand over his mouth. His other hand rubbed the back of his head in the same spot I’d hit him in earlier.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Changing topics was usually a tactic I employed to deflect someone’s sympathetic intentions, but in this case, I also hoped I hadn’t bruised his head.

  “What?”

  I pointed to his hand still touching his head.

  He dropped both his hands into his lap and looked at them in surprise as though they were separate entities with their own brains. “Oh, yeah. I’m fine. I should be the one who’s sorry. That was so insensitive of me.”

  “It’s okay…” I couldn’t fault him for not knowing. “I’m the one who mentioned him first.”

  Aiden’s body slumped against the wall, head bowed. After a prolonged period of awkward silence, his head snapped up, startling me. He straightened and scratched his nose, giving me a sidelong glance. “Do you want to tell me about him? If you feel you can, that is. I know talking can help sometimes. If not, I’ll just apologise a hundred more times like an idiot.”

  Tell him about Dad? “My dad…”

  He nodded at me in encouragement. I didn’t think he was prying—not really. My school counsellor had actually told me to share my sorrows when I felt I could. I’d never really tried to though. I didn’t want anyone to pity me or act awkwardly around me. But Aiden… There was something about him. It might’ve been the fact that he was a stranger, or that it was the first time in ages that I’d been out instead of moping at home. Whatever it was, I found that I did want to share something about Dad with him.

  I gulped, looking away from him and focusing on the empty tennis court.

  In what felt like a lifetime ago, Dad and I had come here on weekends for social club tennis. We’d mainly used the free-with-membership synthetic grass courts outside. Though during the hotter days, we’d booked the expensive indoor court. We’d been the father-daughter duo that everyone knew. Then we’d stopped coming.

  I inhaled deeply, working on steadying my breathing. My chest throbbed painfully. Rather than ignoring it, I acknowledged it. Yes, it hurt. Yes, it wasn’t fair he wasn’t here. It wouldn’t be the same anymore without him. It would never be. But if I wanted to honour Dad—to remember him with a smile, rather than with tears—I could share one piece of his life with someone.

  “My dad’s the reason why I like tennis a lot. Even though I’m not that good at it. He was the biggest tennis fan. We used to go see the Australian Open every year.”

  We’d stopped that tradition after his health had deteriorated. This year, we watched it from a crappy TV in a cramped hospital room. A sharp pain in my ribs surfaced at the memory. I fumbled for words I could use without my heart breaking into pieces. “But I don’t think I’d want to go anymore. It’d just make me sad without him there.”

  Oh no. I’d blabbered without realising it. I’d never told anyone this. Ever. Not even Liz. Way to go, Serena. Not like a stranger would be interested in my life’s woes. He probably only asked to be polite, and now I’d overshared.

  But Aiden nodded solemnly, placing a hand on my shoulder, his grip gentle and warm. “I can understand why he loved it so much. It’s a really great atmosphere. I hope one day you’ll want to go back.”

  I shuddered and let out a breath, releasing all the tension I’d held in. “Maybe.”

  I was about to ask if he’d been there too, when he said, “You know, I don’t even know your name yet.”

  I paused at the sudden change in topic. “Uh, Serena.”

  “Woah. Like Serena Williams?”

  “Something like that.” He didn’t need to know my real name was unnecessarily longer and dumber.

  “I’m Aiden.”

  “I know. Your friend kept saying it.”

  Aiden glared at the man. He was on his phone again. “He’s not my friend. He’s my dad.”

  “Oh…” I hadn’t drawn the comparison between them. Aiden’s tousled hair and angular nose mirrored nothing on his buzz-cut-haired, pudgy-nosed father. “He seems to care about you a lot.”

  “Not really,” he said in a tone that warned me not to discuss this any further.

  Oh-kay, I wouldn’t step on that landmine then.

  Luckily, Liz came back at that moment. Her damp hair frizzled in a voluminous heap around her face. She wore a different top than the one she’d played in, and some exercise shorts.

  Dumping a large plastic box near my feet, she collapsed onto the bench. “Ahhh.” She stretched her arms out, her joints cracking. “Fun Day is going ahead.”

  So that was what she’d been checking on. Fun Day happened every weekend. Club members brought in their children, and the centre let them play for free. Liz regularly joined in, teaching kids how to hit tennis balls with small rackets over mini nets. I’d watched a few times last year, but my lack of confidence and excuse of playing with Dad had meant I’d never joined in.

  Liz eyed Aiden. “Hey. Is this the same guy you knocked out with a ball?”

  “I did not knock him out.”

  “Well, it did really hurt.” Aiden laughed at my concerned expression. “Joking.” He turned to Liz. “I’m Aiden.”

  “I’m Liz.” She gave me an odd look—bugged out eyes and flared nostrils—while Aiden had his back to us, sipping from his drink bottle. What was she trying to tell me? Did she have a problem with him? But her face relaxed when Aiden faced us again, and she said, “I’m starving. Didn’t you promise me egg tarts, Sere?”

  “Oh, right.” I rummaged through my bag and dug out a plastic container. “Here.”

  Liz cracked the lid open. The yellow tops of the tarts glistened, just waiting to be devoured, encircled by flaky, golden crust. She pushed her nose up close and breathed in deeply. “Ahh
h, my one true love.”

  I snickered, snatching the box away from her. “They aren’t all for you.” I turned to Aiden. “Want to try one?”

  He hesitated, his eyes shifting to where his dad was still preoccupied with a phone call before landing back on me. “Okay.” He shuffled closer to me. The movement jostled my arm as I scooped a tart out from the box and handed it to him.

  I observed him from the corner of my eye as he took two quick bites, chewed, then shoved the rest in his mouth in one go. “Tchs owd.”

  I bit the inside of my cheek to stop myself from laughing. “What?”

  Aiden chewed the rest with his mouth closed and swallowed. “It’s good. Where did you buy these?”

  “Sere made them. Her family owns a Chinese bakery.” Liz butted in before I could reply, grabbing a tart from the container. Unlike Aiden, she savoured every bite and licked the remaining crumbs off her fingers.

  “Wow, you made them? That’s so cool.” Aiden’s “wow” was similar to mine when I’d seen him hit an ace. Which was ridiculous, because anyone could make an egg tart if they took the time to learn how. Not everyone could hit an ace.

  “It’s not that hard,” I said.

  Liz made a grab for another tart. “She says that, but it’s not true. Trust me, I’ve tried.”

  She’d only tried once, so that hardly counted. “With enough practice and persistence, anyone can do it.”

  “It’s not that simple.” Aiden frowned, and a crease formed between his eyebrows. “It takes skill and dedication in whatever you do.”

  “I guess so.” Why was he so fired up?

  His frown deepened. He scooted closer to me until we sat shoulder to shoulder. Raising his index finger, he gently poked my cheek. “Give yourself some credit, Serena.”

  I held his gaze, suddenly hyper-aware of the lack of space between us, of his casual touch that made my insides flutter. Up close, I noticed his eyes were hazel with specks of forest green. A little mole marked his skin next to the bridge of his nose.

  “If you two lovebirds are done chatting,” Liz interrupted, “do you want to participate in Fun Day?”