“Hi,” Sadie said dumbly. She didn’t know why the word spilled out, but she also didn’t know how she could keep from responding to someone with a smile like Jay’s. “I’m Sadie Larsen.”
“Jay.” She extended her hand, the calluses on her palms causing a pleasant grate across Sadie’s smoother skin.
“I know.” She internally chastised herself for not saying something more, or better, but the simple acknowledgment seemed sufficient for Jay, whose cheeks flushed a little deeper.
“Hi, Jay,” Hank said.
Her expression shifted subtly, but didn’t exactly darken, as she nodded to him. “Hank.”
He shuffled his feet. “Sorry . . . ’bout Melbourne.”
She shrugged. “No worries. It’s nothing.”
Her smile didn’t fade, but the sparkle left her eyes, and a twinge of something protective twisted in Sadie’s chest. She wanted to ask what had happened in Melbourne, but more than that, she wanted to erase it, to wipe it away the way she used to wipe Destiny’s tears. The thought was so disconcerting she took a step back.
“Who you working out with these days?” Hank asked, seemingly oblivious to Sadie’s discomfort.
“I hit with Peggy Hamilton at the Australian, till she knocked me out. So, you know, for two days.”
He laughed. “Quite a streak there.”
Jay shrugged. “I never have trouble finding a pickup game.”
“Probably because of your winning smile,” Sadie offered without thinking.
Hank turned to look at her, his eyes wide, but Jay laughed. “You know, I think I’m going to use that next time a reporter asks me the same question.”
Hank turned to her, his eyes now narrowing.
“I’m doing some serve work today,” Jay said, turning her whole body toward Sadie now. She wasn’t insanely tall for a tennis player, a few inches taller than Sadie’s five feet seven, but her broad shoulders and lanky limbs made her seem bigger. Perhaps her personality contributed a bit as well. “If you want to hit a few returns, I wouldn’t mind.”
Hank made a small choking sound, but Sadie managed to form actual words. “Oh, no. I couldn’t return your serves. I’m—”
“We’re done for today,” Hank cut in quickly. “What about tomorrow? When’s your practice time?”
“You know me. No set plans.”
He laughed. “Glad some things never change, but we’ve got the court at three. If you want to hit a few balls with Ms. Larsen I could plan a session on returns.”
Jay pretended to think about the idea, but while she did, Sadie noticed her eyes wandering over to her once more. Jay’s smile shifted to something a little more playful before she said, “Sure, I’d love to see what you’ve got.”
“Oh, I’m not—” Sadie started as soon as she realized Jay had mistakenly pegged her for a player, but before she could finish the statement, Hank quickly threw his arm around her shoulder and tugged her close.
“Great. We’ll see you tomorrow.”
Jay raised an eyebrow, but Hank steered her away before she could say anything else.
“Just one return session, Hank,” Jay called nervously after them, but Hank kept right on walking.
“Grab Destiny’s bag on the way off the court,” he whispered, as they neared the security fence.
“I thought Des had more work to do today, and why didn’t you tell her I’m not—”
“Just go with it. I’ll explain everything later,” Hank said.
“And by ‘everything’ and ‘later,’ you mean only as much as I need to know and only when I absolutely need to know it?”
He stifled a laugh, causing his chest to shake. “Exactly.”
Sadie sighed, scooped up Destiny’s bag, and slung it over her shoulder, trying not to stagger under the bulk of it or the weight of the million questions filling her mind. “You’re lucky I trust you as much as I do.”
“Yeah,” he said, with a grin, “but you’ll thank me for this one later.”
★ ★ ★
Jay was early. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been early for a workout on purpose. She didn’t want to overthink why she’d chosen today to break her streak, but it didn’t take a ton of analysis to realize Sadie Larsen’s smile had been a primary factor. Every time she pictured Sadie, something she’d done frequently over the last twenty hours or so, she felt a little thud under her rib cage. Then again, when she thought of Hank and his allusion to “a new doubles partner,” she felt the thud somewhere lower in her stomach. She wasn’t great at math, but even she could add two and two together. She’d realized as soon as she’d seen them both standing on the court holding rackets yesterday that Sadie must be the woman he’d mentioned, and she’d had every intention of keeping her distance. But something about the smile made her forget her resolve for a moment.
“Just one return session,” she said aloud. That’s the note she’d ended on yesterday and the refrain she’d woken up echoing this morning. She’d remember the mantra no matter how many times Sadie smiled at her this afternoon, and she hoped it was a lot.
Did that make her pathetic? Wanting a pretty woman to smile at her while also dodging playing tennis with her, because last time she’d combined those two things . . .
“You’re here.” Hank sounded so shocked you’d have thought she’d teleported onto the court.
“Did you think she was going to stand us up?”
“She’s never on time,” he said to the woman pushing through the gate behind him.
Jay leaned slightly to the left, trying to see around his hulking shoulders, her so-called winning smile already stretching her cheeks, but as soon as the woman stepped out of Hank’s shadow, her expression changed. Confusion? Surprise? Disappointment? All of the above wrinkled her brow and tightened her chest.
“Jay, I’d like you to meet Ms. Larsen,” Hank said, in his clipped business tone. “Destiny Larsen.”
Jay stared, trying to process what she’d just heard. Larsen. Ms. Larsen. That’s the name Hank had used two times now, and yet the woman he’d seemingly referred to had changed drastically between then and now. Not that there wasn’t a striking resemblance between the two. The nose was the same, broad and proud, and the mouth carried a remarkably similar pout. The oval shape of her face carried more than a hint of familiarity as well, but this woman’s skin tone was more tawny than mocha, her hair longer, her eyes flecked with hazel rather than the smooth mahogany she’d been drawn to yesterday. Most importantly, though, her smile was tight and guarded, not the heart-thudding, open expression that had made Jay forget her past and her promises. Also, the girl before her now was just that, a girl, maybe sixteen or seventeen, whereas Sadie Larsen was most definitely all woman.
Jay glanced over her shoulder and under the bench before laughing. “Is there a camera here somewhere? A practical joke? Punk the tennis pro?”
Destiny scrunched up her youthful face. “Excuse me?”
“Jay,” Hank said, “I can explain.”
“Sure, but can you tap dance?” Jay’s cheeks warmed with the realization he’d played her. “Because I think you’ll need to in order to distract me while you pull another bait and switch.”
Hank frowned and opened his mouth, but before the words came out, the gate opened again, and this time the woman who entered the court caused Jay’s temperature to rise for a different reason.
“Sadie,” Hank called, his voice registering a notch higher than his regular baritone. “What great timing you have.”
Sadie looked from one of them to the other before rolling her dark eyes. “So much for her always being late.”
Jay laughed in spite of her lingering confusion. “You talk about me at home, don’t you, Hank? What else did you tell them? How gullible I am? How dense? How I’m so oblivious that you could just show up with a different Ms. Larsen and I’d never notice?”
“A different Ms. Larsen?” Destiny asked, her tone suggesting she hadn’t been in on the little charad
e. “I thought Hank set up a hitting session for you and me.”
“Oh, he did,” Jay explained. “Only when he did, he led me to believe I’d be hitting with . . . with your . . . what, sister?”
“My sister?” Destiny’s eyebrows knitted together, then shot up. “You mean my mom?”
Now it was Jay’s turn to feel confused again. Apparently, they were all playing a game where they passed the emotion around like a hot potato. “Your mom? No, Sadie, right?”
She turned from Destiny to Sadie, nodding for her to explain that they’d made the tennis date, or even that Sadie was actually her name and she hadn’t just imagined the whole encounter.
Destiny sighed with all the drama of teenage-girldom and said, “Sadie is my mom, and she doesn’t even play tennis.”
She didn’t know what part of that statement to try to process first. She knew the second half was the only one that really affected her personally, but somehow, she couldn’t make it past the first. “Mom? As in like, ‘mother’? I mean, like adoptive, right, ’cause you’re so . . . but you also look alike, eyes and . . .”
“And mouth.” Destiny finished for her, clearly having gone through this before. “We look alike because she is, in fact, my mother. As in, she gave birth to me and hasn’t let me out of her sight for more than ten minutes since then.”
Jay turned back to Sadie, her mouth wide open.
Sadie smiled sweetly. “Guilty on all counts.”
“Were you, like, ten years old?” Jay finally stammered.
“Sixteen, but thank you again,” Sadie said. “I think.”
“Wow.” Jay knew she should say something else. She was likely verging on impolite, but she couldn’t help doing the math in her head. If Sadie was sixteen when she’d given birth to Destiny, and Destiny wasn’t much older than that herself, then Sadie must be . . . two carry the one . . . thirty-two? Thirty-three? Or in other words, a year younger than Jay herself.
“Jay?” Hank finally said. “Are you okay?”
She nodded.
“Are you doing math in your head?”
She nodded again.
“And?”
She blurted, “I’m old enough to be her mother!”
He burst out laughing, a deep belly roar she hadn’t heard in over a decade. “Yes, yes you are.”
“You wanted me to play tennis with a kid young enough to be my daughter?”
“Why not?” he asked plainly. “She’s exactly the type of person you’re going to face if you want to make a comeback.”
“She’s a teenager.”
“So were you when you broke onto the tour,” he answered, without raising his voice to match hers. “And so are your opponents.”
“Name one person I’ll face in this tournament who’s as young as she is.”
“Me,” Destiny said flatly.
“What?”
“You’ll face me in the third round,” she said, then added, “if you make it that far.”
Jay clenched her jaw, then slowly shook her head. The kid was already on the tour. Why hadn’t she realized that? Oh, right, because it never occurred to her that someone she could’ve given birth to might be a professional fucking athlete. She sighed and rubbed her forehead.
“I’m sorry.” A soft voice cut in. “I don’t know why Hank felt the need to let you think I was a tennis player.”
Jay snorted, but when she looked up and met Sadie’s warm mahogany eyes, all the bite faded from the retort she’d planned. Her voice came out sounding little more than a whisper. “Because he knew if he told me the truth I’d say no.”
Sadie shook her head. “I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t you want to practice with Destiny?”
“It’s not Destiny,” she said quickly, then turning to the girl added, “I mean it. I’m sure you’re a fine tennis player, but Hank and I go back a long way, and we both learned our lesson about these little pairings a long time ago. Trust me, it’s just not a good idea.”
Destiny folded her arms across her chest. “It wasn’t my idea in the first place.”
The muscles along the top of Jay’s shoulders knotted at the little dig, but she kept her mouth shut and shouldered her bag. Then looking apologetically to Sadie once more, she said, “Sorry I wasted your time.”
Sadie shrugged. “I won’t say I’m not disappointed. I’d looked forward to seeing you two hit together, but I respect someone who refuses to be played, and I’m sorry for any part I had in misleading you.”
Jay nodded. It was such a nice thing to say, she almost didn’t want to go. Everyone always argued with her, told her she was wrong or unreasonable. She had to work so hard to remind herself that only she knew what was right, that having someone suddenly agree with her made her want to be wrong.
But she wasn’t.
Sadie laid a hand on her arm, long fingers curling so softly around her biceps and they sent a tingle all the way to her core. “Could I ask just one question before you go, though?”
“Um, yes,” she said, staring helplessly into Sadie’s sympathetic eyes and hoping she wasn’t about to ask for a kidney, because in that moment Jay might have answered in the affirmative.
“Why were you willing to practice with one of Hank’s students when you thought it was me?”
Her chest constricted and her mouth opened, but no words came out, so she closed it again. She knew the answer, but she didn’t care for it, and she sure as hell couldn’t speak the words right now. Not to Sadie, and not in front of her daughter, the one she might face on the court in a matter of days. She glanced over at Hank, who was doing a piss-poor job of hiding his smile. He’d clearly known the truth all along. What’s worse, he knew why the truth would be so unsettling, and he’d still let her paint herself into this corner.
She’d either have to fabricate a lie on the spot, something she wasn’t great at, or tell Sadie she’d only agreed to the hitting session because she was too attracted to her to say no. That fact had been embarrassing enough when she’d imagined Sadie as an aspiring pro. It was damn near laughable now that she was the mother of an actual member of the tour.
Also, probably straight. That added another layer she hadn’t even had a chance to peel back yet. Once again, stereotypes be damned, an up-and-coming women’s sports star had respectable odds of being gay, but a shockingly young tennis mom had considerably less probability of the same. She wasn’t about to take any more chances of playing the role of predatory lesbian. Her jaw tightened again at that thought.
“Jay?” Sadie said softly, reminding her three people were still waiting for an explanation.
“I . . . well, you see, when I thought I’d be playing with you, I kind of felt like we had . . . um, I mean, I’d never met you before.”
“And?” Sadie prodded gently.
“So, I figured you weren’t on the tour yet. But Destiny is.”
“Right,” Hank cut in, “she’s a tour member just like Peggy Hamilton, who you hit with in Melbourne.”
“Exactly,” Jay said, rubbing the wrinkles out of her forehead.
“So?” Hank asked.
She sighed. “So I wouldn’t want to get too close to a competitor.”
“Which is why we agreed to just one session,” Hank offered.
“Just one session.” She repeated the mantra she’d walked in with, then allowed her bag strap to slip off her shoulder. Maybe the easiest way out of the situation was to plunge right through. “Yeah, sure. Fine.”
“Fine?” Destiny asked suspiciously.
“One session.” She nodded. One session to get out of here gracefully, one session to save her from an awkward explanation, and one session to remind herself why she needed to keep her guard up.
Sadie gave her arm a little squeeze and flashed an appreciative smile.
One session to make Sadie smile at her one more time.
Fair trade.
★ ★ ★
Sadie wasn’t sure what had just happened, but whatever it was ended with
Jay and Destiny on the court, so she supposed all was well that ended well. Still, Jay had seemed more upset than a moment of confusion warranted. She’d seemed frustrated and irritated, but also almost hurt. That’s the emotion that had caused Sadie to reach out to her, to connect, to touch. She wanted to know about the shadows of pain she’d seen flicker over the blue eyes that refused to dance today. All the rest had seemed secondary. She was used to being mistaken for Destiny’s sister, even if she didn’t enjoy the misconception, and she couldn’t have cared less about a tennis practice if it came at the expense of someone else’s feelings. Even Destiny’s pouty temper hadn’t registered above the hurt in Jay’s eyes.
The thought made her frown. She didn’t even know this woman. Why should she care about her practice habits or the reasons behind them? Jay had turned up her nose at a chance to work out with Destiny, to compete against her, to help her grow as a player. And why? The stonewalling of her daughter should’ve made her furious; it always had before, and the more Sadie thought about it, the more Jay’s reluctance bothered her.
“Easy, Mama Bear,” Hank said, from his position at the side of the net.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to,” Hank said, without taking his eyes off the court. “I can hear your toes tapping on the concrete.”
“So?”
“You tap ’em when you’re trying not to let anyone see how torqued off you are.”
She frowned, but didn’t argue.
“They’re out there now,” Hank continued, as the two women warmed up with short, easy strokes. “It doesn’t matter how they got there.”
“I’m not sure I agree,” Sadie said. “Your job is to prepare my daughter to be the best competitor possible. My job is to prepare her to be the best human being possible. You might have done your job, but I’m not sure I did mine.”
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