Pickleballers

Chapter Seven

Seven

Meg’s pulse did a plunge off the high board into a tiny bucket of water. The workings of her mind pedaled overtime to catch up. Her pickleball haven was under attack. She ticked off the complications on her mental tally chart. 1. Her ex-husband 2. was playing pickleball 3. with her foxy replacement. At least there were only three annoying things. Could be worse.

édith’s chestnut waves swayed effortlessly across her shoulders as she sashayed over toward Vance and kissed him. Meg could not believe it. Who shows up to play pickleball without a hair tie? Make that four annoying things.

Oblivious to Meg’s presence, Vance patted édith on the butt. And then he spotted Meg. She wished in that very moment that she could be anywhere else. Even back in the porta-potty.

“Meg!” He had the grace to release his hold on her replacement. “Hello,” he said in a tone one might use with a great-aunt who had overapplied her rouge. “Good to see you. Have you met…édith? édith, this is Meg. You know”—he insinuated, with portent—“ Meg .” The air quotes were implied.

“Ah! It is you, the cat crafty person.” édith gave a girlish, rapid wave and her breasts moved in sync. “Your crafts, they are so cute!”

Meg looked down quickly before anyone spotted her mortification. Tugging at her nylon bike shorts, she cursed herself. Why couldn’t this have been a cute tennis skirt kind of day?

Turning, she sought out her friend for support, and when their eyes met, Annie took a protective step toward Meg. Hackles raised, she crossed her arms and manifested a glare that came off like Tinker Bell with menstrual cramps. Meg would have laughed if the whole situation weren’t so painful. And Rooster, who had a corner on the empathy market, uttered, “Mm-hmm.” Meg looked up to match eyes with him, and he nodded slowly. “Mm-hmm,” he said again. Sometimes she had the sense that Rooster could reach into her skull and understand what she was thinking. Right now, she didn’t mind it so much.

Vance laid his paddle on the pile on top of édith’s, and a game of chicken ensued. One of the three alphas was going to have to leave the pile. Five players simply could not play pickleball. The men glowered, locked horns, and took virtual claw swipes at each other’s athletic shorts until the wiriest among them, Phil from Oregon, cracked.

Phil withdrew his paddle. “Fine. I guess I’ll just leave,” he said, sulking. “Who’s got my balls?” he called to the crowd. “Somebody’s got my balls. They have my name on them.” Jeannie snickered, and her girls followed suit.

“Yeah. C’mon, you guys,” Jeannie guffawed. “Who has Phil’s balls?”

“They’re yellow with holes and one of you has them.” Phil rummaged through his gym duffel. “I brought two 2Win tournament-quality balls, and now they’re both gone!” He reached into his shorts pockets. “Oh. Forget it. I have my balls.”

A chorus of chuckles followed Phil from Oregon as he took his balls and went home.

Vance, unaffected, shrugged. “C’mon, babe. Let’s play.” Meg almost joined him, until she realized she was no longer the babe he meant.

Annie shifted to block Meg’s view of the courts—and of Vance. “How ’bout we get out of here?”

Meg shook her head. “I can’t believe this.”

“Come on. I’ll get you a soy mocha. We should go.”

“Pickleball is my thing. Since when is it his thing?”

By now, Annie was tugging at her elbow.

“No. You know what? I was here first,” Meg said stubbornly. “This is my group now.” Besides, part of her wanted to wait and watch the train wreck. Annie had introduced her to pickleball gently; it was weeks before she played with anyone else, much less in front of a crowd of spectators. Vance was a pickleball newbie. This could be good.

The throng parted to make way for the striking pair. édith’s stretching regimen captivated an audience. Vance jogged in place, cracking his neck and swinging his paddle at the air.

“Zero–zero. Start,” Vance called.

Then he served a rocket, low and deep.

Meg’s eyebrows leapt. Vance had always been athletic, sure. He played tennis, which was certainly an advantage, and he kept fit with weight training and running. But clearly, this was not his first pickle-rodeo. He swung with finesse, dropping to the corners and racing to the baseline to return a lob. It didn’t make sense. Where did he learn to play like that? When did he learn to play like that? What had Jeannie said? That she’d poached them from the Shoreline league? Had he been playing when they were still married? How many more betrayals was he going to serve up?

And édith, for cricket’s sake. She was a pickleball savant: swooping, pirouetting, stalling just long enough before a shot that Meg thought she’d never get to the ball, then lunging at the last moment to deliver a perfect lob. Car-stopping gorgeous, and now this. Meg felt her pickleconfidence slipping away.

By the time édith bounced off the court, she glowed with a light sheen of perspiration. Her cheeks flushed pink, and her lips parted. “Pickleball is so fun, non ?”

There was nothing to say, really. After all, pickleball was fun. That was the point.

“It is so new and so fresh, this pickleball. What a beautiful sport.” édith lifted her shoulders as if to say she couldn’t help it if she was so damned talented.

Jeannie smirked, nodding at the throng of spectators. “That’s why I went nosing around the Shoreline courts. I was scouting for newbies,” she said proudly, gesturing to the marble-muscled édith and the sporty Vance as if she had personally sculpted them from clay.

Silence descended on the spectators as the ramifications of Jeannie’s comment settled on the crowd. Meg prickled. A whorl of leaves picked up off the pavement and Meg looked up at the sky. Overhead, a pregnant gray cloud gestated, waiting to dump its rain baby all over the courts.

Buff Dave spoke up. “So. Wait. Neither of you have ever played in a tournament before?”

“A tournament! We’re hardly at that stage,” Vance laughed, placing a humble hand to his chest.

Meg bit back a scream as she realized Jeannie’s intentions. She should have left when Annie suggested it. Then she wouldn’t have been party to her own doom. It was one thing for her ex and his new girlfriend to show up at the courts and outshine her, but threatening her shot at Picklesmash was quite another. She sensed the inevitable plunge, like being suspended at the top of the roller coaster.

“The thing is”—Jeannie piped in as if the thought had just occurred to her—“we do need a beginner team for the Picklesmash Tournament. To represent us.”

Rooster raised a finger in the air. “Now, hold on a minute. That’s me and Meg. We’re the beginner team. We’ve been prepping.”

“Uh-oh,” Vance warned, grinning with his whole face. “We don’t want to start a war here. You folks work this out and we’ll be over here playing full-court singles. You all are welcome to watch. I mean, I would.”

As the striking pair jogged off to the far court, the crowd stared after them. Meg wanted to say something commanding, something that would reassure her league that she and Rooster were the better choice. Meg searched her mental hard drive and came up with No results found . The confrontation sent pangs into Meg’s chest; she felt like she was having a lactic acid attack without even enjoying the Brie.

The dull thunk-thunk of raindrops began to drum on the pavement. Annie piped up. “Hey. Come on, you guys. This is a community,” she said. “We support each other. Meg and Rooster are working hard, and the point of the tournament is to support beginners, right?”

“No,” Jeannie said. “The point of the tournament is to win some money and put it toward new courts somewhere so we can keep playing.” She jerked her head toward Meg. “And thanks to Puppy the Pickleballer here, who rolled over for a belly scratch instead of showing some teeth, our courts are on the line. We need a win.”

Now the rain hitched up a notch. The pavement darkened quickly and began puddling. Some folks scooted away for cover, but most were too enthralled with the impending picklebrawl.

“Sure,” Annie countered diplomatically. “And we’re going to keep working hard. It’s the only way to get results. We all want the best for our club, right?”

“If that’s the case, Annie…” Jeannie got right up in her face. “Where’s Michael Edmonds? If you two are hogging up one of the advanced team spots, shouldn’t he be here working, too? Like me and my partner Kiki here. We’re busting our butts to make sure we win this thing. If you and Michael don’t want it badly enough, pass it along to a couple of my girls who don’t get the chance.” She stuck her thumb behind her, indicating her posse of minions.

Annie stuttered, “Michael Edmonds will be here. He’s just…”

Jeannie widened her stance. “Michael Edmonds should be here. Practicing. Or did he change his mind and go back to playing with his old Bainbridge pals?”

More droplets bounced off the pavement. Another, then another fell, pinging Meg on the top of her staticky head. A gust of wind whipped the courts. The nets snapped and flapped like rogue sails.

Jeannie seemed oblivious to the foul weather—in addition to her foul nature. She was still holding court with the remaining looky-loos. “Look. We don’t have time to mess around. We have a common goal, and a common enemy—that numbnuts who is shutting down our courts. So frankly, I don’t know why we’re even talking about who gets the beginners’ slot.” She gestured with rhetorical obviousness at Vance and his superstar girlfriend. As an afterthought, she turned to Meg. “No offense.”

Meg flushed. She had come to understand that people who said no offense were the same people who said phrases like I don’t mean this in a bad way, but… right before uttering a self-esteem-squashing zinger.

She opened her lips to defend herself, but suddenly the rain called for attention. Over the course of a minute, the drops changed from a pitter-patter, to a drumroll, to a downpour that turned the court into a pond.

Players exploded into motion. Laverne and Reflux Dave went for the speaker and slid it under the slim protection of the school’s brick facade. Dress Shirt Dave reached into his pack and pulled out an expertly folded poncho.

The rain powered up to deluge. “See ya,” “Later,” “That’s my cue,” came the parting calls from Kiki and Knee-Brace Joe and Samantha and Shanthi and fourteen-year-old Wylie and that guy with the sports glasses with the lenses popped out, to protect his eyes without all the bothersome fogging.

Reflux Dave broke into a tentative jog, then slowed to a walk. “Forget it. I shouldn’t run. I hafta take it easy,” he yelled over the rain. “Wish me luck. I’m having my gastrointestinal surgery tomorrow.”

Meg hoped it would work out. Even if it meant they would have to come up with another name.

Vance’s voice cut through the downpour. “Bloody hell! The car!” He was already running toward the open-topped convertible and covering his head with his backpack.

“Watch it,” Jeannie muttered. She jostled into Meg, shoving her aside in pursuit of her gym bag. “I don’t want my paddle to get soaked.”

If Meg did not speak up right this moment, there would be no regaining her footing, no opportunity to fight for her place in the tournament. Pulse pounding, Meg tapped Jeannie on the shoulder. Jeannie whirled on her.

Meg kept her nerves in check, and the words shot out of her. “We’ll play for it. Me and Rooster. Give us a couple of weeks to practice together. We’ll play a determining match. And whoever deserves the spot gets it.”

Jeannie smirked. “Okay.” Her tone was overbright. “That sounds fair.”

When she turned to Rooster, she found he was not beaming with his usual supportive grin. In fact, he was frowning. “Can I talk to you a sec?”

Now the rain puddled as it spat down and splashed off the pavement. Rooster directed Meg away from Jeannie, toward the narrow awning against the school building. “I know it’s bad timing, but…” His fingers probed at the goose egg bump on his forehead. “Laverne and I are headed to Bainbridge Island. We have a family situation. You know that I wouldn’t go if it wasn’t necessary.” He waited for her to arrive at the unfortunate conclusion. “You’re welcome to come out once in a while over the next few weeks. But I can’t guarantee I can get back to Seattle to practice too much. I want to. I just don’t want to make you a promise I can’t keep.”

“Oh,” she processed, trying to shield him from her disappointment. If he was on Bainbridge, they wouldn’t be able to practice, and she wouldn’t be able to get better, and there would be no question that the spot would go to Vance. “Of course. No. Of course.” Meg glanced at Jeannie, snuck a look toward Vance, and pressed her lips together. “You do what you have to do.”

By now, a few of the Daves, Annie, Jeannie, and Laverne had all squeezed into the narrow space beside Rooster. The eight of them huddled against the school building in the shelter of the slim awning. The pounding rain and the roaring wind formed a wild curtain beyond the overhang. Meg unballed the yellow plastic poncho she kept in her bag and struggled to stick her head through the hooded hole. It was uncomfortably steamy inside. She looked like a badly designed pup tent.

From the other end of the rain shelter, Laverne let out a low whistle. “Oh boy. You’ll never guess who just posted.” She held her phone aloft. “This is from an hour ago.”

Finance Guy Dave peered at the screen. “Is that…” He blinked rain from his eyelids. “Is that Michael Edmonds?”

“That’s him, all right,” Jeannie scoffed, and took a closer look at Laverne’s phone. “Where the hell is he?”

Laverne passed the phone along the line. To Rooster, to Jeannie, to the Daves, and at last to Annie and Meg, who huddled and gazed at the phone, disbelieving.

“Is that,” Meg asked, “ Walla-Walla ?”

In the photo, Michael Edmonds leaned casually against a green handrail. Behind him, the Space Needle, Smith Tower, and the Seahawks’ stadium stood out from the downtown skyline. The dark rain clouds that were now taking their toll on Lakeview formed a backdrop to the Emerald City, so named for its preponderance of pine trees. Michael Edmonds’s face was lit with sunlight as he posed on the deck of the ferryboat.

The ferry to Bainbridge Island.

Buff Dave zoomed in on the photo and pointed at the item protruding from his backpack. “Well, look at that.”

Meg peered at the screen and gulped. Definitely the handle of a pickleball paddle. Everybody knew that Lakeview’s rival, Bainbridge Island, was Michael’s hometown, and most suspected he still had allegiances to his native league. Shooting an uneasy glance at Annie, Meg said, “He probably brought it with him so he could practice over there.”

“Practice! With the competition?” Buff Dave grunted. “Not likely.”

Warily, the sopping crew eyed one another, weighing their suspicions. Boring Dave spoke. “You don’t think he’s really— Do you?”

Jeannie snapped, “Say it, Boring Dave. You know it. I know it. We all know it.” Venom flared in Jeannie’s eyes. “It’s like I said. He’s whoring himself out to that Bainbridge league!”

Dress Shirt Dave blew a gasket. “Jeannie. Watch your language. This is a school!”

“How much do you think Bainbridge is paying him to shill for them?” Jeannie goaded. “They want that win, too. Everybody wants a prize like that. They’re probably using him to puff up their advanced standings. He’s two-timing us. Michael Edmonds has switched teams and left us high and dry.”

“Can’t a guy just go to Bainbridge?” Dress Shirt Dave asked.

“Oh, stuff it, Dress Shirt,” Jeannie countered. “We all know that jerk is trying to beat us the sneaky way. He’s headed out there to practice with the enemy and learn the secret to that trick shot. I hear those Islanders know the key to the Golden Pickledrop.”

Dress Shirt Dave pursed his lips. “First of all, the Golden Pickledrop. There’s no such thing. Hard work, practice, and patience. Those are the only secrets to a good shot. And second, I know Michael Edmonds.” He backtracked. “As well as any of us do. And I don’t think he’s the kind of guy to switch teams.”

“I’m sure he’s just helping them,” Annie insisted. “Coaching. To be nice.” Meg worried at her friend’s hopeful tone. Annie’s personal investment in their pickleball partnership was obvious. “He’d never skip out on me.”

“If that’s what you wanna tell yourself,” Jeannie muttered under her breath but over the rain.

Meg didn’t want to believe the image on Laverne’s screen or Jeannie’s dreaded predictions. Michael wouldn’t do that to Annie. Or the team. He wouldn’t betray them. Would he? Meg slipped her arm around her friend’s shoulder. Frustration percolated beneath the split ends of Meg’s blonde ponytail.

Just then, Jeannie’s expression shifted to pure glee. “Oh! Look!” She snickered and poked a finger toward the parking lot. “This is gonna be good.”

As Meg peeked from beneath the hood of her yellow poncho, her body tensed. On the other side of the lot, Ethan Fine shielded his eyes from the rain and jogged from the construction site toward his truck.

Jeannie was shaking her head in anticipation. “You gotta watch this guy get into his truck!”

In one swift motion, Ethan gripped the door handle and pulled, ready to dive inside and escape the downpour. Meg’s heart stuttered a full measure of sixteenth notes, when, with a thundering crack, the door powered open from the built-up pressure.

A torrent of pickleballs poured from Ethan’s vehicle.

Ethan jumped back in surprise. The flood cascaded from the driver’s seat and tumbled onto the pavement. Jeannie clutched her belly and laughed as the truck continued to vomit fluorescent green pickleballs of an obscene magnitude until, at last, all that was left were the dry heaves. For an encore, four final balls took the opportunity, with a syncopated tick-tack-tickity-tock, to plop from the open car door onto the puddled asphalt below.

“Oh man!” Jeannie whispered. “Look at his face.”

Ethan’s face was, in fact, stunned by the heaps of pickleballs stuffed into the cab of his truck. From beneath the lip of her yellow slicker, Meg watched as he ducked for a moment into the passenger side and emerged with an empty duffel.

Suddenly, Ethan’s head swiveled and, like a searchlight, he scanned the courts. When his gaze hit on the sopping bunch of pickleballers huddled beneath the minuscule overhang, without hesitation, he broke into a vigorous jog.

“Aw, crap,” Jeannie said. “This guy has no sense of humor.”

Each puddly step resounded with a splash alongside Meg’s heartbeat. He was headed straight for them. There was nowhere to hide and nothing to do besides bury her head right here in the sand. But to her dismay, there was no sand beneath, only pavement. She could try it, but she might crack her skull in the effort.

Before long, Ethan Fine’s soaked work boots splashed into her line of view. He was standing five feet from her! She dipped her chin toward her neck, causing her yellow poncho to cling to her cheeks.

“Is this your doing?” he asked.

“Do you mean,” asked Jeannie, “did a group of unjustly evicted pickleballers shove a shit ton of plastic balls in your car? Or was it, say, the Easter Bunny? Survey says…”

Annie’s chirpy voice jumped into the fray, doing its best to smooth over the rough edges of Jeannie’s sandpaper tongue. “Sorry. It was us. It was us. Well,” she clarified, “actually. It wasn’t me. I would never. I mean, if you’re going to punish someone, please don’t take it out on our whole group. Keep in mind that this”—she indicated the steady stream of pickleballs floating their way—“this was an individual act of vigilante rebellion and in no way represents the official sentiment of Lakeview Pickleball.”

Before she was premed, Annie was prelaw. Annie was nothing if not extra. Meg loved that about her.

“So let me get this straight,” Ethan said. “You are neither taking nor denying responsibility for stuffing a bunch of brand-new pickleballs into my truck.”

“Ha!” Jeannie countered before she could stop herself. “You think I’d waste my good balls on you! I stuffed it with my busted balls.”

Ethan sighed and stepped out of the wetness into the slim alcove beneath the overhang. His body was so near to Meg that even with her poncho hood pulled low, she could smell the delicious change in her surroundings.

Just then, Meg caught sight of a lone pickleball rolling toward her feet, pushed like an autumn leaf in the flow of the rainstorm. Bending, she grabbed for the renegade ball, but her fingers made electric contact with another set of fingertips. Their eyes connected.

“Hello, Meg,” Ethan said.

“Hi,” she squeaked. In her sticky, yellow poncho, it was mortifying to see him.

Ethan’s gaze looked from Meg to the faces of the hostile throng, and concern wrinkled his forehead. “Are you with these people?” he asked, as though he were trying to connect the seat belt sexpot to the shrinking woman in the yellow slicker. Seriously, this day really couldn’t get any worse.

Her tongue felt fuzzy. She could admit she was one of these pickleballers and be on the receiving end of the blame for Jeannie’s pranks. Or, she could pretend she had been kidnapped by a band of pickleball addicts in desperate need of a fourth.

But her efforts to deny any connection to these picklers were in vain. Jeannie, of all people, linked her arm through Meg’s. “She’s with us. Like it or leave it. Or better yet, just leave.”

“And what am I supposed to do with all these pickleballs?”

“Good question. And good luck,” Jeannie said, sarcasm lengthening her words.

“Where did you get so many, anyway?”

Jeannie shrugged. “Every week, we fill a garbage bag with the balls that bust on the courts. So I was like, well, that sucks. So I started, you know, taking ’em home and making earrings and Christmas ornaments. I stick a pencil through ’em and, you know”—she mimed a spray can—“paint them silver or gold. I do decoupage, snow globes, multimedia collage, the works. You can find them online; look up Deck the Balls. But mostly I just make ’em and give them to friends.”

Meg gaped at Jeannie, stunned by this revelation. Jeannie had friends?!

“I mean,” Jeannie continued, “otherwise, what happens to the broken balls? Once they’re cracked, they just go in the trash. So, I got this idea. Your plan to screw up our courts is cracked, too…” She gestured rhetorically at his truck. “It’s poetic justice, butthead.”

“Yes. I see. This has been enlightening,” Ethan said, and scooped up the armload of pickleballs that had been swirling in a puddle. He tossed them into his duffel. “I guess the ball is in my court now,” Ethan said, pinning Meg with a look that set her off-balance. Then he took off into the downpour, hightailing it to the truck.

Rooster, perceptive as ever, caught Meg’s reaction. Reading her crush beneath the awkwardness, he gave her a knowing look. He shifted his gaze to the distance and said to no one in particular, “Whoo-wee. Looks like somebody just got a tug on their fishhook.” Darn that Rooster! Was he reading her mind?

Still glaring at Ethan’s departing form, Jeannie muttered, “Sheesh. I’d flip that guy the bird, but he’d probably just try to protect it.”

Dress Shirt Dave, who had been wordlessly watching the proceedings, now shook his head in disappointment. “I wish you hadn’t done that. There are kinder ways to make a point.”

“Aw, puh-lease,” Jeannie crabbed. “What are you, the polite police?”

“If such a thing existed, I would gladly join them,” Dress Shirt retorted.

Noticing Meg’s expression, Annie touched the crinkly plastic of Meg’s poncho. “You okay? You seem shaken up.”

Meg nodded absentmindedly, but her brain was stuck on a treadmill with no emergency stop: I have a crush on the enemy of my people . And while the rain poured down like a curtain, she strained to hear what the storm was telling her. The solution came to her, loud and clear.

Escape.

With one brief ferry ride, she could spend a week on Bainbridge, and if she dipped into her savings, maybe two. She could practice with Rooster. She could track down Michael Edmonds. She could escape Vance’s encroachment on her territory and still fight for her place on the team. And she could cut off this complicated, cargo-panted fantasy at the root. Because she felt way too vulnerable to be infatuated with public enemy numero uno.

Bainbridge Island. Birthplace of pickleball. A painter’s dream. Already, she could picture the blanket of pine trees, the crisp salt air, the majestic backdrop of the Olympic Mountains. Besides, she deserved a vacation.

“I need to get out of here,” Meg said. Her eyes slid to Annie—“I mean really get out of here”—and they shared an instant understanding that only best friends are capable of.

“Good idea,” Annie agreed. “I’ll check the ferry schedule.”