Page 15 of Fun Together
And I belong here, too.
6
Eli
“It’s a beautiful morning.”
“Perfect conditions for me to wipe the court with you,” Evie says, plucking the strings of her tennis racket.
I do a few stretches and warm up exercises in an effort to make this as painless as possible. “That’s a little brutal for ten o’clock in the morning, even for you. This is already unfair enough.”
“You didn’t have to agree to this.”
“Is it true you made your own teammate cry?” She played on the club tennis team at UNC, and I’d never tell her, but I’m a little scared I’ll be reduced to tears after this.
She tightens her ponytail and adjusts her visor. “How about we also make a bet on whether I can makeyoucry today, old man?”
“I’m only four years older than you,” I point out.
She serves the ball, and it flies past my face before I even register that she’s hit it.
“Could’ve fooled me. You’ve got the reflexes of a slug.”
I bounce up and down on the balls of my feet. “Maybe if you’d give me some time to warm up first.”
I’m pretty sure I hear her mutter the words, “an elderly slug,” under her breath. To be fair, when I hit the ball back to her, I think my shoulder joint actually creaks.
“I thought you were supposed to be the athletic one in the family,” she says as she serves again, only slightly less aggressively.
I still don’t hit it.
It stings a little, even though I know she’s joking. Because she’s right. I played every sport I possibly could growing up and it always came easily to me. I just haven’t felt like doing much since I’ve been back. Although, I think I accidentally joined a local rec softball league last week when I was walking our dog Pebbles at the park. I saw some people playing, started talking to the guy on the first base, and suddenly I’m on the team.
“I like to play sports because they’re fun, not because I want to see if I can give my opponent irreparable emotional trauma.”
She rolls her eyes and serves an ace. “Why can’t you do both?”
We play a couple of sets, and I somehow manage to win a few games, which momentarily gets my hopes up. Turns out, she was only taking pity on me, and it wasn’t anything to do with my own stroke of luck.
Eventually, she serves for match point and when I barely shuffle over to make contact with the ball it bounces off the side of my racket into the bushes behind the fence.
“That’s one way to put yourself out of your misery,” she says.
“You’re a humble winner, as always,” I say as I walk over to the bushes where the ball landed. I see that I’m not the only one who’s met this fate. “It’s like a tennis ball burial ground over here. How do I know which one is yours?”
“It has my initials on it.” Of course it does, because Evie would never want to risk someone else taking her stuff.
“Do you really need this tennis ball?” I ask, narrowly avoiding taking a branch to the eye as I dig around.
“Tennis balls don’t grow on trees. I’m a poor college grad, remember?”
After digging around for a few seconds, I finally spot it and toss it to her.
“This isn’t mine,” she sniffs.
“It says ‘E.M.’ on it.”
“Must be someone else with my initials.” She throws it back to me. “Check again.”
