Girlfriend Material (7 page)

It felt like about an hour passed with the two of us just standing there staring at each other, but maybe it was only a second or two before Adam added, “Unfortunately, I’ve got to get back to work.”

“Oh, right,” I said, surprised at how disappointed I was to hear him say that. “Of course.”

“Take a rain check?”

“Definitely,” I said. Was this a real rain check? Maybe it was a 19rain check.

The whole conversation was starting to give me a massive headache.

“Okay then,” said Adam. “See you later.”

“Later,” I said. And as I watched him walk down the steps, I couldn’t help hoping that “later” implied soon, and that the next time one of us suggested getting together, it would be clear that we were talking about doing it in the twenty-first century.

THE NEXT MORNING
, as I was leaving the house for my lesson with Natasha, Henry warned me that you have to wear white on the Larkspur tennis courts. Luckily, I have a white tennis dress, so I put that on. As I got off my bike in the club’s parking lot, I found myself looking around for Adam. But even though I’d come up with a bunch of (what I thought were) amusing one-liners for us to exchange, he was nowhere to be found.

Apparently he was too busy living his own life to be a character in the imaginary novel that was mine.

Larkspur’s tennis courts were a thing of beauty. There were eight courts, all clay, and even though I thought making people wear white to play tennis was kind of a stupid rule, I had to admit it made you feel like everyone there was a serious player with a capital S. When I told the guy at the pro shop that a woman named Carol had booked a court for me and her daughter Natasha, he told me to go to court number three. Natasha’s mom must have explained that I was giving Natasha a lesson, because he offered me one of the baskets of balls that real tennis pros always have.

Walking along the path that ran the length of the courts, all I heard was the steady
thwack!
of ball against strings. Normally that’s one of my favorite sounds in the world, but today it made me a little nervous. Because I was teaching a teenager and not a kid, I felt like I couldn’t just get away with doing the kinds of things my dad had done with me when I was first learning to play. I tried to remember my early tennis lessons, when I’d first started playing with someone other than my dad. I was pretty sure the instructors had us run back and forth across the court, doing something with our rackets, but I couldn’t remember what it had been.

Now I was feeling something that definitely resembled panic. Natasha was going to show up, we’d say hello, then I’d … what, exactly? Even though she’d taught history and not tennis, I felt a sudden unprecedented respect for my mom. Had she been nervous, like I was, before her classes started? Or was it different if you had a lesson plan and stuff?

I took a deep breath and hitched my bag more firmly onto my shoulder. I was being crazy. I loved playing tennis. I was about to get
paid
for playing tennis. What could be bad? Natasha was going to be a great student.

Maybe she’d recommend me to all of her friends. I could already see myself surrounded by an adoring crowd of my students, who would gather on the last day of the summer to present me with the #1 Tennis Coach mug they’d chipped in their allowance money to buy me.

When I got to court number three, I put my bag down by the bench outside the fence and walked the basket of balls onto the court. I felt a little stupid standing there not doing anything, but it seemed even stupider to start jogging in place as if I were about to play center court at Wimbeldon or something.

Luckily, before more than a minute or so had passed, a big beefy guy approached me.

“Are you Kate?” he asked. His face was red, and he had sweatbands on his forehead and wrists.

I nodded.

“Jim Davis,” he said, extending his arm toward me. “Three-time club champion.”

He said it like he was talking about the U.S. Open.

“Wow,” I said as we shook hands. “Three times.”

He was too proud of himself to detect the sarcasm in my words. “That’s right,” he said. He turned and looked over his shoulder. “And here’s the next generation of Davis champions.”

I looked where he was looking and almost dropped my racket.

First of all, the girl walking toward us was taller than I was. Significantly taller. This definitely put a crimp in my plans to have her stare admiringly up at me as I dropped pearls of tennis wisdom into her eager young brain. Second, by the time she was within ten yards of me and her dad, I could see her scowling.

It was like even though we hadn’t met, she already had a reason to be pissed off at me.

“Hi,” I said, trying not to look as surprised by her appearance as I was. “I’m Kate.”

“Hi,” she said. She didn’t smile, but she didn’t need to for me to see that she had a mouthful of braces.

Mr. Davis put his hand on her shoulder. “This is Natasha,” he said.

“Um, I think she knows that already,” said Natasha.

“Now, Natasha,” said her dad, “I want you to really show Katie here everything you’ve got, okay? I want you to just
dominate
this court.”

Natasha rolled her eyes. I didn’t exactly blame her; her dad already struck me as one of the more annoying samples of fatherhood I’d met in my life. Still, it wasn’t my fault she had a lame dad. So why was she looking up (well, down) at me like her dad was only
one
of the annoying people she was being forced to deal with on this tennis court?

I made myself smile at her. “Let’s get started,” I said, though what I really wanted to say was,
Okay, first of all, nobody calls me Katie, Mr. Davis. Second of all, what’s with the scowl, young giantess?

I gestured for Natasha to go over to the opposite baseline from me, and then I went back to my side of the court. Right before I turned to face her, I was surprised to see that her dad had seated himself on the bench just outside the fence.

“Come on, honey,” he shouted. “Let’s see what you’ve got.” He clapped his hands a few times.

I grabbed two balls from the basket and hit one lightly to her.

The ball landed almost directly midcourt before gently rising up just in front of Natasha. She bent her arm back at the elbow and wrist before swatting ineffectually at the ball, like it was an annoying or dangerous insect she needed to repel.

I was about to remind her to keep her elbow straight when a voice came from over my shoulder. “Honey, what are you doing? Is that how I taught you to hit the ball? You’ve got to be aggressive. You’ve got to
want
it.”

“Gee thanks, Dad,” she said sarcastically.

I wasn’t sure how to interject my whole “pull your racket back” routine into their bickering, so I just hit another ball over the net. She swatted at it again.

“Oh, Natasha, what are you doing?”

I didn’t know what to say. I mean, was I supposed to join Mr. Davis’s chorus of criticism?

“Hey, Natasha,” I said. “Why don’t we switch sides? I think the sun’s in your eyes a little bit over there.” It was true that the sun wasn’t
not
in her eyes on the far side of the court, but it was also true that maybe having her dad behind her would let Natasha relax a little. Of course, I wasn’t sure what having to look at Mr. Davis would do to
my
game, but at least I was getting paid.

Natasha nodded and started heading toward the net, eyes on the ground. She walked hunched over, like she wanted to be about a foot shorter than she actually was. I had the urge to tell her to stand up straight.

Unfortunately, though Natasha could no longer
see
her dad, she was even closer to him than she’d been. I hadn’t realized how much louder his voice was on the other end of the court, but when he opened his mouth again, the booming I’d come to associate with his running commentary was dimmed somewhat for me.

“What’s the matter, honey? Why did you change sides?”

She turned to answer him, but I couldn’t hear her response. His, however, was crystal clear. “What?
What?
Sweetheart, you can’t be afraid of a little sun. Sun’s not going to hurt you.” Again the inaudible reply, but this time he didn’t say anything in response, and the conversation ended.

“Natasha,” I said, “I’m going to hit the ball to you. This time, will you pull your racket straight back from your shoulder, not from your elbow?” She shrugged. I decided to take that as a yes, and hit the ball toward her.

To my surprise, she actually did what I’d told her to. There was the thump of a ball hitting the sweet spot in the center of the racket, then it was over the net. I’d pulled my racket back to return it when—

“Now that’s what I’ve been talking about,” Mr. Davis shouted, clapping his hands for emphasis. “
That’s
what I want to see more of.”

I don’t know if Natasha was distracted by her dad’s comment, or if she’d decided to punish him for his enthusiasm, but as the ball headed back toward her, she pulled her racket back from the elbow, bent her wrist, and swatted at the ball, which hit the frame of her racket and flew up into the air before landing almost directly at her feet and bouncing slowly into the net.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Each time I gave Natasha a suggestion and she followed it, her dad yelled something that made her furious and/or distracted her enough to ensure that she didn’t do it again.

It was like trying to teach tennis with a Greek chorus sitting in the bleachers.

When the big clock by the pro shop read eleven, my dress was plastered to my body, and even with my baseball hat on, I felt as if the sun was beating directly onto my brain. It seemed impossible that the lesson had only lasted an hour: surely we’d been on this court since the dawn of time.

“Well, I guess we should call it quits for today,” I said, panting not unlike an overheated dog as I crossed to where Natasha stood. I’d waited until 11:so it wouldn’t be too obvious that I was desperate to get away from bitter Natasha and her crazy father.

“Yeah, sure,” she said. “It was really nice to meet you,” I said. “You too.” Were we both lying? I knew I hadn’t done a very good job of teaching her, but I couldn’t see where I’d gone wrong. As Natasha’s dad headed over to us, I wondered what a lesson with just me and Natasha would have been like. Not that I was ever going to have the opportunity to find out—no way was any sane parent going to continue to pay someone who clearly had so little to offer his daughter by way of tennis instruction.

“Thanks a million, Katie,” he said. Then he reached into his pocket, took out a tight wad of bills and peeled a crisp twenty off the top. Given how much I disliked him, I wished I had the nerve to spit out something really insulting like,
Sir, you can keep your money.
But I just took the bill and thanked him.

“So,” he said to me, “when’s a good time for the next lesson?”

Was he serious? Did this man just have, like, money to burn? Did he not realize that his daughter was about as interested in learning the game of tennis as I was in … I don’t know, hunting?

“Well, I …”

“Let’s see,” he said. “Today’s Monday. Tomorrow we’ve got that sailing thing. Wednesday’s the Fourth, so that’s out. What about Thursday at ten again? Natasha?”

She shrugged. I couldn’t tell if she was scowling at the idea of another lesson with me or if the look on her face was just her baseline expression of distaste for life in general. “Whatever,” she said.

“Great. Does that work for you, Katie?”

Who was I to turn down twenty dollars?

“Um, yeah,” I said. “Sure.”

We said good-bye, and the second they were out of earshot, I dialed my dad.

“You are not going to
believe
the girl I’m supposed to be teaching tennis to,” I said. I told him about Natasha.

“Sounds like she has a real chip on her shoulder,” he said when I’d finished.

“Tell me about it,” I said. I was sitting on the bench, zipping and unzipping the cover for my tennis racket. I was glad my dad agreed with me about Natasha’s being a pain. Still, I
had
agreed to try and teach her again. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” I admitted.

“I’ll tell you what you can’t do,” he said. “You can’t take responsibility for other people’s anger.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean—hang on a second, hon.” I heard him saying something to someone else. He sounded irritated with the person. “You know what, Katie,” he said, “I’m really sorry. I’ve got to go and deal with this, okay?”

“Yeah, sure,” I said.

“Honey, I wish I could solve this one for you. But just remember: you’re the best. Anyone who doesn’t appreciate that is just nuts.”

“Thanks, Daddy,” I said.

“I love you, Katie,” he said.

“I love you too,” I said.

Hanging up, I couldn’t help but wish that, in addition to loving me, my dad
could
solve all my problems. I wished he could solve all of his and my mom’s problems too, since that, actually, would have gone a long way toward solving mine.