Deep Down Inside Ch. 13-16

Chapter 13: Gettin' Served

April was a month of sunny days and reckoning. Following an unusually wet March, the ash-hued shrubs and faded-red earth running up the hillside had been transformed into a huge swath of green. The sight of it filled me with hope and energy, although some of that I attribute to the two coffees I'd downed in order to make the courts by 9:00 on a Sunday morning.

Jane had one sport and that was tennis. Of the four of us her serves were by far the deadliest. She'd get you on the serve. Her racquet almost dropped to her ass as the ball peaked in the air, her Nike shirt tightening over her conical tits, and then the racquet swept along a high arc, her body reversing its twist and becoming momentarily weightless as the thwack sounded off like a perfect note and her right foot came to a graceful landing just in front of the server line. Camille and I had to scramble to place ourselves ahead of the incoming bullet and I was constantly forced to play from the baseline, where it was hard to return with any power. Despite Jane's mighty serve and Kaden having beaten me in the past, Camille and I kept the score close, or so I was told. I'd played maybe thirty hours of tennis in my life and couldn't wrap my head around the scoring.

We took a break between matches and Jane sat on a folding chair left by the instructor who taught kids the prior evening. As she eased her bottom down she smoothed out her short, white tennis skirt to keep it from riding up. Camille sat beside her, sipping tea from a thermos as she pulled a loose thread from her running shorts. There sat one brunette, one blonde and four gorgeous legs.

The tennis courts were surrounded by a tall chain link fence and the girls sat with their backs to it. A loud slobbering on the other side caused them both to turn around in their seats, and then their faces lit up upon finding a huge playful bulldog poking its long, drippy tongue through the openings in the chain link. A guy came running across the field of grass neighboring the court until he caught up to the dog and snapped on a leash.

"Sorry, he doesn't usually stray away from me."

"Oh it's okay," Jane said affectionately, as her and Camille tried to pet the dog's head through the diamond holes in the fence while also avoiding its wet tongue.

The guy kneeled to scratch the bulldog's back. "Spanky's essentially a drool factory on legs."

"No problem," Jane assured him, "I'm used to slobbery dogs. My family has one."

"A bulldog?"

"No, he's a dogue de bordeaux."

Camille and I locked eyes, silently asking one another, "What the fuck did she just say? Dog de fucking-bordeaux?" We both struggled not to laugh, pursing our lips to hide our growing smiles.

Even the bulldog's owner was confused and Jane quickly explained, "It's sort of like a French Mastiff."

I Googled it later and it is a French Mastiff—it's exactly that.

Kaden broke it all up when he spun his racquet in the air and asked, "Are we playing tennis or what?"

Within minutes we were back on the court. Camille and I still had the giggles. It wasn't just the strangeness of Jane's words back there at the fence, it was the pretentious way she used them that made it so perfect. And oddly enough, our telepathically communicated joke seemed to heighten our mental connection and sync up our playing for the second match.

Jane served first and she executed it perfectly, only this time I was able to get in position to fire back and drop the ball right between them. A polite hesitation over who was going to return caused Kaden to wait too long and scoop up the ball, barely lobbing it over the net. Camille moved up and fired it to the back, right corner, where Jane took one step in its direction and then realized it wasn't worth running, the ball was moving too fast and angled away.

The rest of the game played out much the same way. I'd come to learn Jane had four spots where her serve would drop, and once I'd determined where I needed to be for each of those I was able to consistently position for the return. Camille and I both figured out that Jane played a very precise game and wasn't interested in sloppy saves, which meant we only needed to get the ball outside her comfort zone for a point. I could tell it frustrated Kaden, but still under the gooey spell of his new girlfriend, he merely rolled eyes dramatically in the opposite direction.

We were in the last set, up a point and Camille's serve, when I called a quick time out and walked over to quietly discuss a new strategy. I leaned in and pointed across the court. "OK, here's what you need to do. I want you to put some dogue de bordeaux on this serve."

She pinched her eyes shut and snickered cutely, as I slapped her shoulder in coach-like fashion and returned to left center. Camille, about to toss the neon-green ball into the air, mouthed, "Dogue de bordeaux," gave me a thumbs up while still clutching the ball and then proceeded to replicate one of Jane's perfect serves. Or rather, Camille replicated her perfect form. The ball on the other hand, it sailed straight out of bounds. Apparently we needed to shore up the meaning behind our new favorite saying.

They caught up, 40-40, or deuce, or whatever the fuck. Kaden served a mean shot right down the line, but Camille leapt into place so fast she was at a forty-degree angle as her backhand returned the ball on a beeline to Kaden. He had to hop to the side and make a desperate swing that missed entirely, which granted us our serve again.

Kaden was on fire after that, his thigh muscles hatching as he darted back and forth across the court. And the next time Jane let the ball whiz by, he didn't just roll his eyes, he loudly pleaded, "Jane, you could've got that!"

After that we had several long vollies. And neither side could score a winning point. They'd get one and have the advantage, and then we'd deuce it up, and then we'd get the advantage, and they'd deuce it up. I lost track of points after a while and Jane had visible pit stains on her white Nike shirt. We were all sweating and breathing heavy, and all determined to win.

On my last serve of the game I had the scoring down cold. I loudly called out, "Advantage," and drove the ball far to the right of Kaden, who threw his whole body towards it, swinging in mid air and barely landing on his feet. He managed a clean return, though, and what followed was an epic volley between Kaden and Camille.

Camille was so on point she even stole a shot from me. Kaden put one so close to the net it actually wobbled, and Camille fired it back over the net causing it to wobble again. "Fuck you," Kaden shouted as he pivoted and raced back across the court again. The fast action was drawing them in closer to the net, with Kaden almost on it for a shot that struck within a yard of it and hugged the ground. Camille's racquet swept towards the fuzzy ball and popped it up but in a delicate lob that plodded a slow short path to Jane. Jane ran forwards but Kaden beat her two it with a resounding backhand. The ball went up, apexed over the net and fell from the sky on a course behind Camille.

"That's the one!" Kaden yelled with exhausted confidence.

But it was not the one. Camille reached back and caught the ball, the extreme angle of the racquet causing an unbelievable topspin on a shot that was sure to land outside the line but somehow curved its way back in. Kaden's big smile turned into gaping surprise the instant he realized the match was not over and the ball was still in play. He made a last desperate attempt, losing his footing and crashing down on his shoulder, but he couldn't make up the distance and his swing breezed past the ball.

Camille and I hi-fived as Jane helped Kaden to his feet. He rolled his shoulder, stretching it out and looked over at us with horrified eyes and a giddy smile. "Camille, where the hell did that come from?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"You aren't being straight with me. There's no way you haven't played since high school."

"Just those couple of weeks before I settled on track."

He rubbed his shoulder. "That was brutal." He took a swing at nothing, making sure his arm was good to go. A second stronger swing made the racquet whistle through the air. "Okay, that's one match each. We gotta settle this."

Kaden was met by heavy sighs, and Jane conceding that she was done for the day. She looked done. It was nearing noon, the sun high above us and sweat spots soaked through the back of her Nike shirt.

"Ah Jane, I can't go out like this!"

We were walking off the court to our water bottles by then, all hi-fiving each other over a good game played.

"OK, Jane's out. Let's go singles."

Our eyes met as the palms of our hands slapped together. Kaden's enthusiasm has always been infectious, like he always had a slight adrenaline buzz.

"Fuck it, one more," I said, pulling my racquet back out from under my arm.

"Excellent." He then pointed his finger at Camille. "But I want Camille. I want revenge."

She looked back at me and I nodded.

They didn't waste any time getting back into another intense volly, as I sat by Jane and made small talk.

First thing I learned about Jane was her full name after it appeared in her message history. Her phone rested on her knees and her slender fingers texted a friend as she spoke to me. Jane Coco Bergum! The name "Jane" led me to imagine her parents as a stuffy, old-money couple. But "Coco", that was a surprise. At least one of her folks had a sliver of personality.

"Sorry, I just had to let my girlfriend know I wouldn't be able to make it for lunch."

I wondered how she ever intended to make lunch given her morning plans, but instead I pressed her on how she'd met Kaden.

"So last month for my birthday, when my Bug finally went to poop, my daddy took me into Kaden's dealership and bought me a Camaro Convertible. Kaden helped us with the final sale stuff and whispered that he came with the car. So that was that."

She pulled off her white cap and her honey blonde hair was sectioned into front to back lines and woven together in a skull tight braid before hanging freely in a long, thin braid down her neck. She had an olive tan, shades lighter than the honey blonde that popped her blue eyes the way Camille's rich chestnut hair did hers.

She asked me about myself and lit up when I mentioned starting up a small graphic design agency. I tried to explain that we were only a team of three but she remained genuinely impressed.

"No, really, you should be super proud. I studied photography for three semesters so I heard all the horror stories about making it in the field. Unless you wanted to shoot weddings or kids,there was always that."

"Is that what you do?"

"No. God no! I gave it up. I mean, I got asked to be in a lot of my classmates' photo shoots." She swept a hand down the length of her body, highlighting her attractiveness. "And I don't think the teacher liked me. Or he didn't like my pictures because he'd heap praises on these portraits of me by other students and then just 'meh' when he got to mine. And then he literally said while pointing to a big picture of my face that I might belong on the other side of the camera, basically telling me I was nothing but a pretty face. I was so furious I just dropped out in the middle of the semester."

"Did you try taking your teacher's advice?"

"About modeling? No. I was twenty-three. Maybe if someone had pushed me into it when I was sixteen. Not at twenty-three, though. No. At twenty-three it would've just been kinda sad."

"That's just crazy how that is."

"I know. I'm twenty-nine now. People still treat me like a kid. 'Oh those Millennials.`"

"Ha, I'm thirty-two and I still get that."

"I don't see how I could be too old for anything. But yeah, twenty-tops for modeling so I would've had to do something else with my life anyway." She looked across the court as my wife clobbered her boyfriend's serve right back at him. "What about Camille?"

"What's she do? She's an editor of non-fiction books at probably the largest Orange County publisher, of which there's maybe three." I laughed, but she didn't pick up on my facetiousness. My boasting was real, but I always downplayed my accomplishments and I'd lately been doing the same for Camille's. It was shitty of me. I needed to stop doing it.

"Oh, so she's smart?"

"Smarter than me."

"She must be like my sister. Lily is a lawyer at my dad's firm. Super smart."

"A lawyer, huh? Betcha nobody treats her like a kid."

"Nope! I work there too. Just paperwork, though."

We watched the game in silence for a minute. Kaden was all power, quick bursts of fluid movement and then he'd mount himself in front of the ball like a brick wall and blast it back. His shirt was mostly damp and clinging to his back as he hunched over in his ready stance. Camille also had beads of perspiration on her forehead and dark patches on her shirt but showed no signs of breathing hard or tiring. She was also quiet, which is how she gets when fiercely focused. Kaden, on the other hand, offered running commentary on every play, with his go to line being, "So you think you know how to play tennis!"

Kaden sliced one over the net, straight to the line. Camille rocketed across the court but when the ball bounced it spun away from her into the fence. As Camille walked to retrieve it, Kaden shouted with a condescending smile, "I forgot how much fun tennis is. If I win you owe me a copy of your new book. Waddya say?"

Camille was bent over grabbing the ball when she heard that, and she froze, as if her heart simply shut down. Kaden had no idea how she felt about that damn book. He should've, but didn't. Kaden was just another red blooded male with an engorged, purple blooded dick, but it got to her nonetheless, I know it did.

She uprighted herself and walked back to the court with a huge smile. She looked over at me. We had a moment, one of those commutative glances where we understood one another perfectly, like two actors reading each other's cues from our own copy of a script.

I laughed and turned towards Jane, who was staring right back at me. At some point she'd put on big mirrored sunglasses and the lenses framed my smirking reflection. I liked what we saw.

"How did you do that? How did you get the ball to spin off in the other direction?" Camille squeezed the furry rubber in her palm, keeping the ball even though it was Kaden's serve.

"My slice?" He took a swing at nothing, presumably demonstrating the technique. "Kid Kaden's deadly-ass slice?"

Camille attempted to replicate his last move and hit the ball to him, but it bounced in a straight line. Kaden popped it back, the ball changing angle the instant it touched concrete. She made a second attempt, but it continued on just as straight.

"Do I need to show ya?" He headed to her side of the net, collecting a couple extra tennis balls from courtside and shoving them in his baggy pocket. He then fired off a few shots next to her as she watched and listened.

"Camille is quitting her job soon," I said, nabbing Jane's attention. "She hit an impasse with her bosses. They want to publish books that don't align with her principles, so she's getting out."

"That's commendable. Is she going somewhere else? You said there were only a few places around here, right?"

"I think she's going to switch careers. We're sort of setting the stage for it now, building up a little Instagram fame before doing her own thing."

"Writing?"

"What? No, she's thinking about putting a studio together."

"Oh wow, like a fitness type thing?"

"Yeah."

"Well she'll be great at that."

I held up my crossed fingers. "We're hoping."

"I get the whole Instagram thing too. I'm having to fix up mine. I haven't told Kaden yet, in case it doesn't work out, but I might get a job as the alternate weather girl on NBC."

I could see my own horrified expression in her mirrored sunglasses and quickly forced a smile, making me appear more so impressed. And I was genuinely impressed, but at the elitism of it all, because I could only imagine her mom or someone close knowing a friend who knew a friend and lined up the job—a job on fucking TV! It made me think back on Bobbie and how she'd worked so hard just to get an internship at the studio. It made me consider how much effort Camille and I were putting into her Instagram account, and how Jane was likely just deleting party pictures at Cabo San Lucas and replacing them with stock photos of cumulus clouds.

She put up crossed fingers on both hands. "Good luck to both of us I guess." A text buzzed from her phone which still rested on her knees.

I checked in on my spouse's backhand slice lesson to find she'd progressed to Kaden holding her wrist and positioning the raquete in her grip.

"Is my shoulder good? It feels off."

He took hold of her arm and smoothly formed shoulder, explaining she needed to rotate her arm from there.

"And my back?"

"You're back?" He set a hand on her bare midriff and another hand on her low back, and swept his palms across the skin and around her slender sides. "You'll wanna twist, but fuck, Camille, you were looking perfect there." He stepped back and scanned over her posture. He then pitched a ball and she swung.

"Nice!" He exclaimed.

"There you go, Camille," I shouted from my chair.

"OK, it spun but not like yours."

"Oh, you think you're going to master my slice in a day?"

"We'll see."

"Damn," he laughed. "Gotta watch out for you. All I can say is maybe you can shift forward more."

She took a swing at nothing. "I can't be doing this right, I feel unbalanced."

"I mean, that looks really good." He circled behind her. "Maybe the hips can come back some as you finish the stroke." Standing just a few feet from her, he became momentarily mesmerized by her micro-running shorts. The lightweight fabric couldn't have been more than six inches tall, riding low at the the V of her butt and hugging her firm cheeks, those cheeks making the back stretch. A cut at either side of her hips allowed for a loose flap along the bottom, and her ass was just full enough to lift the flap's edge past the crease at her butt cheek and thigh. With Camille's body, the perfection never ended, and it was getting to him.

"So..." he began, testing the limits of his restraint, mere inches from her ho-so-fuckable-ass. "Maybe..." he began again, and then reached out, pausing with his fingers hovering around her waist. A drip of sweat glided down the side of his face, he breathed, and then gently took hold of her just below the hip bone, his thumb resting on the shelf of her ass. "Maybe tilt here leading into the swing." He pinched his thumb into the thick softness of her butt and twisted her slightly. "The power starts down here. And you've definitely got some power."

I quickly looked over to Jane, who was deep in phone-land, as her boyfriend pulled my wife's ass toward him, the beginnings of a tent in his shorts dangerously close to getting wedged between her cheeks. The bend at her waist caused her micro running shorts to creep down an inch, and that was just enough to expose a little ass crack. "See, if you push those tight power-buns back like that your legs can pivot."

Camille shot him an annoyed look over that comment, just as he let go and jogged to where he could lob a ball at her. She swung, enacting every one of his adjustments perfectly, and the ball took off and blazed off the ground in a vastly different direction.

"Mother-fucker that was nice!" He yelled. "I mean, your fucking body control is insane, girl, that pose belonged on a sports cover."

"It's called body-awareness," she said, a tad amused. Still holding her racquet Camille ran her hands down her sides as she swayed her hips. "Just need to be aware of your whole body and everything it's feeling."