Chapter 20

LISSA AND I had a light workout Friday afternoon. We’d be playing for five or six hours on Saturday, so we weren’t pushing it. We all went to Carmine’s for dinner. Amy got her laptop out and showed us the designs for our new website. It was a knockout. She’d used some of the motifs that Melody was using on the fabric with some really sensual shots of racquetball players dressed in our sportswear.

“How did you do that?” I asked. “The only outfit we have is the one Melody made for Lissa this week.

“I Photoshopped it into a stock photo using a picture of the fabric Melody sent me,” Amy said. “It will be better, though, if we get an action shot of Lissa at the tournament tomorrow wearing the prototype.”

“Better take it early in the day or it will be a soggy rag,” Lissa said. “I’ve got a feeling that we’ll be working up a real sweat tomorrow.”

“Mmm,” Amy said. “Just give me a minute with that image, would you? Oh, yeah.”

“You nasty, nasty girl,” Melody laughed. “But now that you’ve got me thinking about it...”

“OH!” Kate interjected. I think the imagery had gone past her at first, but once she thought about Lissa working up a sweat, she got lost in the same daydream as Melody and Amy.

I leaned over and kissed Lissa soundly.

“Personally,” I whispered to her, “I’ll take you when you’re fresh. I know what you’re like when you come off the court.”

“Ditto,” she said.

“Um ... did I miss something?” Wendy asked as she came up with fresh drinks for all of us.

“Oh, no,” I said. “You didn’t miss it. You came in right in the middle of it. You’re welcome to join.” I slid over on the bench and Wendy sat next to me.

“You all looked like you were sort of far-away,” she said.

“Those three,” I said pointing across the table at Amy, Melody, and Kate, “were lost in a daydream. We two decided not to dream about it.”

“Mmm. Is there room for another in that party?”

“You know there’s always room for you, Wendy,” I said. Then I surprised her by kissing her right on the lips. She blushed.

“I better get back to work before Carma starts expecting me to give kisses to all the customers,” Wendy laughed. She headed off to wait on others. It was busy, so I knew we couldn’t waylay her for long.

At ten o’clock Saturday morning, Lissa and I faced our first competitors of the day. As it happened, we’d drawn Sally and Tomas for our first match. They were pretty confident when they stepped onto the court. They’d played us and beaten us handily a few weeks ago when we first started playing doubles. They got a big surprise. Lissa and I were still stumbling over each other a bit, but we were nailing our shots and they couldn’t last against it. They won the first game, but we took the next two for our first win as a doubles team in competition.

At 11:15, we faced a couple from the UW. Funny, but in spite of the fact that the University has nice courts and a great facility, they have a squash club but no racquetball club. That may be why the team didn’t play all that well together and we were able to take them. But they were good sports and had lots of questions about the club we were putting together at SCU.

It was the 12:45 match that just about killed us. Pro Sports Club in Bellevue has a strong racquetball club and sent two teams over. Lissa and I were fighting for our lives from the first serve. It was likely that we’d meet this pair in the Opens if we decided to play there. We won two out of three games by one point after they blew us out of the water by five in the first game.

At our two o’clock match, we met George and Nicole, the other pair from Pro who we’d practiced with a couple weeks ago. We were so tired we made silly mistakes and they took us in two games straight by a good margin. Our last game was at 3:15 against a new team at our own club. John put them together to try to get more couples playing. We tried not to slaughter them, but the score was pretty lopsided and we won in two games. That gave us time to watch the last game of the two elite teams playing against each other. Just watching them was amazing. Watching singles racquetball is raw athleticism. Watching doubles is like ballet. I realized that what we were doing was powering our way through competitions and we needed to become even more coordinated. I didn’t think we were going to get that far by October.

In the end, George and Nicole lost the match which left three teams tied for first in the round robin, each with one loss. We weren’t playing eliminations, though. Total point margin was tallied and George and Nicole still came out on top. We squeaked by in second by a single point. All told, we were all exhausted after a hard day of racquetball.

Amy took some great pictures and couldn’t wait to show us. By the time we got home, she’d already put the action shot of Lissa into the website design and had it ready to upload to our new domain. Of course, all but the front page of our website would be hidden until we were ready to launch, but it didn’t hurt to get a presence on the Internet and protect our name.

Kate left the tournament early and went back to the house to fix dinner for everyone. Lissa and I showered at the club just so we wouldn’t stink up the car. We didn’t take a soak, promising that we would get one in this evening at home. I can’t tell you how much I looked forward to soaking in hot water, especially with one or more naked beauties in the tub with me. Melody and Amy rode back with us and an incredibly delicious smell greeted us when we opened the door.

“Oooh! I’m in heaven! What’s cooking, Kitten?” Lissa called as we came toward the kitchen.

“You just smell the fresh bread,” Kate laughed. “Dinner is salad.”

“How did you manage to bake bread in the time you had to cook?”

“I just bought these loaves that are ready to bake at the grocery store. They call them par-baked. All you do is toss them in the oven and impress your friends.”

“Genius,” Amy said. “Will you marry me, Kate? You can cook for me every night.”

“Boy, that’s a proposal that deserves no consideration,” Kate laughed. “All work and no play. At least here, I get taken out on dates.”

“I could make you very happy,” Amy suggested with a leer.

“Amy,” Lissa said. “I thought you were going to visit Sonia. That’s in about five minutes isn’t it?”

We all laughed and Amy quit teasing. Lissa kindly granted her permission to stay until Sunday. Kate’s salad for dinner was anything but simple. I swear that every vegetable in existence was in that salad, along with strips of ham, cubes of chicken, and shredded cheese. She’d made her own dressing as well and it was a savory blend of flavors that I couldn’t identify. I was sure it had olive oil and soy sauce in it, but beyond that it was a mystery. I was so famished that I had a second huge bowl of the salad and I think I ate a loaf of bread by myself.