Page 33 of Off Court Fix

Weaving between tables, I shoot small, polite smiles at stares from members who should be used to seeing me by now but, for whatever reason, remain unable to hide the shock and awe. But then I catch Crosby’s eyes, and I’m unsure if I like he remains unfazed by me at all.

* * *

“Damn,” Jack hisses before clapping his hand against his racket’s strings. “Nice shot.”

It was a nice, decent forehand, hit right down the line while Jack was fast approaching the net.

“Too shallow,” I say. “You’re just getting old. A faster woman would’ve gotten to that.”

Jack laughs as we approach the benches on the side of the court. “You’re funny but also too hard on yourself.”

“Both of those things are true,” I respond, wiping my face with a towel. “Hot as hell today. I’m starving, but I think I need to go jump in the pool first.”

“Here. Do both.” He tosses me two protein bars that I drop to the bench before I sit to unlace my sneakers while Jack slips his racket into his bag. “Gotta jet. I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah? Early like today?”

I nod. I asked Jack to come an hour earlier to the club to see if we could avoid having people line up along the fence during most of our session and I’m glad he offers to do it again.

When he walks off, I remove my sneakers and unwrap my ankle. Raising my head, I try to peer through the courts and past the dunes to get a glimpse of the ocean. “Salt water is the cure for everything,” I tell myself. “Ocean dip today it is.”

I collect my belongings and the protein bar, slinging my bag over my shoulders, letting my bare feet drag across the short, worn-down grass as I make my way to the wooden path, taking a left to head to the beach where the waves call my name and my aching body.

Tearing open the protein bar, I pull the wrapper down and take a hefty bite.

I chew three times before I realize I’ve made a mistake. A big one, and the remaining half of the bar slips from my trembling hand, landing beside me on the path.

“You know something?” It’s Crosby’s voice. “You pay foraccessto this place, not for people to just pick up after you.”

I’m standing still and yet each word from Crosby grows more muddled, as if I’m continuing to walk away from him. I might be moving, but not in that kind of way. The racing of my heartbeat bouncing between my ears, panicked by pending anaphylaxis lets me know I’m seconds away from moving right out of this life.

“Did you hear me? No one is here to pick up your trash.”

My bag falls from my shoulder, landing in the spot where I realize the chocolate-peanut-butter protein bar Crosby now holds in his hand was lying.

The burn on the outside of my chest sizzles, and I look down, finding it beet-red. And on the inside? It’s a different kind of burning, a slow kind of incinerating that swells my trachea from the bottom where it feeds oxygen to my lungs.

I sway, struck and dizzied by the slow, torturous suffocation.

Crosby grabs my arm with his free hand, but it’s not enough to hold me up, and I sink to the ground with my legs folding beneath me.

“Whoa, whoa, Maxine.”

Calm. Calm. Stay calm.

It’s hard to stay calm when you know you have another ten seconds before a very bad situation turns into something catastrophic, but I do my best. Sticking my arm out, I stretch and wiggle my fingers frantically in search of the side zipper of my bag.

“Pen.” I try to repeat it, but my voice is stuck, and that makes me panic more.

“Maxine? Oh, oh shit. Shit.”

The tone of Crosby’s voice changes tune from confusion, to disbelief, to fear.

He tosses the protein bar off the path into the dunes and grabs the bag, opening all the zippers. “Where is it? Where is it?”

I tap the outside, and he rips open the small outer pocket zipper, pulling out the EpiPen box. His hands are shaking so hard he fumbles with it, ripping the cardboard open, muttering worried curses under his breath.

“Stay awake. Look at me. Hey, Maxine, keep looking at me.”

It’s the tapping of Crosby’s hand against my cheek that lets me know my eyelids grew too heavy to stay open, and my head too hard to support because I can feel the wooden post now behind it.

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