Page 40 of Off Court Fix

DRAPER AND SUMMERS AND THE CHANGING OF TENNIS’ GUARD

I don’t see this Maxine. I see the Maxine rushing down Fifth Avenue, seeking refuge in a church, in the anonymity of a stranger. I see the lost look on her face, the way her eyes were nearly blank, vulnerable, and unprotected.

No one protected her that day, and I’m struck by a twinge of guilt because I feel worse about our encounter. And me being in the right place at the right time the moment Maxine needed someone as she straddled the line between life and death doesn’t make up for it.

Arriving home, I park in the pebbled driveway. With quick steps, I hop out of the car and grab every magazine, having to shovel one in my mouth, then toss my hip against the door to slam it shut.

Maxine is on the side steps where I had greeted her earlier, looking at me like I’ve lost my damn mind. And maybe I have.

“A little help,” I mumble, my teeth biting halfway through paper.

She approaches and takes the issue from my mouth and a few from the stack I’m barely holding on to. “What are you doing?”

I ignore Maxine, walking through the open door. “You didn’t have to clean up,” I say over my shoulder when I notice the dishes and glasses in the drying rack. “Grab the matches from the drawer next to the sink.”

As I cross my backyard, my arms burn from the weight of the stack, and I practically scream in relief when I dump the magazines onto an Adirondack chair beside the empty fire pit.

“What are you doing?” Maxine repeats her question, coming up behind me with the few remaining issues and box of matches.

Feeling sticky, I rip my sweatshirt over my head and pull off my glasses, wiping them on my t-shirt. I reach for an issue and begin tearing it from the back over the clean firepit I haven’t used since last summer.

When there’s nothing but the cover left, I grab the matches, not paying attention to the confused look on Maxine’s face. The strike makes her jump, and I flick my head, encouraging her to come closer as I hold out the match.

“Go on.”

Maxine focuses on the flame flickering from the match, her chest rising and falling with hard, full breaths before she turns her gaze on me, and even though my thumb and index finger are a few seconds away from being burned, I feel nothing from the flame. All I feel is the focus of her stare as she rips the cover from my hand with strength and the match with a tad more caution.

She holds that cover over the pit and watches it burn.

I’m hit by an odd sense of pride to witness this.

I step aside as Maxine reaches for another issue, tearing it to shreds over the pit, and another, and a another, the paper cracking and screaming in protest between her hands. And I can’t take my eyes off Maxine, the way she moves, how she seizes and strangles the pages of the magazine that was a nightmare masked as a dream and lets them burn.

I realize now, we both made a mistake the night we met, thinking it was a chance for Maxine to be someone else—perhaps, someone she thought she wanted to be. Really, Maxine was showing me who she is—the same woman before me now—determined, strong, empowered, and unapologetic about all of it. Maybe Maxine only needed someone to listen. Or maybe she needed to quit hiding.

Andthis Maxine, who, fully clothed, finally looks at me after ten minutes of shredding... I swear, she’s more gorgeous and sexier a million times over than the half-naked woman on the magazine cover she left in ashes inside my fire pit.

A sheen of sweat paints the skin of her cheek, the cool she has carried all night as lost to the flames as the magazines. When she steps toward me, I instinctively want to move back, but when our eyes lock, I’m forced to stand still. I wait. I wait because I took that night, and now, in the quiet and privacy of my backyard, with nothing more than crickets and frogs croaking from the creek on the other side of my fence, I wait as the flames rage behind her.

I wait to see if, after Maxine is done taking herself back, she’ll take me with her too.

A careful step forward brings Maxine well within reach. With each second that ticks by, my pulse quickens, and I hope whatever comes next is better than the anticipation raging through my veins. When Maxine’s tongue dips out and swipes at her bottom lip, I nearly fall victim to it.

She reaches an arm behind her, and the crinkle of a wrapper makes my brows furrow.

“I told you I was bringing dessert,” she says, trying to clear up my confusion.

Maxine could be holding a million dollars in cash, and I still wouldn’t look away from her at this moment. But when she nudges her arm and palm forward, I’m forced to look down.

And when I do, I find a bite-size Snickers. But it’s more than a small piece of chocolate candy. It’s her ask, a test for me.

She doesn’t even have time to grin. Because in half a second, I grab the candy and toss it over her into the fire pit.

If there’s any threat to Maxine, it will be me, come hell or high water—not peanuts.

“I told you—” I can’t finish my sentence because she swallows my words, and one of my hands finds the side of her face and the other locks on her waist.

That anticipation? It doesn’t hold a candle, a match, an entire raging fire pit to Maxine’s lips on mine, how her body doesn’t melt against me but battles, and I feel all the strength she’s spent years building, going toe to toe with me, and it’s wild.

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