CHAPTER 5

“So, what he had you two doing just doesn’t work.” Their potential coach shook his head. “DJ, you’re too long when you pass. You’ve got to get lower. And, Aspen, when you set, you’re better with your hands, so set traditionally.”

Aspen glared at the guy. She now understood why he’d been fired by another pair of beach players and was currently unemployed. They’d been desperate, though. She’d always had a coach on the beach, even though it wasn’t a requirement and many teams went without. That was usually because beach players paid their own coaches, and most teams didn’t make enough on the tour to afford that. Many players already had two and, sometimes, even three jobs. Aspen knew of one player who was a tutor because she couldn’t be a teacher and travel on Thursdays or Fridays during the season, and she also drove for Uber to make ends meet. The woman lived in a one-bedroom apartment near the beach that she had to share with a roommate because its location meant the rent was ridiculous, but it got her close to the sand, and that was more important to her than anything else.

Aspen and DJ were lucky that at this point in their careers, they could afford a coach, and a good one, too. They’d had one for two years, and he’d warned them that he wanted to retire to spend more time with his family ever since his daughter had given birth a few months ago to his first grandchild, but they’d been lax finding a replacement, thinking he’d change his mind and stay on at least through the Olympics should they qualify. They’d been wrong. He’d given them notice and told them he couldn’t stay on any longer than that because of a family vacation he’d not only agreed to go on but was paying for, and they’d still not found a replacement.

“She’s 6’2”. If she gets any lower, she’ll be sitting down,” Aspen retorted in the guy’s direction.

“She’s not sitting in the position right; I think is what you mean.”

Aspen glared at him again. She’d intentionally tried to challenge him to see what he’d do and, unfortunately, no one had warned them about his obvious issues. She wasn’t sure how he’d gotten this far in coaching when he seemed to be a ‘my way or the highway’ kind of a guy, and not a very nice one at that.

“And we’ll work on your swing, too, DJ. I was at the match in Chicago. Your line needs work.”

“Her line is one of the best in the sport. She just had an off day. We’d played a tough match that morning, and her shoulder didn’t get enough rest.”

“She had five hitting errors on her line shot alone,” the coaching prospect argued and crossed his arms over his chest.

“She had zero the previous match and the one before that, and–”

“Okay. Okay.” He waved his hands around in the air. “What am I doing here? Do you two want to improve or not? Do you want a coach who can help you get to the Olympics or not? What do you want? While your previous coach did his best, I’m sure, he didn’t exactly get you to where you need to be.”

“Our previous coach was a hall-of-fame player in both indoor and beach, has won a gold medal in both in the Olympics, and has earned countless other medals and trophies, too. On top of that, he’s coached three Olympic beach teams, and they’ve won medals. What have you done?” she challenged.

“I don’t have to be here and take this. I have other teams interested.”

“In your ego? I doubt it.”

“Aspen!” DJ exclaimed.

“What? It’s the truth. Why did you even come out here if you were just going to tell us what we’re supposedly doing wrong without even watching us work out first, or listening to some of the things we think we need to work on, or asking us about what our previous coach had us working on, for that matter?”

“I came out here because you asked for me. You need a coach.”

“We don’t need you, though. And you should really work on your attitude because this ain’t it.” Aspen shook her head. “You didn’t even say hi or shake our hands when you got to the beach. You just walked up and started telling DJ she was serving wrong when you’d seen her serve once. Even if you watched us play and you had notes, which we’re more than willing to take, that’s not how you approach people.”

“Aspen just means–”

“What she’s saying. Aspen means what she’s saying,” Aspen interrupted her far-too-nice partner. “So, we’re done here.” She nodded at the would-be coach.

“Fine. I only took this meeting as a favor, anyway. I don’t need this job.”

“Great. Win-win, then,” she returned. “Bye. You’re on our sand.” She pointed down to where his feet were on their rented court for the day.

He grunted in frustration and more stomped off like a toddler in the middle of a tantrum than walked off.

“What was that?” DJ asked.

“That was me texting Beth and Patrice later, asking them why they didn’t warn us about this guy when we mentioned that we were looking for a new coach. Think they’re trying to sandbag us? They were with him for over a year.”

“No, I don’t think that. You asked if anyone had any recommendations, but you failed to ask if anyone had any good recommendations.”

“My bad, then,” Aspen joked and turned toward her partner. “We’ll find someone. I’ve got a list of–”

“One more person does not a list make, Aspen. You know that finding great beach coaches isn’t exactly easy. We’re a small group of people as is, and you’d have to not only find someone available or willing to leave their current team, which could cause drama we don’t want to deal with, but someone who will actually work with us, unlike that guy who just wanted to point out how bad we are. It’s a chemistry thing more than anything else.”

“I know.” She sighed. “Let’s just get through our practice. I’ll call the next one up on our non-list when I get home and see if he can get out here tomorrow.”

“We could always go without a coach,” DJ suggested. “A lot of teams do.”

“Not the top teams,” she argued. “Name one of the top eight teams on tour or any of the possible qualifiers without a coach…”

“Yeah, I know,” DJ replied. “What if we tried for a tourney or two and see how it goes?”

“We might not have much of a choice,” she said.

◆◆◆

“Can you come out tomorrow?” Aspen asked into her phone as she walked over to her sliding glass door.

“I can’t. I’m in upstate New York this week and going to Seattle the following week. I’ll be back after that, though, and we can talk then. In the meantime, I can watch tape, and we can chat on video if you think that’ll help until I can get out there to see you. I have a contract that I can’t break, and it wouldn’t be fair to my players to just go, even if I could.”

“I understand. I think that’ll be fine, but I’ll need to talk to my partner,” she replied and pulled open the door.

“No problem. Just let me know, and I hope we’re able to work something out,” he said.

They hung up, and Aspen wished she’d known he’d taken an indoor coaching job for a university team and was currently on a four away match trip. He didn’t live in LA, either, preferring to live in cooler climates, apparently, so that would cause issues. They couldn’t afford to move him here, even if he was interested in that, which meant there would be additional travel expenses, and that might mean this was impossible, but she’d see what DJ thought before she said no.

She walked outside with her phone and her coffee and sat at her table. She had planned on getting in another workout for about an hour in the backyard, but she’d changed her mind when she’d gotten home. Instead, she had showered and changed, made a cup of coffee with sugar-free peppermint syrup in it, and decided to sit outside and watch what she could see of the sunset around the houses surrounding her. Very few things calmed Aspen’s brain enough for her to relax. Sex was one of them. It took her mind off pretty much everything else, if it was good sex, at least. A cup of coffee and an e-book helped as well, and that was especially true if she could get some fresh air while drinking and reading. The other thing was playing by herself in her backyard. Hearing the bounce of the ball on that box and feeling the sand between her toes as she moved back and forth calmed her in a way that practicing with a partner or on a public beach never could.

“Hey.”

Aspen looked up and over, seeing Kendra sitting at her patio table. Kendra held up her own coffee cup, acting as a wave.

“Oh, hey. You’re back?” Aspen asked.

“You knew I was gone?”

Aspen hadn’t planned on revealing that she’d been at her front door grabbing her food delivery order when she’d seen Kendra leaving her house with a roller bag and getting into what Aspen guessed was a shared ride car.

“Yeah. I hadn’t seen you around, so I guessed. I also watch volleyball on TV whenever I can, so…”

“You saw the match?”

“Yeah. And I feel like we’re yelling right now. Are we yelling?” She laughed a little and stood up. “I’ll come to the fence.”

“There’s a gate, you know?” Kendra noted.

Was Kendra inviting Aspen over, or was she asking if she could come into Aspen’s backyard?

“Right,” Aspen said. “Is that okay? I don’t want to interrupt your solitude.”

“It’s fine,” Kendra replied. “Had you not had your own coffee, I would’ve offered you a cup of mine since I actually got my kitchen unpacked today.”

“Yeah? Congrats,” she said before she walked out of her own gate, turned, and opened Kendra’s to walk into her yard.

“Thanks. It’s not that hard when you only have, like, four plates and two pans.”

“You only have two pans?” Aspen asked and took the two steps up to the patio.

“Exaggeration. Although, I did have a small apartment before this because I was never home anyway, and I’m not much of a cook. I’ve always wanted to be a good cook, but that’s just not in the cards for me, it seems, so I don’t have the need for much.”

Aspen nodded toward the chair across from Kendra at the round glass table.

“Of course,” Kendra said.

Aspen pulled out the chair then and took a seat, setting her phone and coffee cup down on the table in front of her.

“How was your trip?”

“Same as always, for the most part. One night in a cheap hotel that looks the same as all the other hotels I’ve stayed in, so I went the wrong way in a hallway, thinking I was in the last one, and forgot my room number for the same reason.”

Aspen chuckled and said, “Sounds familiar.”

“It’s the same for you?”

“Yeah. I’ve got to rack up those hotel reward points, right? We tend to stay in the same places. I’ve forgotten which rental car was mine more than once, too, because I thought it was the last one I’d rented and then left at the airport. I technically broke into a car once because of that.”

“What?” Kendra laughed.

“I thought I had a red Toyota Camry because I’d had that car the previous week. I just saw it in the parking lot, got in, but the key didn’t work, and it was then that I remembered that I’d gotten a green Ford Focus that week and jumped out of the car that someone had carelessly left unlocked.”

Kendra laughed harder and said, “No… Really?”

“Yup. Thankfully, no one saw me and called the cops. I think I could’ve gotten away with it, given my reasoning, but I didn’t want to risk it. I ran away. Like, I literally ran out of the parking lot and across the street until I realized that I still needed to find the car I did rent. I stopped renting cars after that, and now, I just get rides, but it was always easier to rent because I had so much stuff to bring with me.”

“Doesn’t the league shuttle you all around?” Kendra asked and took a sip from her cup.

“Sometimes. They use hotel shuttles, mostly, because it’s cheaper than getting their own, but it depends on where we are and what’s available. I liked having my own car.”

“Why?”

“In case I wanted to go anywhere. Obviously, I can get a shared ride, but I have to wait on those, and sometimes, we’re in busy places where it can take a while.”

“Where exactly are you going? I got the impression players mostly just go back to their rooms and ice their whole bodies.”

“That is true most of the time. But, sometimes, I need to let off some steam. I don’t do it much these days, but I used to go out when we didn’t play the following morning. I’d mostly just dance, have the one drink I’d allow myself, dance some more, eat something, make sure I was sober, and head back to the hotel for sleep.”

“Mostly?” Kendra asked curiously as she took another sip of her coffee.

“Sometimes, I’d do other things, yeah. Not so much these days, though, like I said. It’s too important now. I’m trying to make the Olympics. I need to be focused.”

“Other things?”

Aspen picked up her cup and took a sip herself.

“Sex.”

Kendra had just been about to take another drink and promptly lowered her cup back to the table.

“Oh.”

“Yeah. I’d go out, and if I met someone and we both wanted that, we’d hook up. I haven’t done that in a few years, though.”

“Right,” Kendra said.

“Anyway, I do not know how we got on this topic.” Aspen laughed nervously because she hadn’t planned on talking to Kendra Bowie about her sex life. “And I hope that is off-the-record.”

“This whole conversation has been off-the-record, Aspen,” Kendra told her. “How are you feeling about the next match?”

“Is that off-the-record?”

“Yes.” Kendra chuckled.

“So, you’re asking me as a neighbor right now and not a reporter?”

“Do you see a microphone in my hand and a fake smile plastered on my face for a camera?”

Aspen nodded, liking that response.

“We’re feeling good about it. Assuming the weather doesn’t hate us, we should be fine.”

“Happy to hear it,” Kendra said.

“Aspen!”

Aspen turned and saw her mother standing in her backyard.

“Oh, shit. That’s my mom. I forgot she was coming over to drop off some of my old stuff tonight. I have to go.”

“That’s okay. It was good catching up.”

“Yeah, it was,” Aspen said and stood.