When Charlie woke up the next morning, she stayed in bed for a long time, trying to decide something. (Richard and Maggie were taking the Pollards out for an early round of couples’ golf, so the mandatory family breakfast sentence was temporarily suspended.) She had a tennis date with Jude in half an hour. Or did she? That’s what she was trying to determine. He’d thrown out the invitation casually, and late into the night, when he, she, and Cybill were drunk from the wine, high from the pot. “We should play tomorrow,” he’d said. “I had a match scheduled with this guy, Chip, at ten, but he sent me a text a few hours ago, canceling. Be a shame to let the court go to waste.” She’d controlled her excitement—the joint helped—shrugged casually, said, “Sure.” Neither of them, though, had mentioned it when she’d walked him and Cybill to the door. Could be he forgot he made the offer as soon as it passed his lips. And she didn’t want to show up to be stood up, reveal that she took him seriously, cared more than he did. Although, she didn’t want to miss the chance to be alone with him either, part of a couple for once instead of part of a threesome.

Fuck it, she said to herself, jumping out of bed, pulling off her T-shirt. She’d head on over to the club. It was where she spent most of her mornings, anyway. And if Jude was a no-show, so what? She’d practice serves or get in a workout with the ball machine. She walked over to her closet to make sure that Fernanda had washed her favorite tennis skirt—she had—then beelined for the bathroom to take a shower. She’d have to make it a snappy one if she didn’t want to be late.

• • •

Charlie kept her head down as she exited the clubhouse, concentrating on straightening the strings of her tennis racquet, adjusting the placement of her vibration dampener. She told herself she’d get a hopper of balls from one of the pros, do serve drills if it turned out she was solo. She didn’t lift her head until she’d reached the chain-link fence surrounding the courts. When she spotted Jude on the other side, she felt pure joy rising up in her, traveling from her stomach to her throat, bursting out of her mouth in a jaw-cracking smile. And she realized that she’d only been fooling herself with the hard-boiled talk, that she’d have been bitterly disappointed if he’d blown her off, that no way would she have spent the next hour practicing her serve.