The tennis championships took place on a sweltering hot summer day. As soon as I stepped up that morning, squinting into the sun, I could feel the heat shining down on centre court. Luckily, the heat favoured me because I was a good server -- it meant I could win some easy points and save energy without yanking myself back and forth across the court, exhausted.
'You nervous?' Coach said, as we walked onto the court for my last practice shots.
'Not really,' I lied.
Of course I was nervous. This was the championship match. If I won, I could go straight to the pros. And I was up against Ross, the second-ranked male player in my age group.
'Don't worry,' Coach said. 'You crushed him last time.'
It was true. Last time I'd defeated Ross in three sets easily. But there was another reason I cared about this game so much: my ex, Ruby. And as I let my eyes flicker across the stands, which were starting to gather with people, I spotted her sitting in the corner of my opponent's box, casually resting her slender bronze legs on the seat in front of her.
Ruby was easily the most attractive girl I'd ever met. With her angelic blonde hair, cherry lips, and wickedly sexy turquoise eyes, Ruby could easily wrap any guy around her finger -- something she never hesitated to do. If casual flirting was a sport, she'd be in the Olympics. She could always score a bargain on a new dress or ace an interview she was underqualified for.
Ruby had broken up with me two months ago and started going out with Ross a month after that. Somehow the breakup gave her beauty an ethereal glow that made her even more breathtaking. Her white T-shirt hugged her generous chest and her miniskirt showed off every curve of her legs.
'Oi!' Coach barked out. 'Are you listening, Brad?'
I jerked my head away from Ruby, trying not to think of her.
'Y-yes!'
'I was saying, let's practice your serves,' Coach said as he jogged across to the other side of the court. 'Two serves down the T, two serves out wide.'
'Right!'
I had to get my head in the game. If I always got distracted by pretty girls, there was no way I'd win.
I went through my routine, bouncing the ball and coiling my body into the right serving position. It was just my luck that in my position, I couldn't serve without looking directly at her. Or maybe it wasn't -- knowing Ruby, she could've chosen that spot deliberately because it was in my line of sight.
I paused for a moment, bouncing the ball a few more times than usual so I could admire the way the sun shone off Ruby's shoulders. She luxuriously crossed her legs at the knee and dangled one of her sandals off her pretty toes.
Fuck. I definitely had a weakness for female feet, and my ex had the prettiest pair I'd ever seen. Ruby, like beautiful girls all over the world, knew how to use all her tricks to her advantage. She knew dangling a feminine shoe off was the best way to show off the high arches of her flawless soles.
Realising I was daydreaming again, I hurriedly swerved my body around and fired a serve down the court. It bounced horribly wide.
'Man, what the fuck was that!' Coach yelled from the other side of the court, as some of the crowd laughed. I hadn't done that in years. Even if I missed a serve, it was usually much closer than that.
'Sorry, Coach,' I mumbled.
'Are you even concentrating at all?'
Ruby chose that moment to look up at me, and I felt a hot flush creep over me. Why did she have to look at me now? Why not when I was about to do something special?
Ruby lifted one hand into her hair and kicked off her shoe completely, letting it fall onto the seat beside her. She pressed the sole of her foot against the top of the seat, scrunching her toes, rubbing them up and down, teasing her beautiful foot across the head of the empty seat.
Shit. Shit. It was hard enough ignoring my ex when I was just in front of her, but it was impossible when she was deliberately teasing me in front of hundreds of people. This was going to be a long practice.
Sure enough, I screwed up my serves in every way possible: out wide, long, short, into the net, and everything else. People were laughing at me while I was out there. Coach, getting despondent, stopped yelling at me and told me to leave early.
'Hope you're better than that when the match starts,' he sighed.
Ten minutes later, I sat alone in the locker room bench, both hands clenched together. Half the locker doors lay carelessly opened, revealing their now-empty contents. Polished floorboards reflected the fluorescent lights shining overhead. Most weeks this change room was full of loud whistles and salacious gossip, but in the championship round it was utterly empty. They did that to simulate the professional tour.
In these last ten minutes before my championship game, I had one last chance to calm down and get myself back in fighting shape. As any great athlete knew, your success wasn't just about your skills or athletic ability. The most important thing was your ability to control your mind.
But I wasn't doing well. My thoughts kept straying back to Ruby and how smooth her bronze legs looked under the sun. Sighing, I leant back against the locker room and massaged my temples. When I finally opened my eyes, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I shook my head rapidly back and forth but the reality was clear: Ruby was leaning by the doorway.
'Wh-what?!' I stammered. 'What are you doing here?'
Up close, Ruby was even more stunning than I remembered. I hadn't seen her like this in so long that my mouth was dry just looking at her.
'Oh!' she giggled. 'I didn't know this was the boys' change room.'
She hopped onto the bench opposite me and sighed. Ruby crossed her legs at the ankle, pressed one foot against the other, and playfully kicked her legs back and forth.
'Hey,' she piped up, 'the boys' bathrooms are so much better than ours. Isn't that a bit sexist?'
'What are you doing here?' I whispered, glancing around, panicking, my heart hammering. 'Can you please leave?'
'No,' Ruby said promptly.
That was her favourite word around me. Whenever I asked her to do anything, it was usually no. On the other hand, I could never reject her. If Ruby had wanted me to buy her a new dress or drive her to some girls' night, she used to sit on my couch, pout her pretty lips, and dangle one shoe off her toes. Struggling to hide my arousal, I'd always give in quickly. Then she'd hide her knowing smirk with a giggle and reward me with a chaste kiss on my cheek.