The pickleball rose—a slow, spinning arc that made time feel optional.
Dev squinted up into the heavy late sun, sweat pooling at his jawline, paddle poised. The trees behind the chain-link fence buzzed faintly with cicadas. His knees wobbled. June stood beside him in a crouch so low it looked like her bones might rebel.
Across the net, Mel’s face was flushed and wide-eyed, her lips parted like she might yell or cry or both. Evan behind her was practically vibrating, one foot tapping the court like a metronome possessed.
It was 10-9. Match point. Tuesday night rec-league pickleball. But you’d think it was center court at Wimbledon.
The ball dipped below Dev’s waist.
Dev swung and smashed it—too hard, maybe. The ball kissed the inside of the line. Mel lunged. Somehow, impossibly, her paddle caught it, and the return rose like a prayer. A ridiculous, moon-high, shoulder-burning lob.
“Yours,” June breathed.
Dev backpedaled, chest heaving, watching the ball as it bounced high off the clay court. The sun glared off the paddle in his hand. He didn’t think—just swung. The ball rocketed toward Evan, who made a sound like a goose being mugged and flailed it back across.
Another volley.
Then another.
A blink. A slide. Dev barely registered June diving beside him, sneakers screeching. Her paddle made a sharp, triumphant plock.
The ball dropped just over the net.
Evan’s swing was just barely late.
Game.
Silence cracked the air open.
June let out something between a scream and a cackle. She shot up and pumped her paddle in the air. “Let’s goooo!”
Dev blinked at the sky. A patch of cumulus drifted by like it hadn’t just witnessed a war crime. He collapsed onto his back, dust sticking to the sweat on his shirt. “Did I… hit it good?” he muttered.
“You hit it like Zeus getting his security deposit back,” June said, breathless and wild-eyed.
Mel peeled off her headband and sat cross-legged where she stood. “I think I disassociated halfway through. Did we win? Are we ghosts now?”
Evan flopped onto the court, limbs splayed. “My legs have filed for separation.”
A breeze drifted in. Somewhere beyond the fence, a teenager rode by on a scooter playing music from a speaker clipped to his belt. The world kept turning.
“Real talk,” June said. “That was the hardest I’ve ever tried at anything that didn’t involve a deadline or fire.”
Dev sat up. His shirt stuck to him like wet cardboard. “We peaked. We’re done. That was it. The top of the mountain.”
They looked around at each other, drained and grinning. No one said it, but it was written in the slump of their shoulders: nothing that happened next would matter as much as that stupid rally.
June stood, wiping dust off her knees.
“So…Waffle House?”
Curious how much is AI? Read the prompts here.