The Summer I Was Fifteen I Played Tennis Every Day
I had ulterior motives
The summer after my freshman year of high school I played tennis almost every day.
My best friend Jamie and I were a little obsessed with Wimbledon, it was the era of Becker vs. Edberg. She was team Becker: she loved his boisterous, rowdy spirit. I preferred the cool, aloof, handsome Edberg.
She had a park with tennis courts near her house, and these tennis courts just happened to be positioned directly across the street from the boy I had the biggest crush on of my young life.
His name was Jake . He was a brown haired, brown eyed skater boy who was two years older than me who went to my high school.
He was in a band, he had floppy hair, a square jaw, and a shy, unaffected aura for such a stone cold hottie. He didn’t know I existed, and I was kind of ok with that.
For me, he existed on another plane, in a fantasy world that I felt most comfortable nurturing in an invisible swoon.
Other real life experiences with boys were usually disappointing, annoying, or boring, so I was more than happy to keep him in a magic bubble in my head of perfect dreamy romance.
Of course, the more Jamie and I played, the more fun we had with it. We didn’t take…
