The Racquet Accident

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Started: Sunday, August 14, 2022

Prologue: "The Monster."

TWO YEARS AGO 

"BABE. C'MON."

No. I wanted to groan out loud while fanning myself with my hand, but I kept the word bottled. In fact, I took a swig of the sweet, bottled drink in my hand instead of relaying that response. But the 5% alcoholic drink wasn't doing much for me. 

This was the second time my boyfriend, Benny, has yelled those words at me in a span of five minutes. It was the hundredth time he had said that to me all day. And it was always spoken in the same way: with impatience.

"Beer pong outside. Let's play, yeah?" That wasn't really a question I was meant to answer. Benny's red hair was pushed back with a purple bandana, one of our school's colours. His fair skin was flushed and currently dotted with blue and red flashing lights. 

No.

We stood in the middle of a house that was neither of ours. The crowd around us was shifting; people vibrantly moved without a care of the world. I glanced over to where a few girls I recognized were dancing their way towards the kitchen. I'd rather do that than watch another game of beer pong. Yet even at this moment, I knew I needed a break. We'd been moving around since 7 AM.

That was how Homecoming worked at Herringway University. It started with drinking in someone's house and then on Parkdale Lane with alcoholic drinks filled in water bottles. Parkdale Lane was a street that was comprised of day parties today--darties; people coming in and out of houses and lingering on the road. The morning was followed by a football game that no one paid attention to and continued with more drinking. In the afternoon, a concert occurred with a lineup that always made me question how much money HU had.

While the concert excited me, the aftermath that started joyfully was put to a halt when I found myself throwing up in a bush. Ugh.

My hand came up to my sweaty face, grimacing as the heat only seemed to worsen in the living room. The music around seemed to only get louder as bodies moved, danced, and shouted, thumping loudly. This wasn't a bad thing but when you'd been doing it the entire day, you wanted a moment of silence.

I was thinking of peace for far too long because Benny's hand was already wrapped around my wrist. He pulled me over to the kitchen, past the girls that were snickering around the island table and towards the backdoor where his friends were playing a game outside in the cool late September air.

Fall was barely gracing itself upon the town of Jasper Bay, Canada. Jasper Bay was located in the southwestern part of the province of Ontario. The weather here was a completely different contrast to the rainy showers that were likely falling upon my hometown, Stottsville, British Columbia right now. On the other side of the country.

Benny's friends surrounded a table. The group of men, most of whom played on the varsity hockey team, were patting each other on the back. Cheering as if they had recently won a championship game. The sound wasn't unfamiliar. It's one I'd heard all day long. 

The longer I stood at the threshold, the more I wanted to yank my wrist out of Benny's grasp and run down the street. Bolt. Instead, my toes curled within my sneakers as if I was attempting to dig myself into the ground. As if trying to hold in all the irritation I had from the non-stop action and the commanding and the pulling.

Two seconds. I need two seconds alone. Seconds away from the sticky atmosphere at my back and the yelling in front of me. A moment of peace.

Or else I was going to—

"I'm going to go to the bathroom," The words rushed out of me the second my toes uncurled. Instead of bolting down the street, I swiftly made my way through the house, hearing Benny shout for me to meet them outside when I was finished.

Setting my drink on the island next to the group of girls, I pushed past the people on the main floor, seeing heaven at the sight of a mostly empty landing upstairs. Making my way past the couple making out on the staircase, I didn't waste time finding isolation.

I forced a door open with my shoulder, ignoring the pain that was sure to leave a bruise as I made my way inside. Shutting it closed behind me, I sucked in a cool breath and pressed my forehead against the door. 

Peaceful.

Quiet.

Nice.

"That's so good," I murmured.

The music became a faint dull. All the annoyance pent up inside my body started to subside. The unwanted sweat on my body was already drying itself on my skin the longer I stood there, and I waited. Waited for the music to become an afterthought. For the hot air to slowly dissipate—

And then something slammed right behind me.

The scream that left my body, took my soul as I jumped. Impulsively, without a second thought, my hand grabbed the first thing in my sight as I twisted. And once I had a grip on the object in my palm, I swung. with the object, I swung. Then I heard the shrieking sound of strings ripping, their strength collapsing. 

A gasp tore out of me when I locked eyes with the other person in the room.

Shit.

Nikko Zhou.

Nikko with his jet-black hair closely cropped to his head. Nikko whose kind and friendly smile usually broke through strong and handsome features. Nikko who never seemed to be without people around him.

Also, Nikko: whose fist was currently jumbled in the string of a—his—squash racquet.

The cords still attached to the racquet were hazy and bent outwards like someone had escaped from a cage. It looked like a mess.

But he didn't.

Nikko focused on the racquet while I stared at him. His gray t-shirt, partially tucked in and out of his black jeans was accompanied by black socks. The outfit didn't scream anything about Herringway. Or the entire day of Homecoming. His clothes would have made him blend into the background if he came downstairs but that wasn't Nikko, according to my observations. He was...well, he was—

Staring at his socks made me realize then that the cause of the slam was an anatomy textbook laying on the ground next to his feet. 

"I'm so sorry." The apology came out of me in a hurry. The internal reprimanding I gave myself was doing nothing to settle my guilt of being a complete idiot. Nor did it stop me from taking his fist that had gone through the racquet and checking it over myself.

Marks of the strings were imprinted on his skin. Skin that displayed rough callouses on his palm. Skin that was warm to touch on a hand that was slender yet bigger than my own.

Nikko, however, seemed unbothered. He stretched his fingers, closing them in and out before he let out a sound of disbelief, "Do you know how much force you have to have to swing this through my hand?"

I winced, "A lot?"

A small chuckle of disbelief (and awe?) left his lips, "You're stronger than I thought, Larine."

He would know a bit about strength.

Nikko and I played intramural squash together. We racked up as many wins as we could on Sunday nights each semester.

I had met him early last year, during my first year at Herringway, when I had been looking at a poster board for intramural sports at the Rec center. He had come up to me to ask if I wanted to join his team. Little did I know that the group he had broken himself from moments ago was comprised of people I'd become familiar with. And Benny.

When I started dating Benny, I saw Nikko often because they had friends in common. Nikko's house was usually where Benny dragged me to on the weekends after he won a game. Including tonight.

There were weekends when I'd see Nikko sitting on the front steps of his staircase talking with a group of friends. Weekends where I would see him on the court in athletic gear. Where I'd notice the way he stretched before matches. The way he raised his arms. Bent his legs. Twisted in a specific way where it wasn't hard to see the muscles and tendons in his physique. It wasn't hard to see the definition in his body. Especially with the way he hit the ball.

I would never ever say that out loud.

Either way, he knew a thing or two about strength. 

"I guess," I mumbled, glancing up at him. He wasn't that much taller than me. Maybe 6'0 to my 5'10. "You okay?"

"I'm good. Sorry for the jump scare. It fell out of my hand," He said, picking up the anatomy textbook from the ground and placing it on his desk. "Who did you think I was?"

He grinned when he asked that question. And when Nikko Zhou smiled, he did it in a way where you stopped what you were doing.

Where you couldn't help but stare for a few seconds longer than you should have. It was a smile that you'd think about even when he was no longer in the room. I'd see it often whenever we won a game. And besides the heart-stuttering effect it produced, it was also contagious. Which meant my lips had risen the second his own did. 

"No one," I said. My reflexes were always something I had taken advantage of as a child when playing sports. Using them to accidentally attack people I guilty found attractive, wasn't good.

It probably wasn't good to admit attraction to someone when I was almost a year into another relationship. 

My thought made me shake my head. The room that had been cool one second somehow started to become unbearably hot in the next. When I put my hand on the wall by his desk, still holding his broken racquet with the other, Nikko's eyebrows scrunched, "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," I said, taking a much-needed deep breath. To stay in this room with Nikko or to go back out there?

I didn't want to go back out there. If I stayed out there for one more second, I've might throw up again or the heat would've made me so irritated. My anger wasn't exactly my favourite trait of mine. Besides, out there made me sick in an 'I need to take a break from doing this for so long' type of way. Here, with him, made me sick in an 'I don't know exactly how to talk to you' type of way.

"You don't look fine."

His focus dragged from my outfit to the makeup on my face. To the highlighter on the inside corners of my eyes. Moved down to my silver necklace and yellow tube top, another colour of my university, that was accentuated by the waves of my blonde hair.

I was bright in contrast to his dark clothes, dark hair, and dark eyes. We looked like two opposites. Standing across from each other in the quiet room that slightly trembled from the jumping downstairs.

If he realized that at all, he didn't show it. Instead, he moved toward me. Immediately I tensed up, anticipation streaking down my bones. When a breeze of his cologne took over my mind for a brief second, I fought the need to inhale as he sat down, leaning his back against the wall. Nodding his head for me to join him, I didn't hesitate, sliding down until I planted myself next to him.

I was more legs than torso, but Nikko seemed more proportionate in both. His upper body was a stretch taller than my own. Amusement crossed his expression when he asked, "How's it going down there?"

"Stop," I let out a soft laugh, leaning my head back against the wall and embracing the sudden calmness that overcame me. 

For a moment we sat in silence, and I took that opportunity to survey the room. A double bed in the corner. Carpeted floors. The stack of textbooks high on the desk that read exercise, health and nutrition, along with a few pictures of him with different people scattered on one wall.

This was his room. Why was he here when the party was outside?

"Do you feel a little bit better now that you're sitting?" He asked. His voice was so smooth. Like butter.

"I do."

More silence. Nikko and I were friendly, but whenever we spoke to each other, it was typically with other people in the same room. I think this was the first time the two of us had ever truly been alone.

"Where's Benny?"

"He's," I sighed, moving my long hair behind my shoulders. I needed to get it cut but the vague memory of Benny saying that he likes my hair long impeded itself into my mind. The length suited me, anyways. "Probably playing beer pong or something."

What I would give to not be taken from party to party every weekend. To tell Benny that we could have a nice quiet time inside when he's not on the road for hockey. But he's always on the road when there's a game and when he wants to spend time together, it's another party.

At first, it was fine because we barely saw each other as it was. And the honeymoon phase clouded my mind with how I wanted to see him all the time but now I was getting over how we spent that time together. Benny would assure me that we'd only stay at the party for a while before going back to his. Sometimes the parties end up at his place. Sometimes we wouldn't leave until the sun was already rising.

Nikko nodded as if he understood. Maybe he did. He knew Benny's group of friends as well as I did. "You're not much a partier, are you?" He asked.

"I never said that," I pointed out.

"Hmm," Nikko's hand reached towards the racquet, but he didn't take it from my hand. His palm gripped around the bevel, studying it in a way that made me think he'd use the racquet right then and now. My attention went to his forearm as he twisted the handle, the muscles moving beneath his skin.

"Why are you here?" I asked.

"I needed a break," His index finger and thumb held a string of the racquet, brushing against the wayward twines as he spoke. "It's a lot quieter up here. And to be honest, the scent of alcohol makes me nauseous."

"You don't drink?"

He shook his head. His voice dropped down to a low murmur, yet it was still light, "Sometimes it feels like I live in a frat."

"Sometimes," I agreed. His fingers glided against the closed throat of the racquet. His nails weren't cut smoothly. Instead, it looked as if he had a habit of biting them. "I'll pay you back for the racquet."

"It's okay," He nudged me. The mere touch of his elbow against my arm sent a jolt sent its way down my body. That could be due to the liquor still swimming through my system. Yet I knew it wasn't. "Make it up to me by joining the team."

The university team. The team was new compared to others at HU. It was one of the reasons Nikko said that he was going to quit playing intramurals for the winter season the last time we had spoken with everyone else.

I didn't think I could be part of an actual team without my father breathing down my neck.

He didn't even have to physically be here in Jasper Bay. The faintest memory of his voice pressed itself against the side of my head like a hammer hitting a nail whenever I'd expect it. Besides, me playing a competitive sport again?

No. I wouldn't subject myself to that.

Nikko didn't know that. No one really did. I liked squash. I've liked it since a high school teacher I had mentioned that a few students met in the gym after school and I decided to join them for a rally. I was going to like squash just fine and with no intention to have it ruined for me.

"I don't have time," I said with a lift of my shoulder. I lied. All I was doing in my free time was 'helping' someone code in class and attempting to develop my own projects.

"But I'll buy you a new one," I flipped the racquet in my hand, the outward strings brushing against my legs. "If someone asks you what happened to it, you should tell them you were fighting a monster and that's how it broke."

"Oh yeah?" The corner of his lip rose. "Where's the monster gunk?"

"The monster was invisible," I concluded. "You were very good at killing it. I saw the whole thing happen myself."

"Well, how'd the monster get inside the room?" I narrowed my eyes. He was entertaining it.

The Story. That was what I called it as a kid. The last time I played 'The Story', was with my sister, Paula. She typically initiated it to distract me from the incessant noise of two adults fighting in our childhood home. She'd sit there with me for minutes, sometimes hours, listening to me conjure up a story to block out reality.

No wonder she'd become a literary agent.

"Don't you remember?" There was a window on one side of his room that was big and partly cracked open with the dark curtains swaying from the wind.  "We were by the window, and you were showing me constellations—"

"Constellations?" Nikko raised his eyebrows. He didn't know a single thing about the stars.

"Yes," I pretended to encourage him with a wave of my hand. "And you were explaining how I could find Orion and then we heard a growl."

"A growl." He repeated incredulously and I lightly tapped him on the arm but he only grew more amused.

"Yes. It was loud and then we backed away from the window. And then the monster leaped through. And it was big and it was gross and we screamed. But you picked up the racquet and then you killed the monster with it. It was brilliant."

He was holding in a laugh at the dramatic tone that coated my voice. His hand, the one still marked by the strings, came up to his pink lips, "Okay, I think my memory's coming back."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," Those lips twisted to the side before he let out a gasp, "But how could you forget the elf that came through the door?" Elf? He took the racquet, turning it around to point the end at me. I fought back a grin at the serious expression that overtook his face. "You took the racquet and stabbed it so quickly; it didn't have time to think. Now that was brilliant."

Brilliant.

"I think we make a good monster fighting team." I beamed. He smiled right back, the two of us chuckling at our imaginary story when the door cracked open.

"Riri?" Benny stepped into the room, puzzlement dawning on his expression considering I wasn't in the bathroom as I said I would be. His attention cut to Nikko, his eyebrows knitting. Me and Nikko on the ground, shoulders pressed against each other. The two of us holding onto the same broken racquet.

It wasn't a good sight.

Quickly, I got up, putting on a bright face. Benny softened, barely, but he relaxed as I put my arms around him, "Having fun?"

"Yeah," His eyes were still on Nikko. His eyes were still on Nikko. Nothing was happening. He needed to know that. He had to know that, right?

I pressed a kiss to his sweaty cheek, "Let's go play a beer pong?"

Benny's focus cut to me, "Beer pong?"

Let's get out of here. Yet the suggestion couldn't leave my mouth whether I genuinely wanted that or not. I wanted to leave the party. But I didn't want to leave this room.

"Yeah," I intertwined our fingers, turning to look at Nikko whose face I couldn't decipher, "I'll see you around, Nikko. Thanks for the story."

Nikko's expression didn't change from the set stone it was in as Benny and I walked out of the room. Out of the beautifully quiet room and back into the noise, the music, sweaty bodies, the 'woo's' and everything I didn't want to be surrounded by at that moment.

"What story?" Benny asked when we reached the backyard.

"Hmm?"

"You said thanks for the story. What story?"

"Just a story about a prof," I lied. Easily. Too easily. "He took a course with O'Hara last year and he was telling me a story about how he couldn't figure out a code..."

But Benny wasn't listening anymore. Even at my lie. Someone came up to him and shook hands, as they exchanged grins before the person went away. Benny looked at me, far more relaxed now that he was clearly in his element. This was strengthened by the group of men in the corner who all waved at Benny.

Benny raised a hand at them, before looking at me, "Oh yeah?"

He didn't question the fact that Dr. O'Hara, was the first-year calculus professor we both had. Who was part of the math department and had nothing to do with computer science—my major. Or that Nikko wasn't in computer science at all. He was a kinesiology major like Benny. 

How did I know that? I couldn't remember. Maybe it had passed by during a conversation. It didn't matter. Benny didn't care about my words.

"Mmhmm," On the other side of the large backyard, where a familiar group of girls, more or less likely to be involved with a few of Benny's friends were standing. "I'm going to talk to them. I'll see you?"

He was already strutting over to the boys. A part of me sighed in relief. At least I didn't have to watch him play. When I started to make my way over to the girls, I slowed down my walk when I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rising.

Someone was watching me.

Their eyes were on my neck, my outfit and my entire presence. It made me glance over my shoulder to the door Benny and I had exited from. No one was there—

Above. Out the wide window of his room, where our supposed monster who died by racquet had jumped through was Nikko.

Nikko was looking down at me.

Before I could acknowledge him, I could have sworn, maybe, that his lips twitched upward into a faint smile before he disappeared into his room.