The Court Between Us

The padel ball whizzed past my ear, close enough that I could feel the wind on my neck. On the other side of the court, Chloe laughed with Mia — Mia, the girl I'd been best friends with since sixth grade, who now seemed to exist in a different zip code socially.

"You good, Sam?" Mia called out, but her eyes kept sliding to her phone, propped against the fence. Recording, obviously. For TikTok. Because everything was content now.

"Yeah," I said, adjusting my grip on the racquet. "Just warming up."

I'd only agreed to come to the padel club because my mom said I needed to get out of the house. But watching Mia and Chloe coordinate their matching outfits and their little TikTok dances made something twist in my chest. Mia and I used to do that stuff together. Now I was just the awkward third wheel in their content.

The game was a disaster. I missed every serve. My feet moved like they belonged to someone else. And the whole time, Mia's iphone captured it all — the squeak of my sneakers on the court, my face flaming hotter with every error, the way Chloe suppressed giggles whenever I shanked a ball into the net.

"Wait, let me get that one more time," Mia said during a water break, positioning her phone. "Do that thing where you almost hit it but don't. It's kinda iconic, actually."

I laughed because that's what you do when your friend treats you like a joke. "Funny, Mia."

But something in my voice must have landed different than usual, because she lowered the phone. Her expression shifted — just for a second, but I saw it.

"What?" she said. "I'm just messing around."

"I know," I said. "It's just — I haven't seen you in, like, three weeks, Mia. And now that I'm here, I feel like I'm just extra in your Chloe content."

The court went quiet. Somewhere nearby, another game was happening — the rhythmic thwack of racquets, the echo of laughter. But on our court, nobody moved.

Then Mia's phone buzzed. She glanced at it, then back at me. And then she did something that surprised me more than anything had in months.

She powered it off.

"You're right," she said, tossing the phone onto her bag. "That's — yeah. I'm sorry, Sam." She picked up her racquet again. "Wanna play for real this time? Like we used to play tennis that summer before everything got weird?"

"Yeah," I said, something loosening in my chest. "Yeah, I'd like that."

We played for another hour. My serve still sucked. But for the first time in a long time, it felt like we were on the same court again — no phones, no content, no audience. Just two friends remembering how to talk to each other between serves.