The Zombie Padel Summer

Marcus dragged himself across the court, feeling like a total zombie. Three hours of padel in ninety-degree heat would do that to you. His faded blue snapback — the one he'd worn every day since eighth grade — was soaked through, and he was pretty sure he'd sweated through his shirt for the second time today.

"Bro, you good?" asked Jake, clicking his water bottle against Marcus's ear. Jake was effortlessly cool, the kind of guy who could show up to anything looking fresh while Marcus was over here fighting for his life.

"Yeah, just tired." Marcus gulped water like it was the only thing keeping him alive. Which, honestly, it kinda was.

The padel club had become the summer headquarters for their friend group. Every day, same time, same courts. Marcus had never played before June, but apparently that's all it took to get sucked into the social vortex. If you didn't play, you didn't exist. Simple as that.

He adjusted his hat, trying to find that sweet spot where it didn't press into his sweat-drenched hair but also didn't fall off during serves. It was a losing battle.

"Chloe's coming later," Jake said casually, like he hadn't just dropped a nuke on Marcus's afternoon.

Marcus nearly choked on his water. Chloe. The same Chloe he'd been lowkey obsessing over since June. The same Chloe who'd sat next to him in English and borrowed his pens and laughed at his terrible jokes.

"Oh. Cool."

"Yeah, she wants to learn. You should teach her."

Marcus's brain short-circuited. Teach Chloe? The girl he literally could not form complete sentences around? The girl who made his hands shake and his brain turn to mush?

"I'm not that good," he mumbled, which was objectively a lie. He was actually kind of crushing it this summer, even if it didn't feel like it.

"Dude, you're better than me. Just don't be weird about it."

Easy for Jake to say. Jake didn't get nervous. Jake didn't overthink everything.

An hour later, Chloe showed up with a borrowed racquet and zero clue what she was doing. Her smile made Marcus's stomach do somersaults.

"Hey! Marcus, right? You're gonna teach me?"

He adjusted his hat again. Suddenly it felt too tight.

"Yeah. I mean, if you want. It's not that hard once you get the hang of it."

She was terrible. Like, genuinely terrible at padel. But she was laughing at her own mistakes, hair falling in her face, skin glowing from the heat, and Marcus realized something: he didn't need to be cool. He didn't need to be smooth.

He just needed to be here, teaching her how to serve, watching her miss the ball by three feet and crack up about it, feeling less like a zombie and more like himself than he had all summer.

"You're actually kind of a good teacher," she said later, as they sat on the bench sharing what was left of his water.

Marcus smiled. "Yeah? Well, you're not hopeless. Maybe you'll make it to the summer league after all."

She bumped his shoulder with hers. His hat was crooked. His shirt was still soaked. He was exhausted.

But he didn't want to be anywhere else.