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Oh well, time to be professional again. I slipped into coaching mode and gave her a polite smile and walked over. “Hi, I’m Luke. You’re Cami, right?”
“Yes,” Cami confirmed, giving me a scrutinising look.
“Are you fairly new here? I don’t think we’ve ever spoken before?”
Cami gave me an amused smile. “I’ve been at Blue River over a year. We’re actually in the same classes for Psychology and Philosophy.”
“Oh,” I didn’t really know what to say to that.
“Don’t worry about it, I sit at the back, no reason we would have spoken, is there?”
“No, I suppose not.” I looked her over, taking in the fact that she was, thankfully, wearing a crisp white tennis outfit. In fact, her tennis kit was all good quality stuff, a neatly-pressed pristine top and a matching short white skirt. She wasn’t even using a school racket; the one she was holding was an excellent make and didn’t come cheap.
“Coach Morehouse told me you’ve never played tennis before?”
Cami followed my eyes down to her racket, then she shook her head. “Never, but my mum played a bit, she let me borrow this.”
“Okay, well let’s hope you’ve inherited a bit of talent from her.”
Cami smiled. “Doubt it, my mum is more about appearance than talent. She buys the best but doesn’t use it.”
Ah ha, now I thought I was getting the measure of her. She had ‘poor little rich girl’ syndrome, hence the acting out with her hair colour.
“All the gear and no idea?” I quipped.
“That sums it up,” she agreed, the bitterness clear in her voice.
I shrugged. “Okay, well, lets start with some basics.”
I moved behind her, and she skittered to the side. “What are you doing?” she said, suspiciously.
“Teaching you how to hold your racket and the right stance,” I said, wondering if she also had issues with being touched.
“Oh, right.” She nodded and I stepped closer, until she suddenly backed straight into me, causing me to stumble.
“Sorry,” she gave an innocent grin and I realised she’d done it on purpose.
I grit my teeth and took a firmer stance bracing my feet just in case she shoved me again. “Hold up your racket.”
“Like this?” She raised it and it dangled from her limp wrist.
“Like this,” I said, curling my arms around her and moving hers into the correct position.
She went stiff as a board in my arms, like she was seriously uncomfortable being this close to me. I shifted my body back a little and she relaxed slightly. I frowned, wondering why she didn’t want me to touch her. It wasn’t as though I was coming onto her or anything.
“Then what?” she said, her voice sounding like it had a strained edge to it.
“Once you’ve got the grip you can learn some strokes.” I began to shift her hand down the racket into the eastern grip, unintentionally moving closer again.
“Easy, I just swing it at the ball, don’t I?” She took a tighter grasp on the handle then swung it wildly. I ducked, but it still caught me a stinging blow to the head.
“Sorry.”
She looked anything but, and I had to wonder if she’d done it to force me to back off a bit from being in physical contact with her.
I stepped well away, rubbing my head. “This was a mistake. It’s not going to benefit me at all if you’re so bad you can’t even hold a racket. The whole point was for me to get in some practice, but we’re wasting each other’s time.”
Cami stared at me for a moment, then a repentant look came over her face, a real one this time.
“Sorry,” she said again, in a more sincere voice. “I do actually know how to hold a racket; I was being annoying on purpose.”
“Why?” I said, suspiciously.
“Because you look like a prig and I wanted to wind you up.” She said it so matter-of-factly that she caught me off guard and I let out an unexpected laugh.
She smiled in response.
“I’m a quick learner, Luke, just give this a chance or I’m going to get a big fat fail on this class.”
I gave her a dubious look, but she lifted her racket again and held it in position, showing me her grip. It was good, as was her stance. She stood with her knees slightly bent and her weight on the balls of her feet, which is exactly what I had been planning to teach her next. Maybe there was hope for her, after all.
“Okay, well, I'd rather be doing this than anything else, but it would be good if you tried to avoid clobbering me.”
“I’ll give you a pass for now,” she said, with false sweetness.
“Hmm, I’ll stay on the other side of the court for the moment, I don’t think I can trust you at all.” I walked around to the other side and picked a ball out of the bucket.
“I assume you can hit a ball?” I gave it a gentle lob over the net toward her.
She swished her racket in the exact opposite direction and missed it by a mile. “Um, no?”
I heaved a breath of frustration. “Haven’t you ever played any racket sports at all? Badminton? Squash?”
“Baseball,” she said, and picked up the ball, chucked it into the air and smashed it directly toward me.
I dived sideways to avoid a broken nose. “Bloody hell!”
I sat up and rubbed my elbow where it had hit the ground. “You’re like some walking disaster! That was straight at my face!”
Cami pressed her lips together as though trying not to laugh.
“However,” I said, getting to my feet. “We now know you can hit a ball, and you’ve got some real power in it too.”
Cami didn’t look pleased by this, in fact she looked slightly put out, though I had no idea why.
“Just luck,” she said after a pause, “I usually miss it more times than I hit it.”
“We can work on that.” I gave her a cheerful smile, but she just scowled at me.
Half an hour later and she’d failed to hit a single thing again. I was just beginning to rethink the whole idea for a second time when she suggested she should lob them to me for a bit instead. That worked for me, so I gave a casual shrug and agreed.
“Can you make it a bit harder to hit than that?” I asked as she tossed the first ball directly to me.
“Not a problem at all.” She put her hand into the bucket, withdrew another ball and threw it into the corner.
I glared at her.
“It has to at least land in the court!”
“Well, why didn’t you say so? You know I don’t know the rules.”
“Remind me to give you a book or something, or better yet, just look them up online before our next session? Otherwise, I don’t think there will be a next one.”
A look of brief panic crossed her face then she nodded in acceptance. “I’ll learn the rules, promise.”
I wondered why she didn’t just do something else but didn’t ask. Especially as she began to throw balls all over the court but managed to keep them all inside the line. I actually ended up getting a really good workout and she sent them front and back and out to both sides until the bucket was empty.
“Excellent. Did you learn anything just watching, do you think?” I asked, wiping sweat off my brow.
“Definitely.” She nodded.
“Right, let’s collect these up and then it’s probably the end of the lesson.” I picked up the nearest ball and chucked it into the bucket.
She pulled a face. “Yeah, you do that.” Then turned on her heel and left.
“What a charmer,” I muttered, watching her walk away.