The sun was a white-hot coin pressed against the back of her neck, and Dara could feel the sweat collecting at her hairline, sliding slow and deliberate down her spine. She bounced on the balls of her feet, racket loose in her grip, eyes tracking the fluorescent yellow ball arcing across the net toward her forehand side. The court smelled like melted rubber and the faint chemical sweetness of sunscreen, and underneath all of it, her own skin heat, the damp cotton of her tank top clinging to the small of her back.

She pivoted, swung through clean, and the ball came off her strings with a satisfying pop that was already wrong—too much topspin, too sharp an angle. It curved wide, skidding past the singles sideline and slowing in the gritty no-man's-land near the doubles alley.

"Fuck," she muttered, watching it die against the blue surface.

"Thirty-love." Veli's voice came from behind her, dry and unhurried, the way he always sounded when he was winning a practice point. "You're rushing."

"I'm not rushing." She didn't turn around. She was acutely aware, in a way that had nothing to do with tennis, of the way her white skirt settled against the back of her thighs. She'd tugged it down before the last serve—or thought she had—but the fabric was light, athletic-cut, designed to move with her. Which meant it moved. Which meant there were moments, milliseconds really, where it rode up and she had no idea what it showed.

And she knew, with the kind of certainty that sat cold and heavy in her stomach, that she was not wearing anything underneath it.

The realization had hit her that morning, standing in front of her open dresser drawer, staring at the empty space where her clean sports underwear should have been. She'd done laundry two days ago. She'd meant to fold it. But practice started in twenty minutes and her roommate was in the bathroom and the hamper was full of yesterday's stuff she'd sweat through and tossed aside. The logistics of the moment had won. She'd told herself it would be fine. It was just practice. No one would notice. The skirt was compression-lined anyway, double-layer, designed for modesty.

Except she'd checked the compression layer this morning too, and it was thin. Athletic-thin. Breathable-thin. Not-through-the-white-thin, probably, but close enough that she'd spent the entire first set playing with her ass practically glued to the baseline, refusing to bend at the waist if she could help it, lunging instead of squatting, keeping her torso upright even when it cost her reach on a wide ball.

It had cost her three points so far.

She was aware of every single one of them — the weight of Veli's silence after each scramble, the way he didn't comment on her suddenly conservative footwork. He noticed things. He always noticed things. Three years of doubles together meant he'd memorized her habits the way she'd memorized his: the way he bounced the ball exactly seven times before his first serve, the way he adjusted his grip between points by rolling the racket handle against his palm, the way he went quiet when he was thinking instead of when he was focused.

He was quiet now.

She adjusted her skirt with a quick tug, the fabric sliding against her bare skin in a way that made her stomach tighten, and turned to face him. He was at the T, one hand resting on his hip, the other holding his racket across his body like he'd forgotten he was holding it. His grey shorts hung loose, and there was a dark patch of sweat at the collar of his black sleeveless shirt, right where his collarbone caught the light.

"You okay?" he asked. His voice was neutral. Casual. The voice he used when he already knew the answer to the question he was asking.

"Fine." She said it too fast and she knew it, could feel the heat creeping up her neck, the way her cheeks were already flushed from the sun but also from something else, something she didn't want to name. "Just—the sun's in my eyes on that side."

He looked at her. Just looked. His black eyes, sharp as cut glass, moved from her face to her grip on the racket to the angle of her shoulders and back up, and she watched him decide whether to push it. He didn't. He just shrugged one shoulder and walked back toward the baseline, bouncing the ball once, twice, three times before catching it.

"Switch sides after this game. You can serve from the shade."

It was a concession he didn't have to make, and she hated how grateful she felt. She nodded, turned back to face the net, and tried to breathe.

The ball came again—his serve, flat and heavy, aimed at her backhand corner where the sun was worst. She read it late, jammed her return into the net, and heard him grunt in acknowledgment as he jogged forward to collect the ball from the T.

"You're also pulling your head up on the backswing," he said, not looking at her. "You flinched before contact."

"I didn't flinch."

"You flinched." He tossed the ball to her over the net, a lazy underhand lob that she caught against her chest. "You only do that when you're distracted."

The words landed in her chest like a stone dropped into still water. She curled her fingers into the ball's felt and said nothing.

"Forty-love." He said it like it was nothing, like he hadn't just peeled back a layer of her composure with a single observation. "You want to take a water break after this one?"

"No." The word came out sharper than she meant it to. "I'm fine. Let's finish the set."

He held up both hands, a small surrender. "Okay."

She bounced the ball, once, twice, three times, then four—buying time, settling her breathing, trying to find the rhythm she'd lost somewhere between the realization of her forgotten underwear and the look he'd given her that she still couldn't read. She tossed, served, and it was a good one—flat, deep into the service box, skidding off the court with enough pace that he could only chip it back, a defensive lob that floated high and slow into the sun.

She moved forward, tracking it with her eyes squinted, and caught the ball on the rise with her forehand, cracking it crosscourt into the open space. She watched it land, felt the weight of the point shift back in her favor—and then her momentum carried her past the service line, past the T, and the ball she'd hit was already dead on the other side, spent and still, and she was jogging toward the net to retrieve it from the alley where it had rolled to a stop.

She didn't think.

She just moved, the way she'd moved through a thousand practice points, her body responding to the geometry of the court and the ball and the heat before her brain could catch up with what she was about to do.

She reached the alley. The ball was there, resting against the base of the net post, a single scuff mark on its yellow felt like a closed eye.

And she stopped.

Her hand hovered above it, inches from the felt, and the air around her went still and heavy, the way it does right before a storm breaks. She could feel the sun on the back of her thighs. The skirt's hem, brushing against the bare skin where the compression layer ended and she began. The absence of fabric between her legs, a coolness that had nothing to do with temperature.

She could feel his gaze on her back.

She didn't have to turn around to know he was watching. She could sense it, the weight of his attention settling between her shoulder blades, the same way you feel someone standing too close in a dark room. He hadn't said anything. Hadn't moved. But he was looking—at her, at the position she was standing in, at the angle of her body bent forward from the hips with her hand still suspended above the ball like she'd forgotten how to finish the motion.

Her throat went dry.

Her heart was beating too fast, a stupid, traitorous rhythm that had nothing to do with the point she'd just won and everything to do with the fact that she was bent over in front of her doubles partner with no underwear on, and the skirt had ridden up when she jogged, and she had no idea how much of her was visible from where he was standing.

The flush hit her neck first, then her cheeks, a wave of heat that felt nothing like the sun.

She could still straighten up. She could grab the ball and turn and pretend nothing had happened, and maybe he hadn't seen anything, maybe the skirt had settled before he could—

But she knew Veli. She knew the way his eyes tracked a ball's trajectory, the way he watched her footwork during points, the way he noticed when her grip shifted a millimeter to the left on her backhand. He noticed everything.

And he'd been watching her all afternoon.

She stayed where she was, frozen in the space between one decision and the next, her fingers still hovering above the scuffed yellow ball, the silence stretching out behind her like a held breath.

"Dara."