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“Fuck, it’s time to quit,” Yunming said, glaring at her wrapped-up knee.
“You just got out of surgery,” her sister Yunxi said. “You’ll feel different once you feel better.”
“The drugs haven’t worn off yet,” Yunming said. “This is as good as I’m gonna feel the next six months.”
Yunxi blinked. “Wow, that’s bleak.”
“Realistic,” Yunming countered.
“You don’t sound like there’s any happy juice still in your system,” Yunxi said, squinting at Yunming with concern. “I should ask—”
“No, you shouldn’t,” Yunming said. “No second-guessing the surgeon.”
“They didn’t stay ahead of your pain last time,” Yunxi said. “Ayelle won’t let me hear the end of it if I let that happen again.”
Ayelle, Yunming’s wife, was currently on the west coast, for a series of festive events to commemorate her father’s career as a cantor. “You were Ayelle’s top choice for proxy, ’cause you’re my calmest sibling.”
“Oh please,” Yunxi said. “The bar’s so low for that, it’s flat on the floor.”
Yunming snickered with Yunxi as their eyes met: they were all smart—Yunxi, Yunming, their brother and their baby sister—but Yunshuo had always been the poster boy for zero chill, whether he was on a soccer field or at a dissertation defense, and Yunyun was a literal diva, with the spectacular voice and outsized self-confidence to fill opera houses and symphony halls. As a professional tennis player, Yunming herself had never acquired the knack of blithely suffering fools or affecting nice-girl coyness as she scrapped and strategized her way into the Top 200 of the women’s tour. According to many of her relatives, she needed to work on becoming less off-putting and unfeminine, but Yunming had never seen the point of wasting time on that when she had a backhand to fine-tune, lung capacity to expand, and other far more relevant improvements to pursue.
But. She also wasn’t delusional enough to set her sights on coming back. She’d last occupied a spot in the Top 100 three years ago, despite working as hard as ever to stay in fighting trim. The writing had already been on the wall, about her never again climbing back to her peak ranking: the lunge that had blown out her knee was really merely an exclamation point, punctuating the unpleasant reality of her aging out of her vocation. Any temptation to drag things out had been thoroughly quashed by the sorry spectacle of her father-in-law’s forced retirement: he had refused to acknowledge the deterioration of his voice even as it got wobblier and pitchier, and stubbornly rejected the efforts of colleagues and friends to ease him into a less demanding role, until the synagogue’s trustees finally fired him. They had done so as compassionately as possible, out of respect for the decades of movingly rendered Kol Nidres, cantillations, nusachs, and other musical glories, and the recent tussles with Ayelle’s father’s ego hadn’t erased the fact that once upon a time, for a very long time, he had been one of the finest liturgical musicians of his generation.
Yunming didn’t know if the old man would forgive her for missing the tributes to his career, but she herself wasn’t ready to forgive him for being such a self-centered ass. His intransigence had put Ayelle and his other children under immense strain as they tried to remain both filial and reasonable about his declining abilities. Every stance they’d adopted had cost them friendships and credibility, regardless of whether the decision of the moment favored Team Respect Your Elders or Team Step Down Already, and Yunming had thought a man of God would have done his utmost to shield his kids from that shit.
It was chilling, how bitterly Ayelle and Ayelle’s mom had laughed when Yunming had voiced that thought aloud, during a videocall. “You sweet summer child,” Ayelle had finally said, not unkindly. “Religious professionals aren’t any less egomaniacal than tennis coaches, darling. They aren’t any better at answering to higher powers just because they study it more. Dad’s as much of a prima donna as your baby sister.”
Oh. Oh. Yunming had sent her parents a thank-you bouquet right after the call ended. She’d known for years that they were saner than many sports and stage parents: that they were both high-level cancer researchers had worked in her favor in multiple respects, from being well-off enough to pay for private lessons, to having far more important fish to fry than what Yunming should be eating or whom she should be kissing up to to improve her draws and raise her ranking. They had provided the right amount of support throughout Yunming’s tennis career—caring without being overbearing—and they’d instilled in all their kids, even the younger drama llamas, the awareness that no one was special enough to outrun the passage of time or plain bad luck. Yunming had hoped to fit in more tournaments before putting away her racquets—she’d really been looking forward at least one more sun-kissed swing through Portugal, France, and Spain—but she was already more prepared than most players for life away from tennis. It sucked to be hurt, and it was sad to be done, but there wasn’t anyone she respected who would call it a tragedy.
* * * *
Doing her duty as Yunming’s big sister, Yunxi did calmly talk to the doctor about pain management, resulting in an additional shot of something nerve-soothing before the aides transferred Yunming to a wheelchair, and then helped her into Yunxi’s sedan.
“Thank you,” Yunming said, once she was settled in her own bed. “I’m still gonna retire, but I like feeling floaty instead of achy.”
“Good,” Yunxi said. “Hopefully we can keep that going the next two days, and then Ayelle will be back.”
“You’re better at this than Ayelle,” Yunming said, confidingly.
Yunxi laughed. “I should hope so, since I’m the one who’s a doctor.”
“You’re a pediatrician,” Yunming said. “I’m not a kid.”
“No, but you’ll never not be my kid sister,” Yunxi said. “I would’ve offered to help even if Ayelle wasn’t traveling. I have more PTO banked than I’ll ever get to use, and I’ll finally get to finish this novel as soon as you go to sleep.” She held up a book with two beach volleyball players on the cover.
“Ooh!” Yunming said. “Is it good enough to read twice? You could read it aloud to me!”
“Nice try,” Yunxi said. “I’m definitely leaving that to Ayelle. Some bedtime stories are not for sisterly bonding.”
* * * *
Five days later, Ayelle paused at the end of chapter six and said, “I cannot believe your sister was reading this filth in the hospital. And not even on an e-reader!”
“It’s why she’s the best, especially with teens,” Yunming said, smirking. “Nothing those punks or their parents say is gonna faze her.”
“I wish I could’ve borrowed some of that for the trip,” Ayelle said. “Especially for the sixty-something punks still asking when will I find a nice Jewish boy to have babies with.”
Yunming grimaced. “Not gonna lie, babe, I wasn’t sorry to miss all that.”
“Not holding it against you.”
“Didn’t think you were, but I wouldn’t mind you getting a hold of other things.”
“I can’t believe I ever thought you had game, with lines like that,” Ayelle said, face crinkling with amusement.
“No, no, don’t set it aside,” Yunming said, as Ayelle put the book down on the floor. “I wanna hear about golden Brittany’s butter hands again while you sizzle my pits with your perfectly placed thumbs.”
“Oh my God, that’s enough book for you,” Ayelle said, climbing onto the bed and carefully straddling Yunming’s hips. “If you’re feeling well enough to be demanding, you’re feeling well enough for my mouth.”
“Your lips are forming words, but they’re too far away to make any sense,” Yunming said, eyes gleaming.
“There’s only one person in this room with sense, and it isn’t you. Not when you’re asking me to bring a book owned by your sister into bed with us.”
“You teach sex ed to Jewish and Unitarian kids! How are you a bigger prude than the rest of us?” Yunming giggled as Ayelle captured her wrists and pressed them into the mattress.
“It’s called having manners, you uncouth cow,” Ayelle said. Yunming giggled harder. “This can’t be news to Yunxi, though—I bet she sterilizes everything she gets back from you, come to think of it.”
Yunming scoffed. “Yunxi played basketball all through high school, and her gym bags got just as swampy as mine. So anything she shared with me was usually a little damp and worse for wear by the time she handed it—”
“Stop,” Ayelle said, pressing a hand over Yunming’s mouth. “I get it. You are both disgusting, and I’m sorry I ever met either of you.” She promptly undercut this declaration by dropping a soft kiss onto Yunming’s forehead.
Yunming grinned against Ayelle’s palm, especially as Ayelle peppered more kisses across her face and against her neck. Her grin widened as Ayelle sat back up and pretended to debate with herself on whether it was safe to lift her hand. As soon as she did, Yunming said, “You like me damp and worse for wear.”
“Only when I make you that way,” Ayelle said, seating herself more firmly into place.
“Then get a move on already!” Yunming bucked up against Ayelle—and then fell back with a gasp. “Oh fuck, that was dumb. Ow.”
“Shit, did we hurt you already?”
“No, but I need to not try that again until I’m better. Turns out I can feel it in my knee right now when I do a pelvic tilt. Lovely nasty jolt, there.”
“Well, that’s no good.” Ayelle curled forward again, brushing her thumbs against Yunming’s cheeks. “I’ve never known you to come without tilting or grinding.”
“That’s me—known for grinding away,” Yunming said, referring to her reputation on the courts: on the professional circuit, she’d never been the fastest, strongest, or most elegant player, but she’d been one of the smartest and stubbornest, and that had been enough to make a living at it—to win enough matches to keep at it, even though she’d never gotten past the second round of any Slam, and she’d never lifted a WTA trophy: all her titles had been earned at lesser ITF tournaments. No one subjected themselves to all the hassles of a pro career—the relentless public scrutiny, the intrusive anti-doping tests, the joyless dietary restrictions—without thinking they had a decent shot at someday lifting the Venus Rosewater Dish at Wimbledon, or the Suzanne-Lenglen Cup at Roland Garros, even though the odds of doing so were abysmally low.
“Start of a new era,” Ayelle said, thumbs tracing the curve of Yunming’s jaw. “New moves. New angles. Where do you want me in all this?”
Yunming tapped Ayelle’s left hip. “Maybe you could slide to the side instead of sitting on me?” Ayelle immediately swung herself off of Yunming, stretching out along Yunming’s left.
Yunming very cautiously raised her hips and very slowly lowered them, testing.
“That looked like it felt okay,” Ayelle said, staring hopefully as Yunming repeated the short movement up and down.
“Yeah. It doesn’t feel great, but it’s not giving that ‘hell no girlie ow’ that hit when you were right on top of me. Dammit. I like you on top of me.”
“I like me on top of you too, but we can work back up to that,” Ayelle said, placing a hand on the far hip. “Bless your overactive nerve receptors. I guess me sitting on you somehow makes things louder with your knee?”
“Something like that,” Yunming said. “Like how someone yelling inside a booth is gonna sound way louder than someone yelling in an open-air stadium, y’know?”
“Ok, that tracks,” Ayelle said. “I was going to say that bodies are weird, but that’s like, physics.”
“You can still say bodies are weird,” Yunming said, patting the hand on her hip. “I took a pain tab an hour ago. I should be sleepy now, not horny.”
“I was reading smut to you. It’d be weirder if you weren’t horny.”
“It wasn’t outstanding smut,” Yunming said, drawing her hand up to Ayelle’s jaw. “Like, sure, I was already feeling like it’s been too long since our last fuck, so Brittany’s butter hands—”
Ayelle sniggered into Yunming’s shoulder. “You liked what they were doing to her partner, yeah? The way those strong, sure digits knowingly plundered every private nook and cranny of—”
“Stop making fun of the book,” Yunming said. “That isn’t going to make me feel as good as you using your own actual hands on me.”
“Yes ma’am,” Ayelle said, dragging up the hem of Yunming’s pajama top. She gazed happily at Yunming’s bared breasts until Yunming said, “I may be retired, but I’m not a museum piece. If you’re just gonna stare—”
Ayelle snorted. “Impatient,” she said, tracing a tan line with a fingertip. “I should read more filth to you until you’re humping my hand into tomorrow.”
“I should take another tab and fall asleep for real if you’re just gonna be mean to me,” Yunming said, but she remained perfectly still as Ayelle continued to map her multiple tan lines—T-shirt, tennis dress, favorite sports bra. Necklines, straps, the band under the bust.
“You know I won’t be insulted if you do fall asleep,” Ayelle said, finally flicking a nipple with her forefinger.
“Of course you’re saying that now, right when—” Yunming broke off with a moan as Ayelle followed a second hard flick with sealing her lips over the nipple. Ayelle’s mouth was hot and hungry, and Yunming’s hips arched up as Ayelle tongued and tugged at the nipple.
“Yes, you beauty,” Yunming hoarsely said. “Yes, like that. God.” Ayelle traveled to the other breast with wet open-mouthed kisses, firmly pinching the old nipple while latching onto the new one. Yunming whimpered and writhed as Ayelle sucked and nipped at her breasts until they were slippery and pleasantly bruised from the attention lavished on them.
Ayelle rested her cheek on Yunming’s arm when her lips became fatigued. “How do you want me to get you over the edge? Since pinning and grinding are out…”
“Nothing wrong with my face,” Yunming said. “You should sit on it. I think it’s far enough away from my knee that it won’t be like the pelvic tilts firing up muscles that aren’t ready to work.”
“Gotcha.” Ayelle shimmied out of her clothes, helped Yunming pull off the pajama top all the way, and piled the pillows behind her before kneewalking up to Yunming’s head.
Yunming inhaled deeply as Ayelle arranged herself above Yunming’s face. “You smell so good. I should’ve asked for this earlier.”
“I needed to get in the mood myself. Butter-handed beach bunnies do do it for me,” Ayelle joked.
“Do they,” Yunming echoed. “Well. My days of diving after balls are over, but let’s see what I can come up with to make you come.”
Yunming was being silly, of course. Their very first hook-up had been in a motel near the Memphis Racquet Club. Ayelle had come to the city with her heart set on visiting Graceland and Beale Street, but rain pelting down hard on the second day of her vacation had made the prospect of watching indoor tennis far more appealing than it had seemed when a bartender had handed her a free pass. It had been a forgettable tournament for Yunming—the crowds were sparse, she’d lost in the second round to a washed-up wild card Serb, and the barbeque served at the club was more hype than flavor. But a cute woman near the umpire’s chair had decided to cheer for her, and it was a no-brainer to join her after cooling down, and to be unimpressed together by both the doubles match and the barbeque, and then go to the motel and show off to Ayelle how fit she really was.
She wasn’t as trim as she’d been back then, but she knew so much more about what got Ayelle going, and she was so much more addicted to Ayelle’s scent and sounds than when they were just sex-addled strangers. She was now familiar with how Ayelle became distinctly more tangy the more turned on she was: as Yunming licked and lapped her way up and down the folds of Ayelle’s pussy, and then thrust her tongue deep into its center, the musky aroma of Ayelle’s arousal deepened, wreathing her senses with a plush gratification. I can sink into this, and it feels so good. I know what I’m doing here, and I do it really fucking well.
Yunming grinned to herself as Ayelle’s breath hitched and her thighs trembled and the wetness swamping her mouth felt thicker and heavier and brighter with every swipe of her tongue against the flesh enveloping it. As Ayelle shuddered with satisfaction and rolled off to the side, Yunming smeared her mouth against her palm and then cupped her own pussy with her Ayelle-soaked hand.
Sweet spot, Yunming thought to herself, with satisfaction. You don’t have to be the best or the fastest or the loudest to hit it. You don’t have to be the pushiest. She didn’t grind against the curve of her palm. She tilted her hips and locked eyes with Ayelle. So sweet and so good the ride.