Chapter 2 - Game, Set, and...

“Mom… are you sure about this outfit?”
Justine glanced down at herself, feeling a little self-conscious. The shorts that Minerva had bought barely reached her thighs, and it had left her feeling more than a little exposed. Stuffing her ample endowment into them was quite the task, and she found herself repeatedly checking to make sure nothing had slipped. If she managed to keep it soft, she was sure she would be fine…but that was a very big if.
“You promised not to be a stick in the mud…” Minerva whispered, well out of earshot of the approaching duo. Giving her daughter no time to respond, she waved her old friend over excitedly, “Annie! Over here!”
Justine waved nervously, trying to stifle her embarrassment as her mother hopped up and down like a child in the middle of the court. Her friend for her part waved warmly. Unable to contain her excitement, Minerva ran to meet them halfway, nearly tackling them to the ground.
“Oh hello, Minnie!” Anabel gasped, warmly returning the embrace as soon as she had regained her footing, “It’s been far too long, dear.”
“Couldn’t agree more, girl… couldn’t agree more,” Minerva laughed.
After a short exchange outside Justine’s range of hearing, she threw an arm around each of their shoulders and walked them back toward the court.
“Justine, this is my best friend from college: Anabel Descoteaux…”
Anabel wasn’t entirely a stranger; She was a constant presence in Minerva’s stories and photo albums, and they maintained almost daily contact via Facebook and text messages. This was the first time that Justine had met her in person, however. She was an active woman in her mid-40s, much like Minerva. However, where Justine’s mother was energetic and approachable, Anabel had the presence of royalty. Justine found herself feeling very small and under-dressed in her presence.
Justine extended her hand, only to be pulled into a tight hug instead. The girl’s mind briefly left her body as a multitude of sensations hit at once: the softness of her skin, the warmth of her embrace, the sweet smell of her perfume, and the caress of her womanly curves. Justine absentmindedly wrapped her arms around Ms. Descoteaux’s back as Anne nuzzled her cheek into her shoulder.
“Sorry, dear,” Anabel chuckled as they parted, “I hope your mother warned you. I’m very much a hugger.”
Her eyes darted downward for just a split second, and then rose back to meet Justine’s. Her expression was unchanged, but Justine instinctively checked herself to make sure that she hadn’t fallen out of her shorts. Thankfully, all was well. 
“Nah… no worries! I uh… I like hugs!” Justine laughed nervously.
“…And this is her daughter, Elaine!” Minerva concluded, gesturing to the hooded girl with her nose buried in her phone.
As if unsettled by the sound of her name, Elaine raised her head with a start, nearly dropping her phone in the process. She looked from Minerva to Anabel, and finally to Justine. They exchanged an awkward glance. Elaine went for a handshake. Justine went for a hug. Both laughed nervously and stalled, feeling foolish as they tried to correct their incompatible greetings. Justine went for a handshake. Elaine went for a hug.
They silently agreed to cut their losses and settled on an awkward wave in lieu of embarrassing themselves further.
“Nice to meet you,” Justine smiled as genuinely as she could manage.
“Y—yes!” Elaine nodded, before adding, “Me uh… me too…”
Justine turned and took her place down the court. She took a few practice swings in hopes that her body would remember the proper motions. Anabel bounced the ball a few times as she prepared to serve from the opposite side of the net.
“Best of three, dear?” Anabel called across the court to Minerva.
“Sounds good!” She responded with a sweet smile, “You just pick how many games you want to lose, Annie!”
The pleasantries quickly faded as Anabel readied up her serve. She cast a final, confident glance at Justine and tossed the ball skyward. 
“Haaaaa—UNGH!” With an unrestrained grunt of exertion, she fired the serve from her racket, clearing the net with practiced form. A smile crossed her lips…
The return was a sharp contrast. Justine hit the ball back with a criminally precise slice, giving the ball barely any bounce as it unceremoniously rapped twice against the clay court before Anabel could even begin to approach it. Wide-eyed, her gaze darted to Justine, then to Minerva, and then back.
Minerva burst into laughter.
“I guess it’s our serve now—right, Annie?” She yelled to her dumbfounded friend.
Anabel grumbled, retrieved the ball that now rolled lazily across the court, and tossed it back to Justine with a scalding glare. Justine laughed nervously under her breath and attempted to avoid eye contact with her gloating mother. 
“The stakes couldn’t be lower,” she said.
“Just for fun,” she said. 
Justine did not want any part of her mother’s ravenous competitive appetite, but she knew that if she intentionally threw the game, the ride home would be torturous. And Minerva would know—she always knew. Justine took a deep breath and tossed the ball up to serve.
Anabel tensed as Justine’s backswing reached its full extension, and she darted forward as soon as the lanky girl’s racket made contact, intending to intercept the low bounce as she had failed to do seconds earlier. 
Justine tilted her racket at the last second, sending a moonball bouncing fast and high over Anabel’s head—far beyond her reach.
The older woman jumped with a growl of equal parts exertion and frustration. She swung her racket high overhead, hitting naught but air as the ball sailed past and lodged itself in the chain link fence. Clearly rattled but unbroken, Anabel straightened her visor and took her place back on the court; a determined look fixed on her face.
“Love-15!” Minerva cackled.
“M—Mom?” Elaine piped up, finally getting her mother’s attention.
“What is it, Elaine?” Anabel responded, trying her best to hide her embarrassment.
“W—…would you like me… to um—… Should I return the serve?” Elaine asked somewhat apprehensively—clearly concerned about further bruising her mother’s ego, “She’s… pretty good…”
“Thank you, dear, but no,” Anabel flashed Elaine a smile, “I simply underestimated little Justine, that’s all. My mistake. Knowing her mother, I should’ve been more prepared…”
“You’re doing great, sweetie!” Minerva waved to her daughter from across their side of the court, “She’s got them old lady reactions though, so don’t go too hard on her!”
“D—don’t be like that, Mom…” Justine smiled nervously, refusing to make eye contact with Minerva, “It’s just like… a parlor trick. Everyone falls for it once…”
Elaine’s expression mirrored Justine’s. Though Anabel wore a warm smile, the look in her eyes was downright wrathful, and that made both daughters very nervous. Their mothers were clearly taking this far more seriously than they were. What’s more, Minerva’s antagonizing remarks were clearly finding purchase, adding extra powder to this already overfilled keg.
“Justine, dear?” Anabel called across the court. 
“Y-Yes, Ms. Descoteaux?” Justine called back.
“Doctor,” Anabel corrected. 
“D-Doctor Descoteaux, my bad…” Justine apologized, “Wh—… I mean… what did you—”
“I have a suspicion, dear. That you’re planning to ‘accidentally’ give me a sub-par serve. To take it easy on me, as it were…” Anabel loosened her white-knuckled grip on her racket, exhaling softly to re-center herself. The look on her face hadn’t lost an ounce of its original intensity, however, “That would frustrate me. Quite a bit. You understand, dear?”
Justine swallowed hard and nodded. They used different words, and their outward personalities couldn’t be further from each other… but suddenly Justine completely understood why Anabel and her mother had been so close for so long. Because the look on Anabel’s face was very familiar. It told Justine that she would accept no handicap.
“You heard her! She asked for it, J!” Minerva cheered, “Serve this old bat up a few more aces. The sooner we’re done using her tennis balls, the sooner she can put them on her walker where they belong.”
“Still ever the joker, Minnie…” Anabel laughed with a shake of her head and looked to Justine, “Come now, girl. We haven’t all day.”

• • •

Anabel dived for the return, merely grazing the ball with her racket. The fuzzy little ball flew up and bounced off of the empty umpire’s chair, landing squarely back in their court. Set point—McVie.
After she failed to return Justine’s initial serves, the set had more or less devolved into an awkwardly paced singles match. Anabel wished to prove that she could consistently return Justine’s surgically precise serves, and as such had given Elaine a rather wilting look every time she had tried to assist. 
To her credit, Anabel had managed to return a fair few… but she simply didn’t have the speed to both react and put herself in a position to return much of the time. The individual games were never blowouts, but before long, the McVies had captured set point before the Descoteauxs had managed to capture even a single game.
Justine wanted to be swallowed up by the Earth. The tension on the court could’ve been cut with a knife. That probably had something to do with the fact that her mother hadn’t stopped her snide jabs for even a second, and continued cackling at her exhausted rival’s unsuccessful effort.
Anabel picked herself up off of the court. She rolled over onto her backside and leaned back on her arms, gazing up at the clouds while she tried to catch her breath. Sweat poured down her neck and ample chest as it rose and fell, her white tank top already soaked and sticking to her body. She pulled off her visor and fanned herself with it in an attempt to cool down.
Justine could feel it happening. The crackling tingle in her tummy happily sizzled like a lit fuse as it slowly traveled south, making its way to her chemically-restrained testes. Her medicine was wearing off… and now she had second thoughts regarding what she’d like to be swallowed up by.
“It’s my turn to serve now, isn’t it?” 
Elaine called across the net for the first time, which took everyone by surprise. Her mother nodded from the ground. Elaine held her hand out for a ball—jaw clenched tight, eyes narrowed, and eyebrows furrowed. 
Justine jumped a little as Elaine’s icy stare turned to her, as she scrambled to fish a fresh tennis ball out of the canister. After she dropped it a few times, further embarrassing herself, Justine finally managed to pass it across the net.
“Thank you,” Elaine responded with a robotic, warmth-less pleasantry.  
Justine’s shoulders fell. This was the reason she didn’t play anymore. She didn’t care if she won or lost. It was a game to her. It always had been. She didn’t even practice beyond the amount that she was forced to tolerate for her mother’s sake.
And that was fine… until she played against someone who it wasn’t just a game for. Someone who practiced constantly and put their heart and soul into it. For someone like that, losing to her was just a never-ending cycle of confusion and frustration… and Justine couldn’t help but acknowledge that it felt more than a little unfair, in a cosmic sense.
In short, playing didn’t make Justine happy… and it made a lot of others very unhappy. So she quit.
Elaine set her racket and the new ball down on the ground and grabbed the hem of her baggy shirt with both hands. Justine’s eyes were sucked to her midsection like a magnet as each tiny motion of her body made her abdominals ripple through her sun-tanned skin. Her lower body pulled a similar trick as she bent over to kick off her shorts, leaving her only in her leggings and a bright-orange sports bra.
The tingling had turned into a rumble, and Justine pinched her legs together in anticipation of the imminent failure of her tuck work. She could feel her heart beating faster by the second. Her medicine was fighting a losing battle. She could already feel her panties stretching uncomfortably.
Elaine picked up her equipment and shook her hair out of her face, sending a pleasant shiver down Justine’s spine. Though she’d never been particularly religious, she found herself praying that Elaine wouldn’t flash her that cold stare again. Her libido was rapidly becoming more and more of a problem by the second, and there was a non-zero chance that she might cream her shorts if Elaine stared her down again.
As Elaine tossed the ball skyward to serve, Justine was snapped from her daydream by the horrible realization that she couldn’t move—not without flashing her leaky half-chub to a dozen sentient polo shirts, anyway. She tried to get her mother’s attention, but Minerva was already poised to react and return.
“NnnYAAAAAAHHrr!”
Elaine’s serve sounded like a gunshot, and the ball fired off her racket with comparable speed. Minerva moved just a little too late, and the serve bounced at the edge of her box and into the fence. 
Minerva did a bit of a double take between young Elaine and the ball, eyes widened, equal parts surprised and impressed. Elaine flashed her a toothy grin, her braces shining in the bright sun.

• • •

With Anabel still catching her breath and Justine desperately fending off her libido, the match once again devolved into a mostly one-on-one affair. However, Minerva and Elaine played a much more athletic contest than their inverse pair had. While there were few aces to be found, Elaine dashed and leaped around the court with the speed of a pronghorn, and had the endurance to match. 
Minerva’s rally was powerful and precise, but she, unfortunately, possessed the mortal weakness of finite stamina. Elaine seemed to share no such weakness. She was a brace-faced terminator—utterly relentless. Minerva may as well have been playing against a brick wall for all the hope she had of getting the ball past her. 
The second set ended in much the same way as the first—one player exhausted, another barely breaking a sweat, and their respective doubles partners standing around awkwardly like racket-wielding trees had sprung up from the court. Set Point—Descoteaux.
Minerva paced around her box, malding at the rather decisive loss she had just suffered. Justine finally managed to catch her eye and shot her mother a pleading look.