He liked sports fine. Liked them a lot, actually. What he didn’t like was walking onto the courts for a video interview, wearing gym clothes instead of a business suit. As he stepped through the gates onto their court, he was even more wary as he noticed they were holding paddles instead of racquets.
Although, from the look on Bex’s face as she took him in, it was evidence that she was at least appreciating his clothing choice. Maybe it was a good thing he went for the shirt that showed off his chest and shoulder muscles. She was looking pretty amazing in her tennis skirt and tank top.
“You remember Peyton and Max?”
Roman said hi and shook both of their hands. He was glad Bex had reminded him of their names, because he hadn’t remembered them at all. Then he said hi and shook Enoch’s hand before he turned to Bex. “Couldn’t get a reservation at a racquetball court?”
“Didn’t even try.”
He eyed her. “So instead, we are going to play pickleball.”
He must’ve made a face, because her responding grin showed all of her teeth and was mischievous. And beautiful. “Yep. For two reasons. First: I didn’t want to play against you in a sport you were going to dominate at. Plus, racquetball is noisy and not conducive at all to interviewing. And second: you explaining your Nudge Out app inspired me to choose something that was similar to what you liked, but was a departure from your normal. A nudge out of your comfort zone.”
So they were going to have the interview while playing pickleball. A sport he’d never played before. One that he had never even watched before and only had a vague sense of it being something like life-sized ping pong. This was a far cry from the “across a desk from each other” interview he had requested. Knowledge of this was definitely going into a vault, to be kept far from his dad and brothers. And everyone else he knew.
And he was never letting Charli put him in the company’s social media plan again.
Luckily, Bex told him about the rules and how the game was played, and even let him warm up a bit and try serving a few times before the camera started rolling. Which was good, because those balls were so light that he assumed it took a lot more force to get them to where they needed to go than they actually needed. In fact, he really had to hold back.
He picked up the ball that had holes in it, like a whiffle ball from games when he was little, and walked back to the court. “Can we realistically carry on an interview while playing?”
“Yep. I find it helps calm the nerves, and eases people up a bit, since all of the focus isn’t on the interview and all its trappings. I’m hoping that it’ll help you to drop your guard a bit.”
It definitely wasn’t doing that. He regretted feeling so bold on Sunday when he’d talked about playing racquetball and was seriously rethinking the wisdom of saying yes to these interviews in general.
She walked over to him and pressed down on his shoulders with her wrists, since her hand was holding a paddle, and his heart rate ramped up just having her so close. “Relax these muscles. You’re wearing your seriousness like a suit of armor, and it’s hiding what you’ve really got inside. People will connect with what you’re saying about your products more if they can connect with you.”
He rolled his shoulders and shook out his arms. His dad and brothers weren’t ever going to see this. It was fine. All those men and women he hung out with at business receptions? They weren’t going to see this, either. None of them spent their time watching vloggers. This was purely for a demographic of people who were their target audience for their products. He was speaking to them.
“You ready?”
He nodded, so she nodded to Enoch and he started filming.
“Hello, Bexlandians! We are back for our second interview with Roman Powell, the CEO of LivenUP. He has been playing racquetball for the past, what? Sixteen years? In the spirit of their new app that just released, Nudge Out, I decided we’d nudge Roman out of his comfort zone and try a completely new-to-him sport—pickleball!”
“Now, if you haven’t heard of Nudge Out yet, I’ve got a link to our first interview below.” She held up her phone. “Nudge Out is an app that Roman put on my phone at the beginning of our previous interview. I put in the information it asked for, and it’s just been sitting there, doing its thing, gathering data so it can suggest the best ways to nudge me out of my comfort zone. If you’re curious about what that is, stay tuned for our fourth interview, because the app is deciding where that will be.”
Good. He was glad she was talking up the app so much.
“We are going to start by Roman serving.” She handed him the ball, and her fingers brushed his. It was like an electrical charge zipped right up his arm just from the feel of her hand on his, and it lit him up and he was more than ready to play. He served the ball to Peyton, who was across the court from Bex. He had played enough sports to be able to hit a ball with a paddle just fine, but he was having trouble always using the right amount of force when he spent so much time playing a sport that required so much more.
Luckily, she didn’t start off with interview questions so he could concentrate on not looking like a fool. Especially because simply being around Bex was occupying more and more of his attention, leaving less for paying attention to what he was supposed to actually have his focus on.
He did pretty well for the first eight or ten times he hit the ball, but then he had to lunge for a ball, backhanding it as he did, and it didn’t even land in the court—it hit straight into the chain-link fence surrounding the court.
Bex laughed. “I can always tell when you revert to your racquetball roots, because the sound of you hitting the ball is the same as that.”
With as different as the racquets, the ball, and the court was, it surprised him that he caught that familiar sound, too. It made him crave a game of racquetball, and suddenly he was picturing it with just Bex and him in the court. Getting in a good workout, competing, sweating together, and bumping up against each other. Then maybe leaning against the wall facing each other afterward, chatting.
The thought distracted him so much that when he picked up the ball he missed, he couldn’t even remember whether it was his team’s ball or Peyton’s and Max’s, let alone which one of them was supposed to serve it next. Thankfully, Max stood just behind the back line, looking like he was ready to serve, his eyes on Roman, so he tossed it to him.
He had to keep his head in the game, especially with that camera running. Besides, it didn’t matter how attracted he was to Bex—it only seemed like it could work when he was here, in Bexlandia World. The real world was much more complicated, and just the thought of the two of them together in it and how much that would upend his world was all it took to get him paying attention to that ball he just hit back to the other side.
“So...” Bex said, then paused as Max called out the score—seven, six, one—and then served the ball, “Nudge Out isn’t your company’s first app.” She hit the ball back. “You have some pretty remarkable ones. Which one would you suggest for the four of us?”
“Group Eat. It’s kind of like Pandora, except instead of picking your music, it picks a restaurant, and instead of for one person, it can do it for a group.” He hit the ball back. Maybe he could interview and play at the same time. It was definitely easier than thinking of Bex while trying to play.