As soon as Alex broke big with her music career, the first thing that she splurged on was a house. Ever since she was young, she always dreamed of living in a house that had more rooms than she would ever know what to do with. Her accountant, however, advised against it and suggested a more modest home instead. It was still a home big enough for a family of five, but it wasn’t exactly the unrealistic mega-mansion from her childhood dreams. She was, however, very happy with it and couldn’t have asked for a better house.

One of the requirements that Alex had when she was in contact with her realtor was that the house needed to have a few bedrooms and bathrooms, a nice spacious living room, a pool, and a tennis court. The tennis court requirement was crucial, but the realtor wasn’t able to find any, but he was able to find a new and modern house that had a pool, and enough empty space in the yard for a tennis court to be built. It took a few months for the house to become ready to be moved into, but when she did move in, it was like a dream come true.

---

Alex ran down the stairs of her house as quickly as she could, her paws thumping loudly as she made her way down. Her hand hovered over the railing just in case she tripped. Once she was at the last step, she quickly hopped off it and made a sharp left turn to head into the living room, which had a nice view and easy access to the tennis court and pool via giant glass sliding doors. As she strutted her way from the main staircase and into the wide living room, her plaid skirt swished and swirled left and right, and her crop top, which barely reached the underside of her chest, jiggled and bounced along with her breasts. She hopped over the back of the couch and sprawled out lazily before she pulled her phone out from underneath one of the cushions and gave her friend a call.

‘Booooooop’
‘Booooooop’
‘Booooooop’

The phone rang without an answer for a few seconds and being the millennial she is, she was just about to pull the phone from her ear and hang up when there was a soft voice that came from her phone’s earpiece.

“Hey Alex, what’s up?” replied a feminine voice over the phone.

“Heeeeeey there Lauré when are you coming over for tennis? I thought you said you were coming over at 10? It’s almost noon!” the tigress toyed with her hair as she sunk into the softness of the couch, her tail draped off to the side, sweeping the carpet that was right below. There was a moment of silence from the other end of the call as the red panda panicked. Although there was no sound coming through, Alex knew exactly what was going on; Lauré had forgotten about their appointment.

Rolling her eyes as she expected the red panda to come up with her excuse, the tigress was surprised when she just owned up to it.

“Shit, Alex, sorry, I forgot…” the red panda sounded very bashful and embarrassed over the phone, Alex could hear her rubbing her temple with shame. The tigress let out a sigh that signified her disappointment to her red panda friend before she shrugged her shoulders. “You know what, it’s fine, all good.”

“Are you sure? I promise I’ll make it up to you.” The ringtail pleaded. The tone of Alex’s voice was the kind of tone you’d hear from someone who said they weren’t mad and continued to try and convince you that they weren’t, but they, in fact, were very mad.

“Yeah, yeah. It’s cool, we all forget things sometimes, yeah no, it’s fine.” Alex responded; her tone still consistent with her previous sentences to the panda. “Maybe next time you won’t forget something that I was so excited for, cool cool. No hard feelings.” After saying what she wanted to say to her friend who bailed on her, she hung up, flipped her phone face-down on her torso, and brought both her hands to cover her face before she let out a hefty sigh. Alex loved that red panda, but oh how her French-ness rubbed her the wrong way sometimes. The tigress remained on the couch with her hands covering her face for a few more minutes before she came up with an idea. She had a tennis ball machine she could pull out of storage and use as a practice partner, so at least that way she’d get her tennis in and didn’t have to waste all that time she had put into getting into that cute uniform. With that idea in her head, her eyes lit up and she pushed herself off the couch and onto her feet. She did a little stretch after she stood up and then headed out through the sliding glass doors to the tennis court.

“Ugh, this is so fucking… heavy….” The tigress grunted as she rolled the ball machine out from the little shed that was off to the side of the court with all of her tennis equipment inside it. She knew it was going to be a pain cleaning all the balls up after, but it was the only thing she could do for now to get her tennis fix, short of digging around for her Wii and playing Wii Sports. She continued to roll the ball machine out until it was in the back center area of one side of the court, loaded it with two brand new tubes of bright green Wilson tennis balls, and fiddled around with the settings of the thing to get the timings perfect before she pressed the button that started the machine up. It started a very audible countdown timer that started from 15.

“15... 14… 13…”

Alex began to run around the court to the other side, she considered jumping over the net to get there quicker, but then she had a flashback to when she tried that the last time and her foot got caught in the net. It ended with a lot of bruises and once you factor in the downtime from a fall like that, it was a lot slower than just running around the court to get there. Her uncovered paws pitter-pattered across the blue court and she tightened her grip around the handle of her racket as she got ready.

“12… 11… 10..”

Alex stared down the hole in the front of the ball machine with a tremendous amount of focus, only blinking once it became completely necessary. She was ready, all she had to do was wait ten more seconds, and she could start smacking balls like there was no tomorrow.

“9… 8...”

Alex exhaled heavily through her mouth.

“7… 6…”

She shifted her weight from foot to foot.

“5… 4…”

Her tail swept side to side behind her.

“3… 2… 1…”