Two couples, mutually attracted to each other. One more matured, the other, total innocence. That’s what makes it exciting isn’t it? And the best part, all are willing…
The tennis ball hit the net with a sad, wet thud, bounced once on the green court, and rolled to a stop near a drain.
James stared at it.
Jiawen stared at him.
From the other side of the net, Frank cupped his hands around his mouth like a megaphone.
Frank: Bro, Zho simi? that serve got more arc than the Esplanade roof. You launch satellite is it?
James flipped him off with the hand not holding the racket, Jiawen on the other hand, chuckled at Frank’s comment.
Jiawen: Babe, I think you’re supposed to hit it over the net. That’s like… the whole point of the game.
James: Thank you, commentator. Very helpful. Maybe next time you can also critique my breathing technique.
It was Saturday morning at the Singapore Tennis Centre, the public courts near Kallang.
James and Jiawen versus Frank and Christine. Mixed doubles.
It was a Saturday ritual for the 2 couples. Three months running and counting.
James tossed the ball up again, exhaled through his nose like he was performing surgery, and served. This one cleared the net and landed just inside the service box.
Christine returned it with a clean forehand that skimmed the baseline.
Jiawen lunged and missed.
Frank: Haha, sorry ah, James. Your wife cannot save you.
James: My wife is the only reason we’re not losing 6-0.
Jiawen: Correct. Remember that.
Jiawen gave her husband a playful smack on his butt as a sudden breeze blew at her tennis skirt, lifting it up entirely. If not for the attached safety shorts, Jiawen would have given the whole court a glimpse of her underwear.
They switched sides. The morning sun was already vicious at 9am. James’s shirt was soaked through, clinging to his chest in a way he hoped looked athletic but probably looked like a wet tissue on a mannequin.
Frank, looked like he’d barely broken a sweat. He was one of those men who seemed engineered for sports, broad shoulders, lean waist, forearms corded with the kind of muscle definition that came from either disciplined gym work or favourable genetics.
He wore a plain grey dri-fit tee and moved around the court effortlessly, something that James quietly envied.
Frank was thirty four. Ran a small logistics company that handled last mile delivery for e-commerce brands. He talked about container shipping the way some men talked about football with passion and detail.
Christine sometimes had to physically tap his shoulder to get him to change the subject.
Christine.
She was at the bench now, retying her ponytail with that practised, two-second motion that women somehow learned at birth and men could never replicate.
At only thirty-three, she worked in pharmaceutical sales. She had the kind of face that was more striking than conventionally pretty, high cheekbones, sharp jaw, eyes that narrowed when she was amused, which was often. There was a composure to her that James found magnetic, a woman who had figured out who she was and was utterly confident and comfortable in her own skin.
Christine will easily pass off at the rich, beautiful Tai tai enjoying her day at MBS while on the lookout for a potential toyboy if she wants to.
She caught James looking and smiled.
Christine: Tired already? You’re not exactly getting old…
James: I’m twenty-eight.
Christine: Exactly. but i sense old man energy haha. Come, I buy you 100 Plus.
James watched her go on that easy stride, the slight swing of her ponytail, the way her tennis skirt moved against her thighs. He caught himself and looked away.
Jiawen appeared beside him and handed him his water bottle.
Jiawen: You staring at what?
James: Nothing. The… court. Got a new crack over there, I think.
Jiawen: Mmhmm.
She didn’t push it. That was the thing about Jiawen, she saw everything, catalogued it, and filed it away for future deployment at the most devastating possible moment.
It’s dumb for guys to assume their partners don’t know when they are ogling at other women. Jiawen knew he was looking at Christine’s butt but just pretends to act blur.
It was one of the things James loved about her. Also one of the things that terrified him.
They had been together since JC. First relationship for both. They met during orientation week, she was in a different class but they kept ending up at the same CCA fair booths, circling each other like two satellites in converging orbits.
He asked her out after a month. She said yes after making him wait three days, which she later admitted was strategic.
Jiawen: I googled “how long to wait before saying yes” and every article said three days is the sweet spot.
James :you very kana sai you know…
Jiawen had told him this on their one year anniversary and James had felt both annoyed and deeply in love.
That was eight years ago.
Eight years. Same couple. Same inside jokes.
Same arguments about whose turn it was to buy toilet paper. Same two nights a week for sex, Wednesday and Saturday, unless one of them was too tired or someone is having their PMS.
James could predict Jiawen’s orgasm face the way he could predict the weather.
He loved her but somewhere between year five and year eight, the love had settled like sediment at the bottom of a glass. Like you ordered Milo but you didn’t stir it for too long. Everything sinks to the bottom.
Powder is still there in the drink but no longer swriling.
Jiawen felt it too, though she’d never say it in those terms.
She’d say things like “we should try that new ramen place” or “let’s go Batam for a weekend” , small injections of novelty into a life that had become predictable.
She initiated sex slightly more than James did these days, which she resented, not because she blamed him, but because she remembered a time when he couldn’t keep his hands off her in the MRT and now he fell asleep during Netflix by 10:15pm.
She was twenty-eight, same as James. Still looked like the girl he met in JC.
But now there was a restlessness beneath the surface, a low frequency hum that she couldn’t quite identify. She’d started running in the mornings, long loops around Punggol Waterway, pushing herself until her lungs burned and her mind went blank.
She told James it was for fitness. It was, partially. But it was also to outrun the creeping feeling that life was supposed to have more texture than this.
Christine returned with four cans of 100 Plus, condensation already beading on the aluminium. She handed one to James, their fingers overlapping on the cold surface for a half second longer than strictly necessary.
Christine: Drink. You look like you’re about to pass out.
James: I’m fine.
Christine: You’re not fine. You served into the net four times. Even the auntie across the next court was shaking her head.
James laughed. Christine had that effect on him. She made him feel like a funnier, more interesting version of himself, like she was tuning him to a frequency he didn’t know he had.
Across the court, Frank was showing Jiawen something on his phone, probably a video of a serve technique, which was his go to excuse for standing close to her. Jiawen was leaning in, her shoulder almost touching his, her ponytail swinging as she nodded.
Frank: See, the wrist snap. That’s where the power comes from. You’re muscling it with your arm. Let me show you.
He moved behind her, positioned her arm, adjusted her grip on the racket. His hand covered hers completely. Jiawen was acutely aware of how warm his palm was, how his chest was close enough to her back that she could feel the heat radiating off him.
He smelled like sport deodorant, not the body spray James used that came in a can and smelled like a teenage boy’s idea of sophistication.
Frank: Now swing. Loose wrist. Ya, like that. Feel the difference?
Jiawen: Oh. Ya. Actually, can feel.
She swung. The imaginary ball sailed over the imaginary net. Frank stepped back, grinning.
Frank: See? can one…You’re a natural, just need someone to unlock it.
The word unlock landed somewhere in Jiawen’s chest and stayed there like a stone dropped into a pond. She smiled, said thanks, and walked back to the bench, trying to look normal while her heart performed a complicated drum solo.
She glanced at James, who was deep in conversation with Christine about something and felt a tiny, irrational spike of jealousy. Not because she thought anything was happening. But because Christine was making James laugh in a way that Jiawen hadn’t been able to produce in months.
The four of them had met through Darren, a mutual friend who ran a social tennis group. Frank and Christine had been regulars. James and Jiawen were newcomers, looking for something to do on weekends.
The first session was unremarkable, the usual awkward introductions, someone forgetting the balls, a brief argument about scoring.
But something clicked. They both felt the rare pleasure of finding another couple you actually liked.
Not one with a partner you tolerated while connecting with the other. All four corners held.
After the first game, Frank suggested breakfast at the nearby kopitiam. After the second, Christine created a WhatsApp group and it became their primary social orbit.
Within a month, they were meeting twice a week, tennis on Saturday, supper on Wednesday. Within two months, they had inside jokes, shared holiday plans playlists, and an ongoing debate about whether Jalan Kayu or Springleaf had better prata.
James discovered that Frank was the kind of friend he’d always wanted, someone who listened without competing, who gave advice. Frank, six years older, had a steadiness that James aspired to. He’d built his company from scratch, navigated a near bankruptcy during COVID, and come out the other side with his marriage and his sanity intact.
James respected that.
James wanted to be that.
What James didn’t fully acknowledge, not yet, was that Frank also represented something else, a version of masculinity that made James feel both inspired and inadequate.
Frank’s ease with women, with money, with his own body, it was effortless.
James still second guessed his outfit choices and struggle to pass his annual IPPT.
Frank didn’t seem to have outfit choices everything just worked. Whatever he chose to wear, he looks good.
Jiawen and Christine’s friendship developed along its own axis. They started texting outside the group chat , first about tennis, then about work, then about everything.
Christine became the older sister Jiawen never had.
As someone who’d been through the same relationship milestones five years ahead , she could offer perspective without judgement.
When Jiawen complained about James’s habit of leaving wet towels on the bed, Christine laughed and said,
Christine : Frank used to do that. I trained it out of him in year two.
When Jiawen admitted she sometimes felt bored in bed, Christine didn’t flinch. She just said,
Christine : That’s normal. Every couple hits that wall. The question is what you do about it.
The friendship deepened over the months.
Through it all, the attractions simmered.
It was always the small things. Frank’s hand on the small of Jiawen’s back as he guided her through a crowded hawker centre. Christine’s habit of fixing James’s collar when it folded wrong, her fingers brushing his neck. The way Frank’s eyes would drift to Jiawen during tennis, especially when she was serving, watching the athletic coil of her body, the determination on her face, the flash of midriff between her sports bra and her Lululemon leggings.
The way James would lose his train of thought mid sentence when Christine laughed, distracted by the way her eyes crinkled and her hand touched his arm.
Nobody said anything. Nobody needed to. The four of them were fluent in the language of plausible deniability, that uniquely Singaporean art of acknowledging something without ever admitting it existed.
We pretend going through ERP is not painful the same way we try to keep a straight face when we see the +10% service charge and +9% GST in an eatery where you order with your own phone and picked it up after.
Pretend.
But the body keeps its own score.
Jiawen noticed it first during supper. Frank was sitting across from her, sleeves rolled up. His chopsticks was moving, she watched his hands and those toned forearms, and felt something clench low in her stomach.
She looked away and found Christine watching her with a small, knowing smile.
Jiawen’s face went hot. She shoved a spoonful of rice into her mouth and pretended to be fascinated by the TV mounted in the corner, which was showing a rerun of a Channel 8 drama.
The moment passed. But the feeling didn’t.
James, for his part, experienced his awakening during the JB trip. They’d checked into a mid-range hotel near City Square, two rooms, couples separated by a thin wall that trembled every time someone flushed the toilet.
After dinner, they’d gathered in Frank and Christine’s room for drinks, sprawled across the beds and floor with whisky and a bag of Magnum ice cream bars.
Christine was lying on her stomach on the bed facing the TV and scrolling through her phone, and her dress had ridden up slightly, exposing the back of her thigh. James, sitting on the floor with his back against the bed frame, was at exactly the right angle. A clear, unblocked view into the ultimate MILF he knew in real life.
He stared for three seconds, maybe four, before catching himself. But in those seconds, something shifted in his chest.
He felt guilty immediately. Then curious. Then guilty about being curious. The cycle repeated for the rest of the night.
That night, back in their own room, Jiawen was brushing her teeth when James came up behind her and kissed her neck, something he hadn’t done spontaneously in weeks.
She leaned back into him, surprised and pleased, and they had sex that was noticeably better than their usual routine. Afterwards, lying in the dark, James wondered who he’d really been thinking about.
He decided not to answer the question.
Frank and Christine were more aware of the dynamic than James and Jiawen, partly because they were older and more experienced, and partly because they’d had conversations James and Jiawen hadn’t.
Their own marriage was solid but they’d navigated the usual turbulence most couples go through. A rough patch in year two when Frank’s company nearly went under and he was working eighteen hour days, a brief, painful argument in year four about whether to have children, a stretch where Christine’s libido cratered and Frank took it personally.
They’d emerged from each crisis closer, but also more realistic. The fairy tale of effortless love had given way to something more workmanlike, a partnership maintained through communication and compromise.
Sex was still good, but it had become more of a planned event than a spontaneous combustion.
Christine sometimes joked that they should put it in their Google Calendar.
They had discussed, in the abstract, the idea of opening up the marriage.
They’d read articles. Listened to podcasts. Had late-night conversations that started with “What if, hypothetically…” and ended with “Let’s think about it more.”
The thinking had been theoretical until James and Jiawen appeared.
Frank was the first to articulate it one stormy evening.
Frank: I think Jiawen is attracted to me.
Christine turned to look at him. She didn’t seem surprised.
Christine: I know.
Frank: And James…
Christine: …is attracted to me. It’s quite obvious.
Frank: So what do we do?
Christine was quiet for a moment.
Christine: Nothing. Unless they want to. And even then, we go slow. Very slow. These two… they’re not like us…who are married for so long… They’ve never been with anyone else. Ever.
Frank: I know. They gave each other their first…
Christine: So we don’t push. We drop some hints let them come to us. If they want to.
Frank nodded. Then, because he was Frank and couldn’t help himself,
Frank: But if they do…
Christine hit him with a pillow.
Christine: Tsk…If they do, we’ll figure it out.
Frank : really ar? haha
Christine : I can tell you want Jiawen to…come closer
Frank : oh? i can also tell you want James… to…cum?
She smiled, and he pulled her close.
Coming soon