Big Dink Energy

A Pickleball Romcom

By: Sarah Yarrow

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Sloane Lachlan is done waiting for permission. She’s spent three years building Saltgrass Outdoor Co. into the most beloved rental business on the island—paddleboards, kayaks, her latest obsession: pickleball. She’s found her tribe. She’s found her sport. Now she just needs a home for her community’s club before the Coquina Grand Resort prices everyone out with their shiny new premium courts. She has a plan. She has sponsors. She has enthusiasm that could power a small nation.

What she doesn’t have: a facility. And the only available space on the island belongs to a man who actively hates pickleball.

Cal Merritt came home to Saltgrass Key to disappear, not to save anything. He inherited his grandmother’s waterfront tennis facility eight months ago—a beautiful, deteriorating relic of her legacy—and he’s been quietly watching it crumble while he figures out what comes next. Professional tennis ended his identity at twenty-nine. Pickleball is an insult to everything he spent his life earning.

But Sloane Lachlan shows up at his facility on a Tuesday with a business proposal, a visioning energy that borders on nuclear, and the complete inability to read the word “no.”

What starts as a business arrangement becomes something neither of them planned. Cal’s facility becomes the Florida Smash Club. Sloane becomes a constant presence in his courts, his business meetings, and his carefully constructed walls. The renovations are chaos. The community that forms is electric. The banter is relentless. And somewhere between teaching her proper tennis form and losing three straight games to her dubious serves, Cal starts noticing things he can’t unnotice.

Sloane, meanwhile, is learning a dangerous lesson: that the person who looks like they need nothing is sometimes the person who needs you most.

This is a spicy (3 chili pepper) sports romance about building something real. It’s opponents becoming partners. A grumpy former pro and a sunshine optimist discovering they fit together in ways that make no strategic sense. It’s about learning to let someone else be the one who shows up, and learning that surrender isn’t failure—it’s just the opposite of being alone.