by Kennedy Ryan
“You’ll do great.” Her slim fingers close over my hand, gripping the glass. “You’ll be an amazing player.”
Just that light pressure, just seeing her hand with mine, feels good. Something about the sight levels the unevenness I’ve felt all day and unlocks words I haven’t said to anyone.
“I want to be more than just a player. I want to use my degree. I want a business. I want a family.” It feels like a confession. “To be a good husband. A good father. This world I’m entering in a few months, I’ve seen it devour guys. We work toward this all our lives, and an injury, age, a bad trade, whatever—can end it overnight. If the game has eaten up your priorities, turned you into someone you never wanted to be, what’s the point?” I laugh self-consciously. “I probably sound—”
“You sound too good to be true,” she interrupts, her hand still resting on mine. “Guys in your position, the night before the big game, right on the edge of the draft—these aren’t things most of them are thinking about.”
She props her chin in the palm of her free hand, a slow smile working its way to her mouth. “You’re special.” She bites her lip, lifting her hand away from my fingers, dropping her eyes to the bar top scarred by a million glasses and a million moments before ours. “I’m glad I met you.”
That sounds suspiciously like the beginning of goodbye. Like she’s ready to close the door on this surreal chapter.
I can’t let that happen. A night like this, a connection like this—it’s singular. After tomorrow’s game, my future will literally be a little ball bouncing around in the NBA Draft Lottery. I may end up playing for a team I don’t like, living in a place I won’t get to choose.
But tonight, I have control. I have choices, and I choose her. To get to know her. To woo her. To earn her trust. All I need is time.
But time seems to be the one thing we don’t have.
“Closing.” The bartender drags our empty glasses toward him and wipes down the surface in front of us. “You ain’t gotta go home, but you gotta get out of here.”
I hadn’t noticed the bar emptying around us, but we’re nearly the last ones left.
“Good luck tomorrow, West,” the bartender says, sliding two checks across the freshly-wiped bar.
“Thanks.” I stand and snatch both of them before she can even look at hers.
“Give me that.” She lunges toward me, but I hold the check over my head, completely out of her reach.
She stumbles into me, her soft breasts pressing against my chest. I want to wrap my arms around the stretch of sensuous lines and curves that make up her body. With her check still suspended over my head, I slide my other hand down her back, investigating her shape beneath the clingy cotton. I palm the dip at her waist, drawing her a few inches closer until her warmth, her clean scent, surrounds me.
She blinks up at me, bright eyes darkening and widening, the green and gold lost in sable. Desire starbursts her irises. We’ve barely acknowledged the current humming between our bodies, the electricity running under the surface of our easy conversation, until just now. Until I lured her into me with a little slip of paper.
“Let me buy your drinks.” I can’t remember ever wanting a woman the way I want her. I don’t just want to bury my hands in all that dark hair, or to discover for myself how sweet her lips taste, or to explore her body. I want more of her memories, her secrets—to accept an invitation she hasn’t extended to anyone else.
Her lashes lower, shielding her eyes from mine, but she can’t hide her body’s response—the way all the places she’s soft seem to seek out the places I’m hard and unyielding. How her breath stutters over her lips in little pants.
“Um, okay.” She steps back until we’re no longer touching, clearing some of the huskiness from her voice before going on. “Thanks. I could have . . . well, thanks.”
Neither of us speaks on our way to the door. I find myself slowing to match her shorter stride. We watch each other from the corners of our eyes, the silence between us pulsing with possibility. Once outside, we’re tucked away under an awning with the still-bustling city just beyond our patch of sidewalk. Inside, surrounded by people and noise and the action of the game, the conversation came so effortlessly. The confessions and admissions I’d never made to anyone else flowed right out of me. And now, it’s just us and I’m not sure what to say to keep her here, but I know what I’ve been feeling, what we’ve been doing, can’t end tonight.
There’s this part in Spanglish, one of Adam Sandler’s chick flicks. He and his kids’ nanny share dinner at his restaurant. It’s just one meal, a few hours. The narrator, the nanny’s daughter, says, “My mother has often referred to that evening at the restaurant as the conversation of her life.” I’m pretty sure I rolled my eyes when I heard it and said, ‘That was some conversation.’
But now, with her, standing at the edge of goodbye, all I can think is . . . that was some conversation.
The streetlight and the moon illuminate things the dimness of the bar hid—the amber in her hair I thought was just black, the length of her lashes casting shadows on her cheeks while she studies the ground. We both seem to be searching for words. It’s as if we’ve crammed so much into the last few hours that there are no words left—none left for me, anyway. All I have is feeling. Need. I need to touch her, to kiss her—I need something physical to reassure me this encounter really happened. That this isn’t the end.
When you’re a foot taller than a girl, it’s hard to smoothly go in for a kiss, so I don’t try for smooth. I’m careful, though. I lift her chin with one finger, persuading her eyes up to meet mine. I cup her cheek and lower my head until I’m hovering over those lips that look so soft I have to hold myself back from devouring them; I have to control my need to taste her right away. My body revs, demands. My heart slams into my rib cage. My dick is hard. Want sizzles through every cell of my body.
“August.” She pulls her chin away and presses her hand to my chest, but not to explore. To gently push me back. I hold my breath, waiting to see what this means, this small space she’s put between us.
Her head drops forward until the dark cloud of hair eclipses her face, hides her expression. “I’m sorry.” She steps back, running a hand through her hair. “I-I can’t.”
I want to bring her close again. “It’s okay. I get it, of course. We just met.”
I link our fingers. Even that brief contact stirs my senses. I check the roar of my body, hoping my erection doesn’t betray me.
“We can just talk. We can go to your place, if you’re not far.” I lift her chin so I can see her eyes. So she can see that I mean it. Despite the absolute inferno raging under my skin, it’s enough. “We can do whatever you want.”
As little, as much—let’s just keep doing something. Let’s just not stop.
“I-I can’t. We can’t.” With a vigorous shake of her head, she takes another step back, dropping my hand, inserting space between us again. “I have a boyfriend, August.”
Shit.
I shouldn’t be surprised that she’s taken. A girl this gorgeous, this funny and smart and authentic—she’s all the adjectives I would use to describe the perfect girl for me. She’s even the things I didn’t know I wanted. But now I know, and I can’t have her.
A hole gapes open inside of me wider and deeper than it should be considering how little I know about her, but it’s there. And by the second, it fills with disappointment and lost possibilities.
“So . . . is it serious?” I wince internally. If there’s anything more douchey than trying to kiss another guy’s girl, it would be asking, in so many words, if she’s sure she wants to stay faithful to him.
“Yeah.” She sinks her teeth into her bottom lip. “We’ve been dating about a year.”
She finally looks up at me, and at least the battle in her expression, the struggle reflected back to me from her eyes, assures me I’m not imagining the pull between us.
“I should have told you, but that would have been
weird.” She smiles ruefully. “I would have sounded like I was assuming you wanted more than . . .”
We stare at each other in a silence rich with things I shouldn’t say.
“I do want more than.” I manage a smile, though I’m frustrated and not just sexually. I’m downright devastated that some other guy got here before I did.
“I’m sorry.” She stuffs her hands in the back pockets of her jeans. “I was enjoying our conversation so much. I didn’t want to . . . I hope I didn’t mislead you.”
“You didn’t.” I stuff my hands in my pockets, too, to keep from touching her again. “At least I made a new friend.”
Friend.
It sounds hollow compared to what I thought we could be, but I can’t demand more. I can’t make her give me more. I’m on the eve of something most men only dream of, and this bright-eyed girl has made me feel helpless.
“Yeah.” Her face relaxes a little into a smile. “A friend.”
“And you helped take my mind off tomorrow’s game.”
As soon as I say it, both of our eyes go wide. I check my watch, dreading the time.
Fuck.
Curfew.
Was I so absorbed by this girl that I forgot curfew before the biggest game of my life?
Yeah, I was.
“Oh my God.” Her eyes are anxious, worried. “The game. You’ve missed curfew.”
The hunger, the heat, the rightness between us had made me shove every other thought aside, but they all intrude now. Curfew. The rest of the team, asleep and accounted for at the hotel. Tomorrow’s game.
"Will you get in trouble?" she asks, frowning.
“It won’t be the first time I’ve had to sneak in,” I tell her with more confidence than I actually feel. The biggest game of my life, and I lost track of time with a girl in a bar.
But what a girl.
Looking at her, replaying every moment, every joke, every memory we shared over the last few hours, I can’t regret it.
“Let me at least walk you home.” Curfew or not, there’s no way I’m letting her go alone.
“No. I’m really close.”
This part of the city is completely commercial as far as I can tell, not residential. “Your apartment is nearby? Or are you staying at a hotel?”
Does she live here? Is she visiting? A student? Is she in town for the game? Will she be there tomorrow? Does she want tickets to come see me play? All the things we did talk about are suddenly less important than all the things we never said. I don’t even know her damn name. “Gumbo” won’t get me very far after tonight. Panic tightens my body into a drawn bow. Even if it’s never more than what we had tonight—the honesty, humor, ease, empathy— I want to continue with her. I’ll even settle for the dreaded word—friendship.
“I’ll walk you home,” I insist.
“I’ll be fine.” She looks down at the ground and then back at me. The end is in her eyes. I see goodbye, and I want to stop it before it reaches her lips, but I don’t.
“Goodbye, August. Good luck tomorrow.” She turns and starts up the sidewalk.
I want to chase her. To follow and find out where she lives or where she’s staying. Even knowing some lucky bastard found her first, I can’t imagine having no idea how to find her again.
“Hey, wait,” I call after her, forcing my feet not to follow. “You should at least tell me your name. Do you really want me to think of you as Gumbo forever?”
She faces me but keeps walking backward, steadily putting more space between us. Between this night and the rest of our lives. Mischief lights her eyes, and the sly smile playing around her lips makes me think for a terrible moment that she won’t tell me.
“It’s Iris,” she calls back to me. “My name is Iris.”
I stay still, absorbing the sound of her name, absorbing the look on her face as she walks out of my life with as little fanfare as she entered it. Her smile dies off, and she’s staring at me like she wants to remember my face—like she won’t forget tonight either. Like maybe, unreasonably, undeniably, this night meant as much to her as it did to me. If she felt it, too, this connection, she can’t be walking away, but she is. I’ve only known her a few hours. It’s unreasonable that desperation bands my chest and panic shortens my breath, like I’m sprinting.
Except I’m standing still. And she’s still walking.
Walking and turning the corner, out of my sight.
She takes my hope for more with her when she goes.
2
Iris
Anticipation charges the arena, every breath I draw making my heart race that much faster. I’m sitting in the best seats money didn’t even have to buy at the NCAA Championship, yet the basketball game is the last thing on my mind.
“You’re as nervous as a live lobster in a boiling pot.” Lotus’s words are a splash of cold water across my face. Am I that obvious? I feel obvious, like there’s a huge neon sign flashing over my head. I keep telling myself that nothing happened with August last night. I have nothing to feel guilty about, but guilt gnaws through my rationale.
“It’s a big game for Caleb.” I shrug, hoping it looks more casual than I feel. “Of course I’m nervous for him.”
“I get that,” Lotus says. “But you’re downright agitated. Keep bouncing your knee like that and you’ll cause a quake in here.”
Even after she says it, my knee can’t stop hopping, my foot tapping out an erratic rhythm on the stadium floor.
“Bo, what the hell?” Lotus demands, shortening Gumbo as only she does. She presses her hand to my knee, forcing it still. “Seriously, I know this is a huge night for Caleb, but chill.”
I stare down at the court, searching for my boyfriend in the clusters of players shooting around and warming up for the biggest game of their lives. I didn’t want to distract him before the game by telling him I met August West, but what will I tell him after? A conversation at a bar during a Lakers game is no big deal, but somehow, I know Caleb won’t agree.
“Are you even hearing me?” The concern in Lotus’s dark eyes jars me out of my head.
“Yeah. Sorry.” I finally give her my full attention. “I’ll try to relax.”
She searches my face, and I force myself not to look away. Braids spill over her shoulders and arms. High, slanting cheekbones and a narrow chin lend her face an almost feline quality. She’s slim and emanates strength. I’m not sure if it’s the jut of her jaw, her obstinate chin, or her wise eyes. Or maybe it’s something beneath her skin, built into her bones.
We come from a long line of Louisiana’s famous high priestesses. Our great-grandmother MiMi was the last of them. Her daughter, our grandmother, had no desire to stay in the relative seclusion of a small bayou parish but wanted the excitement of New Orleans. A divide grew between MiMi and the other women of our family, and it seems the mystical power will die with her when she leaves this earth. But sometimes I swear I see traces of it in Lotus.
My skin may be several shades lighter than the smooth cinnamon of hers, but we’ve never let a little melanin and our one-year age gap come between us. We’ve needed each other too much. Lotus has been my constant, and I’ve been hers.
Even the years when she went to live on the bayou with MiMi and I stayed in the city, the miles between us didn’t weaken our bond. Though I never keep anything from her, I haven’t breathed a word about last night’s conversation with August.
The roaring crowd, the scantily dressed cheerleaders, and the swarm of cameras and commentators along the periphery of the court all fade, and I remember last night. August’s baseball cap provided a flimsy disguise, and I recognized him as soon as he sat beside me. The lean, powerful body, the chiseled jaw and sculpted lips, the bronzed skin—all dead giveaways.
Caleb has talked about August before, of course, and I know a lot about his game because I stay on top of sports. The media fixated on him during March Madness while his team continued their unlikely road to the Final Four. Caleb and August have been compe
ting against one another since middle school and aren’t exactly friends.
None of that prepared me for who August West actually is. I discovered a depth in him that was surprising and refreshing. His vulnerability was so unexpected and at odds with the strength of his public image. Maybe it’s the vulnerability that enhances his strength.
A dozen times, I started to tell him I’m Caleb’s girlfriend. I have to admit, at least to myself, that I didn’t tell him because I thought he might leave. I was enjoying the conversation so much, and that was the last thing I wanted to happen. It won’t matter since I’ll probably never see him again.
I run a hand through my hair, flat-ironed straight and tamed the way Caleb likes it. I’ve made more of an effort tonight because this is such a huge milestone for him. I even wore the outfit he asked me to wear, the one he gave me for my birthday, though it shows a little more of my body than I typically would. Left to me, I would have worn his jersey, a pair of jeans, and Chucks.
No, Jordans.
I wiggle my toes in the boots I paired with this tight-ass skirt. The top is cropped just beneath my breasts, leaving my stomach almost completely bare. Lotus says I look good, but that isn’t the point. I’m at a freaking basketball game, not a club.
“Hey, there’s your boy,” she says, nodding down toward the court. “And he looks as nervous as you do.”
Lotus is right. There’s a tightness in Caleb’s expression and across his shoulders that doesn’t bode well for his jump shot. He glances all over the arena, searching for something. It’s not until he catches my eyes and smiles that I realize he was looking for me. I set aside my guilt and nervousness long enough to give him the smile, the reassurance, I know he needs tonight.
“Aren’t his parents posted up in one of those fancy luxury rooms?” Lotus directs her gaze to the row of VIP boxes elevated above the rest of the arena.
“Yeah, but I like to sit in the stands,” I tell her. “And Caleb likes to see me here.”