LONG SHOT: (A HOOPS Novel)

by Ryan, Kennedy

  “If I do it, then I claim it.” I grin at her, glad to see some of the color returning to her face. “I have no shame, but at least I’m honest about my shit.”

  Just as I’m thinking crisis averted, an announcement reaches our ears from the ground that there is a technical problem they’re working on, and we should be moving in a few minutes.

  “Minutes?” Bristol peers back over her side.

  “Don’t look down, Bris.” I’ve never shortened her name before like that, the way Rhyson does, and I shouldn’t like how intimate it feels.

  “Okay. I promise not to freak out unless they leave us up here much longer.”

  “And if we are up here much longer?”

  “Then I can’t make any promises.” She runs an anxious hand through her hair. “I’m not scared of heights in general. I can go up elevators and stuff. This is the only thing left from my old fear. Being in an open ride like this and suspended over the ground. I just can’t stop thinking that I could fall so easily.”

  The more she talks about it, the more the color vacates her cheeks and her breath chops up again.

  “Okay, let’s distract you until we get moving again.” I roam my brain for something to take her mind off the imagined fall to our death. “What’s the weirdest place you ever had sex?”

  Yep. The girl I’m supposed to be not trying to screw, and that’s the question that comes to mind. Live by the dick, die by the dick, I guess. No going back now, so I just wait for her response like it’s not a moronic question.

  “Um, how do you know I’ve had sex before?” Her eyes and her grin collaborate to tease me. “Maybe I’m a virgin.”

  “Weren’t you the girl who screamed ‘I like dick’ at the top of her lungs last night on the dance floor?” I throw my head back and guffaw, in honor of Jimmi and her word-challenged self.

  “Oh my God.” Pink washes over her high cheekbones. “I can’t believe I did that. It was the Grey Goose talking.”

  “And warned me that you were horny like you might pounce on me if I got too close.” My laugh dies down to a smile, even though this conversation is making my jeans tight.

  “Okay, you can stop humiliating me now.” She’s only half joking but twists her mouth to the side. “Coat check.”

  “What?” Is the height going to her head already? “What’s coat check?”

  “That’s the weirdest place I ever had sex. It was at my debutante ball, and—”

  “You were a debutante?”

  “Don’t ask. My mother’s doing.” She sighs and offers a wry smile. “But my date and I snuck into the coat check closet and did it. I had on this huge white dress and he was struggling to find the condom and the heel on my shoe …”

  She waves her hand dismissively and grins.

  “I guess you had to be there.”

  That would have been awkward.

  “I think I get the picture,” I say. “Your turn.”

  She sobers in a few seconds, and her mouth gradually flattens into a soft line.

  “What’s your greatest regret?” she asks softly.

  “You’re kidding, right?” I turn my knees in, pressing my back against the side of the cart so I can see her squarely. “I ask you a funny sex question, and you go for the jugular with this?”

  “You didn’t place any prerequisites on it.”

  “I didn’t know I was dealing with a sadist, or I would have.”

  “Well, you didn’t.” She smiles a little, her eyes softening. “Greatest regret, and you have to be honest. Not something stupid like never seeing The Goonies.”

  “God, of course I’ve seen The Goonies.” I run a hand over my face, scouring all the regrets crowding my past to find the one that’s the worst. And once I have it, I’m not sure I want to be honest with her. If I am, it means I have to be honest with myself, too.

  “Okay.” I cross my arms over my chest, tipping my head back to contemplate the stars in the darkening sky. “I was like, twelve years old.”

  “Is this gonna count?” She drops a skeptical look on me. “That’s pretty young for regrets.”

  “Not where I come from,” I say softly. I unfocus my eyes, looking back through the years until I find that day on the playground. “This cop stopped me and my cousin Jade.”

  “For what?”

  “For … nothing.” I shrug. “It isn’t like what you’re used to. They didn’t need a reason. And this was in the nineties, so drugs were huge in our neighborhood. And kids our age were slinging on the playgrounds. So, we didn’t think anything of it.”

  “What happened?”

  “He searched me, and of course, found nothing. I was a good kid.” A staccato laugh comes quick and short. “I watched movies, went to school, and wrote poetry. Not exactly a gangbanger in the making. My mom made sure I kept my head down and kept moving. You didn’t have to find trouble in my neighborhood. It found you.”

  I glance over my shoulder at the ground, which is so far away the people below like a colony of ants, and turn back.

  “Then the same cop searches my cousin.” I pause and swallow the heat blistering my throat. “He … she had on this dress, and he … touched her.”

  I’ll never forget Jade’s indrawn breath. He’d told me to stay against the wall, to face the wall, but when I heard her gasp, I looked at them. I wasn’t a rule breaker, but I knew this one time, I should break the rule. I should step in when I saw his hand working under her dress, when I saw one tear slide down her face. He had a gun. He was a cop. I didn’t know what to do. Jade just shook her head at me, thinking the same thoughts and holding the same fears. It was only a few moments, but that was all it took to turn the whole world upside down.

  “I don’t know why we never talked about it,” I say to Bristol. “And we never told anyone. Jade didn’t want to. She was ashamed, I think. I know I was.”

  “You were kids and he was in authority.” There’s a world of emotion in Bristol’s eyes when they bore into mine. “That’s awful.”

  I blink away the tears filling my eyes as that day suffocates me again.

  “And some days, I look in the mirror, like just brushing my teeth or whatever, and I’ll say it out loud. I’ll say ‘Don’t touch her.’ Just like that. Just that, and maybe he would have stopped.”

  But there’s no rewind button. There are no do-overs. There’s no delete key that undoes the damage or the guilt or the shame. I’m sorry, but I can’t make it un-happen, and that’s why it’s called regret.

  “Things just kind of changed after that, between me and Jade, I mean,” I say. “I mean we still talk, but …”

  I shrug, giving up on words to articulate my complex relationship with the cousin I still love so much.

  “We all make mistakes and do things we wish we could do differently,” Bristol says softly, drawing my attention to her pretty face in the carnival light. “That’s part of life. You and Jade should talk about it someday. Tell her you’re sorry it happened, and that given the chance, you would have done things differently. We only get one life, but it’s filled with second chances. That’s why I came here to try again with Rhyson.”

  I don’t reply, but we smile, and I want to tell her that I’ve never spoken about this before. I want to tell her how good it felt and that I could talk to her all day. That this wheel could be stuck up in the sky for hours, and I wouldn’t get tired of hearing her talk or watching her listen.

  I look over the side of the car again, wishing I could hurl this shame and hurt down to the ground but knowing I’ll live with it forever. Even though it has faded through the years, it isn’t gone. It won’t ever go away completely, but at least today, for the first time, I shared this load.

  And it feels lighter.

  FLOW - Chapter 11

  Bristol

  I SHOULDN’T HAVE asked that question.

  “I’m sorry.”

  I whisper it, but Grip hears. He’s looking over the side, maybe composing himself. There were tears in his
eyes when he talked about his cousin Jade, and that dark, dirty day. When he looks back to me, his eyes are clear of tears but they are still shaded with emotion.

  “Sorry for what?”

  “For asking you …” I lift one shoulder, hoping it conveys things I can’t put into words. “I’m nosy. It gets me in trouble. I ask too many questions, and then I—”

  “I like it.” He cuts in softly.

  My breath swirls around in my chest and furiously circles my heart like a cyclone.

  “You … you like what?” I ask.

  “That you’re curious and ask questions that make me think. That challenge me. People don’t always do that.”

  There’s a disparaging twist to my lips.

  “Because it’s called casual conversation,” I say with a husky laugh. “And I seem to have trouble keeping things casual.”

  With you.

  I don’t say the words aloud, but our eyes exchange them nonetheless.

  “It just means I get to ask a tough question that will gut you.” He delivers the words lightly, but the curiosity in his eyes is real. This will be a gutter.

  “Okay.” I release a longsuffering sigh. “I guess it’s only fair. Hit me with your best shot.”

  “Toughest day of your life.” He twists so his back is against the car and he has a clear view of me.

  “Wow. Just go for it, huh?”

  “Like you didn’t?” He cocks one brow and props his chin in his hand, as if he has all the time in the world to wait.

  “Right.” I laugh nervously. “This is the last question. No more after this.”

  “And I was honest with you, so repay the favor.” He says it easily, but the remnants of emotion on his face remind me it’s true.

  “Toughest day of my life.” I twist a little to face him, too, which is probably good because, if I look over the side, I might start hyperventilating again. “Um, the day Rhyson left.”

  It’s quiet for a moment, and I give him my face to search, not looking down or away. So he’ll know it’s true.

  “Grady had been visiting us for the holidays.” I look down at the anxious tangle of my fingers on the safety bar. “And he took Rhyson with him when he left.”

  Rhyson wasn’t home much, but when he was, I could always find him in one of two places: his rehearsal room or the tree house in our backyard. I ran from room to room. I climbed that tree looking for him, but he was nowhere to be found, and no one had even bothered to tell me.

  “What I remember most is the silence.” I hush my voice like it’s a secret, and maybe it is, because I’ve never told anyone this before. “Rhyson rehearsed constantly when he was home.”

  I laugh, but it costs me a pain in my chest right above my heart.

  “I was such a goofball I would sit out in the hall and listen to him play for hours while I did my homework, painted my nails, or even talked on the phone with my friends.”

  I rest my elbows on the safety bar and prop my chin on the heel of my hand.

  “That was when I felt closest to him. I know that sounds crazy since we weren’t even in the same room when he was playing, but his music was the realest thing about him. And not in a concert hall or in front of an audience. It was most honest, most raw, when he was alone. It was just for him.”

  A sigh trembles across my lips and is absorbed by the cooling night air.

  “And I would pretend it was just for me, too. So when Grady took him away …” I hear my mother’s influence, her anger even in how I phrase that, so I amend. “When Rhyson left, the house was dead. No music, no life. He left without even saying goodbye.”

  Hot tears leak from the corners of my eyes.

  “To me, I mean.” My breath stutters as I struggle to get the words out. “I am his twin, Grip. Somehow I, this unremarkable in every way girl who couldn’t even play a clarinet ‘adequately’, shared a womb, shared the beginning of my life with this genius person, and I feel it so deeply. It’s like I feel his music, I feel him the way twins feel each other.”

  I bite my bottom lip to control its trembling.

  “But he doesn’t feel me.”

  “He does, Bristol.” Grip reaches over to grab my hands, his one hand, which is so much bigger, darker, and rougher than mine, is a comfort. “I know he loves you. He’s just … like you said, a genius. Musicians, sometimes the art takes so much from us and we don’t know how to save enough for the people around us. We pour so much into it, it’s isolating, especially for Rhyson. He was a kid. Dealing with more shit than most adults ever have to. The kind of pressure that had him popping pills just to survive it.”

  I know truth when I hear it, and what Grip says is true. I just stare back at him, giving him permission to go on.

  “Rhyson’s addiction was a destructive path, and your parents weren’t helping. They may not have realized it, but they were only making it worse.” Grip dips his head to catch my eyes as he says the next part. “You said Grady took him, but he saved Rhyson. You know that, right?”

  I do know that. For the first time, I allow the worst-case scenario to play out in my head. If Rhyson hadn’t left, hadn’t gone to rehab, or hadn’t gotten the help he needed, what would have happened? God, I’ve made this all about me. All about how I felt when Rhyson left, not how desperate he must have been to go. All these years, I thought my heart was broken, but only for myself. For the first time, maybe ever, my heart breaks for the gifted, lonely boy who had nothing but his piano.

  I mop my hands over my cheeks, gathering the wetness on my palms. So many tears. I’ve never told anyone how I felt that day. My mother tried to make me go to therapy for that, too, but by then I was sixteen with a strong will of my own and refused. I was tired of talking to strangers, and I wanted to keep this pain locked away, private.

  Until now. Until Grip. His eyes rest on my face. I feel his compassion, and it weighs so much I want out from under it. I turn my head to escape the honesty between us for a few seconds. Just for a reprieve. As soon as I look over the side, I realize my mistake.

  “Oh, God. We’re so high.”

  Breath charges up my throat, panic pushing out the last few minutes of peace. My heart jackhammers. Blood rushes to my head, and the world spins. I grip my head to make it stop.

  “Hey, hey.” Grip scoots closer, eliminating the distance between us. “Put your head down as far as you can.”

  The safety bar keeps me from putting my head between my knees, but I don’t think it would help anyway. Nothing helps. It’s irrational. I know I’m safe, but fear mocks me and makes me its bitch. I hate it, but I can’t stop it.

  “My mom used to tell me to recite things,” Grip says from above me. “Like to distract myself when I was scared. To give me something else to focus on.”

  It only makes me more anxious that I have nothing I can recite. Fear jumbles all my thoughts together, so discombobulated that I can’t even assemble the digits of my phone number.

  “I can’t think of anything.”

  “Okay. Hold up.” He rubs my back in soothing strokes that don’t soothe. “I’ll do it. Just listen to my voice. Focus on what I’m saying.”

  I can’t focus. I can’t stop the encroaching darkness, blurring my edges and knotting my interior. It’s never been this bad, and it would happen right in front of Grip.

  “I’ll recite “Poetry” by Pablo Neruda. My favorite actually.” Grip’s voice is warm but disembodied as I press my eyes closed. “It feels like he was writing my life story. Like he knew there would be this kid who needed something bigger than himself, and he wrote this to guide that kid to a different path. This has always felt like more than a poem. It’s personal. It feels like my prophecy.”

  The emotion, the honesty in his voice compels me to hazard a glance at him. In the faint light of the moon and the bright lights of the carnival, I see his face. Beautiful and bronzed, a sculpture of bold bones and full lips. His eyes are intent, never looking away from mine as he begins.

  His deep v
oice caresses Neruda’s sentiments of how poetry called him from the street and away from violence. Of how writing saved him from a certain fate and opened up a world he’d never imagined. And Grip’s right. The poem could have been written for him … could have foretold the story of a boy called, not from the streets of a Chilean city, but from the streets of Compton.

  Passion weaves between his words and conviction laces every line. He means these words. He loves these words. Amazingly, as he’s reciting a poem I’ve never heard before, someone else’s words illuminate Grip to me. I see him clearly. A man deeply committed to his craft and who views his gift as a miracle of circumstance. As cocky as he is, I see him humbled by the means to escape a path so many others never leave. And if the poem tells his story, his eyes are a confession, never straying from mine, holding mine in the moonlight, his voice liquid poured over something sweet. As he approaches the end, my fears are forgotten, but I’m still stuck on a Ferris wheel under a darkened sky, and nothing has ever been more fitting than the final words, in which the poet says he wheeled with the stars and his heart broke loose on the wind.

  There are too few perfect moments in this life. Far too few of us get them, but I am privileged to have this one with this man. When he empties his chest of his heart and empties his body of his soul for me under a starry sky on a Ferris wheel. And I know. In this moment, I know that I’m lost to him. It has been a matter of days. It has been a string of moments. It has not been long enough to tell him, but in my heart, I know I am lost.

  “Did that help?” he asks.

  He searches through the dim light for my fear or my panic, but they aren’t there anymore. He leans closer, so close his breath whispers over my face. I don’t know when he realizes that fear has gone and that something else has come, but I see the change in his eyes.

  I think he might be lost in me, too.

  The inches between our lips disappear. At the first brush of his mouth on mine, I know this kiss will never end. It will live on in my memory for the rest of my life. His lips beg entry, a tentative touch that blazes through my defenses and hastens the rhythm of my heart. I clutch his arm, skin and muscle, satin over steel. A thousand textures collide. The hot silk of his mouth. The sharp, straight edge of his teeth. The firm curve of his lips. The taste of him. God, the taste of him makes me moan. He cups my face, fingers spearing into my hair. I press so close the heat of his body burns through the thin fabric of our shirts.