King of the world, the little guy squealed and pumped his fist. A. J.’d barely set him down before a horde of amped kids swept him up and carried him through the chain-link fence toward their neighborhoods.
The sun followed them and cast an orange glow over the few fire-red leaves left on the maple tree between our building and our neighbor’s. It seemed colder than it should have for the middle of October.
I leaned against the doorjamb and watched A. J. slip a pair of ear buds in and begin collecting the equipment scattered behind.
His long-sleeved, off-white T-shirt and worn basketball cap took me back to the first night we met. His boyish grin was as endearing now as it had been then.
The strength and tenderness he offered the kids made me proud to be his friend. Proud to serve alongside him. Why couldn’t enjoying the rest of my senior year be as easy as enjoying my work here?
I snuck up behind him on the now-deserted court. “Told you you’d make a good coach.”
He tossed a basketball into the netted bag slung over his shoulder and tugged on his ear buds. “You think so, huh?”
“Yep.” I picked up one of the balls and toed the free throw line. “Maybe you can give me a few pointers.”
His dimples sank into his cheeks. “Thought you said the moves the kids taught you were supposed to leave me dizzy.”
Without moving my body, I met A. J.’s impish grin, returned my focus to the basket under the floodlight, and released the ball with one swift wrist flex.
I kept my arms in the air until that glorious swish sung an anthem of praise. “Oh . . . nothin’ but net!” I strutted toward him. “You’re right. Maybe I should be the one giving you some pointers.”
“Oh, yeah?” A. J. swiped the ball, cut across the court, and nailed an impressive backhand layup. He slid me a smile. “Ready for that rematch, are we?”
I whirled my hair up into a half ponytail, half bun. “You’re on.”
He crouched in front of me. “Bring it, chica.”
His long, muscular arms loomed over me every time I tried to make a basket from inside the paint, but I wasn’t about to give up. I waved at the fence behind him. “Hi, Dee.”
A. J. turned, and I made a solid jump shot from the perimeter. He spun away from the empty fence toward my guilty-slash-gloating smile. “Playin’ dirty. I see how it is.”
He trumped my moves without any diversion tactics necessary. Faking a shot, he had way too much fun watching my pitiful attempt at leaping in the air to block him.
With the sun gone and wind picking up, my frozen hands probably would’ve dropped the ball anyway.
He scooted me backward and boxed me out inch by inch. The bottom of his sweaty shirt pressed into my palm. “Need that ten point advantage?”
“You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?”
He tossed his head back and laughed. “You have no idea.”
I reached around and smacked the ball out of his hands. Pivoting on the tip of my foot, I sidestepped around him, stole the loose ball, and skirted to the perimeter again. “It’s true what they say, you know. Pride comes before the fall.”
He tipped his head. “Spoken by an expert.”
A curt smile preceded a valiant three-point shot. “Oh!”
“Nice.” He slowed across the court, smile extending into the shadow behind him. “You got mad skills, girl. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you might’ve been trying to play me again.”
“Oh, no you don’t. Don’t even go there. There was no hustling involved this time. You knew full well what you were up against.” I pulled my hair tie out of what was left of my ponytail.
“Mm hmm,” he said, standing right in front of me now. “I guess it doesn’t really matter.” He rubbed his knuckles against his shirt and cocked his head. “Since I won and all.”
My lashes fluttered off his gloating. “Okay, I’ll admit, you’re not half bad on the basketball court.” I deliberately choked over the words.
“For the record?”
I nodded a begrudging yes.
“That’s very generous of you.” He brushed away a film of hard-earned sweat from my temple. “You’re not half bad yourself, Rosy.”
His face was closer to mine than it should’ve been. My heart rate picked up faster than it had in the game. I turned.
A breeze barreled through my damp shirt and chilled my skin. “Well, you only won ‘cause my fingers are numb. It’s freezing out here.” Even if my insides felt dangerously close to overheating.
His brow slanted. “What were you saying about pride?”
I mirrored his expression and held my hands out for proof. He squeezed my frozen fingers.
“See?”
He grinned as he rubbed his hands over mine. Friction slowly sparked warmth. “Better?”
I couldn’t find my voice.
Still cupping his hands around mine, he drew my fingertips to his mouth and blew on them. Heat spread from my hands to my chest and down my body. In the glow of the floodlight, his unwavering gaze blurred everything else out of focus.
An icy pang clipped into the warmth and caught me in the gut. I blinked, looked away.
A. J. kept rubbing my hands. “By the way, I finally had that talk with Ashlea.”
My head shot up. “What’d you tell her?”
His enigmatic eyes latched on to mine again. “The truth.”
chapter twenty-two
Scattered
Being winded from the basketball game had nothing on the way A. J.’s words knocked the breath out of me. Honesty could be costly.
He released my eyes but held on to an unreadable expression. “When I told Ashlea we needed to talk, I’m pretty sure she knew it wasn’t about coming home to meet my folks.”
He laughed, probably envisioning the scene playing out. “Mom might’ve bought it. Addison Sr.? Not a chance.”
An undertone of regret, disappointment maybe, laced his usual humor. “As much as I didn’t want to hurt her, I knew what I had to say.” He picked up his cell from the bench and wrapped his earphone cords around it. “Even if it doesn’t make sense.”
“If what doesn’t make sense?”
He stared at his cell. “You don’t choose who you fall in love with. Like music, remember?”
“Music?”
He pocketed his phone and kicked the basketball up into his hands. “Hey, you’re the one who went all Dr. Phil on me with the music analogy. I’m just saying you were right.” He nudged me with the ball. “The whole one song thing?”
I teetered on my feet, words feeling even less stable.
Breaths collected in the air as he peered across the court. “You can’t explain why it stands out from the rest. You just feel it in your soul, feel chills on your arms every time you hear it.” He looked up slowly, eyes full of passion. “You never lose the connection.”
My pulse raced. I backed up, swallowed. “Did you tell that to Ash?”
He rubbed out his hair and slid his hat back on. “Basically.”
I twisted and untwisted the hair tie around my wrist. “How’d she take it?”
“She said she understood, hugged me, and walked away.”
“That’s it?” No pleading? No balls of fire or icy razors shooting through those malevolent eyes? Not even tears?
He scratched his cheek. “You know how proud Ash is.”
That didn’t mean she wasn’t hurt. From the expression on A. J.’s face, he knew it too.
“Listen, it may take some time, but the wound will heal.” It had to. I had to believe that with enough time brokenness could heal.
He inched closer. “What if the person isn’t willing to let go?”
The look in his eyes trapped my breath beneath all the layers of that unanswerable question.
My arm fell to my side. I shuffled backward. One foot, then another. Something creased into my calf and almost tumbled over. I turned and batted the florescent orange cone until it stabilized. Why wouldn’t my
heartbeat do the same?
“It’s getting late. I should probably get going.” I pointed behind me to the office. “Just need to grab my stuff from inside.”
A. J. smiled, saying nothing and everything.
I made a beeline for the door. Hidden in the office, I slouched against the trim and pressed the heel of my hand to my forehead.
“Hey, Emma.”
I gasped, tripped into a metallic trashcan, and caught the corner of the filing cabinet before I ended up on the floor. Staring at Trey, I rubbed the indent on my shin.
He flung his palms up in surrender. “Easy, there.”
“Sorry, I didn’t know you were still here.” I managed to maintain my balance on my way to my desk.
“You seem a little shaky.”
I powered down my computer and gathered my things from the drawer. “Just winded from playing ball.”
Trey plopped down in his creaky chair with the burden of another day resting on his shoulders. “Mm hmm.”
His familiar grunt rang in the office like a phone waiting to be answered.
I wasn’t about to ask. Face forward, I headed for the door. A sparkle from a bag at the base of Trey’s desk stopped me short. “Is that crystal?”
He peered over his arm at the bag and shrugged. “Old wedding presents. I’m hitting up the pawn shop on my way home.”
Hocking possessions to pay bills? I wondered where he came up with the money for last month’s rent. My chest deflated. “Trey, I’m so sorry.”
He shrugged. “You do what you gotta do.”
Even when it hurt.
I opened the door and hustled toward the car. Yet even with some distance, the restlessness in my stomach hadn’t settled. I stretched out my neck. The weight of everything going on must’ve really been getting to me. What happened on the court earlier? A. J. and I were coworkers. Friends. Like Trevor and Trey. I valued his friendship. Treasured his connection with the center. That didn’t mean . . .
The stitch in my side flared.
A city bus pulled out from a stop a block ahead, leaving a haze of diesel smoke to cloud my view and my thoughts. I fumbled through my purse for my cell and called Austin before I fully understood why.
I skipped the hellos. “Do you have a few minutes?”
“For my little sister? Sure.”
I toyed with the keys in the ignition. Just spit it out. “Do you think guys and girls can be best friends? I mean, without romantic feelings complicating things.”
“No.”
“That was a quick answer. You didn’t even think about it?”
“It’s a simple question, Emma. A simple question with a simple answer.”
“Maybe for you.” I swatted the dangling keys, sending them clinking and clanking into the dashboard. “Sorry, not all of us are as enlightened as you, oh great wise one.”
“Aren’t we touchy tonight?” Austin reined in a snicker. “It’s not like it’s some confounding mystery. Just think about it.”
My mind reeled. “Trev and I are best friends.”
Did he just snort?
“I doubt that. Close, maybe. But not like spending one-on-one time with Jaycee, baring all your secrets, right?”
My clenched teeth held back the answer he already knew.
“Emma.”
Steam oozed from the manhole in front of the car. I released my breath and the response I hated admitting. “Right.”
“Why is that?”
I yanked out a bag of M&Ms from my purse. “He’s my best friend’s fiancé. Guess that’d be a little inappropriate.”
“Well, there you go,” he said, sealing the argument. I could almost hear the gavel slamming in the background.
I steadied the phone between my ear and shoulder and pinched the top corner of the bag with my nails.
“And A. J.—”
My tiny incision split the bag straight down the middle and launched M&Ms into flight throughout the car. “What about A. J.?”
Great. As if I needed to add any fuel to Austin’s already-blazing soapbox. I balled up the empty candy wrapper and flicked it onto the passenger seat.
“Em, it’s obvious your friendships with Trevor and A. J. mean a lot to you. I get it. I’m just saying, it’s easy to give away pieces of your heart if you don’t guard it. And, trust me, you don’t wanna be stuck having to break those heart ties on the back end.”
“You speaking from experience?”
“People don’t say ‘live and learn’ for no reason.” He paused. Probably to restock his arsenal. “When I first started dating Hailey, I made a conscious choice to distance myself from my female friends.”
“Like Anna?” I’d wondered why they’d lost touch.
“Anna?”
Was he that clueless? “You guys were inseparable at USC.” I collected a handful of the candy that had landed on the passenger seat.
He laughed. “We were study partners. It’s not like I cried on her shoulder or anything.”
Clueless and hopeless.
“That was before I met Hailey, anyway. But, yeah, Anna and I talk only by email every so often now.”
I picked through the M&Ms for the brown ones. “Hailey doesn’t strike me as the jealous type.”
“It’s not about jealousy. Love isn’t a fairy tale. It’s a commitment. When you find the right person, you’re willing to make sacrifices to protect that. Fires, remember?” he said in a tone bordering much too closely to an I-tried-to-warn-you speech. “We can’t escape them.”
“Thanks for that comforting reminder. I can always count on you to keep it real.”
“A big brother’s specialty.” There was that same tone again.
“Along with driving his sister crazy. You know, you don’t always have to be so good at your job.”
“Then where would you be?”
Lost, probably. “Love ya, Austin.”
“You too.”
As usual, my brother’s Daily Maxims radio station continued to blare in my head even after I hung up. I knew what he was saying, but A. J. and I’d already drawn lines last year.
Nothing had changed. Had it?
I cranked the ignition. A multi-colored array of M&Ms rattled on the floorboard, my thoughts scattering with them. Maybe I needed to make sure I knew where A. J. stood, clear up any uncertainty. Now.
I cut the engine and jogged back inside.
A. J. almost ran into me from the opposite direction. “Hey, I was hoping you hadn’t left yet.” He motioned behind him. “Someone wants to talk to you before you leave.”
My slanted glance petitioned him to fill in the blanks, but his lopsided grin didn’t budge. We’d talk afterward. I eased onto the basketball court again.
“Miss E,” someone called from the shadows.
My shoulders hit my ears. With one hand pressed to my heart and the other to the wall, I steadied my balance. “Dee, you really need to stop sneaking up on me like that.”
“Oh, sorry.”
I joined him on the bench. Why had he stayed this late to talk to me?
His smile tenderized my heart, overriding everything else.
“Tomorrow’s the big day,” he said.
“Ah . . . the PSATs.” I prodded him with my elbow. “You’re gonna nail ‘em.”
He gripped the beveled edge of the bench on either side of his legs. “It’s easy to believe that here.” His eyes flickered with the same self-doubt that’d darkened them when he first came to the center.
He shrugged. “Guess I never had nobody to accept and believe in me like you guys do.” He shifted the bill of his hat. “Trey took me in like it was nothin’. Even A. J. gave me a chance.”
I looked at A. J., standing behind the screen door. Did he have any idea the impact he was making on this boy’s life? The impact we were making here? Together?
Dee jutted his chin at the neighboring buildings. His smile saddened with each glance around him. “At home, it’s—I don’t know—like there’s this darkne
ss I can’t escape. You know what I’m sayin’? The darkness is everywhere. It’s . . .”
“Oppressive.” I knew exactly what he meant.
“Yeah, like everything’s telling me to give up.” The dimly lit court couldn’t hide the hard lines of turmoil deepening across his face.
My heart winced. I stared at the single hoop at the opposite end. The frayed net swayed in a breeze above the paint-chipped pole. We might’ve cleaned up the court after Tito’s raid, but the odds against the kids in this neighborhood clung to them, just like traces of washed-off graffiti clung to the bricks.
I might not ever fully understand what it’d take to break the chains binding Dee to a life governed by his circumstances, but I’d seen hope light up his heart. And I had to believe that hope wouldn’t disappoint him. We weren’t as different as he might’ve thought.
“I know what it’s like to feel overwhelmed.” Way more than I wanted to admit. “My dad and I used to sit under the sky until the stars put things back in perspective. He always said it was because nothing could overpower them. Not even the darkest backdrop.”
I pointed to the heavens. “See?” Raw emotion choked through with a reminder of how much I still needed that light in my own life. “Sometimes it helps to get everything off my chest too. Just face the sky and let it all unload.”
Head angled, Dee studied me for a minute and then focused on the stars. “You mean like, you talk to God?”
“Yeah,” I said slowly. “Yeah, I guess I do.”
He lowered his head and looked at me with the innocence of a child. “Do you think he’ll hear me?”
I turned toward the sky again. “I think it’s hard for us to hear the answer sometimes, but yeah, I think he’ll hear you.”
As we sat side by side, a quiet moment passed in which no sound was needed. The buildings sheltered us from the wind. Clouds glided by, continually robing and disrobing the bare moon.
“Miss E?” he almost whispered. “What happens when you can’t see the stars?”
Starless. I’d felt that way so many times since losing Dad. When storms raged with such intensity that they blocked out all light.
Drawing on the words of wisdom others had given me during times when I’d asked a similar question, I looked at Dee with every fiber of certainty I could muster. “When you can’t see the stars, you have to have faith to believe they’re still there.”
Light Unshaken (Unveiled #2) Page 15