Page 138 of On Merit Alone
She smiled, her sigh tired. I could tell nothing was fully resolved in her mind about it, and I doubted it ever would be, but I could also tell she was done with it for now. Raising a look to me, she said, “And you?”
“Me?”
“How do you feel?” she elaborated as she lay down beside me on the court, ignoring her earlier plans to practice in a surprising twist of events.
I looked at her, raising a brow. “Fine?”
“Just fine?”
“Yeah, why?” I asked. Testing her, even though I had long ago formed my suspicions.
More.
I watched as she bit her lip. Tilting her nose in the air in a silent little harumph she murmured, “I don’t know, you look happy.”
I smiled then. I couldn’t help it. I also couldn’t help reaching over and scooping her hand into my own, lacing our fingers until we were palm to palm and interlocked together as I rested our joined hands on my stomach.
“I am happy.” I said. “Today was a lot of fun.”
She peeked up at me. “You liked it then? Coaching them?”
I scrunched my nose. “It was alright.”
Her silence was so pointed it made me burst out into happy laughter. The huffs coming from deep within myself, right where this sense of contentment was nestled. Looking at her, I raised my eyebrows pointedly. “You are a trip. You know that right?”
“Me?” she asked, voice soft and confused.
“Yes you,” I whispered, my happiness sobering into something that felt so good it hurt. I didn’t know you could make somebody so happy to the point of pain, but if Merit had hurt me once before when I thought she didn’t understand me, she was killing me now as she became the person who understood me most—who understood me even before I understood myself. Clearing my throat that had suspiciously closed, I asked, “How did you know?”
Turning, she brought her eyes down to look at me, her irises moving all over as she read the language of my face. Slowly, carefully, she smiled, her body visibly relaxing next to mine as if she’d already gotten the answers she needed.
To me she just said, “Sometimes it isn’t ‘more’ we’re looking for, it’s just different.”
“You’re a witch.” I said and she immediately laughed “A seer, a fortune teller, on some real voodoo shit I swear to God.”
Draping herself overtop of me she stopped my ranting with her lips. Kissing me sweetly until I slid a hand behind her neck and touched my tongue to hers. The sweetness turned hot in an instant.
Between the press of her lips she panted, “I'm not a seer, or a fortune teller, or a witch, or a voodoo master or whatever?—”
I pulled back and glared at her. “Check your ego, I never said master.”
She grinned, her entire face smiling from her lips to her eyes. Breath tickling my smile she said, “I'm not psychic Ira. I just know you. Not all the way, but I know enough to be able to do this for you. Enough to be able to walk with you while you attempt to find your next moves. I hope I didn’t overstep today.”
I looked at her for a long moment. So long that that pain began to resurface, once lower and more buried than before now this thrumming pulse that was spreading over my entire heart.
“You think I helped her?” I asked. “I know I couldn’t do much, but do you think anything I did helped Tyla?”
Smiling, she said, “I think you helped her a lot, Ira. What you said will stick with her.”
More.
Something I had tried and failed to explain to Kimmy popped into my mind and finally made sense. This was my context.
My entire career has been about being somebody for myself. Showing myself that I could do the things that ran deepest in my heart. But now all I think I wanted was to be somebody for someone else. To help, to guide, to encourage. To be more.
Looking over at the girl beside me, I couldn’t help but wonder if she knew. She had been the one to put me in charge of all this. The one to so easily call me coach. The one to come to me when she needed help. What was I even asking for? Of course she knew.
More.
