Page 37 of Rookie Season
“Who’ve you got your eye on?” Jay asks.
“No one,” I lie. Sierra would gut me if she knew I was asking for advice about her. “I think I want that—the right girl.”
“You’re twenty-three.”
“Twenty-four now,” I correct.
“Right. You still wouldn’t know the right girl if she walked up to you in your jersey.”
“That’s bullshit.” I say it louder than I mean to and feel all the eyes turn toward me. “Just because you’ve got a few years on me, you think you know your mind better than I know mine.”
“You stick around the league a few years and you realize everything happens at a different pace. It’s like getting on a ride at the fair. Takes you two seasons just to get your footing,” Miles offers.
“It’s hard,” Clay says finally. “Basketball and the right person.”
“But?”
“But you do it because when you meet her, you can’t imagine not doing it.”
“What about you?” I ask Miles.
“With Brooke, I know we could each survive on our own. But we don’t want to. She makes the highs and the lows better,” he says. “On the good days, there’s always someone to celebrate with. But on the shitty days, I have someone to laugh with.”
I can picture being that.
“Why don’t you ask me?” Jay protests.
“Last I looked, you don’t have a girl.”
Miles bursts out laughing.
“I could.”
A muffled sound from behind us has me looking around.
“Do you hear it too?” I ask.
“No—wait, yeah.” We put down the tree and listen.
“It’s probably Trista. She heard you saying you want a girlfriend, and she’s running over here.”
“It doesn’t sound human,” Jay decides nervously.
“Probably nothing.” The cabin’s fifty meters up ahead, and I nod to the tree. “Let’s get this inside.”
11
MILES
Carrying the tree back to the cabin through the deep snow is a new kind of gym workout. I’m silently impressed Ryan cut down a tree, though I’m not about to give him props.
But the guy is distracted. I’d swear it’s by whatever he and Sierra were talking about when we showed.
I’m no matchmaker—Brooke’s more that person between the two of us—but I’m down for a little gossip. It wasn’t weird to see Sierra show up here, because she’s in the group chat and often at parties and hangs with the girls.
Something’s up.
I’d like to see Ryan, in all his eagerness and cockiness, laid flat over a girl. That would make my holiday.
