Page 47 of A Shot at Love
“Yes, coach!” we parrot back obediently. We all huddle around her and our other assistant coaches, sweaty and motivated. I don’t know if it's the scandalsurrounding Jack or just a fluke, but we should not be playing so poorly at the end of our regular season. If anything, this is when we should be playing ourbestbasketball. If we lose these next two games and the Fever win just one of theirs, they get our seed. They get to sit and rest while we play for our lives in the first round. We have to win the game tomorrow night and another game Sunday afternoon. Playoffs start the following Wednesday.
Jadea bumps my shoulder, and I startle guiltily. “Do you want to stay and watch film? I want to go over some of our fast break plays before tomorrow. We play Seattle, and they’re not as quick as we are. I’m hoping we can take advantage…” Jadea trails off of her shop talk, noticing my strange expression.
It’s time to come clean to Jadea about Daniel and me. I’ve been lying to her so long that I can’t keep everything straight. She’s the main reason that we even reunited, that we talked through our feelings, that we got back together. I owe her.
In fact, this whole film session would be a great opportunity to talk it out in private. And hopefully she’ll shout and ask aggressive questions and be disappointed and then hug me and then forgive me. That’s the order I’m hoping for.
“That sounds great.” I try to give her a genuine smile, but I think it’s coming off a little intense. Her brow furrows, just like it did when Daniel and I did so well in our who knows who best video. “I just need to talk to Daniel for a minute. He had a question about the piece.”
Not exactly a lie—Daniel and I have been poring over his narration for the upcoming piece. He even showed it to some of the team during our lunch today. He and Lynn talked about it for almost half an hour. In the end, she gave her pleased approval. I hurry away before Jadea can ask too many questions, sidling up to Daniel who is not-so-obviously waiting for me by the locker room tunnel. “Daniel!” I lower my voice a bit once I get close. “Can I get a raincheck?” I try to ignore how handsome he looks in his glasses and how much I just want to drag him into the laundry room so we can make out again. “I know you wanted to have dinner tonight, but I really need to talk to Jadea.”
He raises a quizzical eyebrow. “Everything okay?”
I take a deep breath, trying to release all of my anxiety in the exhale. It works—kind of. “I’m going to come clean. Tell her we dated at Stanford. Explain that I’ve been lying to her. All of it.”
Daniel lets out a little sigh, too. “Oh, good. I didn’t want to push, but I feel like now is the time. If you let it go much longer, she might never forgive you.”
I rub my brow. “Not exactly what I want to hear right now, Daniel.”
He grabs my hand, squeezing in apology. “Sorry. It’s not going to be easy, but Jadea is worth it. And you’re worth it to her. I know you’ll work it out.”
I look up at him hopefully. “Really?”
He rubs a soothing thumb along the back of my hand, and it really shouldn’t make my whole body tingle with affection, but it does. “Well, consider if the roleswere reversed. If she kept a secret from you, would you forgive her?”
I pause, thinking it over. Best friends aren’t supposed to keep secrets. That seems like one of the tenets we came up with when we met in elementary school. However, adult emotions and relationships are messy. Confusing. There have been exes of Jadea’s that I didn’t like or that she defended when she shouldn’t have. It’s a part of life. Hopefully, you grow together as best friends, as sisters, as teammates in life. I feel a relief-fueled smile cross my face. “You’re right. I’d be hurt and confused, maybe even a little angry, but I’d forgive her. Sometimes you make decisions without fully thinking it through.” That’s how this secret began, a strange instinct I had senior year when Jadea FaceTimed and talked about her love life but never asked about mine. She didn’t have any expectations that I could be with someone, so I just didn’t correct her. It snowballed from there.
Daniel’s face softens when he sees me smile. “I’ll meet you at your place later tonight, if that’s okay? You can tell me how it all went.”
“Sure.” My voice is pitifully love-struck, and we just stand there looking at each other for a shamefully long time. His curls. His half-dimple. Those starry, ink pool eyes. The mole on his chin. I love everything about him. Thank goodness our team thinks we’re dating already, or we’d be giving ourselves away.
The moment is torn in two with Jadea’s furious, “Holy shit!” Daniel lets go of my hand, and I wheelaround, seeing her stand near our bench, holding her phone in one hand. At her exclamation, a few of the lingering coaches and players head her way—Coach Rembert, Coach Zak, Lynn, Olabisi, and Taherah.
As soon as I start walking towards them, I know it’s about me. Every recently exclaimed expletive while watching a video has been about me. My whole body feels cold as I approach. Everyone is listening and watching a video, horror-struck. No one looks my way at first. I catch Jack’s name and my own coming from the phone’s tinny speaker. “Jadea.” My voice is faraway, quiet. “Give me the phone.”
Silence reigns, everyone staring at me with a myriad of emotions on their face. Sadness. Pity. Anger. Disappointment. I clutch Jadea’s bright red iPhone in my hand, tilting the screen towards me. Daniel lingers over my left shoulder so he can watch too. I’m not prepared for what I see.
It’s Trenton, my half-brother and owner of our team.
I turn the volume up all the way and restart the video. He’s sitting in an armchair, across from ESPN reporter Jonathan Watson. He writes a sports column forThe Washington Postand is the head anchor for ESPN’s morning basketball talk show,The Jump. A shockingly high caliber sports journalist. The churning in my gut gets worse.
It’s Jonathan who gets it started. “Trenton, you called this interview because you claim to have new information about your father’s mismanagement case. The WNBA is currently in the middle of conducting aninvestigation. Do you believe this will help them in their decision-making?”
Trenton nods seriously, adjusting his monstrous silver watch. “Jonathan, I wasn’t sure what to do with this information when I found it. My father has been distraught ever since the news broke, so I’ve been trying to help him step back and keep it all running. While going through his home computer, trying to make sense of some business accounts, I found several emails saved to his computer. They were all from Annie Larger Smith.”
“Larger,” I whisper, my fingers shaking. “Just Larger.” Trenton’s lying. I’ve never sent emails to Jack.
“From Annie Larger?” Jonathan asks, curious. “And these are in regard to the mismanagement allegations?”
Again, Trenton nods. He looks like a silver-spoon Ken doll, his tie perfectly pressed, his face perfectly symmetrical. “I’ve sent the emails to the WNBA investigative team to verify. These emails prove that Annie Larger was a part of my father’s mismanagement. He didn’t draft her randomly; shebeggedhim to draft her to the Arrows after she found out who he was.”
I physically stumble back a step or two, running into Daniel and stepping on his toes. He grabs my shoulders, holding me steady. Begging to be drafted? Demanding it after finding out my father’s power? It’s too horrifying to consider. It’s cheating, at the worst level.
Jonathan doesn’t even bother hiding his shock. “Annie Larger, an All-Star level player, begged her father to draft her? Demanded it?” He manages to shake off hissurprise. “Annie’s current statement is that she did not know about her father’s identity until Misty presented her with the allegations.”
Trenton gives a very small, very brief smile. It looks like victory to me. “These emails prove all of that to be false. Her mom told her about her father’s identity upon her graduation from college. Annie had pretty low draft stock. She was on the bubble of not being drafted at all. It would make sense she’d ask for help from the powerful father she’d just found out about.”
I can’t believe Trenton would do this to me. We’re blood. I’m his half-sister.
