Page 46 of A Shot at Love
Daniel immediately punches the stop button on his treadmill, taking out his headphones. “Annie!” He hops down and kneels next to me. I blush even more furiously. “What happened?” He double-checks my knees and elbows, but I’m not hurt, thank goodness. I wouldn’t want to explain that injury to Coach Rembert or the training staff.
I try to look anywhere but his shining, beautiful face. The words are too silly to say aloud. Daniel wasn’t having any trouble concentrating, was he? I refuse to admit how ridiculously hormonal my brain is when he’s near. “I just tripped,” I admit, trying not to look suspicious. “Stepped wrong.”
Daniel glances at my treadmill, which is still going at the very casual pace of level four. “You stepped wrong?” He doesn’t mean to sound skeptical, and it’s actually sweet that he thinks I’m so athletic I wouldn’t fall off a treadmill. He furrows a brow. “That doesn’t sound right.”
It’s his worried, kind tone that does me in.
He’s still kneeling next to me when I grab his dewy cheeks and pull him towards me for a soul-searching kiss. Our chests touch, his hand wraps under my knee, we seek the heat of each other, and it feels amazing. Like touching a live wire. Like standing in a perfect summer rain. Like running through the finish line ribbon.
All those love-struck feelings.
When we finally break away, we’re both breathing harder than we had been on the treadmill. “Sorry,” I say, breathless and still holding on to him. “You’re just so distracting.”
The smile that spreads across Daniel’s face is my favorite one, almost blinding. He leans into me, so much so that I find my back on the ground, and he braces himself over me, a hand on the floor near my head. My heart skips a beat at the expression on his face.
“Annie.” He pulls on one of the curls near my face. “I hope to distract you every day of your life. That’s how it should be.”
There’s an almost promise brewing in his face. I can’t answer in words, too afraid and too unsure, but I do pull him down for another kiss. The heat between us is sickening in a way, like we both have a fever. I forget about practice and the time, reveling in these few moments we have to ourselves. Moments that are offline and all real.
We wouldn’t have done anything too exhibitionist, control freaks that we are, but who knows how long we would have made out next to the treadmills if it wasn’tfor one of the gym staff, Keisha, who walked in to clean equipment and put away some of the foam rollers. She was very surprised by what she found instead.
“Oh my God!” We don’t hear her come in, but we do hear her surprised exclamation. “I’m so sorry—” She stumbles over her words.
Daniel and I spring apart, Daniel jumping to his feet and pulling me with him in one smooth motion. Keisha stands near the cardio room door, eyes wide. “We’re fully clothed!” I blurt out, mortified. “We’re leaving now! So sorry!”
I hurriedly gather my things, avoiding Keisha’s newly sly expression now that she’s taken full stock of the situation. Daniel follows behind me quietly, eyes on the ground.
As we head down the stairs, the fever between us fully diminished, I venture, “I think this kind of distraction is going to get me fired.”
The embarrassment between us evaporates, and Daniel laughs. “Maybe no more running together,” he says thoughtfully. “Too much sexual tension.”
I shake my head woefully. “That’s what all the boys say.”
I reach up to smooth my hair, hoping I don’t look too disheveled, and notice my left braid has completely fallen apart. I stop in the middle of the stairwell, struggling to fix it without a mirror. Daniel’s gentle hand stops me. “Here. Let me.” He steps behind me, quickly assessing the situation. “I’ll just redo it.”
“Redo it?” I ask curiously, trying to peer at him over my shoulder. Without answering, he deftly begins braiding my hair, hands sure and soft. I savor the comfortable quiet between us as he works. He ties off the end with the proffered hair tie once he finishes.
“There.” He says, walking back around to face me. He smiles in satisfaction. “Now they match.”
I run my hands over the left braid, and he’s right, it feels just like it should. “Where did you learn to braid?”
He rubs a sheepish hand over the back of his neck. “In sixth grade, I asked my mom for money to buy my girlfriend a Valentine’s Day gift, but she insisted that handmade was better. She taught me how to make a braided friendship bracelet.” A little pink colors Daniel’s cheeks. My heart swells. “While my girlfriend was less than impressed, I became a little obsessive about bracelet making. There are still a few dozen of them at my parents’ house in New York.” His expression brightens a bit. “But now I can braid your hair whenever you need it.”
I take a few steps backward, heading down the stairs. I slowly shake my head at him. “I’ve got to run, Daniel.”
He furrows his brow. “Run? Why?”
I turn down the stairs, tossing over my shoulder, “Because if you keep talking like that, I’m going to do something very exhibitionist to you in this stairwell!”
Daniel’s laughter follows me long after I enter the locker room. It takes all the power within me not to stop and lean against the door, grinning and clutching my chest like a swooning idiot.
Either way, I can’t stop smiling.
*
“Arrows!” Coach is leveling us with her most severe glare. “We have two more games to prove our worth. Currently, Indiana is tied with us for first, though we have the tiebreaker for beating them twice already this season. If they win their last two games, and we don’t, they’ll get the one seed and the bye. It would be helpful if they lost at least one, but we can’t control their fate.” Jadea and Lynn are nodding seriously as though Coach is giving a sermon. I hide a smile. “We need to control our own. Win our last two games so we can skip the first round of the playoffs. Do you understand me?”
Her eyes sweep across our huddle to make sure we understand. It might not sound like a big deal to be the number one seed in the playoffs, as opposed to the two seed, but with the current WNBA system, it is. The team with the number one seed in the Eastern Conference and the number one seed in the Western Conference receive a bye from the first round of the playoffs. The Western Conference is already locked down by the Las Vegas Aces. Now it’s just up to us and the Fever for the East. The number one seeds skip the first round of the playoffs, which is a one-and-done series. You only get one game to prove you should move on, not a best-of-three or best-of-five scenario. Definitely something you want to skip if you can.
