Page 8 of Half-Court Heat (Hoops & Heartstrings #2)

Chapter

Six

T he text came early that morning. It was an hour ahead in Florida, but I’d been up for a few hours, just scrolling through my phone in bed, with no real reason to start my day yet.

I tapped the text message open and blinked at the sudden rush of light and legs.

Eva was standing on a dock somewhere that looked like it belonged on a screensaver.

The water behind her was impossibly blue.

She wore a cream one-piece bathing suit that left very little to the imagination, her twists swept over one shoulder, lips glossed, collarbones gleaming in the sun.

She was posing—hand on her hip, head tilted just so—but the look on her face was all confidence and calm.

Another message appeared beneath the image.

Don’t scroll too fast. I wore this one for you.

My face went hot.

I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling for a long moment before responding.

If the goal was for me to spontaneously combust in my parents’ house, mission accomplished.

Three dots immediately appeared.

You’re home-home?

Yeah. The condo was way too quiet without you.

It got lonely.

I had gotten lonely.

That breaks my heart a little, Lex.

I stared at the honest exchange. God, I simped so hard for her.

Eva hadn’t been gone for more than a few days before I’d made the decision to go home. With no real obligations in Chicago, it made little sense for me to stay in Eva’s penthouse condo all by myself when my family was only a 90-minute drive north.

I’ll be okay. Nothing another behind-the-scenes photo can’t cure.

I’ll be home soon. They asked us to set aside time for a 10-day shoot, but I think I’ll wrap up earlier than that.

Overachiever. Making the other models look bad.

Have fun with your family. I love you.

Love you, too.

My mom was already up and clanking around in the kitchen when I finally got off my phone and decided to interact with the living.

I’d made the trip to spend time with them, after all.

With Eva off in Florida for her SI shoot, the condo had gotten too quiet, too fast. I hadn’t realized how much noise she brought with her—singing in the morning, fussing over her edges, narrating everything she cooked.

Without her, the apartment felt like a museum. Too tidy. Too still.

Home, at least, was familiar.

I did a slow loop around the living room. Nothing had changed. The same faded couch, the same Packers fleece draped over the back, the same framed photos of my sister and me scattered around the room. Maybe I was the only thing in the room that had changed.

I still felt like me, though. I hadn’t had much time to reflect on life after college graduation.

I hadn’t even attended my own commencement ceremony since it had interfered with the start of training camp.

I was a professional athlete. The starting point guard for a major-market basketball team. I’d achieved my long-sought goal.

So why did I feel like I was still waiting for something?

There’d be new goals, of course. Make the All-Star team. Win a championship. Maybe even the Olympics if I kept at it. But beyond that—beyond the game—what else was there? Who was I without the jersey?

The quiet had started to ask questions I didn’t have answers to.

I paused in front of the mantle.

“Ma,” I called out. “What’s this?”

“What’s what, honey?” she asked from the connecting kitchen.

“This photo.” I picked it up, squinting at the pixelated print.

It looked like someone had zoomed in too far before hitting print.

But the background was clear: Tulum. And the people in the photo were unmistakable—Eva, grinning wide in her linen shirt, and me, holding her hand like I didn’t care who saw us. At the time, I guess I didn’t.

“Oh!” she said brightly. “Do you like it? I bought some photo paper and printed it from the internet.”

“You printed a paparazzi photo?”

She shrugged, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. “You both looked so happy. I wanted one for the mantle.”

“I’ll get you an actual photo if you want one that badly.”

She made a little tutting sound. “You make it sound like a crime for a mother to want a picture of her daughter with her … girlfriend? Is that what you two are?”

Guilt tugged at my stomach for having kept such a big thing from my mom. She’d always been supportive, if not overly so, of the decisions I’d made in the past.

I gently returned the frame to the mantle.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier,” I apologized in earnest. “We only made it official right before Eva was traded to Chicago. And then she wanted to keep things between the two of us. With both of us traveling, it could have fizzled out before it even really started.”

“It’s okay, honey,” she allowed. “I know it couldn’t have been easy.”

I continued to stare at the fuzzy paparazzi photo and our out-of-focus faces. My mom was right—we did look insanely happy.

“Honestly, it was kind of the most natural thing in the world—once we stopped hating each other,” I chuckled.

My mom laughed, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. “Did I ever tell you that’s how your father and I started?”

“What—hating each other?”

“Well, hate’s a strong word,” she considered. “But I did find him deeply annoying.”

I leaned on the kitchen counter. “I don’t think I’ve heard this story.”

“Oh, it’s not that exciting. You know we grew up together in the same little town.

Dated in high school, went to Madison together for college.

Never really were apart.” She reached for a sponge and started wiping a counter that was already clean.

“He was always just … there. And then one day, I looked over and realized I’d never wanted anyone else to be there. ”

“How did you know it was going to work with Dad?”

“Oh, now you’re really testing my memory,” she said, chuckling. “I’ve been with your father for so long, I hardly remember my life before him.”

“I guess I’m just worried this is all puppy love,” I admitted. I picked at the countertop’s edge with my thumbnail. “I feel so deeply for her. So soon. It scares me.”

We’d gone from rivals to roommates to something tender and consuming without much time to pause and catch our breath. And I loved it—I loved her —but sometimes I wondered if we’d skipped too many steps.

I didn’t want to be someone she loved because of convenience. Because we were drafted together. Because we were young and playing house in a new city and it felt good to have someone who understood all the pressure.

What if that’s all it was? A phase. A comfort. A story we’d look back on years from now and laugh about over dinner with other people.

I hated thinking that. But the thought came anyway.

“Well, if it’s meant to be, you’ll figure it out,” she said simply.

I let my mom’s words sit with me.

“How do you like Chicago?” she asked, switching gears like she always did when something started feeling heavy.

“It’s fine. Big,” I shrugged. “But at least Jazz and Eva are there.”

Well, Eva was sometimes there.

“You should have brought Jasmine up with you,” my mom said. “It would have been like old times, you two girls here, raiding the fridge and staying up late.”

“She had a thing,” I said vaguely. “And I kind of wanted the quiet.”

My mom gave me a look like she didn’t quite believe me but wasn’t going to push. Instead, she rinsed a coffee mug. “What are your plans while you’re in town?”

I shrugged. “Nothing really. I’ll probably go for a run later, but other than that, I’ve got nothing on my To Do list.”

“Good,” she said. “You can help me with my To Do list then. The garage needs some serious attention.”

I groaned dramatically, but I didn’t mind. Not really.

She handed me a dishtowel. “Dry.”

I took the towel without protest and started drying the mug she’d just washed, and then the next one she passed me. There was something comforting about being told what to do again. Something safe about all this sameness.

I pushed the squeaky cart down the wide aisles of the local supermarket, eyes surveying the tidy arrangements of cardboard packaging and aluminum cans.

My mom had sent me on the errand, clucking about me showing up unannounced when they had no food in the house.

She’d been exaggerating in the way moms tended to do.

There was plenty of food—she just liked to make a big deal about me being home.

It had been that way in college, too. I’d gone to school one town over in Madison, but because of basketball obligations, trips home had been infrequent.

There was always a tournament over various school breaks when other students might return to their childhood bedrooms, and during summers it had been more of the same.

Eventually, Jazz and I had rented an apartment off-campus and stayed there year-round.

It became easier to stay put than to navigate the guilt trips about coming back.

I was only twenty-two, but most days I tended to feel so much older than that. Being a student-athlete at a time when attention on the sport had never been greater had thrust me and other players into the spotlight. You had to grow up and mature in short order.

“Can I get these?” my sister’s voice broke into my thoughts. She held up a bag of chips—some cursed flavor like dill pickle ranch or jalapeno marshmallow or some other combo that didn’t belong together.

I gave the bag a look. “Those sound disgusting.”

“They’re limited edition,” she defended.

Paige had been quiet and surly ever since my mom had told her to come with me. I wasn’t sure if she was actually annoyed or just being thirteen. It was hard to tell the difference sometimes.

“Yeah,” I relented. “Toss them in.”

She dropped the chips into the cart and returned her attention to her cellphone. I had no idea how she managed to navigate the grocery store aisles without looking up.

The longer we wandered the aisles, the more I felt my shoulders drop. I hadn’t realized how hunched I’d been until they started to relax, loosening around my ears. I made eye contact with the store’s other patrons and smiled as we passed each other.

A few people gave me double takes as we passed.

One woman stopped in front of the cereal display and did a full turn like she was going to say something, but in the end just gave me a small wave.

I returned it, awkward but genuine. A man in a Badgers hoodie offered a casual, “Hey, good luck next season,” as he walked by with a gallon of milk.

No one asked for a selfie, but I could feel the recognition. In cities like Boston or Chicago, I could better blend in. In my hometown of Middleton, Wisconsin, it was different. Here, I was the local girl who’d made it further than anyone had expected.

Paige didn’t notice any of it. Or if she did, she didn’t care. She was still absorbed in whatever social media spiral she’d disappeared into, barely watching where she walked.

“Watch it,” I muttered as she nearly walked into a tower of canned cranberries.

“I am,” she said, still not looking up.

Eventually, we made our way to the checkout lanes. Despite it being the weekend, only one register was open. A short line had formed, but I didn’t mind. I didn’t have anywhere else to be.

While we waited, I scanned the impulse-buy rack—kids’ activity books, cookbooks, celebrity gossip magazines.

The covers were full of smiling faces and scandalous headlines.

I picked one up halfheartedly, flipping through pages of airbrushed bodies and paparazzi candids.

Nothing I’d done had ever gotten me on the front of a magazine.

A few local features in the Middleton Times or the State Journal , mostly for breaking school records or committing to a D1 program.

I couldn’t imagine what it’d be like to see my face blown up on glossy paper, next to headlines about secret weddings or surprise breakups.

I wondered, idly, who’d be selected for the new SI swimsuit edition cover.

I glanced over at Paige, still on her phone. “Does anyone treat you any differently because of me?”

Selfishly, I hadn’t ever thought about how my low-level celebrity status or my proximity to hyper fame with Eva might have impacted my family.

She didn’t look away from the phone’s screen. “Why would they?”

Leave it to my little sister to bring me back to earth when I was starting to feel myself too much.

“I don’t know,” I huffed. “I’m the starting point guard for a professional basketball team?”

Paige wrinkled her nose. “Nope.”

Her friends and the kids in her school were probably too enamored by the latest dances and trends on social media to find anything I’d done mildly impressive.

“Although,” she amended, “one of my teachers did ask about Eva.”

I involuntarily stiffened. “What did they ask?”

“Just, like, if you guys were really dating.”

“And what did you say?”

Paige shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t need to know who you’re dating. That’s, like, gross to think about.”

“Why? Because we’re both girls?”

Paige rolled her eyes. “No, dummy. Because you’re my sister. I don’t care who you kiss. I just don’t want to see it.”

“Oh. Okay,” I breathed. “That’s fair.”

We continued our slow shuffle towards the front of the line. Paige’s interest strayed from her phone to the candy and magazines that lined the checkout aisle. She idly ticked her fingertips over the rows of candy bars and chapstick.

“If anyone says anything mean about you and Eva,” she said offhandedly, “you should just ignore it.”

A soft smile fell to my lips. “That’s good advice, P. Thanks.”