She’d grown up fast living in the East Side, and picked up a few tricks from self-defense classes in college, so she wasn’t afraid to stop and stand in the darkness under the trees sheltering the tracks and watch. He had decent moves, probably played in high school, nothing spectacular, but it was hard to show off your best stuff when you played yourself. For that, you needed a teammate, an opponent. His back to her, he worked on his crossover, knees bent, center of gravity low to the ground, the ball bouncing tight and hard off the cement as he switched it from hand to hand. Then he broke left and went in for a layup, and a thrill of recognition and something far too much like delight shot through her.
It was in the long parabola of his body, stretched from his fingertips to his toes, pointed from pushing off for the layup, the key that turned the lock of her memory. Why wouldn’t he be there? She knew he was coming back for the banquet; the chairwoman of the booster club burbling over with excitement at having all of the boys’ team members back, including a U.S. Navy SEAL fresh off a deployment.
Jamie.
All this she thought in the split second he hung in midair. Then the ball rolled off his fingertips, into the hoop, rattling the chains that served as a net. It dropped to the ground, bouncing once before he palmed it back into his control, dribbling absently.
“Come on out of there.”
She knew an order when she heard one, and this one was given in his voice, a sandy curl no less compelling for the tenor tone, for all she knew actually roughened by sand. Her muscles jerked, not toward the court in response to his command but rather the temptation to run strong enough to make her twitch in the direction of home. She caught herself. Lifted her chin. Stepped out of the darkness, onto the court, the ball balanced between her forearm and her hip.
He froze, his hand hanging in midair as his eyes widened. “Hey,” he said, the ball bouncing away from him. “Hi. Uh, sorry. I didn’t know it was it you.”
“It’s me,” she said, trying not to stare at his body as the ball rolled to a stop at her feet. His hair glimmered with the soft brown of a fawn’s pelt when the court’s light caught it. He was tanned, twin stripes of sunglasses along his temples and around his eyes. She was used to athletes in peak condition, had dated professional tennis players, basketball players, soccer players, rugby players, and for a few months, an Olympic show jumper who had thighs she’d never forget, but Jamie was different. Jamie’s body wasn’t athletic. It was the hard musculature of a man who knew that life was no ordinary game.
After one quick glance at his ball, now in her territory, he put his hands on his hips and looked around. “It hasn’t changed much,” he said.
“There’s a neighborhood association working to revitalize without giving up too much to gentrification,” she said in return. “It hasn’t gotten much traction, but Eve Webber … you remember Eve? Caleb’s sister? She’s leading the charge.”
“I remember Eve,” he said, one corner of his mouth twitching up.
No surprise there. Everyone remembered Eve Webber. A man’s creases to go with the boy’s dimples, she thought absently. She’d forgotten his dimples. He still had the direct stare. Growing up a son of a cop meant he looked you right in the eyes, used words like “sir” and “ma’am” with ease, answered up, but this was different. This look had a man’s knowledge and a Navy SEAL’s experience behind it, and she wasn’t sure what to do. With anyone else she’d claim a basket and shoot away her restlessness. All she could do now was stare, tongue-tied.
“You play down here much?” he asked.
“No.” She shook her head, defensive despite the reasonable question. Kids from the Hill had their own park, complete with a playground, a sand box, a tennis court, and a basketball court, all tucked under spreading elm trees, or so she’d seen after she went to a cocktail party for the booster club held in one of the houses that backed to the playground. She’d never been up on the Hill as a kid. She had no business up there. Jamie had his cop-father’s go-anywhere attitude. Taking the steps down the Hill two at a time to the court was easy for him.
“It’s been too cold,” she added in explanation, the drop back a decade to high school made her ache, a phantom pain left over from wanting so hard it hurt. Wanting her mother to sober up and keep a job. Wanting to get out of Lancaster. Wanting to win a spot on the team, a starter’s spot, a game, a championship, a scholarship anywhere because basketball was her way out. Wanting Jamie, knowing she could never, ever have him.
“That never stopped you before,” he said.
She’d played outside when the windchill was below zero, bad for the ball but needing to be anywhere but at home. “I’ve got access to a gym now,” she said, and was every conversation going to be like this, a minefield of memories?
He must have seen the pain on her face, because he walked right up to her, bent over, and bounced his ball from immobile to dribbling, then got right in her space, his smile doing nothing to dial back his intensity. “Don’t let me stop you,” he said.