WHEN KATIE DEPARTED for the bathroom, it left me standing there with Dash and his thick-necked pals. I’d had enough to drink. So instead of reaching for another beer, I began to noodle around with the outrageous pink basketball I’d been carrying around. I rolled it up the back of my hand and along my arm. Then I dribbled it a couple of times on the old wooden floor beneath me.
“Nice ball you’ve got there,” Dash muttered. “Is your team switching teams this season?”
A gay joke from a frat guy? Shocker. “You know, it’s not nice to make fun of a guy’s balls,” I quipped. Nothing he could say right now could ruin my mood. I still wouldn’t have minded landing a punch right in the middle of his smirk. But I wasn’t going to do it. Because fighting Dash and his crew was a pretty bad idea, one which would surely mess up the plan I had to walk Katie home and ask her out.
Eyes on the prize, and all.
Ignoring Dash, I toyed with the ball, spinning it on my finger and dribbling through my legs. This always relaxed me. Whenever I was stressed out about something, I took the ball in my hands and began to calm down.
Still, I could feel him watching me. Maybe he thought I was showing off, but it wasn’t really like that. If I wanted to show off, I’d do these tricks twice as fast. I was just taking things nice and easy, letting the ball slide off my palms, feeling the satisfying bounce of rubber against wood and then skin.
“Pass,” Dash said.
Really, dude? You have to get competitive? Maybe he didn’t enjoy the fact that I was friendly with his ex-girlfriend. What a tool.
I passed him the ball. He palmed it, then bent his knees to execute a couple behind-the-back bounces. Then once under the knee. And then he bounced it back to me.
You want to show off? Fine. For the next fifteen seconds, I gave it to him: bang-bang under one leg, followed by a scissor cross, a few strokes of walking the dog, and then a quick bounce back to him.
He fumbled it, which made me irrationally happy. Then he did a little handiwork with a triangle dribble around his right leg (and I’d bet money he couldn’t do his left) before a fake and a snap back to me.
The fake and the snap were exactly what I thought he’d do. So I took that ball as if I’d been waiting for it all my life. Slowing it down, I dribbled around my body a few times, spinning it on a fingertip after that. “Stay ready,” I warned him.
He lifted a brow, irritated that I’d warn him like that. As if he were a bumbler. (Even if he was.)
I dropped the ball low in front of me, pounding the dribble for four or five strokes. Then I let go. The ball ricocheted up… and straight into Dash’s crotch.
Three-pointer! So to speak.
“URMMFFF!” the guy groaned, catching the ball and bending over in the time-honored position of a guy whose eggs had just been scrambled.
It took all my effort not to laugh. “Ouch,” I said.
“You ass,” Dash muttered. And when he straightened up, his face was red with anger.
My heart rate kicked up a couple of points, but I held his gaze. “That hurts, right? When you think you’ve signed up for a simple game of one-on-one, but then it turns out that someone else had different plans for you?”
His face did something interesting then. It locked up tight in surprise. And then guilt crossed his features. His mouth sagged, and his eyes looked away from me. He swallowed uncomfortably.
“You can call me an ass if it makes you feel better,” I said in a low voice. “But you leave Katie alone.”
Dash didn’t acknowledge me. He just set the ridiculous pink basketball down on a wicker chair, and then picked up a sport coat that had been lying over the back of it.
“You get me?” I pressed. That’s when I heard the sound of high heels tapping toward me. “Hey!” Katie said, skidding up to me. “Sorry about that. I got caught up chatting in the bathroom.”
“No problem.” I turned to give her my full attention and was basically walloped all over again by how attractive she was. Her silky hair slid over her bare shoulders as she moved. And those kissable lips gave me a little smile. “Are you ready to head out?” I asked, hoping the answer was yes.
“Sure! We can grab my coat on the way.”
A frat brother nudged Dash, whose face was still red and ornery. “Let’s hit it, bro,” he said.
Dash cleared his throat. “I was waiting for Debbie. She might still be in the bathroom.”
Katie paused, her hand grabbing mine. “She left,” she told Dash.
“What?”
Katie’s grin took on a devilish glint. “She said she had more important places to be. Or something like that. G’night.” She gave my hand a little tug, and we left the room together.
