In one of the earliest photos my mother has of me, my father’s autographed basketball rests beside me in my crib. Though shadowy, I know the memories of summer afternoons behind our house, of him lifting me on his shoulders to dunk the ball with my childish hands, are real. I could barely walk when I started dribbling a ball. You could say my entire life has been leading up to this moment.
The fall of confetti, the thunder of the crowd, the lights ricocheting off a thousand camera lenses—it’s a prism of sight and sound that doesn’t penetrate my private celebration. I’ve come so far and grabbed the prize, and I want to enjoy this for a moment. Maybe later in life I’ll figure out how to turn off the drive that churns like a locomotive inside me, but I haven’t yet. And tomorrow it will demand of me what it always does—more. I’m allowing myself a moment to savor.
A microphone thrust in my face shatters that nanosecond of contemplation. Questions pellet me like a hail of bullets. Dazedly, I field each question, squinting against the glare of a dozen cameras connected to millions of viewers at home. Coach is probably watching from Delores’s hospital room, exactly where he should be. But my mom and my stepfather, Matt, are here somewhere, and I’m consumed by an urgency to share this with the only people who understand all it has required.
As my ecstatic teammates and I finish shaking hands with the other team, my mother reaches me, grabs my arm, and pulls me into a hug that smells and feels like every comfort and encouragement it’s taken to get me here. I sink into it, burying my face in her thick, red curls that always smell like strawberries. When my dad died and my world upended, my mother was my constant. When she married Matt and moved us to the suburbs outside of Baltimore, she was my rock. When I got the scholarship to play basketball at St. Joseph’s Prep and had to leave my friends and all that was familiar, she anchored me. At every turn, when things have spiraled or changed, she’s been the same source of support.
She pulls back far enough to peer up at me, framing my face with her hands. If her watery blue eyes didn’t reflect the pride they do, tonight wouldn’t mean nearly as much.
“You did it,” she says, running her fingers over the sweaty mess of my hair. “Your father would be so proud.”
Her words, barely audible over all the raucous celebrating, slip right under the guard I have over my heart and prick me. Before I know it, I’m blinking back fucking tears.
“And on his birthday,” she whispers, sadness and joy mingling on her face.
“You remembered?” A laugh trips over the sob in my throat.
“Of course, I remembered.” She shakes her head and pats my face. “You’re so much like him, you know? But you’re even better than he was at your age.”
Before I can respond, a hand on my shoulder turns me around. Matt draws me close, pride in his eyes, too. He’s not my biological father, but he’s the man who taught me so much about discipline and respect. This moment belongs to him, too.
“Hey, West.” Coach Mannard approaches, grinning more broadly than I’ve seen him do in four years playing for him. “You saved us tonight more than once. It’s been an honor to coach you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
I shake the hand he extends to me, and we both laugh and end with a hug. Coach Mannard and I have butted heads several times. Fortunately, last night’s curfew violation wasn’t one of them—I slipped in unnoticed. Even when we haven’t seen eye to eye, we’ve had one thing in common: we both want to win. And tonight, as our road together ends, we have.
“The boosters have a celebration reception for us in one of those fancy boxes upstairs.” Coach Mannard addresses me but raises his voice and then looks around to my teammates who have gathered around. “I’m sure all of you have your own plans to celebrate.”
That comment is met with wolf whistles and laughter. Fifteen college guys who just became national champions can get into a shitload of trouble, and a lot of us plan to find out how much firsthand tonight.
“But,” Coach Mannard says, pausing until he has our attention, “these are our boosters and they want to see you. Shake your hands. This is the school’s first basketball title. You made history tonight. It’s a big deal. You’re a big deal, and the people who pay the way want to see you.”
He looks at his watch and then back at us.
“I know some of you have interviews to do.” His eyes drift to me and then away. “And we’ll have the trophy ceremony here in a little bit. After that, shower and get your asses up to the box. Just gimme an hour or two. Sing for your supper, and then I don’t care what you do as long as I’m not reading about it tomorrow.”
The next hour or so goes quickly, a stream of people demanding my attention. I lose count of the reporters with their recorders and microphones, all asking the same questions.
The trophy ceremony is a blur of emotions, but I see it all in stunning Technicolor detail. My mind takes a snapshot. I’ll never forget hefting that trophy over my head in front of thousands of screaming fans.
It’s only after I’m showered and in my dress shirt and slacks that it all starts to sink in. I’m a national champion. I may win the Naismith award, Player of the Year. I may have just sealed a top-five spot in the NBA draft. Implications inundate my mind—the money, the fame, the opportunities.
I’ll be back in class in a few days. Finals are coming soon. Besides an upcoming visit to the White House, life will return to normal. But there’s a new normal waiting for me after graduation, and I’m not sure I’m ready.
I hang back a little and let the rest of the team go ahead to the booster party. When I board the elevator to the luxury boxes, I’m alone, considering the things I told Iris last night about not wanting to lose myself in all of that madness. I want to hold onto that.
I step off the elevator, and my heart stops. Thuds. Drops
Iris.
Like my thoughts delivered her to me, Iris is standing right there, tucked into a group of people clustered at the entrance of the box not too far from ours. Is it my imagination? No, a figment of my imagination wouldn’t charge the air and heighten every detail. Everything is clearer, sharper, crisper. For my senses, she’s a magnifying glass. She’s a megaphone.
And she’s standing right there.
Her hair is different. Tamed. It’s long, straight, and hanging to the middle of her back. Color splashes her lips, eyes, and cheeks, layered over the beautiful nakedness of last night’s face. Instead of the casual clothes from the bar, she wears a short top that stops right under the roundness of her breasts. The skirt sits low on her hips, molding to the length of her legs and the curve of her ass, leaving a stretch of toned stomach bare. I could tell last night she had a great body, but the reality of her shape, her soft, coppery skin—it shames my imagination. She looks different, but it’s still her. My gumbo girl. Every cell in my body confirms it, and my feet are taking me toward her before I realize where I’m going.
“Iris?”
When I call her name, she searches the space around her, sifting through the knot of people until her eyes meet mine, widening with surprise. She quickly picks her way through the small crowd gathered at the entrance to the box, crossing the space until she reaches me. She smells the same, and the effect she has on me, it’s exactly the same. A lightning strike. A power surge. Our eyes tangle in the tight space, in the brief silence. Those eyes are the color of whiskey tonight, and they’re just as intoxicating. She goes right to my head.
“Hey.” My voice comes out raspy and labored, like I took the stairs at top speed instead of the elevator to get here.
“August, hey.”
She sounds breathless, too. It must be the live wire running from me to her because she hasn’t exerted herself. As a matter of fact, she couldn’t look more perfect. “You look . . .”
I stop to steady myself. Adrenaline courses through me like I’m in the heat of a close game, a nail-biter. Like the ball is in my hands for the last-second shot.
“You look beautiful, Iris.”
“Oh . . . um, thanks.” She tugs at the top like maybe she’s self-conscious. Then her eyes go wide again when she looks up at me. “Oh, God, August. Congratulations! Incredible game. I’m sure your father’s proud of you today.”
Her softly spoken words move me. All the pieces of myself that never seemed to quite fit lock with this girl. I recognized it last night, and I know it now. Maybe it’s because we grew up with some of the same challenges, of never feeling like we belonged. Maybe it’s the nitroglycerine chemistry boiling between us, just waiting for the strike of a match.
“Thanks.” I clear my throat, not sure what to say next except the obvious. “What are you doing here? I mean, I’m glad. Really glad, I just—”
“Iris.”
The sharp voice just beyond her shoulder captures my attention. She stiffens, her lashes drifting down for a second before she glances back up.
“August, I—”
“Hey, baby. I was looking for you.” The tanned arm that wraps possessively around her waist belongs to the guy I just defeated.
“Caleb, hey.” Iris flicks a glance between the two of us.
What. The. Fuck.
Caleb Bradley is Iris’s boyfriend? It couldn’t be worse. I hated the idea of the guy lucky enough to have Iris before. Now I hate the actual guy. The one everyone calls “the golden boy” is, from my experience, an asshole. He certainly doesn’t deserve the girl I met last night. I’ve never envied his family’s money or all the attention the media showered on him. I’ve never envied the advantages he’s had, but now he has her. I envy him that. It boils under my skin and churns in my gut.
“Good game.” I fix my eyes on his face so I don’t have to look at Iris.
“You, too.” Stony blue eyes collide with mine. Bitterness twists his lips. “Congratulations.”
It’s the most grudging congrats I’ve ever heard, but I can’t blame him. No one wants to see the winner so soon after losing.
“You know my girlfriend?” His eyes connect dots between Iris and me, suspicion laced tightly into the words.
When I finally look at her, the guard over her eyes that dropped so quickly last night is back. I’d almost forgotten it ever existed. Is it back because of me? Or because of him? I have no idea how she wants to play this. Nothing happened last night. Not because I didn’t want it to, but because she stopped it.
For him.
For a moment, I want to ruin it. To wreck their relationship by planting doubts in his mind. It’s a passing thought I won’t follow through on. That’s not how you win a girl like Iris.
“We met last night at a bar.” Her voice is even. Her eyes, when they meet his, are clear.
“At a bar?” A frown jerks his eyebrows together. “What the hell?”
“I wanted to see the Lakers game,” she says with measured patience, “and the hotel wasn’t carrying it. So, I went to the bar around the corner to watch.”
“We ran into each other there,” I finish for her. “Just talked for a little while. No big deal.”
“Right. No big deal.” Her eyes meet mine for a charged second before swinging back to Caleb. “I hadn’t had a chance to tell you.”
“Well, you won the game, West.” There’s a phony lightness to Caleb’s voice while his eyes remain flinty. “Next thing you know, you’ll be trying to win my girl, too.”
“Oh, you’re not that insecure, are you, Bradley?” I deliberately relax my posture, sliding my hands into my pockets and rocking back on my heels, laying a wide winner’s smile on him. “If she doesn’t want to be won, she won’t be.”
“She doesn’t want to be.” He strips all the lightness from his voice, and if his eyes were stony before, now his whole face is granite. The arm around her waist stiffens to steel.
“Both of you, please stop.” Iris exhales sharply, her words, soft but firm, refereeing the tension snarling between Caleb and me. “Caleb, we just talked.”
His face broadcasts his displeasure. Seeing his hand spread over Iris’s waist, mine might, too. Asshole.
I’ve known him since the eighth grade. Most guys don’t just stumble into an NBA career. They pursue it relentlessly for years. We started attending the same preparatory camps and tournaments years ago, and though everyone’s fawned all over him, he and I have never clicked. Dirty plays when he thought no one was looking, jockeying for positions, whining when he lost and boasting when he won—those are things that have kept us from being friends. Even though the press constantly compares us and pits us against each other, the hostility has never been open . . . until now.
Until her.
“I guess I won’t see you again until the draft, huh, West?” Caleb’s tone stays smooth, but he can’t hide the lumps from me—the frustration in his eyes, the anger bunching his jaw, the tight fists at his sides.
“Probably not.” My eyes stray to Iris. As tall as she is, the two of us dwarf her. I give in to temptation and rake my eyes deliberately over her body again. “I’d wish you luck, but you’re obviously a very lucky man.”
She draws a deep breath that lifts her breasts under the cropped top. Caleb’s narrowed eyes shift between the two of us, like he suspects there’s a silent, secret message we’re passing between each other under his nose. I wish there was a way for me to telegraph to her what I’m thinking: to ask why she’d fall for the act he dupes everyone else with. And why, knowing the well-documented rivalry between us, did she not tell me who she was last night? For the first time since I saw her at that bar, I wish I hadn’t. It would have been better to never know there was a girl out there who could make me feel this way after only one night than to know she chose a guy like him.
“Congratulations, again, August.” Iris’s smile is starched and stiff, but I know she’s sincere. “Caleb, we should get back to the party. Your father’s probably looking for you.”
Iris tugs his arm, but he doesn’t budge for a second, watching me. Silently warning me. I grin at him, so he knows I don’t give a fuck and that he doesn’t intimidate me.
After another second, he nods at Iris and they head toward their box. They’re absorbed into the press of people, and I’m left standing alone. The sense of loss I felt when she walked away the night before is nothing compared to what I feel now. Now it’s not just that I can’t have Iris. It’s that I can’t have her because he does. And the girl I met last night, she deserves better than Caleb.
My teammates, Coach Mannard, the boosters—everybody’s celebrating, and I’m determined to join the party. This is everything I’ve worked for, and I refuse to allow Caleb and his girlfriend to spoil it for me. A few of the cheerleaders have thrown clear signals they’d love to find themselves under a national champ tonight. Or on top. Or on their knees. I’m not picky, and I could use the distraction.
After half a bottle of champagne, I’m game for whatever. Who needs Caleb’s leftovers when I can have something hot and fresh right here? I’m at the bar in our box still convincing myself when Iris joins me.
“What’s a nice guy like you doing in a place like this?” She stares straight ahead at the bottles lining the wall behind the bar for a moment before she turns to me.
“Where’s your boyfriend?” I tip the half-empty champagne bottle up to my lips. “I’m surprised he let his consolation prize out of his sight.”
“Wow.” She shakes her head, a humorless smile resting on her lips. “I probably deserve that, but . . . wow. To answer your question, Caleb and his dad are talking with a potential agent.”
“And you decided to sneak over here to check on me?” I slide her a glance as cold and hard as glass. “To make sure I’ve recovered from the shock of seeing you with the golden boy?”
Iris rests her elbow on the bar, watching my profile for a moment before speaking. “No. I came back to say I’m sorry, August.” Her voice holds genuine remorse. “I should have told you about Caleb.”
“Yeah.” I turn toward her, hoping she feels at least an aftershock from the irritation rumbling inside me. “You should have.”
I’m being an asshole. I know it, but I can’t seem to stop even when I see the hurt accumulating in her eyes. I’m too drunk. Drunk on disappointment. On frustration. On anger. The half-empty bottle is merely my excuse to show it.
“When you first sat down at the bar last night, I thought maybe you were just a jerk.” Her eyes tease me from under her lashes.
I bark a laugh and take another swig from my bottle. “Thanks for that.”
“You know what I mean,” she says, loosening into a small smile. “Then once we started talking, there didn’t seem to be a good place to say, ‘Hey, I’m Caleb Bradley’s girlfriend.’” She traces a pattern on the bar, dipping her head until a fall of hair conceals much of her face. “After a while, it didn’t seem to matter anymore.”
If I had known she was Caleb’s girl, I wouldn’t have sat down. I would have kept walking out that door and made curfew in plenty of time. But she’s right. Even just a few minutes into our conversation, knowing about Caleb wouldn’t have made me leave. Not once we started. Not once I knew her.
“So . . . it’s serious?” I carefully set down my bottle of champagne. “I mean with him. You said it was serious. Like are you guys talking marriage or what?”
Knowing that she was serious about “some guy” was one thing. Knowing she’s serious about him is quite another. Caleb and I will move in the same circles, play in the same league, attend the same events. I may see her from time to time, wearing his ring and raising his kids. Maybe I’ve just had too much to drink, but my stomach turns.
She shrugs, dropping her eyes to the floor and shifting her weight from one foot to the other. “He wants to marry me, yeah. Someday.”
“And what do you want?” I ask, watching her closely.
“The same things I told you I wanted last night.” A frown crinkles her expression. “I want my career. I want the chance to prove myself.”
“Good.” I pick up my champagne. I need it. “Remember how I said guys
lose themselves in that world? The one Caleb and I enter in a few months?”
I wait for her to nod, to acknowledge that she remembers. “So do girls,” I say softly. “I would hate to see that happen to you, Iris.”
“Thank you.” She pushes her hair behind her ear, her lashes lowered. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
I hope she does. A girl with that much spirit shouldn’t be crushed. A girl with that much character shouldn’t be swayed. I’m afraid a man like Caleb could do both.
Regret tinges her smile when she looks at me. I don’t know if it’s regret for not telling me about Caleb last night or if it’s regret for what we’ve lost before it has even begun. Whatever it is, she tucks it away behind her eyes and steps close to me.
“You’re a great player, August.” She tips up on her toes until her lips are at my ear. “But I think you’ll be an even greater man.”
Her words zip like an arrow to the very heart of everything I’ve wrestled with tonight, soothing my uncertainty about how I’ll handle the future. My hand slips to the small of her back, to the silky skin above her skirt. I want to pull her closer so badly, but she steps back until my hand falls away. Clearing her throat, she flashes me one last heart-stopping smile. “Bye, August.”
And with that, she turns and leaves the bar, retracing her steps from my box back to Caleb’s. My fingers seize around the gold-foiled bottle of champagne in unreasonable frustration. I met this girl last night. I shouldn’t feel this intensely so quickly. I shouldn’t feel like Caleb stole something that was never mine. I out-shot him tonight. I out-rebounded him. I flat out outplayed him. I’m the one who raised the trophy over my head. I won.
So why in God’s name do I feel like the loser?
