Block Shot (Hoops 2)

Him.

“Imagine seeing you here,” Jared drawls, standing still so I can’t move forward either. His closely cropped hair glints golden in the bright morning sun.

“It is my gym,” I answer caustically.

“Your gym,” Jared says, arms folded across his chest. “Your city. I don’t remember you being this possessive.”

“I’m surprised you remember me at all.”

One dark blond brow ascends and that wide mouth tips at one corner.

“Pretty Pastel,” he murmurs, his deep voice and his damn seductive scent suffusing the tight glass-encased space, making it a hothouse.

“What?” My mind blanks because he couldn’t be saying . . .

“You still use the same dryer sheets.” He leans forward and sniffs my shoulder.

“Stop that.” I bat him away, conscious of the fact I didn’t take the shower I had planned.

“Are they or are they not called Pretty Pastel?” he asks.

His self-satisfied look darkens and intensifies the longer we stand transfixed in this glass box of boiling air.

“You don’t want to know all the things I remember, Ban,” he says, his laugh husky. “Or maybe you do.”

“I do not.” Our words, our breath, whatever is condensating in this partition between us, is literally fogging the glass. “Let me out.”

A woman enters on the other side, bewildered that the revolving door isn’t revolving, that we aren’t moving. Jared flashes her one of those smiles, and she blushes and bats her damn eyelashes. We can only get out of this if he steps forward and I step back. Even for just the few seconds it takes to free us, it feels like he’s advancing on me.

“I’ll be seeing you, Banner,” he calls from inside as I walk to the parking lot.

“Not if I see you first,” I mutter.

I click my car open and climb in, slamming the door with unnecessary roughness. I don’t even make it to the interstate before the phone rings in my car, my mother’s name displaying on the screen.

“Hola, Mama.”

“Hola, Bannini.”

When Mama’s family first moved here from Mexico, she spoke no English. One teacher in the overcrowded San Diego public school took extra time and care to make sure Mama learned English and helped her adjust to her new circumstances, her new country. That teacher was Ms. Banner Johnson. My namesake, but my family calls me Bannini. How that started, no one remembers, but it stuck.

“How are you?” I continue in Spanish. “How’s Papa?”

“Ehh. We are fine. Always fine.”

“Papa’s taking his medication?”

Considering what Mama cooks every day, diabetes was practically an inevitability. I’m constantly after Mama to adjust their diets. Between what he eats and how hard he works running the construction business he built from the ground up, I have reason to worry.

“Yes, yes,” Mama replies with a touch of impatience. “How are you? Are you eating? You were wasting away last time I saw you.”

Only my mother would accuse me of wasting away at a size ten.

“I’m eating. Promise, Mama.”

“How is my boy?” Mama’s voice goes soft and sweet with the question, and there’s no doubt who she’s asking about.

“Zo is fine.” I laugh and take the exit to my house. “He’s at my place. Still sleeping when I left.”