Block Shot (Hoops 2)

My boyfriend is a good man.

“Even marriage is no guarantee,” I hear myself saying. “And if Banner is stupid enough to fuck her client now, she has to know people will think that’s how she landed him in the first place.”

As soon as I say the harsh words, I want to take them back, but it’s too late. Mitch looks past my shoulder, and his eyes widen. His mouth drops open.

“B-Banner,” he stutters. “Uh . . . We were just . . . Pull up a chair. Have a drink.”

I close my eyes, praying to the whiskey gods that Banner didn’t hear my last comment. When I turn on my barstool, there is no doubt in my mind that she heard every word.

“Let me get this straight,” she says through tight lips, ignoring Mitch’s pitiful cover-up attempt. “I got where I am by fucking Zo. Do I have it right?”

“Banner,” I start.

“Fuck you, Jared.” She doesn’t even look at me when she says it. She glares at Maybe Jimmy. “You haven’t signed a new client in two years, and the few you have left are jumping like you’re the Titanic because you’ve managed their careers into the toilet.”

She points to Mitch. “Cal Bagley would have fired you years ago if your father wasn’t his best friend. I spend half my time cleaning up your shit and the other half taking up your slack.”

Her eyes, when they shift to me, are obsidian. Hard. Dark. Cold. Even when she’s been furious with me in the past, irritated with me, she’s never looked at me this way.

“And how dare you intimate that anyone would assume I’m successful because I fuck my clients?” She hurls the question at me.

“I didn’t say—”

“When you wouldn’t even own your agency,” she cuts over me, “if your brother hadn’t bought it for you. So is your success because of nepotism?”

The hell?

I stand up fast and step so close, I smell her shampoo. After all these years, it’s the same scent. Something fresh and clean and distinctly hers. I step so close her head falls back so she can maintain her glare, but she doesn’t fall back. I’m so close the sight of her in this black dress hugging her curves, with her hair piled high on her head like a crown, swallows up my peripheral vision and Banner is all I see.

“You should get your facts straight before you speak,” I say so low only she can hear me, though I’m sure Mitch and Maybe Jimmy strain to catch it.

“And you should be careful before you insult me,” she returns, her words a challenge, a pistol drawn. “Or my boyfriend.”

I don’t allow myself many regrets. I don’t say I’m sorry often simply because I’m usually not. I say what I mean. I mean what I say, and I stand behind it. If it hurts someone, as long as it was true, I’m not sorry. But I regret saying that about Banner to these two idiots. I don’t think it’s a good idea for agents to date clients, and I expressed as much to Banner at the game, but saying it to Mitch and Maybe Jimmy felt wrong. Tearing Banner down feels wrong.

I bend until we’re eye level, stare to unflinching stare.

“I’m sorry, Ban,” I whisper. “I shouldn’t have said it.”

She blinks like my apology startled her and steps back, inserting space between us. She spares a quick glance at Mitch and Maybe Jimmy before looking back up at me.

“You’re not sorry, Jared,” she says softly, glaring at me. “But you will be.”

That’s her parting shot. She turns on her high heels and leaves the bar, dignity in the set of her shoulders and indignation in the rigid line of her back.

It’s only when I’m still at the bar long after Mitch and Maybe Jimmy have left, nursing my fourth Jameson, that I process what’s happened. For once I allowed emotion to get the best of me, and I said something I should never have said in front of people who should never have heard me say it.

Ironically, it’s only when I’m almost too drunk to stand that I gain perfect clarity. Only when the room starts spinning am I still enough to understand.

My boyfriend is a good man.

You should be careful before you insult me or my boyfriend.

Banner praising Zo. Banner protecting Zo. Banner being with Zo.

That emotion that has been choking me since I heard Banner speak today—hell, maybe since August told me about Banner dating Zo—that emotion is the one that makes you do and say petty things. That emotion has a name.

It’s jealousy.