Block Shot (Hoops 2)

Because she reminds me of you.

I don’t say it. I can’t shake every rule of negotiation. I can’t give her everything up front.

“Bobby is the billionaire and Chuck runs the city as the DA,” I say. “But Wendy runs them both. They’d do anything for her. Bend their morals, break their rules. They’d even act against their own self-interest for her, which is antithetical for them both.”

“You’re so sure?”

“If there’s one thing I know for sure,” I laugh harshly. “It’s selfish bastards, being one and all, and those two selfish bastards would do anything for Wendy. That’s what ultimately drove Bobby’s wife away. She knew she might be the wife, but Wendy was the queen.”

“Yeah, I didn’t see their divorce coming.”

“I did,” I scoff. “It’s so obvious Bobby would fuck Wendy if she ever gave him any indication he had a chance.”

I pause, capture, hold her gaze in the moonlight.

“That’s what we selfish bastards do,” I tell her. “We fuck the girl we want the first chance we get.”

Static electricity crackles in the air, drawing us to one another even though neither of us move an inch. It’s invisible and inexorable, this pull, and I hope she’s truly done resisting it.

“And how do you deal with the guilt?” she asks, her voice low and barely above a whisper. “The guilt of just taking and doing whatever you want?”

“What guilt?”

The truth lands on the table among our appetizers and silverware. Her heavy conscience and my lack thereof. Before she can probe any more, the server comes to take our order. He walks away and I shift the conversation instead of talking more about my general lack of morality.

“Favorite movie of all time?” I pick up where we left off before the interruption.

“Shawshank Redemption. You?”

“The Godfather.”

“Figures.”

“Yeah, it does.” We laugh together.

“Favorite food?” she asks.

“Lasagna.” I sip my drink, a jalapeño margarita or some shit. I miss my Jameson. “Best lasagna I’ve ever had in my life was my mom’s.”

“I’ve never heard you talk about your mother,” Banner says. “Only your stepmother.”

There’s a pain in my chest every time I think of my mother. Some emotions are so strong, some losses so essential that the heart—not your beating heart, your feeling heart—can’t contain them, so the body absorbs the blow. That’s how I grieve my mother.

“She died.” I clear my throat and take another sip of my spicy margarita. “Breast cancer.”

Banner has this way of making you feel like you’re the only person in the room, maybe in the world. She doesn’t blink, as if she might miss some vital detail of what you’re saying if she does.

“How old were you?” she asks, her undrifting stare compassionate.

“Ten.” I cough, less about the spices in my drink and more about how foreign it feels to talk about this, about her. “It was really fast. She was already stage four and . . .”

That’s as far as I typically go, and I assume she’ll do what other people do. Murmur condolences and move on. It’s an old hurt, no place to linger, but Banner does what Banner does.

“Tell me about her,” she says softly. “What was her name?”

“Angela.” My laugh is short. Truncated. “Dad called her Angie. God, he yelled her name all the time. ‘Yo, Angie, where’s my socks? Angie, you pick up my dry cleaning? Angie, there’s no beer in the fridge.’”

I pause to offer a knowing look.