Long Shot (Hoops 1)

“For asking you …” I lift one shoulder, hoping it conveys things I can’t put into words. “I’m nosy. It gets me in trouble. I ask too many questions, and then I—”

“I like it.” He cuts in softly.

My breath swirls around in my chest and furiously circles my heart like a cyclone.

“You … you like what?” I ask.

“That you’re curious and ask questions that make me think. That challenge me. People don’t always do that.”

There’s a disparaging twist to my lips.

“Because it’s called casual conversation,” I say with a husky laugh. “And I seem to have trouble keeping things casual.”

With you.

I don’t say the words aloud, but our eyes exchange them nonetheless.

“It just means I get to ask a tough question that will gut you.” He delivers the words lightly, but the curiosity in his eyes is real. This will be a gutter.

“Okay.” I release a longsuffering sigh. “I guess it’s only fair. Hit me with your best shot.”

“Toughest day of your life.” He twists so his back is against the car and he has a clear view of me.

“Wow. Just go for it, huh?”

“Like you didn’t?” He cocks one brow and props his chin in his hand, as if he has all the time in the world to wait.

“Right.” I laugh nervously. “This is the last question. No more after this.”

“And I was honest with you, so repay the favor.” He says it easily, but the remnants of emotion on his face remind me it’s true.

“Toughest day of my life.” I twist a little to face him, too, which is probably good because, if I look over the side, I might start hyperventilating again. “Um, the day Rhyson left.”

It’s quiet for a moment, and I give him my face to search, not looking down or away. So he’ll know it’s true.

“Grady had been visiting us for the holidays.” I look down at the anxious tangle of my fingers on the safety bar. “And he took Rhyson with him when he left.”

Rhyson wasn’t home much, but when he was, I could always find him in one of two places: his rehearsal room or the tree house in our backyard. I ran from room to room. I climbed that tree looking for him, but he was nowhere to be found, and no one had even bothered to tell me.

“What I remember most is the silence.” I hush my voice like it’s a secret, and maybe it is, because I’ve never told anyone this before. “Rhyson rehearsed constantly when he was home.”

I laugh, but it costs me a pain in my chest right above my heart.

“I was such a goofball I would sit out in the hall and listen to him play for hours while I did my homework, painted my nails, or even talked on the phone with my friends.”

I rest my elbows on the safety bar and prop my chin on the heel of my hand.

“That was when I felt closest to him. I know that sounds crazy since we weren’t even in the same room when he was playing, but his music was the realest thing about him. And not in a concert hall or in front of an audience. It was most honest, most raw, when he was alone. It was just for him.”

A sigh trembles across my lips and is absorbed by the cooling night air.

“And I would pretend it was just for me, too. So when Grady took him away …” I hear my mother’s influence, her anger even in how I phrase that, so I amend. “When Rhyson left, the house was dead. No music, no life. He left without even saying goodbye.”

Hot tears leak from the corners of my eyes.

“To me, I mean.” My breath stutters as I struggle to get the words out. “I am his twin, Grip. Somehow I, this unremarkable in every way girl who couldn’t even play a clarinet ‘adequately’, shared a womb, shared the beginning of my life with this genius person, and I feel it so deeply. It’s like I feel his music, I feel him the way twins feel each other.”

I bite my bottom lip to control its trembling.