Hook Shot (Hoops 3)

“Why?”

“You have as much to lose as I do—as much of a leap to trust again.” She shrugs. “Maybe I’m kidding myself because I was tired of resisting the attraction, but that’s what I told myself before I kissed you.”

I nod, thinking this may be the one time all the crap Bridget put me through has worked to my advantage. I take Lotus’s hand and lay it against my chest, cover it, completely eclipsing hers. She’s so small, but not fragile. If I’m using one of MiMi’s Bible stories that even I know, Lotus is the pebble David slung to take down Goliath. Maybe I’m not the gladiator after all, but Goliath. Am I falling? Falling from a little pebble right between the eyes?

“Let’s eat,” I say after a few moments like that.

We walk into the dining room where the chef left the food in warmers.

“Nice place,” she says, surveying the open-plan apartment and settling into the dining room chair.

“I can’t really take credit. It came furnished. The only thing I’ve really added of my own is the ice bath.”

“Ice bath?”

“I take ice baths after every game and really hard workouts. Helps with recovery. I had one installed for while I’m here.”

I press a few buttons on the wall and music, “In A Sentimental Mood,” seeps into the room. Some of the tension I’ve carried in my shoulders ever since Lotus told me about Bridget drains away. Each note from John Coltrane’s saxophone seeks out the knots in my neck, and rolls over them with precisely the right amount of pressure.

“I actually think I recognize this one,” Lotus says, propping her chin in her hand.

“Is that so?” I serve a portion of the grilled chicken and vegetables for her plate and a larger portion for mine. I set them both on the table and nod for her to start. “Dig in.”

“Yeah. It’s from the soundtrack for Love Jones,” she says and slides a forkful of mushrooms and asparagus into her mouth.

I almost spit out my water mid-sip. “One of the greatest songs of the last century, by John Coltrane, a genius, and your context for it is a movie?”

She laughs and shrugs, teasing me with her eyes and taking another bite.

“Wait,” I say. “Are you messing with me?”

She squints one eye, and squeezes her thumb and index finger together, leaving a small space. “Maybe just a little.”

That is the pointy tip of Lotus’s sharp humor.

She shows me a lot of it over the next hour. We talk so much during dinner my food gets cold, neglected because I’m absorbed in how she thinks, the way she voices her opinions. The entire night is a stream flowing easily from one topic into the next. Our conversation drifts effortlessly from movies to music to politics. We don’t align on every point, but hearing how she arrives at her opinions is as satisfying as sharing them. Coltrane yields to Chet Baker and his Funny Valentine. By the time we make our way to the couch, Miles Davis takes center stage, and we fall quiet, me sitting in the corner of the couch and her snuggled against me, knees tucked beneath her.

“It’s this one,” I tell her when “It Never Entered My Mind” begins.

“Your favorite song?” she whispers as if afraid she’ll interfere with the dialogue between the man and his instrument.

I nod, hearing it not in this room now, but in the book-lined walls of my father’s study for the first time; sitting with him, listening while he reviewed material for his court cases and I did my homework. “It was my dad’s favorite, too.”

She turns eyes filled with compassion up to me.

“You miss him.”

I swallow, surprised by the burn in my throat. It must be remembering him with this song playing, reminding me of his contemplative nature and appreciation for beautiful things. How he passed both on to me.

“Yeah. I do,” I answer after a few seconds. “You think you’re fine and then . . .”

She nods against my shoulder, biting her lip and knotting a handful of my shirt in her fist.

“I think about MiMi almost every day,” she says. “Not always sad. Good, too. Something she told me, taught me. A recipe. A sewing pattern. I used to fight memories of her because it hurt, but I realized it was like her knocking at my door, and me not letting her in.”

She shrugs, a sheen of tears over her dark eyes. “She always let me in. Not thinking of her would be like forgetting parts of me exist. The best parts.”

“I never thought of it like that.” I kiss the top of her head and draw her a little closer. “I want you to meet my mom. She’s not dealing with it well. I think she’ll like you.”