Hoops Holiday (Hoops 2.50)

Sarai looks up, and the wonder of the gift dims when she meets the seriousness of Lotus’ expression.

“You remember Mimi?” she asks, and I recognize the shadow that passes through Lotus’ eyes as sorrow. She still grieves our great-grandmother who raised her. Even though she was so young when we took shelter in the bayou with Mimi, Sarai remembers her. She made quite an impression on everyone who crossed her path.

Sarai nods, her gaze locked with Lotus’.

“She made my ring.” Lotus raises the ring finger of her left hand where she wears her gris gris. “And she made your mama’s, too.”

Sarai looks up and over her shoulder at me, her eyes dropping to the ring even now I’m stroking.

“It’s protection and you never take it off,” Lotus says, her tone fi

rm, serious. “Tu comprends, oui?”

Hearing the French tongue Mimi taught her when she was so young seems to startle Sarai. I’m much less fluent than Lotus. I don’t use French at all really, but Sarai first learned to talk in the bayou with Mimi, and half her first words were English and the other half, French. Looking at her, between my German father and her blond, blue-eyed father, our Creole heritage has been so diluted, you’d never know Sarai’s Creole ancestors hail from the belly of the Bayou.

“Oui,” she replies softly.

“Is that some of your voodoo shit, Lo?” Chase asks, the cocksure grin on his handsome face at odds with the hesitation in his voice.

I’d forgotten he was even there. The world had narrowed down to my daughter and my closest relation, and the significance of the gift she was bestowing. I’d forgotten about Kenan, too, whose attention remains fixed on Lotus.

Lotus stands, smoothing the creases in the leather dress from squatting on the floor.

“Shut up, Chase,” she says easily, the look she offers him indulgent. “Don’t talk about things you don’t understand.”

“Voodoo?” Kenan asks, a deep vee between his eyebrows. “Like potions and spells voodoo?”

Lotus looks way up at him, meeting his skepticism directly.

“What do you know about it?” she asks, one sleek brow cocked in challenge. “Spells and potions and hexes and Hollywood?”

“I know it’s not real,” Kenan scoffs.

She steps closer until she stands right in front of him, tipping her head back to meet his eyes. Even in heels she barely reaches his shoulder.

“Not real?” Lotus smiles like a cat toying with a ball of yarn. “How do you know I haven’t cast a spell on you?”

Something flares, sparks in the dark depths of Kenan’s eyes and he bends until their faces almost align.

“Because a woman like you,” he says softly, so softly that I think only Lotus and I can hear. “Doesn’t need spells to make a man want her.”

In my head, I scratch a point for Kenan on my air scoreboard.

Good one.

The seconds draw out like an accordion as they stare at one another, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the lights flicker there is so much power in the silent exchange. Lotus rubs her gris gris ring with the pad of her thumb and finally snaps the thread between them.

“Let’s go, Chase,” she says abruptly, deliberately shifting her eyes from Kenan to her friend, or whatever he is.

“We’re leaving, too,” August says. “We can walk down together.”

Kenan drags his glance from Lotus and does the man hug thing with my husband.

“I’ll see you back in SD,” August tells him.

“Yeah, see you Monday in the gym,” Kenan says absently, his eyes tracking Lotus and Chase, who are munching a handful of hors d’oeuvres at the door on their way out.

“Oh, and Kenan?” August says.