Chapter 29 #2
Hearing her say it made something in me loosen.
Like I had been waiting for permission to still be angry.
“I kicked him out,” I whispered.
Mars nodded.
“He deserved that too.”
A weak laugh slipped out of me.
She smiled sadly.
“But you’ve been carrying all of this by yourself?”
I wiped under my eye.
“I guess.”
“That must have been eating you up.”
“It has.”
“I’m sorry, Ni.”
I shook my head. “Why are you sorry?”
“Because I’m your best friend, and I didn’t know you were hurting like this.”
“That’s my fault. I didn’t tell you.”
“Still.” Her thumb brushed over my hand. “You shouldn’t have had to sit with it alone.”
For a moment, neither of us said anything.
The server came by, asked if everything was okay, and Mars gave her that bright public smile she used when she was trying to make everything look perfect.
The second the server walked away, Mars looked back at me.
“So where are you now?”
I let out a long breath.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s honest.”
“I know Cal loves me,” I said quietly. “That’s the part that makes it harder.”
Mars nodded.
“If I thought he was playing with me, I could walk away. If I thought it was just lust or timing or some emotional reaction, I could make sense of it. But I know he loves me.”
My voice dropped.
“I felt it.”
Mars’s eyes softened.
“And I love him too.”
The confession came out so quietly I almost didn’t recognize my own voice.
But there it was.
Sitting right between us.
The truth I had been avoiding for years.
“I love him,” I said again, my throat tightening. “But I’m so angry with him. At least I was. I still am, I think. I don’t know. It keeps changing. One minute I want to scream at him. The next minute I miss him so bad it makes me feel stupid.”
“That doesn’t make you stupid.”
“It feels stupid.”
“It makes you human.”
I shook my head. “How can I trust him, Mars?”
She didn’t answer right away.
And I appreciated that.
Because a quick answer would have felt fake.
She looked down, thinking, then back up at me.
“Nia, you and I have known Cal his whole life.”
I swallowed.
“He is a good person,” she said. “He is. But being a good person doesn’t mean he can’t mess up. And loving you doesn’t mean he automatically knows how to love you right.”
That one hit me.
Mars leaned closer.
“My brother has always been emotional when it comes to you.”
I huffed. “That’s one word for it.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know.”
“He can talk sports with millions of people listening. He can sit across from athletes, coaches, analysts, whoever, and never flinch. But with you? He has never known how to act normal.”
Despite myself, I smiled a little.
Mars saw it and smiled too.
“He has loved you for so long, Ni.”
I looked down.
“And I know you,” she continued. “From the ground up. I know the way you think. I know the way you protect yourself. I know when you’re trying to convince yourself of something because the truth scares you.”
I picked at the corner of my napkin.
“And the truth is,” Mars said gently, “you may have cared about David. You may have even imagined a life where he made sense. But he wasn’t it for you.”
My chest tightened.
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Mars.”
“Nia, you are in love with Cal. And you have been for a very long time.”
I looked away before she could see my face crumble.
But it was too late.
Because the second she said it, my mind betrayed me.
I saw us.
Not now.
Not grown.
Not complicated.
Not messy.
I saw us as kids.
I was nine, sitting on the edge of the cracked-up court near my grandmother’s house, wiping my face with the back of my hand because some boys had called me weird for wanting to play basketball with them.
They said girls were supposed to cheer, not hoop.
They said I ran funny.
They said my shot was ugly.
I remembered trying not to cry because I hated crying in front of people.
Then Cal walked over, eleven years old, skinny legs, big mouth, too much confidence for somebody who still had grass stains on his shorts.
“What you crying for?” he had asked.
“I’m not crying.”
“You lying.”
“I hate them.”
“Good,” he said, dropping the ball at my feet. “Then beat them.”
I had looked up at him like he was crazy.
“They won’t pick me.”
“So?”
“So how am I supposed to play?”
Cal had looked over his shoulder at the boys, then yelled, “She’s on my team.”
One of them laughed.
Cal didn’t.
“She’s on my team,” he said again, louder. “And when we win, I want everybody’s dollar.”
I remembered staring at him like he had lost his mind.
“You betting on me?”
He looked down at me and shrugged.
“Yeah. So don’t embarrass me.”
I had been so mad I stopped crying.
And then we won.
Barely.
But we won.
Cal split the money with me afterward, three wrinkled dollars pressed into my palm like it was prize money from a championship game.
“You still weird,” he had said.
I had shoved him.
He laughed and ran.
Then I saw us at thirteen and fifteen, the sun going down behind the backboard, the streetlights buzzing on one by one.
I was frustrated because my jumper kept falling short.
Cal kept rebounding for me even though everybody else had gone home.
“Your elbow,” he kept saying.
“I know.”
“Then fix it.”
“I’m trying.”
“No, you’re rushing.”
“I am not.”
“You are.”
“You’re annoying.”
“And you’re missing.”
I had thrown the ball at him.
He caught it and laughed.
Then he walked over, stood behind me, and gently adjusted my arms.
“Relax,” he said, his voice softer than usual.
“I am relaxed.”
“No, you’re not. You always get tight when you think people are watching.”
That made me go still.
Because he was right.
He always noticed things like that.
Even then.
Especially then.
He stepped back and nodded toward the rim.
“Shoot it like you already know it’s going in.”
So I did.
And when the ball dropped clean through the net, Cal threw both arms up like I had just won a championship.
“See?” he yelled. “That’s what I’m talking about.”
I rolled my eyes, but I remembered how warm I felt.
How seen.
Then I saw us at sixteen.
My first kiss.
His too, though he lied and said it wasn’t.
It happened on my porch after a summer block party, when the music was still playing down the street and everybody’s parents were pretending not to watch the older kids too closely.
Cal had walked me home even though my house was five doors down.
“You know I can see my porch from here, right?” I had said.
“Still walking you.”
“You’re so dramatic.”
“You like it.”
I had pretended I didn’t.
We stood there under the porch light, quiet in that awkward way that only happens when two people know something is changing but neither one wants to say it first.
He really looked at me then. Not the quick, casual glance I was used to from him, but the kind of look that lingered long enough to make me forget every smart, sarcastic thing I had ever said in my life. For once, my mouth had absolutely nothing to offer.
“You’ve got glitter on your cheek,” he said softly.
I immediately lifted my hand and brushed at my face.
“The other side,” he said, a small smile tugging at his lips.
I switched sides, somehow managing to miss it again.
Cal laughed quietly and stepped closer. “No. Right here.”
His thumb gently brushed across my cheek, wiping away the glitter. The touch should have lasted only a second, but when his hand lowered, neither of us moved. We just stood there, suddenly much closer than we had been before.
My heart was pounding so hard inside my chest that I was convinced he could hear it. I searched his face, waiting for him to crack a joke or say something that would break whatever strange, unfamiliar tension had settled between us.
He didn’t.
Instead, Cal swallowed hard and looked directly into my eyes.
“Can I kiss you?” he asked.
And for once in his life, Cal Sinclair sounded nervous.
That alone nearly took my breath away.
I nodded.
He leaned toward me slowly, giving me plenty of time to change my mind before his lips finally touched mine. The kiss was soft and brief, almost innocent, but it changed something between us that neither of us knew how to name yet.
It lasted only a few seconds.
I thought about it for months.
Years, if I was being honest.
But life kept moving forward whether we were ready for it or not.
There were school dances and college visits.
First loves and painful breakups. Family emergencies that brought everyone rushing home and career victories that carried us farther away.
There were terrible days we thought would never end and beautiful ones we wished we could hold onto forever.
And somehow, through every season of my life, there had always been some version of Cal Sinclair woven into it.
Cal at eleven, believing in me before I had learned how to believe in myself.
Cal at fifteen, standing beneath a streetlight and patiently fixing my shot until I finally got it right.
Cal at sixteen, looking at me like I was no longer just the girl he had grown up with and kissing me as though I were something precious.
Every version of me had known some version of him.
And maybe that was why, no matter how many years passed or how much our lives changed, a piece of him had always felt a little bit like home.
Cal at twenty-one, calling me after one of my worst breakups and staying on the phone until I stopped crying.
Cal at twenty-five, showing up with food after I got passed over for a position I deserved.
Cal at thirty, looking at me from across crowded rooms like he was always searching for me first.
Cal now.
Standing in a hotel room, jealous and reckless and wrong.
Cal now.
Telling me he loved me like it was the surest thing he had ever said.
My chest ached.
Mars let me sit with it.
She didn’t rush me.
She didn’t fill the silence.
That was one of the reasons I loved her.
Finally, I blinked and looked back at her.
“What if love isn’t enough?”
Mars’s face softened.
“Then make him show you that he knows that.”
I frowned.
“What do you mean?”