Chapter 17 #3
“I need somewhere that doesn’t ruin the night.”
She looks over.
“What would ruin it?”
“A bar.”
“Agreed.”
“Party.”
“Definitely.”
“My place.”
Her eyebrows rise.
I glance at her.
“That was a joke.”
“It wasn’t a very convincing one.”
“I’m behaving.”
“So far.”
I drive another block.
Then I remember somewhere Coach took us after a team dinner last year.
Not a restaurant.
Not really anything.
A narrow road climbs into the hills west of campus. Juniper Ridge Road. Mostly houses, trees, cyclists during daylight, and a small county overlook near the top.
At night, the valley spreads below it.
Lights forever.
I turn toward the hills.
“Trust me.”
Hannah snorts.
“Strong choice of words.”
“Give me fifteen minutes.”
“Are you taking me somewhere to murder me?”
“You think I dressed like this to commit murder?”
She looks at my sweater.
“You do look unusually respectable.”
“I changed three times.”
The confession slips out.
Silence.
I grip the steering wheel.
Hannah turns slowly.
“You changed three times?”
“No.”
“You just said you did.”
“I reconsidered the statement.”
A laugh starts.
“Three times?”
“Drop it.”
“Oh, absolutely not.”
“Hannah.”
“You stood in front of a closet trying to decide what to wear for me?”
“I own limited non-basketball clothing.”
Her grin is unbearable.
“This might be the best part of my evening.”
“You cried over a voicemail song.”
“I had something in my eye.”
“You were wearing glasses.”
“Drive, Haverhill.”
I smile and keep climbing.
The overlook is empty.
Perfect.
A wooden rail borders the edge, beyond it nothing but dark hills and thousands of lights stretching across the valley.
Hannah gets out before I reach her door.
I stare across the hood.
“You ruined my streak.”
“What streak?”
“I was opening doors.”
“You’ll recover.”
She walks toward the railing.
I follow.
The air is colder up here.
She pulls her coat tighter and stares out.
“Wow.”
Stanford sits somewhere below us.
Palo Alto.
Roads threaded with headlights.
Buildings glowing in the distance.
From here, none of it looks important.
Just lights.
Hannah rests her forearms against the wooden rail.
“This was a good choice.”
“Better than the bar?”
“Exponentially.”
“Better than the open mic?”
She considers it.
“No.”
“Harsh.”
“The sourdough poem set a high bar.”
I laugh.
We stay there for a while.
No need to fill it.
Eventually the wind gets stronger, so I lower the tailgate of my truck and we sit side by side.
Hannah’s boots swing several inches above the pavement.
Mine hit the ground.
She notices.
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You looked.”
“I was appreciating our height diversity.”
“You’re one sentence away from walking back to campus.”
I grin.
She leans her shoulder against mine.
Tiny movement.
Barely pressure.
It lands harder than if she climbed into my lap.
I look toward the valley.
“Can I tell you something?”
“That depends.”
“On?”
“Whether it involves your left-side drive.”
“No basketball.”
“That was the deal.”
“This is different.”
She waits.
The city lights flicker beneath us.
“My parents weren’t poor.”
Hannah turns toward me slightly.
“We didn’t go hungry. Bills got paid. We had a house. My dad worked maintenance for the city, and my mom did billing for a medical office.”
I rub my hands together against the cold.
“But there wasn’t extra. Private school wasn’t even something people around us discussed. Neither was personal training or travel teams that cost five grand before you bought shoes.”
Hannah stays quiet.
“I wasn’t great in school when I was little.”
That gets her.
“You?”
“Try not to sound so shocked.”
“You argue with professors recreationally.”
“Now.”
“What happened then?”
“Math and I were enemies.”
Her mouth curves.
“Actual enemies?”
“Blood feud.”
“Interesting.”
“I had trouble with stuff other kids seemed to get without thinking.”
I look down at my hands.
“Tying my shoes took forever.”
Hannah doesn’t laugh.
That makes it easier to keep talking.
“Everybody else in kindergarten had it. I didn’t. Teacher kept telling me to practice. My dad would sit on the floor with me at night and show me again.”
Loop.
Cross.
Pull.
I can still see his work boots beside my sneakers.
“I’d get pissed and throw the shoe.”
“How old were you?”
“Old enough to know everyone else could do it.”
She nods.
“That matters when you’re a kid.”
“Yeah.”
I look toward the lights again.
“Reading came slower. Math worse. Teachers thought I wasn’t applying myself.”
“But you were.”
“Harder than most.”
My jaw shifts.
“Thing is, on a court nobody cared.”
Hannah goes still.
“Street court three blocks from our house. Cracked asphalt. Bent fence. One rim was lower than the other.”
I smile at the memory.
“I could play.”
“How old?”
“Seven when I started hanging around. Ten when the older guys stopped automatically kicking me off.”
“That was your credibility.”
“Exactly.”
Not grades.
Not money.
Not clothes.
Not whether I could solve a worksheet before everyone else.
Put a ball in my hands and people wanted me there.
“I got bigger around thirteen. Faster. Started beating guys who used to destroy me.”
“You were a late bloomer?”
“More like puberty finally decided to contribute.”
She laughs.
“Then one summer this coach shows up.”
I can still picture him standing behind the fence.
Khakis.
Polo.
Sunglasses.
Watching.
“He coached at this private school across town. Expensive place. Kids showed up in cars that cost more than my parents made in a year.”
“What did he want?”
“Point guard.”
I shrug.
“They were trying to build a championship team. He saw me playing and asked where I went to school.”
“What did you say?”
“None of your business.”
Hannah laughs.
“I was thirteen.”
“You’re still difficult.”
“He came back the next day.”
“Persistent.”
“The third day he brought an assistant.”
“What did your parents think?”
“They thought somebody was trying to scam us.”
That gets another laugh.
“Eventually he talked to them. School waived my tuition. Books. Fees. Everything.”
“That’s huge.”
“It changed my life.”
I look at her.
“Coach drove me.”
Her face softens.
“Every morning?”
“Practice started too early for my parents to get me across town and still make work. No bus came anywhere near our neighborhood.”
“So he picked you up.”
“Five twenty every morning.”
“For how long?”
“Three years.”
Hannah looks away toward the lights.
“That’s a good man.”
“Yeah.”
My throat tightens unexpectedly.
“He didn’t have to do any of it.”
“But he did.”
“And I took the opportunity.”
Every early morning.
Every insult.
Every parent who thought their kid deserved my minutes.
Every class I stayed late for because I refused to let anyone say I was only there to play.
“I never looked back.”
Hannah bumps her shoulder lightly against mine.
“Until now.”
I glance over.
“What?”
“You look back.”
Her expression is serious.
“You remember exactly where you came from.”
Something moves in my chest.
I stare at her for a second.
“Yeah.”
Maybe that’s why I can tell her the rest.
“I want the NBA.”
“I know.”
“I want the contract.”
“I know that too.”
“I want the money.”
No shame in it.
“I want NIL money now. I want endorsements. I want enough that my parents never worry about another bill.”
Hannah listens.
“But I want something else.”
“What?”
“A school.”
Her eyebrows lift.
“A school?”
“Or academy. Something.”
I’ve never said this out loud to anyone.
Not Vale.
Not Stella.
Not Eli.
It sounds bigger once it’s outside my head.
“I want kids who get overlooked.”
Hannah’s attention sharpens.
“Not just athletes.”
I lean forward, elbows on my knees.
“The kid sitting in the back of class while some teacher decides he’s lazy because numbers don’t click fast enough.”
Her eyes stay on me.
“The kid who shows up to tryouts and watches the coach’s son get point guard even though he can’t dribble with his left.”
Hannah smiles faintly.
“Daddy ball.”
“Exactly.”
“The worst.”
“The kid whose parents can’t afford private training. Who doesn’t have someone making calls. Who plays on a cracked court because the travel program costs six grand.”
The old anger rises.
Not ugly.
Useful.
“That does something to you, Hannah.”
She waits.
“It creates a fire.”
My voice drops.
“You have no idea what it feels like when someone decides what your ceiling is before you even understand there is one.”
Her eyes change.
I stop.
Actually look at her.
Maybe she does know.
“I want to find those kids,” I say. “Academic scholarships. Athletic scholarships. Tutors. Coaches who aren’t picking teams based on somebody’s last name.”
Her lips part slightly.
“I want them to walk into rooms people told them weren’t built for them.”
The words keep coming now.
“I want some kid whose teacher told him he’d never amount to anything to graduate college.”
I look out across the valley.
“And yeah, maybe another one ends up playing pro ball.”
Silence sits between us.
Not uncomfortable.
Full.
Then Hannah says quietly, “You’re going to do it.”
I look at her.
No sarcasm.
No teasing.
She means it.
“You think?”
“I’ve watched you argue with an official over half an inch of court space.”
“That seems unrelated.”
“You don’t let things go.”
“Frequently a character flaw.”
“Could be useful.”
She looks back toward the lights.
“My mom couldn’t have any more children after me.”
The shift catches me.
I don’t interrupt.
“She had an ectopic pregnancy when I was little.”
Hannah folds her hands inside her coat sleeves.
“It ruptured. She lost one fallopian tube, and there were complications with the other. I don’t know all the details.”
Her voice remains even.
“They don’t talk about it much.”
“You wanted siblings?”
“I think she did.”
“And your dad?”
“He wanted basketball.”
The words carry no bitterness at first.
Then some finds its way in.
“He thought I might be his player.”
I already know pieces.
Too short.
No vertical.
No path.
Hearing her say it still gets under my skin.
“When I was young enough, he could imagine it.”
She swings one boot slowly.
“Then I stopped growing.”
“How tall are you?”
“Five-four.”
I look at her.
“Generous.”
She elbows me.
“Five-three and some change.”
“I knew it.”
“Quiet.”
I smile.
She doesn’t.