Chapter 7
JAKE
I lay on my bed later that night listening to the disturbance outside my window with one ear open in misguided interest and one hand covering my face.
It was like a bad whiplash of wanting to keel over with laughter one minute and bury myself in a coffin of second-hand embarrassment the next.
I watched Shelby and Briggs from my window for only a minute or two when the pair first arrived to play basketball, before finding it too painful to watch.
And I had recently survived a groin lap launch from Sophie, so that was saying something.
I didn’t have to look out the window to get a sense of Shelby’s frustration.
Her words were clipped in response to Briggs’s good-natured, though perhaps ill-timed, teasing.
It was interesting overhearing Shelby from this angle.
Usually on the court, she was controlled, smart, and made fast decisions.
The problem was that they were both on the court for different reasons.
Briggs was more interested in teasing and physical contact disguised as a basketball game.
Shelby, it would seem, was here to win a pretend championship game with a tied score and ten seconds left on the clock.
I bit back a laugh as I heard the pair stop playing to check on the effects of Shelby’s elbow to Briggs’s face.
“Shoot, is that a tooth?!” I heard Shelby gasp.
“No, I think it’s just a crown that came loose.”
“Dang it. I’m sorry! I wasn’t expecting you to be that close.”
“Yeah…sorry about that.”
For a long minute, I just lay there, silently groaning, already knowing what I had to do—and startled at the way I didn’t seem as disappointed to do it as I should have been.
My mom’s words from earlier were still picking at me.
Maybe in five years I’d feel different. Maybe if we hadn’t had a kid, it would be different.
I would be able to move past everything easier.
But I had involved a child. My child. And if there was anything burning a hole in my heart, it was the fact that Sophie was going to have to live through the same pain in her childhood that I did. The same hole in her chest.
Everybody always left eventually. Even Shelby. The idea of spending time with my old friend and Sophie getting the wrong idea or getting inadvertently attached scared me.
Still, though…maybe I’d been looking at this all wrong. With everybody trying to set me up so much, I had gotten in my own head. I was still busy licking my wounds and had gone on the defensive. But maybe what I needed was a good offensive plan. One that could benefit both Shelby and me.
I had already established she was safe. She’d always been safe.
It didn’t matter how she did her hair now or how long her damn legs were these days.
I didn’t have to look. We had a history of being just friends.
And she was leaving. That wouldn’t be a surprise later on this summer.
Her plans were established right from the start.
It could work.
From the sounds of Shelby’s intense score-calling, the game was almost wrapped up. The elbow in Briggs’s face was the only action he’d be getting tonight.
I made sure Briggs had left by the time I meandered outside.
Shelby was shooting free throws on the court.
She still looked and felt like my childhood friend…
but also different. Her hair was tucked back in a sleek ponytail.
Before, there had never been anything sleek about Shelby.
Even her limbs had smoothed out from gangly to… well…decidedly not gangly.
In a slight panic, I raised my eyes and focused on her less superficial qualities.
She had the effortless form of a woman who had spent her life playing the game.
There was a flawlessness to her jump shot.
I wished I could take some credit for that one, but she had been schooling me in basketball since the early days.
She always had something to prove on the court for her dad and brother, and I had no doubt that was the root of what I had just witnessed.
She turned to grab the rebound and saw me approach.
“You up next?” she asked, her eyebrows raised as she twirled the ball on her finger in an attempt to show off. Instead, it launched toward me.
Grinning, I grabbed the ball and spun it on my own finger with the grace of a professional NBA athlete.
Shelby could beat me playing the game with her hands tied behind her back, but between the two of us, I was much more of the showman.
“Four years of playing college ball and you still haven’t mastered the old finger twirl? ”
“Funny, I can’t think of one time where the knowledge of the finger twirl helped me win a game.”
“Did your team win any games?”
“In our hearts, we won every game.”
I took a three-point shot and smiled when it went in, much to her annoyance.
“Sounded like nobody won tonight,” I said, dipping my toe into the fray.
“What?” Her eyes shot over to my open window while I grabbed the rebound. “You were listening?”
“Hey, believe me, I would have been much better off if I hadn’t heard some of that. I’m going to have nightmares tonight.”
She yanked the ball from my hands. “He was cheating.”
“He was trying to make a move on you, not win the game.”
“No, he wasn’t.” She let out a defensive huff and shot the ball toward the basket. It lined the rim before bouncing out.
“He was flirting.” I boxed her out, her body leaning into mine as my six-foot-three frame grabbed the rebound easily.
“No, he—“ She stopped, her face clearly reliving her time on the court.
“So all the arm grabs, body hugs, shirt pulls…you think that’s just how he plays with everybody? Because I played a game with him the other day, and he never touched me like that.”
Her face fell into a frustrated version of embarrassment. I tossed up a shot from the foul line while she protested.
“He was throwing shade at me every time I saw him today, bragging about how bad he was going to beat the college star in our game tonight. He should have led with something flirtier before we got to the court.”
“He did.”
“No, he—“ She stopped again before her gaze turned annoyed. “I hate you right now. What do you mean, make a move on me? He wouldn’t have kissed me. Right? It wasn’t even a date.” She flung her arm toward the basket in disbelief.
“It was a date, and he probably thought about it right up until the time you gave him that fat lip.”
The scowl she sent my way only succeeded in making me smile.
“Do you want to date him?” I dribbled the ball in place while I watched her carefully, waiting for her answer.
Her shoulders lifted in an almost imperceptible shrug. I tried again.
“Would you have let him kiss you?”
She attempted a steal, but I blocked her advances.
“You’re assuming I’ve been kissed before and have thought about this stuff.”
“You’ve been kissed before,” I said.
That remark did the trick. She shot me a dark look.
I refrained from making any sort of face that might result in me getting a black eye. “Do you like him?”
“I don’t know him. I thought he was nice, but I can’t stand guys who think they’re better at sports than me just because I’m a girl.”
“To be fair, he did win.”
“He cheated!”
I raised my eyebrows, which almost made her smile before she caught herself.
She turned toward me, a softness taking over her voice now.
“Jake, guys don’t flirt with me. At least, I don’t think they do.
They always go for my friends. When they want to shoot hoops, they call me, but even then, it’s never a flirty game.
They’re playing for real. I’m serious when I say this doesn’t happen to me. I don’t date.”
“Why?”
She threw her hands up in the air. “Because nobody asks me. Or when they do, I freak out.”
A warm breeze lifted the loose auburn hair against her face, causing my eyes to rake over the freckles splattered across her skin.
“You can go now.” She took another shot, her chin up. “I’m going to stay here and pretend nothing happened.”
“Can you block it all out that fast?”
I ducked for cover as she chucked the ball at my head.
After she retrieved her ball, she shot a few more times, missing more than she made—if that meant anything. It did mean something. She was nervous. Embarrassed?
“Shoo. Go away.” She motioned for me to go with her fingers before shooting the ball once more.
I folded my arms, still thinking, when an idea to keep everybody at bay this summer finally fell into place.
So simple it almost felt like a mistake.
At least, the sinking in my gut made it feel that way.
This was Shelby. And, besides one time in an old shed ten years ago, she was somebody I had made it my business to never tangle with. And I was about to tangle with her.
I sighed. “Alright. I’m here to offer my services.”
She was about to send off a shot in her favorite spot on the corner of the foul line when she hesitated, turning to meet my eyes with wariness.
“I wasn’t going to do this, but after what I just witnessed…” I trailed off, trying to find the right words.
“What?”
“I’ll help you get more comfortable with flirting. And teach you how to put yourself out there.” I wanted to laugh at the obvious irony of my statement. I was the last guy planning to put myself out anywhere, but hopefully I’d be able to remember a few things from the old glory days.
“Are you serious, Clark?”
I shook my head at her audacity to make me laugh at our shared love of the Griswold family. I was making her a serious offer to help. Help. Not to get involved. Not to mess anything up. To help a friend in very obvious need. And in exchange, I’d have a summer free from relentless setups.
“Very serious.”
She didn’t flinch. Just stood there staring at me, waiting for the bomb to drop. “In exchange for what?”
“Why do you just assume I’m after something?” I asked, my hand going to my heart innocently.
“Because I know you.”