Eli rolls over and mumbles something about fish. Drew snores like someone dragging a chair across a floor. A casino-cheer rises and falls somewhere below like the ocean pretending to be money. I close my eyes and see him again at the end of the half—how shock bent his mouth, how quickly he built himself back into the captain, how the color didn’t leave his face even when he pretended it had.
I see the layup and the choice inside it. I see tomorrow’s door opening. I see my own name in my mouth like a vow I might be ready to make, not to the crowd or the agent or the stage, but to the fact that whatever this is, it’s not noise. It’s music. It’s heartbeat. It’s two people in a city that sells spectacle choosing small, true things and letting them be enough for a night.
I lie back on the mattress next to Drew and let sleep slide over me in thin sheets. When it comes, it brings a song with it, and I don’t try to write the words down. I know them already.
Tomorrow, I’ll sing them. Tomorrow, I’ll say them out loud for a room full of strangers. Tomorrow, I’ll learn which parts of me are brave and which parts need more time.
Tonight, I just hold the shape of his name behind my teeth and think:Breakfast. Just us.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
The desert lighthas a way of being cruel—too honest, too bright—but somehow it feels softer this morning. Maybe because I barely slept, or maybe because I know who’s waiting for me.
The Lucky Bean Diner is two miles off the Strip, tucked between a pawnshop and a tattoo parlor. Inside smells like fried food and caffeine. Its booths are vinyl patched with duct tape, and the waitresses look like they’ve been here since Elvis left town.
And Ollie, sitting in the far corner.
He’s got his hood up, baseball cap low, the very picture ofplease don’t notice I’m six-four and built like a superhero. But I notice. Of course I do. The slouch that’s too practiced, the tap of one knee under the table. He’s been running on adrenaline since last night’s game. I can see it in the way he keeps flexing his hands like they still remember the ball.
“Hey,” I say, sliding into the booth across from him.
He looks up, the faintest smile cracking through the fatigue. “You made it.”
“Didn’t want you to think I dreamed you up.”
“Would’ve been a weird dream,” he says. “The breakfast version of you probably orders something fancy like avocado toast.”
“I’m a pancakes-and-bad-decisions kind of guy.”
That earns a quiet laugh. He’s still smiling when the waitress drops off two menus and asks for drink orders. Two coffees, easy. Ollie keeps the hood up until she leaves, then pushes it back, exhaling like he can breathe for the first time since the final buzzer.
“Did you sleep at all?” I ask.
“Couple of hours. Team’s still wired. Coach tried to get us to lights-out at midnight, but half the guys were watching replays.”
“Your game’s all over the internet. You were a machine.”
He makes a face. “I hate that word.”
“Fine. A poet, then.”
He arches a brow. “A poet who dunks?”
“Exactly. You make it look like music.”
That gets him, and in return, he graces me a small shake of his head and a half-embarrassed grin that tugs at his mouth. “You say that because you’re a musician.”
“I say that because it’s true.”
The coffees arrive. We wrap our hands around the mugs. Outside, sunlight cuts through the blinds in narrow bars, striping his face gold. He looks wrecked, alive, beautiful.
“Coach said we’re flying out in a few hours,” he says. “Sweet Sixteen, man.”
“Big time.”
“Bigger pressure.” He lifts his cup, blows on it. “How about you? You’ve got that look.”
