The sound of my open palm slapping against her lace covered ass sounds like water pounding the shore of El Matador. The rest of her sentence gets caught in her throat while my fingers sigh in relief at the tingling sensation they’re left with after convincing me to do some shit I shouldn’t have.
Her wet chest heaves up and down as she presses a hand to the hot spot I hit. Her lips get slack, like she wants to say something and if she has the nerve, my fingers had already convinced me to do it again.
“FuckThe Dream,” I choke out. “Go wash that hand and check on Mom.”
CHAPTERFOURTEEN
Ace
Mom told me one thing she loved and hated most about Pops was his drive.
“Uh huh.” He nods, with his phone in the crook of his neck while motioning for me to come inside his office. “I will pour every dime from the Shooting Stars Gala into this basketball program. You don’t have to worry ‘bout that.”
I drop my bag and fall into the chair in front of his desk. It’s the only new thing in here. All the stuff the old head coach left behind sits in a corner in crumpled boxes waiting on Mr. Jackson and his custodial staff to toss it with the rest of the shit they left. He didn’t even bother taking his championship trophy he won back when Marshall was living. I would’ve left it too. I don’t think it’s much I would’ve wanted to take from a place that could fire somebody just because a famous person offered themselves up like a sacrificial lamb.
“My primary concern is the facility we have for these kids. They’re playing in an arena that was built in the eighties. Meanwhile, across the way, they got a million dollar state-of-the-art arena. We have to keep moving the goal post forward.”
When Pops is deep in his midlife crises, the drive Mom hated and loved turns intooverdrive.
He reaches out and snatches a pink stress ball off his desk.
It’s the only thing here that represents her. There’s no family pictures of us like it was back in his office in El Segundo. Back then, the players on his team used to joke he had shrines of me and Mom. He had a picture of me at every age with a basketball in my hand and a picture of Mom from every year they’d been together until she stopped taking pictures.
“I absolutely know how much a new arena costs, President Bolden. We’re looking upwards of ten million for a team that hasn’t won a title since I was in college.”
I sigh, shifting around in the hard chair.
There’s too much other shit I can do, like skip my biology class to put up shots with Marcus or check in on Phat’s quiet timeline while taking 1942 to the head. It’s all the shit my life revolves around these days.
“Listen, I know what I promised you when I made my proposal to come here, but what you failed to tell me was how much these boys have to sacrifice just to show up every day. We have no funds for scholarships, outdated equipment, and don’t even get me started on that court. It’s a joke. I proposed to work with the talent we had instead of bringing in boys from the outside and I’ll stand on that. That was the whole point of bringing the Shooting Stars Gala back home. Look, I have something to take care of.”
I scoff, scraping my fingers against the smooth leather chair.
“Let me get back to you on this.”
He hangs up the phone and then takes a sip of his coffee before he can get out whatever shit’s been eating at him since the gala. There’s a lot that probably was—Blake Harvey, all those drinks I had, the blunt I smoked with Cree, and that moment in the truck.
He gulps. “That’s Marshall’s babygirl.”
“Huh?”
“Lourdes.”
I almost sputter out the rest of that sentence Phat stopped in the truck because this new midlife crisis had him gone.
“Lourdes” didn’t even sound like it was supposed to come out of his mouth. It sounded just as foreign as this office felt.
“Yeah, I know. You told me.”
He nods while his eyes dart around my face like he’s looking for evidence that I touched Phat in a dishonorable way, as if she wasn’t the delicate little lady Mom told me she was that day I saw her struggling to flip a hamburger patty. He looks at me like Marcus did.
“Whatever it is you’re trying to pursue, you shouldn’t.”
It’s the exact opposite of what Blake Harvey thinks and out of everything Pops could’ve addressed, my new little innocent habit is what he’s worried about.
I swallow her taste like I did this morning when LaQuan stomped into the locker room, talking about all the “hoes going to Splashtown” and Bryson climbed on the bench to shout him and his “girl” would be there.
Fuck.
