Hendrix: What room are you in?
I grin.
August: The one that the hotel assigned me.
I’m playing with her and I know she knows it. But I don’t care.
Hendrix: Good for you, me too. But I’d rather be with you. Not in my room alone.
August: Yeah, I would rather be in a room with you. Can you get away quietly?
Hendrix: Wouldn’t be asking you if I didn’t have a way to do it.
August: I’m in 1223. I hope to see you soon because it’s lonely up in here.
I don’t have to wait long before I hear a light knocking on my door. Without checking the peephole, I quickly open the door, and I’m rewarded with Hendrix.
“Hi there,” I grab her arm and yank her into the room. She squeals as I close the door. “No one can see you out there,” I remind her.
“Oh, I know,” she says, looking around my room.
“What?”
She grins at me, “You’re room looks just like our rooms. I just assumed that because you chose something on the twelfth floor of the hotel, you would have had a penthouse or something fancy like that.”
I shake my head. “No, Hendrix, I can sleep in the same type of room that you can. I don’t need a fancy room for one night. I’m not as picky as you make me out to be.”
“Picky is not the word that I would use.” Her eyes are dancing with amusement. “I would say entitled, swanky, bougee…” Her voice trails off and she laughs. “Those are the things that I think of when I think of you.”
“Well, I’m so sorry to disappoint you, if you came up here for a nicer room. I don’t have anything like that up here. Just the same old room that you are sleeping in.”
“Yeah, you do. But that’s okay because this room has you in it.”
“And it’s up so high because l like to make sure I’m separate from the rest of the team,” I say.
“Because of me?”
“Well, that’s a good reason now to make sure that I’m separate from the rest of them so no one would really hear us. But I like to make sure that no one is near my room so there’s no funny business,” I tell her, my tone stern, attempting to make a joke out of it. But failing.
“Has anyone ever tried to get into your room?” I hear the trepidation in her voice.
I shake my head. “No, but I remove any type of chances from it. The same way I make sure to put the coaches away from everyone else too. No access and no one can bother them about playing time or game performance when all they want to do is sleep. It’s just a good rule of thumb that my dad taught me,” I admit.
She nods. “Good rule. I like it.”
“Me too,” I tell her.
She’s been too far away since she got into this room. My hands itch to be touching her. I reach out and pull her close to me so that our chests are almost touching.
“I was so proud of you today. You were amazing,” My lips hover as I move closer to her, longing to crash right into hers and swallow her whole. But I don’t.
“I had a couple of easy saves. They were good but, honestly, I think their defense gave our offense a bigger run for their money than their offense did,” she says with a shrug.
“You got to play with them a bit, Nate was telling me.” I grin at her, remembering how he said she was trash-talking them, getting in their heads so that they were so frustrated, they couldn’t shoot right.
“I was. But their shooter was just a pain in the ass who thought she was all that. She needed to be taken down a peg or two. And it was weird; she was the only one who got close to me. The others stayed back. They were non-issues. I just had to show her what’s up.”
I laugh. “Well, you did well. I’m proud of you.” My lips hover over hers as I watch her grinning back at me.
