Grumpy Baller calling.
I don’t feel like talking to him, but can’t bring myself to hit decline.
“You didn’t answer my text,” Clay says without waiting for a hello.
“And the state of my wrist was a national emergency?”
“Is it?”
I roll my wrist around.“No.”
I did ice it, and the treatment did help.
“Tell me what’s so important you didn’t text me back,” he says.
I groan.“Are you this bossy with your teammates?”
“I’m charmingly persistent.”
“Debatable.”But I take a breath and fill him in, feeling as though I’m confessing and burdening him way too much.
He listens, his silence punctuated with steady breathing.
“It was humiliating,” I finish.“I felt like I was ten all over again and she won the spelling bee and I didn’t make it past the second word—catastrophe.I carried around her trophy though.”
“That’s decent.”
I squeeze my eyes shut.“And pretended it was mine.”
There’s a sound like a half laugh, half grunt.“Can’t see how it’s your sister’s business what you do.Who you date or where you work, either.”
The tight ball in my chest eases a bit.“We used to tell each other everything.I’m not sure when that changed.”
“You have to follow your own path.Everyone I went to school with wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer.Deciding to pursue basketball wasn’t the easy choice—it was the hard one.”
“It sounds lonely.”
“Sometimes being different is.”
My attention falls to my drawing.As ego-bruised as I am from last night, I’m not ready to hang up.
“Do you know anything about children’s charitable foundations?”
“Ask Chloe.The team’s foundation is part of her portfolio.”
I bite my lip.“I don’t want to involve her.”
I tell him I’m trying to learn to help out a friend but don’t admit it’s for Harlan.From what my future brother-in-law said, he and Clay don’t have the best relationship.Solving that is definitely beyond the scope of my powers, and at this point, I suspect that even asking about it would get me shut down fast.
“I’ve done some work with the foundation.I could answer your questions,” Clay says when I’m finished.
I’m surprised, both because I didn’t see anything in his profile about that and because he’s offering.“You kicked me out of your car last night, and now you’re offering to help.”
“I needed my beauty sleep.”
“Shouldn’t that be my line?”
There’s a pause.
