LONG SHOT: (A HOOPS Novel)

by Ryan, Kennedy

  Because I don’t want to.

  FLOW - Chapter 9

  Bristol

  THE RIDE HOME from Brew is mostly silent. Yet, it’s a silence filled with all the reasons Grip and I shouldn’t indulge the attraction plaguing us. Grip’s scent alone—more than clean, less than cologne, and somehow uniquely his—makes me close my eyes and take it in with sneaky sniffs. I wonder if he’s taking me in, too. I still tingle from that alleyway alchemy, the chemistry that snapped and sizzled between us behind the club. It’s all I can think of.

  “We’re here.” His voice is deep and low in the confines of the car.

  I glance at Grady’s house, which is dark except for the porch light, and wonder if Rhyson is home, awake, interested in finishing the argument we started earlier. Because who doesn’t want to scratch and claw with their sister at two o’clock in the morning?

  “Thanks.” I turn a grateful smile on him, not meeting his eyes. I fumble with the handle until the door opens, the cool air raising goose bumps on my arms. Or maybe that’s his touch, the gentle hand at my elbow. I look back to him, waiting for whatever he has to say.

  “Bristol, I …” He bunches his brow and gives a quick shake of his head before turning to face forward. Both hands on the wheel of the ancient Jeep. “Never mind.”

  “Um, okay.” I get out, ready to slam the door when his words stop me again.

  “I had fun tonight.” He leans across the middle console so I can see his face a little. His interior light doesn’t work, so he’s still basically in the dark. The shadows smudge the striking details of his face, but I feel the intensity of his eyes.

  “You had fun wrangling a half drunk girl off the dance floor and arguing in a dirty alleyway?” I ask sarcastically. “Yeah, right.”

  I hear the little huff of a laugh from the driver’s seat.

  “I had fun hanging with you,” he responds softly, the smile tinting his voice.

  I let his words settle over me for a moment before I pat the roof of the car twice and step back.

  “Me, too,” I finally answer. “Have a good night and thanks for everything.”

  Manners.

  As Grip pulls away from the curb, I can’t help but wonder why I’m being painfully polite when what I’m starting to feel for him is anything but well mannered.

  A little wild. A lot unexpected. Completely unlikely, but definitely not polite.

  I use the key Rhyson gave me and hope there isn’t an alarm. I walk deeper into the house, still a little wired but unsure what to do. The door leading to the kitchen opens, and Rhyson steps into the living room.

  “Hey,” I say softly, watching for signs of lingering anger.

  “Hey.” His eyes fix on my face, and I’m guessing he’s gauging me, too. “You too tired to talk?”

  I sit on the couch and gesture for him to join me. He sits, elbows to his knees and eyes on the floor.

  “I’m sorry for how out of control things got at the studio,” he says, his voice quiet, subdued. “I … I don’t feel like we know each other anymore.”

  A humorless laugh escapes my lips.

  “And I’m not sure we ever did.” I smile a little sadly when our eyes connect around that truth in the lamplight.

  “You’re probably right.”

  He sighs, raking his long sensitive fingers through wild hair. He has an artist’s hands. Well kempt but competent and capable of creating.

  “Do you remember when they insured your hands?” I ask.

  “Yeah.” He doesn’t say anything more, but draws his brows draw into a frown.

  “I overheard Mother discussing the policy. We were eleven.” I bite my lip and smile. “I remember asking her why they insured your hands. She said you insure things that are too valuable to lose forever. She said your gift was irreplaceable and that made you incredibly valuable. They had to protect you.”

  “That sounds about right,” Rhyson says bitterly. “Protect their investment.”

  I don’t acknowledge his interpretation of it because he never saw it from my side.

  “I was so jealous of you that day.” I shake my head, feeling that helplessness and the frustration of having nothing to offer flood me again. “I had nothing to insure. I had nothing that valuable to our parents. They had shown me a million times, but that day she put it in words.”

  “Jealous?” Rhyson’s incredulity twists his handsome face. “You were jealous of me? You had everything, Bristol. You had friends. You got to go to school with kids our age. You had a normal life. That was all I wanted.”

  “You had them,” I counter. “The three of you would go off for weeks at a time, and I had nannies and therapists. You had our parents.”

  “I had them?” Rhyson demands in rhetorical disbelief. “Yeah, I had them riding my ass to rehearse eight hours a day, reminding me that I might be a kid, but adults paid good money to come see me play. I had nothing.”

  “You loved piano,” I insist, needing to know that things are as I remember them, because if they aren’t, what has been real?

  “I loved piano, yes, but that just came to me. I don’t even remember not knowing how to play. Piano I was born with. The career? The road and the concerts and the tours? That they made me do.”

  Condemnation colors his eyes.

  “The addiction—I let that happen,” he says.

  “You were too young,” I counter softly. “Too young to take the pills, and our parents should have stopped you, not enabled you. I see that now.”

  He scoots closer, looking at me earnestly.

  “Bris, I had to get away from them.” He shakes his head, and his eyes are bleak. “To survive. I needed to get better, and to do that, I had to put as much distance between them and myself as possible.”

  “But that meant me, too.” Tears prick my eyes.

  “Yeah, I’m sorry about that.” He drops his head into his hands. “But you stayed. You were there. I didn’t know whose side you were on.”

  “There wasn’t a side, Rhyson.” My words come vehemently. “You were all my family. They weren’t perfect, far from it, but they were the only parents I had. I wanted them to love me. You were the only brother I had. The only family I had, and it was ripped apart. You didn’t seem to want to repair it.”

  “Not with them, no,” he admits. “Not yet. Maybe not ever.”

  “And me?” My heart flutters in my chest as I wait.

  “When you would call, I thought it was them having you check up on me or trying to get in so they could get me back to make money for them. Even when you called and told me you wanted to come here for spring break, I thought there was an ulterior motive.”

  He laughs, eyeing me with no small amount of doubt.

  “And when you started talking today about moving here and managing my career—”

  “I probably should have handled that better.” It’s the truth. “I know it seems crazy to you, but you’re a star, Rhyson. Like once-in-a-lifetime genius star. I don’t want to capitalize on it. I just want to see it happen, and for some reason, it isn’t.”

  “I don’t know if I can do that shit again, Bris. It takes so much, and I only got through it with the drugs. I don’t want to create a situation where I need those again. If there was one thing I learned when I kicked the habit, it was that I have an addictive personality. Music is the only thing I need to be addicted to.”

  “I’m not trying to create a situation where you need the drugs,” I say. “I just want to be your sister again.”

  “And my manager?” Skepticism lifts one of his brows. “You want to be that, too?”

  “I still have two years left at Columbia. We could start with me just being your sister.” A wide smile stretches across my face at the prospect. “And then see what happens.”

  FLOW - Chapter 10

  Grip

  I HATE CARNIVALS.

  My cousin Jade used to drag me to these things and make me stay until the smell of funnel cake wasn’t even sweet anymore. We
’d ride the Ferris wheel and run through the fun house. We’d play every game we could afford and some we managed to swindle our way into. Ring toss. Big Six Wheel. Ring the Bell. Skeeball. Jade’s so competitive, I’d have to let her win the basket toss most of the time. Not so much she’d get suspicious, but enough that she didn’t pout the whole damn time.

  Something shifted between Jade and me along the way. I know it started with a secret shame we share, and over time, that deteriorated our closeness some. When I won the scholarship, leaving her in our local public school, things only worsened. We’re still close, but it isn’t what it was before. Maybe it’s just a part of growing up.

  All that to say, I hate carnivals.

  And Jimmi’s “brill” idea (her whack word, not mine) to show Bristol some fun before she leaves is this carnival. It could be worse. Rhyson could be stuck in the studio again, and I could be entertaining Bristol by myself. And that could get touchy … since I want to fuck her.

  I mean, yes, talk to her ’til the sun comes up, laugh about the stand-up comedians we both like, exchange playlists, debate hot-button politics, explore all the ways we are different and just alike … but also I want to fuck her.

  And never more so than last night in the alley. That sensuality I wasn’t sure Bristol understood about herself gyrated on the dance floor. The way her eyes dropped closed when she took her first sip of Grey Goose, licking the drops from her lips and savoring their taste. The way she rolled her hips, even sitting on her stool, her body seeking out the primal beat of the music. She says she can’t dance, but it wasn’t skill that had her out on the floor. It was her body pinned up, searching for release. And she thought she would find it with that Zeta Delta Dick frat boy who had been scoping her all night. I could barely focus from song to song as I watched her. Watched him watching her. I knew I couldn’t give her the release she wanted, but he certainly wasn’t going to.

  It feels like this has been building between us for months, but it’s only been days. I had decided to squelch it, but when I heard her master plan about moving to LA and managing Rhyson, something turned over inside my head. A possibility? A maybe? Doing what she’s doing, staking her college career, planning her future based on helping her brother’s dreams come true, it’s crazy.

  And so completely right.

  I’ve known since the beginning that Rhyson will have to play again. We use the word genius like it’s nothing. I mean, seriously. Apple genius? But he is legit genius. Like playing Beethoven at three years old genius. And for him to neglect his gift, in whatever form it takes—classical, modern, pop, rock—is a travesty. Everyone around him knows it. Jimmi, our friend Luke, Grady. I know it, but none of us have called him on it. We have this silent pact to let him come to it on his own. He has to after what he endured for years under his parents’ tyrannical management. But Bristol, who hasn’t even seen him in five years, does it. She’s so sure it’s right that she’s betting her Ivy League education on it. She’s planning her future around it. She’s challenging him in a way none of us were willing to do.

  And that’s my kind of girl. That abandoned passion. That bottomless commitment. You don’t meet people like her often, and when you do, you never forget them. I couldn’t get her out of my mind before, but now …

  I glance over at Bristol and Jimmi, who are playing water guns with Rhyson. It’s good to see the siblings laughing. Maybe they worked things out after I dropped Bristol off last night. They seem to be trying to enjoy the little time they have left. She leaves in two days. Why that feels so shitty this fast baffles me.

  “Come on, Grip!” Jimmi eyes me over her shoulder as she sprays blindly at the target in front of her. “Grab a gun.”

  “Nah.” I munch on the popcorn I grabbed a few booths back. “I’m good.”

  Carnivals do have good popcorn. But funnel cake? I ate so much of it with Jade, the smell nauseates me. When they finish the game, the girls want to do rides.

  “Ferris wheel.” Jimmi presses her hands together in a plea to Rhyson. “Please ride with me.”

  Rhyson carefully considers the girl who has been one of our closest friends since high school. She’s also had a crush on Rhyson about as long as she’s known him. He’s very careful with her heart, though, encouraging her as little as possible. Rhyson gets as much ass as I do, but he’s just on the low with his shit. He knows there should be a huge KEEP OUT sign all over him for Jimmi.

  “Okay, we can ride.” Rhyson holds up an index finger. “Once, Jim. I know how you get. All ‘again, again’.”

  “Cool.” Jimmi’s expression may be calm, but her eyes dance all over the place. “We can talk about that song I’m working on.”

  She knows him well. As soon as she says that, Rhyson is in. Talking music theory and asking about chord changes will occupy them for the whole ride.

  “We’re down to ride, too.” Luke, the other guy we’ve been tight with for years and a fellow arts alum, hooks his elbow around his girlfriend Mandi’s neck.

  “I ate that polish sausage.” Mandi looks a little green. “Think I’ll be okay on the Ferris wheel?”

  I wouldn’t trust it. You can’t ever un-see projectile vomit, and there’s nothing sexy about that.

  “So, you’ll ride with Grip then, Bristol?” Jimmi looks between the two of us with a gleam in her eye. Don’t let the blonde hair fool ya. Jimmi’s sharp as a new pair of scissors. She probably picked up on the vibe between Bristol and me last night. We don’t need her matchmaking. I’m trying to figure out how not to complicate this situation more. The last thing we need is be alone on the—

  “I’ll ride.” Bristol stuffs her hands in her pockets and looks at her feet. “I mean, if you want to, Grip. Since everyone else is. Up to you.”

  She looks up at me, wearing not much makeup at all. Just as beautiful. A threat to my peace of mind.

  “Weren’t you scared of heights?” Rhyson asks his sister, a reminiscent smile playing around his lips.

  Surprise flits across Bristol’s face.

  “Uh, yeah. For a little while. Sometimes.” She laughs, covering her mouth with one hand. “Mother sent me to therapy for it. Remember that?”

  “God, yes.” Rhyson’s face lights up. “Didn’t she send you to therapy for biting your nails, too?”

  “And for wetting the bed. I was three! Since she was never there, therapy was Mother’s parenting alternative,” Bristol says dryly.

  Wow. Their mom does sound like a piece of work, but Rhyson and Bristol are laughing about it as if it’s nothing that their mother sent a three-year-old to therapy for bed wetting. Just two prisoners, reminiscing about doing their time. Only Rhyson escaped, and Bristol stayed behind bars.

  The ride is crowded, and there aren’t any available cars near each other, so we’re all spread out, leaving Bristol and me strapped into this small space and relatively alone. At first, the only sound is the whir of the motor and distant squeals from the ground below. After a few moments of quiet between us, Bristol snickers. I glance at her to see what’s so funny, but she isn’t even looking at me. She’s looking down at the ground, which is growing smaller and smaller as we ascend.

  “What?” I ask. “You laughed. What’s up?”

  She turns her head, and her laughter slowly leaks away until the only thing left of it is a shadow in her eyes.

  “I was thinking about my mom sending me to therapy for biting my nails.” She shakes her head. “I spent so much time in therapy, I knew the therapists about as well as I knew my nannies.”

  “You had nannies?”

  “Sure.” She laughs again, but this time bitterness tinges the sound. “Who else was going to raise me with my parents trailing Rhyson on the road most of the year?”

  “That sucks.”

  I want to say more, but feel it might the wrong thing. Like how her mom should have stayed her ass at home with Bristol instead of forcing Rhyson to perform most of his childhood or leaving him addicted to prescription drugs. But that mig
ht be too much.

  We reach the top of the wheel, and both of us look over our respective sides at the ground. When I turn back into the car, Bristol’s face has gone pale, and her breath comes in little anxious puffs.

  “Hey, you okay?” I lean into her space, grasping her chin to turn her face to me.

  “Yeah. I just—” She closes her eyes and clamps her teeth down on her bottom lip. “I shouldn’t have looked down.”

  “Are you still scared of heights?”

  “Sometimes.” Her eyes are still closed, and she pulls in deep breaths through her nose and blows them out through her mouth. “This used to help.”

  “If you’re still scared of heights, why’d you want to ride this thing?”

  When she opens her eyes, I almost wish she hadn’t. There’s a vulnerability at odds with Bristol’s bold persona. There’s a question there that she’s afraid to voice, and I know just as surely as if she’d said it aloud that she got on this ride to spend time with me. She drops her lashes and fidgets, bending her body over the bar holding us in and folding her arms on top of it.

  “Just don’t look down.” I clear my throat, looking away from her, too. “We’ll be finished soon.”

  Only we don’t move at all for the next few seconds. And then more seconds.

  “What’s going on?” Low-level panic infiltrates her voice. “Why aren’t we moving?”

  “They just kind of pause sometimes,” I lie. “Probably just so we can get a good look at everything.”

  Her laugh catches me off guard.

  “They just kind of pause?” She rolls her eyes, looking more like the confident Bristol I’ve gotten to know the last few days. “You’re a better liar than that.”

  “I don’t lie.” I shrug. “Ask anybody. I’m honest as Abe. You know how you’re in a group and someone farts? And no one claims it?”

  “Don’t tell me.” She giggles, resting her cheek on her folded arms and looking at me. “You claim it.”