by Kennedy Ryan
“I wish I’d gotten to spend more time with her.” He raises his voice over the shower. “I wish I had more time with you for that matter.”
“I know. This trip was much too quick,” I yell back. “And next week I’m in Denver for that convention.”
I head back into the bathroom to grab my hair dryer. There’s a snow globe on the counter beside it. It’s heavy when I pick it up. The base is marble with Vancouver, British Columbia etched into the stone. A winter sunset fills the glass arch, a gold and scarlet sky vivid against the snowy ground and the drift of powdery flakes when I shake it.
I walk over to the shower, globe in hand, delighted grin on my face.
“And what is this?” I ask.
A pleased smile creases Zo’s handsome face. “Just a little something I picked up for you.”
“It’s beautiful.” I lean my head in to kiss him lightly on the lips, but his soapy hands slide down my arms and bring me under the spray.
“Zo!” I laugh and grab at the towel slipping from my breasts and the globe slipping from my hand.
“Thank me properly,” he says, his voice husky, his eyes hot on my wet, bare skin.
I tip up on my toes to kiss him, taking his tongue into my mouth and allowing the towel to fall. I press my body into his and slide my fingers into the thick, wet curls at his neck. He groans, cups my ass, and pushes into the V of my naked thighs.
“I can’t. I’m already late.” I giggle into the watery kiss, pick up the now sodden towel, and step out of the shower. “But consider yourself properly thanked.”
His laughter follows me to the linen closet where I find a fresh towel to dry off and wrap around myself again.
“You got a full day?” Zo asks, his voice still slightly raised over the shower.
“Very.” I run a hand through the hair hanging past my shoulders and pick up the dryer. “Isn’t every day?”
“When do you meet with Lowell?”
Even with my back turned, I know Zo well enough to hear concern in his voice.
Lowell, the Titans’ president of basketball operations, is a tough customer. He’ll play hard ball because Zo’s numbers are down, and it’s bad timing. Right at the end of the regular season, going into post, his performance started suffering, but Zo has almost a decade of outstanding performance in this league. He’s eligible for a supermax contract, the designated veteran player extension, which can be up to thirty-five percent of a team’s cap space but can only be given by the team that drafted the player. He’s earned it, and I plan to get it for him.
“Hey.” I put my dryer on the counter and turn to face the shower, propping my butt against the counter and meeting the concern I anticipated in his eyes. “You know I got you.”
“En las buenas,” he says, our private message of loyalty through the years.
Through thick.
“En las malas,” I reply.
Through thin.
I’m reassured by the warm feeling of contentment his smile brings. The trepidation I haven’t been able to shake, my fear that our relationship will somehow ruin our friendship is unfounded. We’ve been too close for too long.
En las buenas y en las malas.
What could possibly come between us?
11
Jared
“Do not live someone else's life and someone else's idea of what womanhood is. Womanhood is you."
-Viola Davis, Oscar-Winning Actress
I don’t believe in fate.
“The universe” is not some omnipotent force moving us around like chess pieces, manipulating us or protecting us or colliding us. Work hard, good things happen.
Or not.
It’s life. A cosmic crapshoot in which odds don’t mean shit. I’m more fatalism, less fate. With that said, I do believe circumstances happen in a certain order at a certain time. And for a certain reason. That does sound suspiciously like fate, but I dwell less on the why things happen and more on how I should respond when they do.
I sense storms coming, things shifting in the air. That helps me plan. It’s helped me in every area of my life, especially the market. I have my own money, nothing compared to Bent’s generational coffers. His mother traces her roots back to the Mayflower. Several times Bent has tipped me off, gotten me in on the ground floor of something big, but it’s my gut that tells me when to play. An intuition. I just know.
I’ve seen Banner Morales more in the last two weeks than I have in the last ten years, and I “just know” something’s shifting. When we literally ran into each other at the gym, the scent of those dryer sheets transported me back to late nights in Sudz. Before we worked for rival firms. Before Prescott’s stupid prank broke the fragile connection between us. Back to a time of discovery. Deciding what I felt for her. Figuring out how she felt about me when all I had to go on were the shifting winds.
Something’s shifting.
I stand outside the ballroom where Banner’s doing her talk on women in sports management. I finished my presentation for this convention in Denver a little early and found my feet bringing me here. I’m not a woman in sports management. I could lie to myself and say I’m coming to meet Iris. We’d arranged to connect after our respective sessions. She’s in here. Knowing her hero worship for Banner, she’s in the front row capturing every word as soon as it leaves Banner’s mouth.
I may be a ruthless son of a bitch, but I don’t lie. Especially not to myself.
I’m not here for Iris. I’m here for Banner.
I push the door open, hoping I can, even as the only male in the room—and six-three to boot—go unnoticed. I stand at the very back, pressed into a corner. At some point there was probably standing room only in here, but they’ve all sat down in seats and on the floor. There’s a growing number of women in sports management, and they all seem to be squeezed into Banner’s session.
“I’m not here to talk to you about sports,” Banner says from the small stage. “We all specialize in various sports or fields. Some are agents. Some are in sports broadcasting. Some marketing. We could be here all day talking about the ways we’re different in our focus.”
She takes a sip from a nearby water bottle and spreads a smile around the room.
“I’m here to talk about how we are the same. Our common challenges and possibilities,” Banner says. “For example, women only make eighty cents on the dollar to what men make. That’s white women. Black women, not so fast. You’re only at sixty-three cents on the dollar. And my Latina sisters, lo siento. We average only fifty-four percent of every dollar men make. “
Banner pauses, giving the discouraging numbers space to sink in. I haven’t seen her hair down much in the past, but it’s loose around her shoulders today, thick and dark and shiny. She wears a narrow black leather skirt and a red silk blouse. The front view shows a breakneck curve from waist to hip. She turns to the side, and I see the diabolical dip from back to ass. Her only accessories are simple gold earrings and her confidence, which drapes her from head to toe.
Damn, she looks good. Like the girl I knew, the one I saw even back then. The girl I saw inside has taken over the outside, too. Banner slowly scans the crowd from left to right. It feels like she’s meeting every eye even though that’s impossible. Dr. Albright taught us that trick in our Debate & Public Speaking class.
Convince me.
Our old professor’s mantra pops in my head, and, inevitably, I recall the night I asked Banner to convince me she was a good kisser. It was too much at first, that kiss. I was too much. Too hungry and deprived after a semester wanting something I knew would be devastatingly sweet.
And it was. Sweeter, better than I thought it would be. She was better. She was sweeter. I literally stole her breath with that kiss.
She stole mine, too.
“The truth is in the numbers,” Banner continues. “We make less than men do, but the future isn’t in the numbers. What’s true today won’t be in a hundred years. In ten years. It was held as fact that the Eart
h was flat until it was proven otherwise. It was true that women couldn’t vote a hundred years ago. But the Earth is round and now we vote. Now we speak and are heard. We re-made truth. We re-shaped fact.”
Banner is lit from the inside by her passion, and her convictions stand her up straight and proud.
“Our field is male-dominated,” she says. “We are a minority, some of us a few times over, but we have a voice. You have your talent. You have determination. I was doubted in every boardroom I walked into, but I never doubted myself because I knew what I was capable of. Do you know what you’re capable of? Because if you don’t, they’ll never know either. You are your greatest natural resource and don’t let anyone strip you of that or tell you it’s not enough. We are making the future, defying the odds just being in this room right now.”
Banner swings a look over the crowd.
“I don’t give a damn about odds,” she says. “Odds don’t tell me what I can’t do. Odds just tell me how hard I’ll have to work to get what I want. Don’t allow anyone to make you feel less.”
A wry smile quirks the mouth that so captivated me ten years ago.
“Let me get even more personal for a minute.” She swallows, glances at the floor and then back up to meet the crowd’s attentiveness head-on. “I’ve always struggled with my weight. For most of my life I compared myself to my sister, who was naturally slim. I compared myself to women in magazines, who looked nothing like me. I let men determine how I felt about my body based on how they saw me. I allowed those things to make me feel smaller than I was. Not on the outside, on the inside. On the inside I was a highly intelligent woman who spoke several languages, was the first in my family to go to college, and won full scholarships to the schools of my choice, but I hid that girl under bulky clothes.”
Banner disabuses me of the notion that I’ve gone undetected when she looks directly at me, finds me in the very back.
“I hid her in the dark,” she says more softly, holding my stare for a few seconds before moving past me, but even when she looks away, I feel seared. Like in one glance and with a few words she’s burned years away. She takes us back to a darkened laundromat. The bright swirl of whites flashing in the washing machine. The toss and slap of darks in the dryer. The thump-thump of my heart while I waited to kiss her again.
“I don’t hide anymore,” Banner continues. “Not in the dark. Not under bulky clothes. Not even behind my intelligence, which I sometimes used as a shield to keep people out. Whether I’m five pounds up or ten pounds down, I’m done hiding. I am done letting my waistline and other people define me.”
She shares her husky laugh with the crowd.
“Culture twists what it is to even be a feminist, tries to sort us into categories and force us to choose between being a good mother and being a successful businesswoman. I unabashedly want to rule every boardroom room I step into, and I unashamedly want at least four kids.”
She smiles and shrugs.
“What can I say? I’m Catholic.”
She pauses for her audience to laugh, wearing a small grin while she waits.
“What I’m saying is be unafraid to want it all and be disciplined enough to work hard to get it.” Her smile fades, replaced by a steely determination that radiates from her inside and glows out. “We can be fierce and feminine. Tenderhearted and tough as nails. Life is seldom binary. And I’ve talked a lot about patriarchy and living, working in a male-dominated culture, but men are not our enemies. Any force that would diminish us, pigeonhole us, would make us one thing instead of all that we are, that’s the enemy . . . even if it’s inside of you.
“There are some real jerks out there, especially in the locker rooms and boardrooms we frequent, but there are good men, too. I have good men in my life. My father, who’s been faithful to my mother for forty years. My boyfriend is a good man. Sometimes they feel more like exceptions than the rule, but they’re out there.”
Her expression softens and her smile grows wide.
“If there is one thing I can leave with you, it’s this: we work in a jungle and are surrounded by alpha males and apex predators. Everyone’s looking to be the last one standing, to be at the top of the food chain, and they sometimes don’t care who gets hurt in the process. Don’t lose your heart. Don’t lose your soul. Don’t lose your compass, and that doesn’t mean don’t win. Win. Fight. Conquer. You have just as much right to success as anyone who works for it. It may be a jungle, and they may be lions . . .”
She pauses, her eyes finding mine again, holding mine.
“But the daughter of a lion is still a lion, and this is your domain.”
“You got everything?” I ask Iris, rolling her suitcase out to the front of the hotel and peering up the street for the car taking her to the airport.
“Yeah,” she answers absently, checking her phone. “I’m sure Sarai is fine. It’s just lice, but August figuring out lice?”
“Yeah,” I agree with a wry grin. “Get home as fast as you can.”
We both laugh at that.
“I just want to make sure it’s handled thoroughly.” She pokes out her bottom lip. “I do hate to leave early, but I’ve gone to all the sessions I wanted to attend.”
“Good. I’ll debrief with the team next week to hear takeaways, things we learned. That kind of thing.”
“I, uh, saw you.” Iris glances up from her phone, assessing me and chewing the corner of her bottom lip. “In Banner’s session. In the back.”
“Oh yeah?”
And, Iris? And?
“Iris, I think this is your guy in the black Tahoe. Oh, nope.”
“Was it just a matter of checking out the enemy, or . . .” Her expression asks me to fill in a blank I have no intention of filling in.
“Bagley’s a rival firm.” I keep my voice even, neutral. “But Banner’s not my enemy. I was just curious. Don’t read too much into it.”
“What would I read into it?” Her eyes are wide and innocent, but I know better. Iris has survived a lot, been through things that sharpen your senses and intuition.
“Just checking on an old . . .” I search for the right word “. . . friend. Banner and I went to college together.”
“I had no idea.” A grin spreads on her face. “Did you two date or something?”
I look past her shoulder to the black SUV pulling up.
“Not exactly. Drop it, okay? Your car’s here.”
After a searching glance, she shrugs. “Consider it dropped.”
We greet the driver, and I haul her bag into the back.
“What are you doing tonight?” she asks, one foot on the running board, one foot on the ground.
“There’s a thing at the bar. I’ll show my face. Or I may skip it and go crash. I’m exhausted.”
She climbs in and leans out the window. “Thank you for the opportunity to come and experience this.”
“Guess I don’t have to ask which session was your favorite. Banner, right?”
“You looked like you were enjoying her . . .” Mischief sparks behind her eyes. “I mean the talk, too.”
“What happened to consider it dropped?” I lightly tap the hood, signaling it’s time to head out. “Go exterminate my niece’s hair.”
As soon as I enter the hotel lobby, Mitch and a few other agents accost me.
“Foster,” Mitch slurs, already halfway to falling down. “Join us at the bar.”
Why the hell not? Alone in my room, I’ll only rehearse what I heard today, the things Banner said that have been looping through my head. The last thing I need to be thinking about is Banner. She works for a rival firm. She’s dating a man widely considered the NBA’s patron saint. And the main reason I shouldn’t be thinking about Banner? She hates me.
All day I’ve walked around with this . . . emotion I can’t quite name agitating my insides, seething under my skin. Of all the things Banner said in her session today, the least impactful thing has impacted me the most. The one I can’t stop rehearsing.
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My boyfriend is a good man.
Zo Vidale digs wells in Africa, feeds hungry kids in India, and probably helps old ladies cross the street. Every Good Samaritan and Citizen Award there is, he has won. He is a good man, and I, along with the rest of the known world, admire him. I respect him.
So why the hell does it bother me to hear Banner call him a good man?
“So, Foster,” one of the agents—maybe Jimmy, I think is his name—says. “I heard you went to college with Banner Morales. That right?”
Is the world conspiring against my peace of mind?
“Yeah,” I one-word it, prop my elbows on the bar and motion to the bartender. “Jameson, please.”
“I heard her session was packed.”
“Yeah,” I answer automatically.
“You were in there?” Mitch perks up to demand. “I thought it was just for chicks.”
“I needed my sister-in-law,” I lie. “So I poked my head in to find her.”
“What I want to know,” Maybe Jimmy asks, leaning forward conspiratorially. “Did she look that good in college?”
Frumpy sweater. Baggy sweatpants. Hair scraped back. No makeup. Seven freckles.
“Yeah,” I reply, staring into my drink. “She did.”
“Did not,” Mitch counters with a sneer. “I interned with her at Bagley. She didn’t look anything like that, but I guess it didn’t matter to Vidale.”
“What’s that mean?” Maybe Jimmy asks, practically smacking his lips for some juicy gossip.
“I was supposed to meet with Vidale.” Mitch leans forward, glancing around to make sure he’s not being overheard . . . or more likely to make sure he is overheard. “Last minute, Cal grabs Morales for the meeting. She goes into the conference room. Next thing I know, wham, bam! She’s Zo’s agent. Hadn’t even graduated or taken the exam yet. How’s that happen?”
Mitch’s “theory” of how that happened is scrawled all over his face.
