Block Shot: A HOOPS Novel

by Kennedy Ryan

  “Millions,” Banner interjects softly. “Tweeted to millions of people with a photo for reference.”

  “Tweeted to millions of people with a damn photo for reference,” I say, futile rage testing my calm. “Humans, we suck. I know we have these bright shining moments, but a lot of us just suck most of the time, and we say mean things to gain more followers. The worst of us exploit each other’s pain to get something for ourselves, and then there’s people like you.”

  “Jared, you don’t have to—”

  “People who get this human thing right. People who are actually kind. Actually have a conscience. Actually feel guilt when they hurt other people.”

  I’m on dangerous ground here because it’s her guilt that keeps her across the hall instead of sleeping in my bed tonight, but this is more important than me getting laid. Which is saying something since few things take precedence over me getting laid most of the time.

  “I’ve had beauty queens, porn stars, waitresses, strippers, lawyers,” I list.

  “Okay, Jared, I get the picture,” she mutters, lips pressed together suppressing a laugh.

  “Senators, ambassadors, stewardesses,” I say. “Excuse me, flight attendants. I even had a princess, though I’m not allowed to talk about that.”

  “Oh my God.” She rolls her eyes, but that beautiful mouth is no longer stiff, instead pliant and softened into a smile.

  “And some were pretty, some were smart, some were funny. Some probably had square asses. I can’t even remember now.” I frame her face and hold her eyes with a look that goes serious so she’ll know I mean it. “But none of them were you. There’s only ever been one Banner, and her . . . I’ve never been able to forget.”

  Her smile falls away and she swallows hard.

  “This blogger bitch person has no idea who you are.” I caress the silky skin covering one high cheekbone. “She has no idea that you’ve always been the girl I liked most, and I don’t even like people.”

  We stare at each other. I’m afraid to blink and shatter this unflinching moment. Everything I’ve laid out says so much about how I feel about her. I don’t feel for women. I fuck them. I date them. I don’t feel for them, not what I feel for Banner, and now she knows.

  “I, um . . . Thank you.” She clears her throat and pushes a swathe of hair back over her shoulder. “You probably want to get changed, right? To shower?”

  Disappointment drains some of my fervor.

  “Uh, yeah. Right.” I drop my hands from her face and shove them into the pants of my suit. “And you probably want to shower.”

  “Yeah.” She runs a palm over her arm. “Sunscreen is kind of sticky.”

  “Great.” I start toward the stairs, and she joins me. “So we’ll both shower and then maybe scrounge up something to eat?”

  “The kitchen is fully stocked.” She shoots me an almost shy look on the landing at the top of the stairs. “Fridge and pantry loaded.”

  “Great.” I rock on my heels for a few seconds of awkward silence. “Well, we can come up with something for dinner and maybe eat out tomorrow?”

  “Sounds great.”

  “Great,” I say again and turn toward my bedroom. She turns to hers. “Have a good shower.”

  Have a good shower?

  That’s your parting shot, Foster? I ask myself once I’m under the stinging spray of the shower in my bathroom. How things got so awkward there at the end, I have no idea, but I was fumbling and stumbling like some college boy. No, in college I had more game than that. This was middle school level awkward.

  Keep the cards close to your chest.

  That’s Negotiation 101, but what did I do? Laid them all out on the table—and too soon. Banner’s relationship just ended in an epically bad way because I couldn’t keep my dick in my pants, per usual. She’ll be dealing with the fall out, personally and professionally, for weeks, months. She needs time, but what do I keep doing? I keep pushing. I’ve always prided myself on knowing when to press and when to hang back, to let things come to me, but I don’t have that with Banner. When she doesn’t come to me, I chase her. When she needs space, I crowd her. I’ve always known how to get what I needed from women, and I’m realizing now it was because I needed so little. Mutual physical satisfaction. This is different, much more complex than simply getting in Banner’s pants.

  I rest my head against the wall and fist my painfully erect cock.

  Though getting in Banner’s pants . . . I wouldn’t turn it down right about now. I need more than that, though. And it’s disconcerting because I’ve never needed more before.

  I walk out of the shower, dry off. I’m pulling on briefs when the air changes in the room. The leftover steam shifts with the opening of my bathroom door. I glance up and couldn’t be more shocked to see Banner standing there, wearing a white fluffy robe like the one hanging on the back of my door. Damp hair falls past her shoulders. I don’t speak. I don’t move toward her. I don’t do anything but stare because I’ve screwed things up enough doing things. I wanted Banner to come to me.

  The next move is hers to make.

  28

  Banner

  “I don't need to be so full of myself

  that I feel I am without flaw.

  I can feel beautiful and imperfect at the same time.

  I have a healthy relationship with my aesthetic insecurities."

  - -Lupita Nyong’o, Oscar-Winning Actress

  Why are you here?

  The perfectly reasonable question ricochets inside my head, a lonely echo bouncing around.

  I’m just a girl standing in front of a boy asking him to . . . what do I want from Jared? We’re well past just liking each other, but not ready for the l-word. We’ve already bumped uglies—twice. I’m the one who insisted on my own room. So what exactly am I here asking him to do?

  See me.

  The answer whispers from behind the wall I’ve built around myself, a drawbridge I’m ready to lower. Why him? Why Jared, the guy I’ve made sure to hate through the years? I think I made sure to hate Jared because I liked him so much, and if he did what Prescott said he did, then he couldn’t possibly have felt the same for me. My incredulity from that night in the laundromat when he kissed me, when he said he’d been thinking about it for a long time is only matched by my shock earlier when I told him about the blogger. I wondered how someone like Jared, with his parade of beauty queens and Cindy’s, would go so drastically “off brand” and choose someone like me. And tonight I heard the answer.

  He sees me. Really sees me. Fifty pounds in either direction, and the look in his eyes—that intensity, the longing, the desire—never changed.

  If I asked myself why I’m standing here, Jared’s curiosity is practically foaming at the mouth.

  “That night was more traumatic for me than you probably realize,” I say, starting in the middle instead of the beginning, taking up a thought that had no precedence and hoping he’s following. “It was probably more traumatic than it should have been. I’m not the first girl caught naked in a room with a guy.”

  I laugh, even though nothing is funny. Jared watches me intently through lingering clouds of steam.

  “But I was already self-conscious,” I remind him.

  “You wanted the lights out.”

  “Right.” I lick my lips and fiddle with the belt of the fluffy white robe. “I had a boyfriend who was less than impressed with me when the lights were on and shared his opinion freely.”

  Jared steps toward me, muffling a curse, but I put my hand up to stop him. With only scraps of clothing between the two of us, and all this steam and naked flesh just under surface, if he gets too close, this conversation will catch fire, and I need to get this out.

  “Just . . . let me speak.”

  He pauses, leaning one hip against the marble counter, eyes trained on my face.

  “I’ve always had a contentious relationship with food.” I swallow the embarrassment that would choke this confession. “I’ve always
struggled with my weight, and it got worse in college. I gained a lot in those years, but I was also in a relationship with a guy who used me. He pretended to be attracted to me so I could help him academically. He cheated on me.”

  Iron streaks through my hollow chuckle.

  “Another reason I swore I would never cheat on anyone,” I say. “I know how bad it feels. There were things he said that, even to this day, make me second and third guess myself. I hate that he and other people who didn’t mean me well have had that much power in my life, but they have.”

  “Banner, you don’t have to tell me all of this,” Jared says, anger in his frown and the flat line of his mouth. “It makes me want to find them all and pound their faces in. They’re blind and dumb.”

  A tiny smile lifts the corners of my mouth, lifts my heart.

  “That’s why I want to tell you.” I break my own rule and walk over to him. I stop a few inches shy of sharing body heat, but our stares heat up, igniting the space left between us. “There’s no difference in the way you looked at me, ten years and over fifty pounds ago, and the way you looked at me by the pool.”

  “No,” he agrees, the timber of his voice deeper and richer the closer I come. “You were incredible then, and you’re magnificent now. I’ve never met another woman like you, and I liked you from the first day of class.”

  “I know.” I nod then shake my head. “It was impossible to believe at first, but I know. That’s why I bought Prescott’s prank so easily. It made more sense, when the truth didn’t. That you—”

  “Wanted you,” he interrupts softly.

  “Yes.” I hesitate and study the brick red polish on my toes for a second. “After the things my ex had said and done, things that had been said all my life, it was hard to believe someone like you wanted me.”

  “But I did.” He bridges the space separating us, reaching over to push a swathe of wet hair over my shoulder and cupping my neck. “I do. A lot.”

  He tugs me by my neck gently but firmly enough to pull me closer until my breasts, through the robe, brush his naked chest. I can’t resist touching him, tracing the hard muscles and brushing the stiff nipples with the tips of my fingers. His sharply indrawn breath doesn’t stop me now that I’ve started. I round my hands on his shoulders, caressing the taut skin with my palms.

  “You’re so beautiful,” I whisper, my hands addicted to the feel of him.

  “It’s only a shell,” Jared says, his words seductive, his breathing more erratic. “I’ll crack it open for you and pour everything out.”

  He slides the hand at my neck down to my shoulder, caressing the nakedness inside the robe.

  “See. This is what I was afraid of,” I say with a raspy chuckle. I step away from his hand, away from his perfectly sculpted chest and abs. “I had so many things I wanted to say.”

  “And then can we fuck?” Jared asks, impatient passion nipping at his words.

  His coarse words may as well be a couplet, a sonnet, an ode considering how they make me feel. The consistency of how he wants me, how it never fluctuates, makes me want him more. More than the ridged terrain of his torso. More than the water-darkened gold hair curling at his neck or the stormy-sea blue eyes and rugged masculine beauty of his face.

  “Almost,” I laugh and run my fingers nervously through my damp hair. “I shared all of that to say I’ve always been inhibited about my body. I’ve gotten better. Counseling and, I guess, living, maturing, becoming more confident. All of it has helped.”

  I grin up at him.

  “And, no, the lights don’t have to be off anymore.”

  A slow smile spreads across his lips, and his eyes still glow hot but are solemn.

  “I have disciplines,” I tell him. “Things I do to keep myself in a routine and consistent with my health goals. I count points. I work out. I have my apps.”

  I look at him as I tug at the belt of my robe.

  “At least once a day, I look at myself completely naked.”

  Jared’s hooded gaze scours my body, covered nearly head to toe in white terry cloth.

  “Seeing you naked every day doesn’t sound like much of a hardship,” he says, voice braided with lust. “Sounds like my fantasy, actually.”

  I pause, my fingers caressing the soft fabric, my eyes caressing his face.

  “The first time we made love,” I say, resuming the work of my fingers at my waist. “I made you turn the lights off.”

  Jared’s glance latches onto my waist, following the simple movements of my fingers.

  “This time I want you to see me.” I force the words past the anxious knot in my throat. “Not because I’m perfect—I’m still not—but because I trust you to want me just as I am.”

  Jared’s hand covers mine at the belt of the robe. The other hand reaches up to cup my cheek, and his eyes lock with mine.

  “I do, Ban,” he says roughly, tenderly. “I’ve seen you. I know you’ve lost weight, but I’m more impressed with how you’ve grown than by what you’ve lost. You’re more confident, more compassionate, more clever, more driven. You’re more of all the things that drew me to you in the first place.”

  I blink back tears at the rightness of that. It’s not that Zo didn’t see me clearly. I know he did, and that he loved me for who I was under my skin. But I tried to feel this for him, tried to want him the way I want Jared, and I never could. I don’t know when thinking of him while I’m with Jared and thinking of Jared when I’m with Zo won’t feel disloyal to them both. Right now it does, and I clear my mind of everything but the man standing in front of me.

  Ten years ago, I demanded he kill the lights before we went any further. I wrapped layers of clothing around myself then to camouflage my flaws. To hide myself. Now I’m standing under bright, unforgiving lights in the bathroom, only a thin robe between Jared and my imperfections.

  And I’m not concerned about the pounds I still need to lose.

  I’m not wondering if anything will jiggle when he makes love to me.

  I don’t care about the last of the dimples in my thighs or if my hips are too wide.

  I’m captivated by the acceptance in his eyes.

  Seduced by the care in every touch, even more because I know he doesn’t always care about people, can’t tolerate everyone. But he said he likes me more than any other girl. I never imagined I’d fall for someone like Jared, so opposite of me. We both play by certain rules and are both each other’s exception.

  Whatever it is that binds us and has endured even through the hostility and deception compels me to do something I’ve never done with anyone else.

  Eyes never leaving his, I completely loosen the belt of the robe. I shrug my left shoulder until one panel falls away, revealing my naked breast and glimpses of my waist and thigh. Jared inhales sharply though his nose and clenches a fist at his side. I shrug my right shoulder and the robe surrenders completely, falling to the ground in a white heap of clouds at my feet.

  The tiny network of stretch marks at my waist and thighs, etched in my skin from the weight I’ve gained and lost . . . he sees those.

  The discrepancy between my breasts—one slightly larger than the other—he sees that, I’m sure.

  The stomach that never seems quite flat enough and pokes out if I even look at bread . . . he must see that. My eyes zero in on it every morning.

  I’m sure he sees all my imperfections. I want him to see them and to want me anyway.

  And he does.

  “Can I touch you now?” His voice is scraped raw with hunger for me. The girl with the pencil in freshman orientation. The one he didn’t see or even recall. That girl stands here showing him everything, trusts him with everything.

  And feels completely seen.

  I nod jerkily, breasts rising and falling with my choppy breaths.

  His hands . . . God, his hands are so reverent when he strokes the curve of my jaw and then traces my face. He wanders down my neck, caressing the skin slowly like he’s savoring every inch. He�
��s watching the path his hands take, narrowing his eyes on my breasts cupped in his big hands. He bends and takes one nipple into the warmth of his mouth, stroking the other with his thumb.

  I clutch the nearby counter, gripping it tightly and trying to stay on my feet while his mouth widens over my breast, sucking aggressively, and his other hand swipes down my side and palms my butt.

  “This ass,” he breathes over the dampened tip of my breast and moves his hand between my legs, palming me and sliding three eager fingers inside me without delay. He runs his finger to my ass and strokes the sensitive aperture, surprising me, overtaking me with unexpected sensations as he freely explores my body.

  “Have you ever been fucked in the ass?” he asks, running his thumb over the tiny hole, eyes burning with curiosity and lust.

  “Yes,” I breathe, realizing that I shed my inhibitions along with my robe. “I love anal.”

  His thumb stills, lingering then probing the tiniest bit at the puckered hole but not delving inside. The look suspended between us spins a web of soon-to-be unindulged fantasies.

  “We’re gonna get along just fine.” He resumes the seeking, the stroking, the torture above the waist and below until I’m panting, desperate, quivering. Our breaths mingle. Our foreheads press together and he rubs my back, my spine a conduit for the electric charge transmitted from his fingertips to the delicate column of nerves and muscles.

  “It would be a shame if a bed is actually here this time,” he says. “And we still don’t use it.”

  He kisses me, our tongues parrying and thrusting, our moans meeting in the middle. I barely notice that he’s slowly walking me backward into his bedroom. By the time the backs of my knees hit the firm mattress, I’m nearly delirious, twisting his hair in my fingers, scraping my nails down his back. There’s a savagery in our kisses born of desire long denied. There’s nothing sweet or gentle in it. A starving stroke of tongues, the sharp snap of teeth. Bared. Biting. The taste of blood mingles in the kiss, making it ferrous, feral. It’s more than a kiss. It’s a clash of titans.