Plot twist.
My father decided to show up, and he’s behind the glass too, except he's not watching the puck. He's watching me, the way you watch and wait for a train wreck. That's the thing nobody warns you about building a bad reputation. People don't tune in to find out whether you changed. They tune in to be proven right.
It’s like he wants his pound of flesh, because I haven’t spoken a word to the man since he walked out on Ma and the rest of us. How did he think that shit would go? That we’d still throw a ball around and go for ice cream?
Then number fifty-two on the other side decides I'm his project for the night.
First, it's a slash behind the play the ref doesn't catch. Then a crosscheck into the boards a full second after the whistle. Then, gliding past our bench, easy, grinning, he hands me the one that's machined to work.
“Heard you're a charity case, Adams. Heard somebody paid your coach five bands to bring your ass here. Bet you don't make the playoffs before you snap. Idiots like you always snap.”
“Fuck you.”
Here's the problem. I’ve played against this kid before. He knows the player who used to bash people’s teeth in for fun. That player already has him by the collar. That player is fantasizing about how good it would feel to see the blood dripping from his face. I’ve been able to keep that player at bay during my time here at VCU, particularly because I have a girl now who has never seen that guy, and I don’t want her to.
This fucker is trying me tonight, but it's bigger than my career this time. That's the part that fifty-two doesn't know. Two weeks ago, Jasmine made a decision in my favor. She broke the one rule that keeps her safe. She put her own name on a lie because she decided I was worth it. If I drop the gloves tonight, in front of the scout, father, and her father, I don't just torch my future– I prove Coach right about exactly the kind of distraction I am.
So when the red comes up behind my eyes, this time it has her face in it. Reminding me of my additional “why”. I’m just not sure it’s enough tonight. This dude has always been my Achilles heel.
I'm over the boards at the next whistle before I have technically decided to be. That’s how it’s always worked with me. The hands move, and the deciding shows up late. Bass slides in between us like he can smell it coming off my jersey. Number Fifty-two backs off, grinning. He got his hooks in, and he knows it. There's a period and a half left to play, which is a long time to skate around a building holding your shit together.
I come off for the next change with my pulse still in my teeth, and that's when I find her.
My girl…Jasmine.
Mine.
She’s at the bench, where she's been all night. And while normally, she’s a good little VCU staff member with her clipboard, ear buds, and an impartial face…tonight, she's looking dead at me.
And while two hundred people watch the puck at the far end, she lifts one hand off the clipboard, just enough, and takes a paper clip between two fingers, and bends it. Out, and back. Slow. The private little signal that's only ever meant one thing between us.
Pull your shit together.
So I do.
The red, angry heat drains out of me. My hands quit a fight that hasn't happened yet. I drop onto the bench and breathe, and I do not go over the boards, and I do not put fifty-two through the glass, and I do not set my whole life on fire over one mouthy kid trying to get in my head and sabotage my fucking greatness.
I just breathe and watch her bend a piece of metal until I'm a person again.
“You good?” Neo asks.
“Yeah, I’m good, Cap.”
We win. I play the cleanest, meanest, smartest two periods of my life, every shift of it under control, and the man from Carolina types something on his phone, and the only thing I do to fifty-two all night is skate rings around him until he's the one who looks like the headcase. When the horn goes, my dad gives me a nod through the glass I've been chasing since I got here. Approval. It should feel like everything.
In the hall outside the room, Coach catches my shoulder and says, “Good job tonight, Adams. You killed it tonight.”
The recruiter from Carolina shakes my hand and tells me, “You looked good out there. Keep doing exactly that, and you’ll fit in just fine with us.”
Everything I moved to Nevada for is lined up and smiling at me at once. So I go looking for the one person I actually want approval from. When I find her in the tunnel after, her face is all wrong.
“What is it, baby? We won!”
“My father saw.”
The hallway drops about ten degrees.
“I just talked to him. What do you mean he saw? Saw what?”
