But if there’s one thing I knew about Nola, from the eight exhilarating years of playing against her, is that you couldn’t trust a single word out of her mouth.
No matter how sweet it sounded coming out.
CHAPTER ONE
Nola
No matter how old I’ll be, I could never imagine not coming home and staying with my family for the holidays.
Even if “home” wasn’t in the state I was born in, raised in, nor went to college in.
Home was a state of mind primarily comprised of the people I absolutely loved and adored. People I fought with. People who weren’t genetically related to me. And there was always a recipe to being at home.
My step-dad, Clay, wouldalwaysoffer to pick me up from the airport. It didn’t matter that he got road rage at the most minor convenience and he would describe all airports in the world as the ninth circle in Hell. The man would always do pick-ups and drop-offs without a question.
In the back seat would sit my little half-sister, Olive. But she’d actually be sprawled across the back row, in deep sleep, and yet will somehow instinctively wake up when we’re five minutes from home.
My mom will be nowhere in sight—see Clay’s road rage—but would be the first to greet me with open arms even if her German Shepard, Flavor Flav, wanted to beat her to it.
And so it went for this trip.
For the last eight years home has been the DMV, where my mom, the superstar as Clay called her, Olivia Young, has been the head coach for women’s basketball at Virgil University. It’d be an understatement to say the Historically Black College was struggling before she came to save the program. My mom was a five time gold medal winning Olympic athlete. She’d won three league championships and her work at Virgil had gone from an abysmal program to turning out consistent wins and play-off runs. And that didn’t even count the hours of private coaching she did with current players in the league.
But I wasn’t entirely looking forward to this trip home. Normal people would call the Violets loss in the championshipour loss,but I knew the weight of that final game was on my shoulders.
I was the one who missed a buzzer beater shot that could’ve tied us and sent the final game into overtime.
I was the one who had my highest turnover count in my whole career.
It’d be easy to put the blame solely onher,but I knew that excuse wouldn’t fly in my house. I could already imagine my mom watching the game again before bed, notepad in hand, ready to tell me how to do better for next season.
Unfortunately, the Venn diagram of basketball and my family was just one big circle.
“Hey, kiddo!” Clay greeted me at the back of the car as if I needed help loading my suitcases into the truck. He stood a mere five inches taller and a hundred pounds heavier than me, but he was the type to rescue a spider from the clutches of my foot and back to the great outdoors.
“Hey, Clay.” We hugged before airport traffic officers started yelling at us to keep it moving. On my way to the front of the car I peeped in the backseat to see Olive asleep, her kinky coils bigger and longer than the last time I saw her. In true teen fashion, her daily uniform—when she wasn’t in her private school uniform—was baggy jeans, and either a tiny crop top, or an oversized sweatshirt she stole from me. Today might be both if that was my sweatshirt she was using as a pillow.
“She knocked out as soon as I pulled out the driveway.”
“Of course she did.”
Even if Clay wasn’t my biological dad, I would always say I have three parents. Two superstars and one normal dad who could actually walk around in public without someone recognizing him. If I wanted to do anything with a parent in public, in the most normal and sane way possible, Clay was my go-to.
If Olivia Young was a legend in the W, my dad Nolan Williams was a literal NBA Hall of Famer and is her perfect foil. Where my mom’s on court presence was all grace, silent strength and lethal perception, Nolan was a publicist’s worst nightmare. He was notorious for fights on the court and getting fined for critiquing refs, yet he’d founded the biggest youth center in his home city.
I might get my looks from Olivia, like her heart shaped face, strong cheekbones, and upturned eyes, but Nolan was the reason I’m a cocky motherfucker.
“How was your flight?” My step-dad asked after mumbling, “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
“The usual: pretty fast and painless.” I shrugged. “Kind of dreading mom’s critique though.”
“Olive tried to tell her to go easy on you but…”
“Olivia Young will do what she wants,” we said in unison.
I shrugged it off though, “It’s whatever. I know I can deliver next season…just waiting on the org to get back to Daya about a bigger check.”
The four year contract I signed with the Violets was officially up—making me a free agent, and leaving me available to go to any team I choose—because, yes, they were all inquiring. But I’d rather give up a kidney than leave the Chicago Violets.
