Page 176 of The Best Shot

Standing there with a woman who loved him. Holding on. Then it was gone.

But I smiled anyway.

The other boy came a few minutes later. The one with the kind face.

“Good game?” he asked.

I looked at the couple walking away, her hand in his.

“Yes,” I said. “Very good.”

“Ready to head back?”

I nodded.

Same time. Same board. Same hope someone might sit across from me and play.

The world was big. I was small. Every day there was more of it I couldn’t keep.

But there were still good games.

There were still people who showed up.

That was enough.

51

“I CAN DO IT BETTER.”

HALE

The problem with inviting a very independent, very stubborn woman to move into your family home and telling her to make it hers is that she will take you literally.

The making-it-hers part was not the problem. I liked finding paint chips fanned across the kitchen table and hearing her talk about opening walls and widening windows. I liked that she wanted roots here.

I wanted her here.

The problem was that Yasmine did not only want to decide what changed. She wanted to change it herself.

Case in point—four o’clock on a random Thursday, she was standing on the top rung of a ladder she had been specifically told not to stand on, working crown molding off the ceiling of the study. The room had stopped being mine somewhere around March, and the shelves were taped over in plastic, textbooks and everything under them sealed in for the duration.

She hadn’t heard me come in. Dust streaked one cheek, her overalls were cuffed above bare ankles, and one strap had worked loose enough to show the yellow tank underneath.

Pretty. Stubborn as hell.

I got my phone out, snapped a picture, and slid it away.

“Get down.”

She glanced over her shoulder. “Hello to you, too.”

“Yasmine.”

“I’m almost done.”

The molding gave a warning crack.

I crossed the room and put a hand on the ladder.