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The kid was faster than Gabriel expected, light on his feet and agile. Fit, too he was all over the court despite just finishing practice. His ball control sucked; Gabriel could tell he was used to getting by with speed. He missed half the shots he took.
At first Gabriel tried calling out pointers but then he remembered again that Simon couldn’t hear him.
Yeah, he saw where the coach was coming from.
Finally, he caught the ball and held his hands in a T. He’d been playing in jeans and a hoodie, and his own hair felt damp.
“You need to slow it down, buddy.”
Simon was breathing hard. He nodded.
“He needs to remember the bus schedule,” said a voice from the bleachers. “We’ve already missed the late one.”
Gabriel turned. Simon didn’t. Layne sat there, a textbook open on the bench beside her, a notebook in her lap.
“How long have you been sitting there?” he said.
She glanced at the watch on her wrist. “Like twenty minutes.”
God, he was baking in this sweatshirt. He swiped a hand across his forehead. “Why didn’t you say something?”
She glanced away, tucking a loose piece of hair back into her braid. “Because Simon never gets to play.”
“So you missed the hey!”
Simon had smacked the ball out from under his arm and was tearing off across the court.
Layne laughed, but then she caught herself and sobered.
They stared at each other across twenty feet of gym floor.
Gabriel pushed the hair back from his face. “You need to go?”
She clicked her pen. “I’ve got nowhere to be.”
Gabriel wasn’t entirely sure what that meant. He couldn’t figure out her tone. It certainly wasn’t friendly.
The ball hit him in the arm. Simon was back, dribbling beside him.
His expression said, We playing or what?
“Go,” said Layne. “Play.”
It sounded like a challenge.
Gabriel grabbed the edge of his sweatshirt and dragged it over his head. Half his T-shirt came with it, but he yanked it down.
When he flung the hoodie onto the bench, Layne was staring at her textbook, the edge of her lip between her teeth.
Her cheeks were bright pink.
Interesting.
Then Simon was throwing him a pass, and the ball was in play.
Gabriel had never been so aware of an audience before. He played harder, feeling her watching him. But when he looked up, her head was always bent over her notebook, her pen moving along the paper.
Oof. The ball hit him in the stomach, hard. Gabriel caught it automatically and glared at Simon. “Dude, what the hell?”
