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“You’re not poor,” she tells me, her blond hair blowing in the breeze. “You’re middle class. You just live in an area that has too many one-percenters.”
“Perspective,” I mumble.
“What?”
I heave out a breath. “It’s all about perspective. You have good perspective.”
“Riiiight,” she drawls. “And no, we’re not breaking and entering. Stepdad number five owns this place.” She hops out of the car, taking her keys with her, and uses them to open the giant padlock on the gates.
“Will you get in trouble?” I ask when she’s back behind the wheel.
With a shrug, she says, “He gave me a key for a reason.” And then she puts the car in drive and makes her way through the park, around the batting cages, and parks right in the middle of the basketball courts.
Great.
More basketball.
Just what I need.
“Let’s go, baller.”
I force my body to move. Hand on the door, pulling at the handle. I use all my weight to push open the door. One leg first, then the other. Karen’s at her trunk and she pulls out a basketball, and if she wants to play one-on-one, I’m noping the fuck out.
I’m done for the day.
Dee-plee-ted.
She stops a foot in front of me, slaps me across the face. Hard.
“What the fuck?” I cry out, hand to my cheek.
“Wake the fuck up, Connor! I’m not here to baby you.” She takes the beers from my hand, dumps them in her open trunk. “Let’s go.”
“I don’t want to play,” I whine.
She eyes me, hand on her hip. “You have ten minutes to sober the fuck up and get back to reality. If this is how you’re going to act after every loss—”
“It wasn’t just a normal loss.”
She slaps me again.
“What the fuck, woman! Knock it off.”
“Ten minutes,” she says, setting a timer on her watch. “I’ll wait.”
I sit my ass on the ground, legs bent in front of me, arms outstretched behind me. And I look up at the stars, breathe fresh air into my lungs, again and again, and I let the coolness of it wash through me, my vision slowly returning to normal.
I ask, because it’s something I’ve often wondered, “Why did you and Ava stop being friends?”
Karen’s quiet a moment, and when I glance at her, she’s sitting cross-legged, staring down at her hands. “I don’t think we ever really stopped. Things just got too hard after everything with her mom. We couldn’t really hang out, and too many calls went unanswered, and after a while, I just stopped trying to reach out to her.” She looks up now, her eyes on me. “I don’t think it’s anyone’s fault. At least I hope she doesn’t feel like I’m to blame. I tried, Connor. We all did, but…”
“It got too hard,” I finish for her.
She nods. “How are you guys doing?”
I shrug. “I don’t really want to talk about it.”
“You brought it up.”
