Page 8 of The Baller

Parker passed his phone over and tapped the screen. “For vacation? We can charter a jet for tomorrow, fly overnight, and be on the beach Friday morning.”

“Tomorrow?” The look on Tanner’s face made it clear he thought Parker had lost his mind. “I need more than tonight to pack. It’s already seven.”

“Dude, you only need swim shorts.”

“We agreed vacation starts Monday.” He shook his head. “I can’t leave tomorrow, anyway. My sister’s coming to stay this weekend.”

I tore my eyes away from the dude by the pillar. “And when were you going to tell us?”

“She just told me today, and I’m telling you now…”

“She can take my bed,” Parker grinned, and Tanner scowled quickly, a thick line appearing on his brow as his glare deepened.

“Just because Scout’s got a boyfriend, doesn’t mean you hit on my sister,” he shot back, at which point Ace and I both held our hands out before a punch-up ensued, because we were veering dangerously close to that happening.

We had been since Parker had discovered the unwelcome news a month ago.

Scout Davison was a girl on the social media team, and why Parker had become a season regular on The Lions social channels. For reasons only known to himself, he’d been biding his time before asking her out… and then Ace had told him it was too late.

Scout was no longer single.

Since then, his mood had been increasingly volatile; flip-flopping between not caring in the slightest that the girl he’d been crushing on all year had hooked up with someone else, and only answering in monosyllabic sentences and appearing to be on the verge of tears.

We’d mostly avoided the subject, but it seemed joking about someone’s sister justified a cheap shot back.

“Can we get back to the task in hand please? Where are we going on vacation? And for the record, I vote we stick to Mexico or the Caribbean. Greece is too far.”

“Barbados?” offered up Ace, which Tanner objected to on the counts of it being too boring.

Parker snatched his phone back and began swiping again. “Hang on.”

I looked over to the guy again. Where the fuck had I…

My hand smashed down hard enough on the table that beer rose up the necks of the bottles, and foamed over the top. My three companions stopped arguing about the merits of Cancun versus Cabo, but over my dead body were we going to Cancun.

“Dude! What the fuck?”

I paused, nodding over to the brick column. “See that guy? Does he look weird to you?”

Tanner and Ace turned around; Parker leaned forward slightly, like the extra six inches would help him see better. After ten seconds of staring, everyone got bored and turned back, which only deepened my frown.

Tanner shrugged. “Not really. He doesn’t seem to be enjoying himself though. He’s just standing there. Why?”

“I saw him this afternoon.”

His brows rose slowly as he became marginally more interested. “Huh. Where?”

My mind snapped back to her, like she was tied on the end of a rubber band.

That girl.

I’d turned down the row of bookshelves to see her reaching way too high, and didn’t give a second thought before I jogged up to help. In hindsight I wish I’d waited; I wish I’d given myself enough time to commit more of her to memory.

From the back and twenty yards away, she’d been a goddamn bombshell.

Up close, I’d never seen anyone like her. I’d almost been rendered speechless.

Her eyes were the color of fall, that indiscernible golden-y bronze; lips that reminded me of the summer peaches my mom brought home from the market on Fridays, and pale toffee hair spun from a million different shades of blonde and brown all tied up in a thick ponytail that slowly swayed down her back.

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