Page 18 of Half-Court Heat
I groaned dramatically, but I didn’t mind. Not really.
She handed me a dishtowel. “Dry.”
I took the towel without protest and started drying the mug she’d just washed, and then the next one she passed me. Therewas something comforting about being told what to do again. Something safe about all this sameness.
I pushedthe squeaky cart down the wide aisles of the local supermarket, eyes surveying the tidy arrangements of cardboard packaging and aluminum cans. My mom had sent me on the errand, clucking about me showing up unannounced when they had no food in the house. She’d been exaggerating in the way moms tended to do. There was plenty of food—she just liked to make a big deal about me being home.
It had been that way in college, too. I’d gone to school one town over in Madison, but because of basketball obligations, trips home had been infrequent. There was always a tournament over various school breaks when other students might return to their childhood bedrooms, and during summers it had been more of the same. Eventually, Jazz and I had rented an apartment off-campus and stayed there year-round. It became easier to stay put than to navigate the guilt trips about coming back.
I was only twenty-two, but most days I tended to feel so much older than that. Being a student-athlete at a time when attention on the sport had never been greater had thrust me and other players into the spotlight. You had to grow up and mature in short order.
“Can I get these?” my sister’s voice broke into my thoughts. She held up a bag of chips—some cursed flavor like dill pickle ranch or jalapeño marshmallow or some other combo that didn’t belong together.
I gave the bag a look. “Those sound disgusting.”
“They’re limited edition,” she defended.
Paige had been quiet and surly ever since my mom had told her to come with me. I wasn’t sure if she was actually annoyed or just being thirteen. It was hard to tell the difference sometimes.
“Yeah,” I relented. “Toss them in.”
She dropped the chips into the cart and returned her attention to her cellphone. I had no idea how she managed to navigate the grocery store aisles without looking up.
The longer we wandered the aisles, the more I felt my shoulders drop. I hadn’t realized how hunched I’d been until they started to relax, loosening around my ears. I made eye contact with the store’s other patrons and smiled as we passed each other.
A few people gave me double takes as we passed. One woman stopped in front of the cereal display and did a full turn like she was going to say something, but in the end just gave me a small wave. I returned it, awkward but genuine. A man in a Badgers hoodie offered a casual, “Hey, good luck next season,” as he walked by with a gallon of milk.
No one asked for a selfie, but I could feel the recognition. In cities like Boston or Chicago, I could better blend in. In my hometown of Middleton, Wisconsin, it was different. Here, I was the local girl who’d made it further than anyone had expected.
Paige didn’t notice any of it. Or if she did, she didn’t care. She was still absorbed in whatever social media spiral she’d disappeared into, barely watching where she walked.
“Watch it,” I muttered as she nearly walked into a tower of canned cranberries.
“I am,” she said, still not looking up.
Eventually, we made our way to the checkout lanes. Despite it being the weekend, only one register was open. A short line had formed, but I didn’t mind. I didn’t have anywhere else to be.
While we waited, I scanned the impulse-buy rack—kids’ activity books, cookbooks, celebrity gossip magazines. The covers were full of smiling faces and scandalous headlines. I picked one up halfheartedly, flipping through pages of airbrushed bodies and paparazzi candids. Nothing I’d done had ever gotten me on the front of a magazine. A few local features in theMiddleton Timesor theState Journal, mostly for breaking school records or committing to a D1 program. I couldn’t imagine what it’d be like to see my face blown up on glossy paper, next to headlines about secret weddings or surprise breakups.
I wondered, idly, who’d be selected for the newSIswimsuit edition cover.
I glanced over at Paige, still on her phone. “Does anyone treat you any differently because of me?”
Selfishly, I hadn’t ever thought about how my low-level celebrity status or my proximity to hyper fame with Eva might have impacted my family.
She didn’t look away from the phone’s screen. “Why would they?”
Leave it to my little sister to bring me back to earth when I was starting to feel myself too much.
“I don’t know,” I huffed. “I’m the starting point guard for a professional basketball team?”
Paige wrinkled her nose. “Nope.”
Her friends and the kids in her school were probably too enamored by the latest dances and trends on social media to find anything I’d done mildly impressive.
“Although,” she amended, “one of my teachers did ask about Eva.”
I involuntarily stiffened. “What did they ask?”
