Page 113 of The Longest Shot
“Your face,” she gasps. “You looked so personally betrayed, like the toaster conspired against your dick specifically.”
“It did!" I protest, although my dick is still every bit as hard for her. "We were having a moment! A beautiful, Foucault-free moment!”
“We almost set my kitchen on fire!”
“Aggressive toasting at worst. The smoke is just… enthusiasm vapor.”
She’s still laughing when her phone buzzes. She checks it. "Mills came through a minute early," she says, turning the screen toward me. "She's got a contact."
FITZGERALD, JAMES R.
SOCIOLOGY 421 - FINAL GRADE: B-
The world stops. “I…” My voice cracks completely. “Holy shit.”
Her arms wrap around me before I realize I’m crying—not sobbing, but tears are definitely happening, and I don’t even care because I got better than the C+ average I was begging the universe for. It's an actual, legitimatepassing grade, that means I would be able to keep playing even if we hadn't foiled Galloway.
“I passed,” I breathe into her neck. “Morgan, a B- final means I got atleastan A- on the exam!”
She pulls back, hands framing my face. The pride in her eyes makes my chest expand dangerously. “You did the work, James. This is yours.”
“No,” I correct, setting her back on the counter. “This is ours, because I'd have been Foucault-ed without you.”
Her surprised laugh is better than any gift. “Look at you, making jokes about dead academics…"
“B- sociology student now, so I'm practically a scholar." I grin. "Might start wearing those tiny glasses and carrying books around.”
She kisses me then, slow and deep. “We should celebrate,” she says, her hand wrapping around me.
“The game?—”
“Is in three hours.” She strokes slowly, deliberately. “We have time.”
“Morgan—”
“Shut up and fuck me, Fitzgerald. I'm your academic achievement award.”
So I do. Right there in her smoke-scented kitchen, with burnt toast as incense and a B- proving I’m more than anyone thought. I fuck her slow and deep, memorizing every expression—the way her mouth falls open, the flush spreading down her chest, how she bites her lip when she’s close.
When she comes, my name on her lips, clenching around me so tight I see stars, I follow her over.
Later, after we’ve aired out the kitchen and she’s made eggs that don’t require a fire extinguisher, we sit at her table looking at my grade on her laptop. She’s wearing my jersey again and I’ve got on boxers, and we look like a commercial for domestic bliss directed by someone with questionable safety standards.
“You know what this means?” she asks, her foot finding mine under the table.
“That my brain occasionally cooperates?”
She flicks my ear, but gently. “It means you’re eligible. Officially.”
I smile and nod, because in a few hours, I’ll step onto the ice for the last home game of the semester. And, maybe for the first time all year, I’ll know I deserve to be there. I'll be a man who's earned the captaincy, the respect of his teammates and his school, and who can be both serious and jovial when the time is right.
“Thank you,” I tell her. “For believing in me, for the creative teaching?—”
“Especially that?”
“Especiallythose.” I kiss each knuckle. “But mostly for seeing me. The real me.”
Her eyes soften. “That’s who I fell for.”
