Page 41 of Game Changer

When it comes to Mari, I always feel like a little kid. She has her shit figured out, and I’m the joke.

I was trying to avoid talking about Brad and work, but by keeping it from her, it's made things worse.

Even though I can’t hide out forever, right now I need the space. I pull open my sketchbook and pick up drawing where I left off.

My cell rings a few minutes in.

It’s not Mari.

Grumpy Baller calling.

I don’t feel like talking to him, but can’t bring myself to hit decline.

“You didn’t answer my text,” Clay says without waiting for a hello.

“And the state of my wrist was a national emergency?”

“Is it?”

I roll my wrist around. “No.”

I did ice it, and the treatment did help.

“Tell me what’s so important you didn’t text me back,” he says.

I groan. “Are you this bossy with your teammates?”

“I’m charmingly persistent.”

“Debatable.” But I take a breath and fill him in, feeling as though I’m confessing and burdening him way too much.

He listens, his silence punctuated with steady breathing.

“It was humiliating,” I finish. “I felt like I was ten all over again and she won the spelling bee and I didn’t make it past the second word—catastrophe. I carried around her trophy though.”

“That’s decent.”

I squeeze my eyes shut. “And pretended it was mine.”

There’s a sound like a half laugh, half grunt. “Can’t see how it’s your sister’s business what you do. Who you date or where you work, either.”

The tight ball in my chest eases a bit. “We used to tell each other everything. I’m not sure when that changed.”

“You have to follow your own path. Everyone I went to school with wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer. Deciding to pursue basketball wasn’t the easy choice—it was the hard one.”

“It sounds lonely.”

“Sometimes being different is.”

My attention falls to my drawing. As ego-bruised as I am from last night, I’m not ready to hang up.

“Do you know anything about children’s charitable foundations?”

“Ask Chloe. The team’s foundation is part of her portfolio.”

I bite my lip. “I don’t want to involve her.”

I tell him I’m trying to learn to help out a friend but don’t admit it’s for Harlan. From what my future brother-in-law said, he and Clay don’t have the best relationship. Solving that is definitely beyond the scope of my powers, and at this point, I suspect that even asking about it would get me shut down fast.

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