Hook Shot (Hoops #3)(19)

“We were gonna go grab some oxtails from that place on Flatbush,” she says tentatively. “You wanna come?”

We’re never tentative with each other, and I wish I could tell her the truth, tell her everything, but I wouldn’t know where to start my story, and it feels like there is no end.

“You go on. I still feel a little queasy,” I say, willing myself to sound normal. “And I need to edit the podcast anyway.”

“You sure? Because I could—”

“Ri, I’m good.” I need her to leave. “See you when you get back.”

“Okay, if you’re sure.” She still doesn’t sound sure.

“Have fun.”

After a few seconds, long seconds where I silently beg her to leave me alone, I hear the steps carrying her back out to the living room. I release a long, calming breath once the front door closes. I flip onto my back, link my hands behind my head, and fix my eyes on the tree. The longer I watch it, the calmer I become. I watch until my body goes silent and still. I watch until the serenity of the room feels like loneliness. And then I call the only person who knows how it all started, even though I’ve never told her it’s not over.

“Hey, Lo,” my cousin Iris says from the other end of the line. “What’s up, girl?”

I’m silent for a second, letting the voice I’ve known all my life wash over me. Familiar. Family.

“Lo?” Iris asks again. “You okay?”

“I don’t know, Bo,” I whisper, abbreviating her childhood nickname Gumbo.

“What’s going on?”

“You remember that day?” I ask, my voice hushing over the secret. “The day it happened?”

For a moment, I’m afraid I’ll have to explain—that I’ll have to say something awkward, something awful to trigger the memory I cannot escape, but she answers. She knows.

“Yeah,” she replies softly. “I remember.”

“It . . . I thought I had this shit under control, you know?” One tear at a time rolls from the corners of my eyes and singes the skin on my cheeks. “But it’s like . . . you remember that big hole in MiMi’s kitchen?”

“Yeah. She patched that hole all the time,” Iris says with a short, rough laugh.

“And nothing ever helped.” I bounce the laugh back to my cousin. “She kept patching it up, and every time it rained, water would leak through that ceiling.”

“Yeah.” Iris’s laughter fades, leaving questions and maybe some answers. “Are you leaking, Lo?”

I bite my bottom lip until it hurts, and I love it. It’s a hurt I can control. I can turn it on. I can turn it off. If I bite hard enough, I’ll see the marks of my teeth. I prefer that to the pain that spreads over my body when I least expect it. That’s a pain I can’t stop—can’t control. And it’s invisible. Untraceable, but lately, it’s hurting me just the same.

I can’t see it. I can’t find it. I can’t fix it.

“Maybe I am.” I sit up, pressing my back to the wall, to my tree, and rest my elbows on my knees. “Lately I’ve been feeling . . . I don’t know. Empty.”

“Empty how?”

“Well you know I’m not one of those people who has trouble with sex,” I say, managing a chuckle.

“I’m aware, yeah,” Iris says, a grin in her voice.

“I always put sex in this box. Sex was to make me feel good, and that was totally fine. I didn’t want any strings. I didn’t want any emotions. I didn’t want . . .” I hesitate over the word waiting on my tongue.

“Intimacy,” I whisper. “I didn’t want that. Didn’t need it.”

“And now?” Iris asks.

“It’s not enough.” I shake my head, shocked at the words I’m saying. “It’s not enough anymore, and it feels meaningless. It’s not enough, but I can’t afford to feel anything other than that. There’s this part of me that says it’s dangerous to really share yourself with someone. Look at my mother.”

Even saying her name makes me want to curl up again under the tree at my back.

“Look what she did for a bad man,” I continue. “She was putty for him. Look at your mom. How she chose the wrong men over and over—how she gave herself to them for all the wrong reasons.”

“Look at me?” Iris asks. “Am I another cautionary tale?”

I don’t answer, but in some ways, she is. I don’t want to hurt Iris, but before she found her husband, August, she chose badly, and that man hurt her. He trapped her. He kept her, and by the time she escaped, it was almost too late.

“We all make mistakes,” Iris finally replies when I don’t.

“Is that what you call what Mama did?” I ask, a serrated edge to my voice. “I’m here feeling this, living this because of her ‘mistake’? No, thank you.”

“So what are you gonna do about it?”

“I’ve sworn off dick.”

Iris chokes on the other end. “We’ll see how long that lasts,” she says. “What about that photographer you brought to the Christmas party?”

“Chase?” I suck my teeth. “Just a fuckboi.”

I don’t want to tell her I cried the last time Chase and I had sex. There are limits to what I can expose.