Page 22 of Never Say Never
“I’m not the one who smoked a bunch of high school kids in a pickup game of my own sport,” I tease her.
Oh crap, hope she isn’t offended at that.
I watch her absorb what I said, and she looks amused instead. “Fair. I was just going stir crazy at home that day.”
“I get that. Where’s your place?”
“I have a townhouse in a new development, about twenty minutes from the arena.”
“Nice.”
We’re interrupted by more instructions from Isaiah.
“Nothing complicated today. We plan to take straightforward shots of you two facing the camera, side by side. If you want to play around with the positions of the balls, that’s fine. Keep things dynamic.”
“With serious expressions,” Farah says. “We’re focusing the article on how you two are going to help your teams in their title runs, so we want the energy of the photos to match.”
As Isaiah gets us started and the clicks from his camera begin, I keep a game face on, which is easy to do in my pads. Looking straight ahead, I barely see Avery out of the corner of my eye, but she’s making a similar expression.
It only takes about fifteen minutes before Isaiah says we’re good.
“All set from my end,” he indicates to Farah.
I relax my posture and flip the ball in the air before catching it one handed, like earlier.
“Hmm,” Avery says. I look over, and she’s peering at me, a brow raised, the ball sitting on her right hip. It’s like I can read her mind calling me out for “showing off” again.
“I doubt a flip of a ball is going to impress anyone, let alone you,” I remark. She smirks, like she knows I guessed her thoughts. “Whatwouldimpress you?”
“A sense of humor. Loyalty. Humility.”
“That’s quite a list.”
Her lips turn up a fraction more as she continues. “A solid fifteen-foot jumper.”
“Oh man. I’m screwed then, as you saw the other day,” I joke.
She gives me a full smile. “You?—”
Farah clears her throat. “Sorry to interrupt, but if you want to change now, we can move on to the interview.”
“Sounds good,” Avery says, her expression muted again.
We both head in the direction of our dressing rooms on either side of the studio.
“You two are quite chatty,” Aiden observes as I pass near him.
I stop to respond, not sure where he’s going with that. “Probably a good thing for the interview.”
“Yes,” he says. “I represent her brother, you know.”
“Oh, yeah? But not Avery?”
Aiden gives me a small smile. “I might have that conversation with her and her mother eventually. But no, not yet.”
Aiden seems to be grabbing up top Florida sports talent like a kid collecting candy on Halloween.
“Don’t let me hold you up,” he says. “Go get changed.”
