Page 9 of ClickBack

She looks at the ball. “When you lose, you’re not allowed to tell anybody you let me win.”

“You already got the speech ready?”

“I like to be prepared.”

Graves has followed me. He checks with the event lead across the room before leaning against the side of the machine. “You have time for exactly one.”

Giselle tips her head toward him. “I like your friend.”

“Everybody does until he starts talking.”

Graves swipes a game card. “Hope she beats your ass.”

She steps into place beside me, laughing, and the game begins.

I make my first two. She makes three. My next catches the back rim, and Zion makes a noise that gets the attention of half the arcade. I should have anticipated that there would be no private loss available here.

“You keep watching my side,” she says. “The basket is in front of you.”

“I see it.”

“Use it.”

I do. She leans forward to catch the next ball and fires before mine drops. Her release is quick, better than I expected. When the ball goes through, she looks over to make sure I saw it, and I forget to reach for my next one. Earlier she kept catching herself looking at me. Now she’s grinning in my face because she thinks she can win. I want to be the reason she looks like that again. Preferably without losing in front of all these witnesses.

With twelve seconds left, I pull ahead. The kids shift loyalties so fast I can’t tell who’s rooting for whom. Graves watches without a word, which means he has his phone out. This shit is going to survive me.

“Don’t get nervous now,” Giselle says.

“You worried about me?”

“I’m worried about your reputation.”

Five seconds. Up by one. A ball rolls into my hand just as Zion yells, “Don’t let my grandmother smoke you, J!”

My shot hits the front rim.

Grandmother?

Hers drops. The buzzer cuts through the noise, and the two scores flash above us with Giselle ahead by one. She looks at the display, then at me. I’ve given her enough material for the rest of the night.

Zion is already shouting her full name. “My grandmother, Giselle Dawkins, beat Jarrett Simmons!”

“By one point,” she says. “Let the man live.”

I set the ball down. “You weren’t going to tell me?”

“Which part? That I can shoot?”

“You know which part.”

“You didn’t ask.”

“I thought you were his aunt.”

She gives me a look I can’t quite read. “And now you know.”

There’s gray at her temples. I noticed it earlier because I liked the way it showed against her dark hair. I had not turned it into a birth certificate. Across the walkway, her daughter is waving the boys back to the party room. Zion gathers his friends, repeats the score twice, and leaves us standing beside the empty game.