Page 36 of Just One More Thing

She crosses her arms. “Your stance is sloppy.”

The crowd oohs.

“Excuse me?”

“You drop your shoulder,” she says. “Always have.”

Ryan nods. “She’s not wrong.”

I adjust my stance deliberately.

She laughs before she can stop herself.

“You watched me play, did you, Mo?”

“No, I?—“

TING.

SPLASH.

Hank brings the ball back again.

“Traitor,” she says.

TING.

SPLASH.

I flip the ball once in my hands. “You okay up there?”

“I’m thriving.”

“You’re dripping.”

“I’m glowing.”

TING.

SPLASH.

“This is for the time you put a snake in my bed when we were twelve.”

“It was fake!”

“I didn’t know that.”

“That’s why you screamed like a dying peacock?”

Wayne loses it. Ryan’s barely holding it together.

TING.

SPLASH.

This time when she comes up, she’s laughing. Head tipped back, forgetting to be mad. The sound of her laugh feels like summer. Like the old days. It settles somewhere in my chest and doesn’t move. I circle the booth and grab the ladder.

“Wait,” she says. “What are you doing?”