“I’m really sorry for what I did to you,” I start. “I was just—”

“Wait, can we not do this?”

Damn, she doesn’t even want to hear my apology? She’s really done with me. But she doesn’t even know that I’ve been working on myself. I need her to know. “Can I at least apologize?”

“You already did.”

“But it’s different in person.”

“Yeah, but the sun is shining. And the sky is so blue. We’re here. Back at the secret court. It’s so soft,” she says, and hops up and down a little bit. “I can’t believe I didn’t notice this the last time we were here.”

I really don’t know what’s going on right now, but I hop up and down a little, too, try to see what sees talking about. I guess it’s got a little spring to it. “Yeah, much better than concrete.”

“Exactly,” she says, staring at me.

I can’t think of anything else to say, so I don’t say anything.

And neither does she.

We stay like that for a while, and I finally see what her eyes are giving me. They’re here . . . she’s here . . . right now . . . with me. And I swear it feels like we’re out of our skin. Like there’s nothing covering us. Nothing in the way.

It’s the best feeling in the world, but I can’t even lie, it’s making me feel kind of shy. “So, Shannon is here,” I say, and turn to look back at everybody else. Shannon grabs the rebound from Cole’s missed shot before Jordan does.

“Yeah, Cole set it up.”

“Gotta love Cole.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure he set this up, too,” she says, and twists her lips. But her eyes have the happiness of a thousand smiles. Okay, maybe not a thousand but at least one.

“Looks like it,” I say, a monument of hope springing up inside of me.

“So how are we about to do this?” Cole yells over to us. “We got five. Quick game of horse to see who sits out first?”

“No, y’all go ahead. I’m not playing,” Carli yells back.

Takes everybody a second to process, but then Jordan finally shouts, “Damn, that’s right!”

CARLI

Didn’t feel like sitting on the sidelines. Wanted to be in the mix with everybody else, so I’m the ref. Just called Cole for his third foul on Rex.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me!” Cole complains, throwing his hands up in the air from the baseline. “You’re clearly giving Rex preferential treatment. I can’t even look his direction without you calling a foul.”

“Yeah, you can’t be out here playing favorites if you’re the ref,” Shannon backs him up from the middle of the key. Didn’t take her any time to get comfortable with sibling bickering.