“I know,” he says, his voice turning serious. “I’m not gonna lie, though. I do already feel like I know you. Not know-you-know-you, obviously, because I just met you. But it’s like somehow, I’ve always known you. Like it took me seeing you to remember. Wait, that doesn’t even make sense. It’s hard to explain. It’s like . . . man, I don’t know.”

“I know what you mean.”

“You do?”

“Yeah,” I say, “it’s just this feeling.”

“Exactly . . . this feeling,” he says, sliding this thumb gently back and forth across my thumb. “And it didn’t waste no time. I swear it started the first moment I saw you on the court.”

“Same here. It’s like I didn’t even know what was happening to me. I literally thought you, or what I was feeling for you, was why my body was freaking out.”

“No you didn’t,” he says, and laughs.

I laugh, too. “Yes I did! And then it was crazy because I had this . . . No, never mind.”

“Had what?”

“I’ve been thinking about you a lot, that’s all,” I say, not wanting to spoil the vision of him. How real it felt.

“That’s not what you were about to say.”

No denying that, I look down. But the soft whirling in my chest makes me look back up. “I had a vision of you.”

“Word?” he says, still sliding his strong thumb gently across my thumb. “What did you see?”

“Well, you were at the hospital that day I had surgery. It was crazy how real it felt.”

His face lights up. With all seriousness, if the power in the gym were to go out right now, there would be a beam of light coming from right beside me. “It wasn’t a vision. I was there,” he says.

“What? But how?”

“Cole posted where the surgery was going to be that morning, and I had to go . . . had to see you. I don’t usually do things like that. But you got me . . . man, I don’t know. I’ve never felt like this before.”

His words make me feel beyond good. It’s like every cell in my body is twerking and cartwheeling and high-kicking all over the place. I don’t usually do things like this, either. . . .

REX

Carli is kissing me. And it’s warm and soft and wet and sweet. Her lips sandwich my bottom lip and then my top . . . bottom, top, bottom, top, her tongue sliding over mine in between. A final press into both of my lips, and she pulls away far enough to look at me.

But the way her eyes are moving around my face feels like she’s still kissing me. “One . . . two . . . three,” she counts.