Swish

Timeout - Eli

For a second, it was like time stood still.  The moment that most guys usually look forward to--introducing the girl that they're crazy about to their family, and there I was about to shit my pants because there were mine, my mother and stepfather staring at me like they were owed something.  

If it weren't for V quickly picking up on my uncomfortable demeanor and gravitating towards Elodie, I would've definitely lost my cool sooner, rather than later. 

Channel the rage, I used to always tell myself, but lately it had turned into helplessness, a sinking feeling that would drown me if I let it, because with Elodie in their custody it wasn't like there was anything that I could really do, only sit by and watch and make sure that Jay kept his hands to himself, unlike what he did with me. 

The champagne flutes were filled, lights sparkling and bouncing off of them and the flash photography going off like strobe lights around the room, laughter filling every empty pocket of quiet while mindless chatter ricocheted off of one conversation and bounded off another. 

"V, it's probably time for me to go and..."

I nodded towards her father, where he was talking animatedly with his hands to Johnson Pierce, a longing to meet one of my childhood basketball idols cementing itself in my chest as the man's laugh pierced the rest of the morning monotonous conversations around us. 

She looked at me nervously, just coming out of a conversation with Elodie about getting us something to eat, when her brown eyes filled with understanding. 

Dark brown curls framing her delicate face, Virginia stood up taller and closed ranks with me, her form fitting outfit momentarily making me lose my focus as it went directly to her body, but the clearing of my mother's throat pulled my attention from her, my mom's outfit more suitable for a Sunday church service than a college charity basketball game.

"Eli-"

"Come with me, please?"

I didn't care that I'd interrupted my mother, though the downward turn of her slightly wrinkle marred face showed her displeasure.  I just couldn't find it in me to care that I'd upset her, not after the things she'd refused to shield me from growing up as her child. 

While my mother had given me my green eyes, I had wished throughout my childhood for the darker chocolate brown eyes that my father sported, the warmth in them that I could only relive through photographs since his memory had faded.  Brown eyes so welcoming and happy, full of light, almost like Virginia's eyes, though hers held a slant at the corners pointing towards her Native American heritage, there was still a similarity, almost in their energies. 

"Of course," she said without hesitation, jumping slightly at my touch on the small of her back, almost like I had shocked her out of a reverie, but then again, if she'd touched me without warning, I wasn't sure my reaction would be any less powerful.  She had the power to do that to me, something no other girl had, like she was predetermined for me, from the moment we met. 

Thoughts like that gave me peace, like my father and her mother were looking over us, guiding us towards each other with more than one aspect keeping us together- her father, even if the truth about him was uglier than I could've ever imagined, her music, her job at the courts...it was like it was all just one big cosmic sign pointing us towards each other, a giant blinking sign screaming in capital letters that this was the girl, she is the one.

Those thoughts while normally more terrifying than the heart stopping moment when the ball was coursing through the air towards the basket, rolling on the rim and waiting to tip in or out of the hoop, instead had the opposite effect, especially when it came to Virginia Bruins.