I melt. Every time.

“I’ll take you home,” he says. “And maybe tonight you can have dinner at my house.”

“Okay,” I say, smiling while my lips hug the straw for my juice drink, my body still burning from everyone’s attention.

Willow doesn’t ask any questions on our way to class, and after school, she only sends me a quick text, reminding me to have fun but be careful, and some picture of a basketball and a heart. She follows it up with a graphic of a condom, which mortifies me—so I spend the next five minutes looking for a picture of a middle finger to send to her.

My mom is working her night shift, so I don’t even bother to text her, knowing she won’t see it for the next several hours anyhow. I wander the empty halls, looking around for Owen or Ryan or even House, but everyone’s gone. I give my backpack one final check, then slide it up over my shoulders and exit the main building.

I can hear the squeak of shoes as I near the gym, and when I open the door, I recognize Owen quickly. I slip through the front hallway to the side entrance and take a seat in one of the bleachers, near the end. A few parents are watching too, one of the dads standing at the front of the bleachers, yelling out things every now and then. It makes me chuckle to myself. It’s not so different from my father standing behind me, watching my hands move along the piano keys. He used to shout things too.

Owen hasn’t seen me yet, and I’m glad. He’s being himself, his confidence something I envy. He’s leading the other guys through drills, the ball always a little sharper, more controlled, when it’s with him. It’s strange to see him like this, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt with the sleeves torn away. His arms are more defined than I thought, probably because the last time I watched him play in my driveway, his shirt was off, and the only thing I could stare at was his stomach and chest.

He has a tight, black brace wrapped around one of his knees, and I remember him telling me he had surgery once. It doesn’t seem to bother him as he glides effortlessly up and down the court, stopping on a dime, switching direction, moving the ball from one hand to the next and rolling it off his fingers near the rim. His touch is flawless.

The coach whistles, and all of the guys jog over for a water break. Ryan sees me first, and I smile, lifting my hand and waving close to my body, not wanting to be a distraction. He elbows Owen, and he looks over and winks, but his focus goes right back to his team.

For two hours, Owen runs. He never stops running. His body never once looks tired. I could watch him for hours, days maybe. He’s clearly the best on the team, Ryan a close second, and the way he controls everything is mesmerizing. He shouts things, pushes other players in their chests, smacks their asses when they do something right and scolds them when they’re wrong. And nobody ever questions him. They all want to please him—even the coach.

It’s almost like they’re afraid…

When practice is over, Ryan runs out from the locker room first, sitting next to me on the front step of the bleacher while he slips on his other shoes.

“Owen will be right out. He wanted me to tell you,” he says, a faint smile on his face. Ryan doesn’t show a lot of emotion, but I get the feeling he’s rooting for Owen and me.

“Thanks,” I say.

He nods once, finishes getting his shoes on, then starts to stand, stopping with his elbows on his knees. “You wanna know why I like Owen so much?” he says, his face slightly in my direction, his eyes looking at me from the side.

I nod.

Ryan looks toward the door, which is still closed, and leaves his focus there as he speaks. “Last year, my little brother tried to kill himself,” he says, my breath leaves my body. “He’s small. Like, really small—opposite of me in every way. It’s not his fault. Something he was born with, just a weird mutation of our genes. The whole family is tall, like me. Jake, he’s short. He’s in eighth grade, and he’s maybe four feet tall. Anyhow, some kids in his grade, they thought it’d be funny to nominate him for the king or whatever they call it at his junior high dance. That’s the only reason he went, because he was nominated, and thought he might win something. So he goes, and he ends up winning, and he gets to dance with the prettiest girl, have his picture taken, all that shit.”

Ryan turns to me for the rest of his story.

“My brother came home on cloud nine, thinking he was finally accepted. Then the next day, he found out that everyone voted for him to make that girl have to dance with him, because she had broken up with her boyfriend, the popular guy, and they wanted her to pay for it. They plastered her locker with pictures of her and Jake—with things written everywhere that said stuff like ‘that’s the best you can do now, bitch.’ The girl was mortified, and she left school for the day, too embarrassed to stay.”