“Well speaking of.” Lotus elbows me. “Your future father-in-law is heading our way.” She nods toward Caleb’s father and his cousin, approaching through the crowded stands, stopping every so often to smile and chat.
“Would you stop saying that?” Exasperation weights my sigh. “It’s bad enough everyone else assumes Caleb and I are already practically engaged.”
“To hear Aunt Priscilla tell it, you’ll be married and pregnant by Christmas.”
“Pregnant?” I scowl. “Mama would love that. The higher Caleb goes in the draft, the more she’ll want a grandbaby to hook him for life. That’s the last thing I’m thinking about. A baby right now would ruin all my plans.”
“What’s the rush anyway?” Lotus adjusts an errant lock of hair until it knows its place on my shoulder. “Why’s Caleb so eager to get married?”
“I know. What’s wrong with a long-distance relationship? I’m not ready for marriage. It’s too soon.”
“Do you love him?” Lo’s eyes pick around the edges of my expression.
“Sure.” I shrug, looking down at my knees. “I mean, we say it to each other, but does that mean he’s the one? I don’t know. We’ve been dating a year. We started as friends, and he’s gorgeous and smart and considerate. I’d be crazy not to love him, right? He’s perfect.”
Lotus puts her hand over mine. “Hey, look at me.”
I meet her eyes, braced for whatever she’s about to say.
“It doesn’t matter if he’s perfect, Bo, if he’s not perfect for you.” She squeezes my fingers. “You need a guy who respects your ambitions and your dreams.”
“I think Caleb can be that guy.”
But even as I say it, I question if it’s true. If my ambitions took me to one place and Caleb to another, would he expect me to follow him? Would I lose him if I didn’t? I hope I don’t have to choose. I know how important basketball is to him, but does he really understand how important my dreams are to me?
“Just be sure,” Lotus says, pasting on a plastic smile and aiming it over my shoulder. “In the meantime, here comes papa.”
“Good evening, ladies,” Caleb’s father says, finally making his way to stand in front of us.
Donald Bradley’s smile is always as carefully coordinated as his ties and tailor-made suits. The word that comes to mind is calculating, like he’s added you up and subtracted you to determine how much of his time and attention you merit. His every movement is smooth, but there is a hardness to him that makes me wonder if there’s really a heart beating beneath that silk shirt. He’s so much like Caleb physically—the same golden hair and dark blue eyes—but Caleb doesn’t have that hard smoothness.
Not yet.
It’s a whisper I try to ignore. The thought of Caleb evolving into his father drops a bag of stones in my belly.
“Hi, Mr. Bradley.” I glance up at the man beside him, forcing a smile for Caleb’s cousin. “Hey, Andrew.”
“Hey,” Andrew replies politely. Neutral is the word I always associate with him. He’s in medical school, so I know he has his own talents, but beside the vitality of his superstar cousin, there is something . . . bland, beige about him. Like he’ll match whatever’s around him, absorb whatever he needs to in any given situation. Maybe that’s not the worst thing, but it makes him hard to read. When you grow up with a series of creepy “uncles” in your house like we did, you learn to read men’s intentions. What makes me wary of Andrew is I can never read his.