Hoops by Patricia McLinn Read Free Book Online

“How about you, Brad?”
    “Sure, I’ll stay.”
    A gym rat, C.J. thought. The cheerfulness gave him away.
    “Frank?”
    Frank looked after Ellis’s retreating back as if for support, then back. “I’ll stay.”
    When C.J. dismissed them forty minutes later, Frank left practically before he’d said the words. Brad lingered, trailing him to the office and talking. C.J. recognized the heavily casual questions as an effort to pump him about his playing days. There had been a time he’d encountered it often. These days it was a rarity.
    “I saw you in Chicago the next year,” Brad said after one anecdote of the Tornadoes’ championship season. “I’ll never forget the way you drove the lane like nothing in the world could keep you from that basket. You dished off to Rake Johnson, and he got the slam. It was so smooth. I’ve never seen anything so smooth. I went home and practiced that move for months. I never did get it.” He paused, a wave of embarrassment at his own enthusiasm abruptly stopping his flow. “I mean, I was just a kid then.”
    “Hey,” C.J. objected. “I’m not that old. My last season with the Tornadoes didn’t happen during the Dark Ages.”
    He glanced at the photo on his desk. My last season .
    He was still looking at it when he added, “My old high school coach used to say, ‘Drive the lane like the Indy 500. Go all out, but put on the brakes before you crash into a wall.’ The one time I didn’t put on the brakes, I crashed in flames. Remember that when you practice that move.” He gestured with his clipboard. “Now get outta here. Hit the showers. I’ve got work. And you’ve got books to crack.”
    Half an hour later, when Brad came past and said goodnight, C.J. looked up from his notes for the first time. The interruption reminded him he was hungry. Packing up six game tapes to review that night, he headed to the apartment he called home.
     When he got there, he swallowed the last of a half gallon of milk while he flipped through his mail. Then he crunched through an apple while he read the only thing that interested him: a letter from his mother full of the small news of a peaceful life. He heated leftover pizza as he set up the VCR.
    Videotapes, clipboards and notebooks were the only accessories in the minimalist decorating scheme of his furnished apartment. As long as the functioning parts met his needs, he was happy. The couch stretched long and firm, so he ignored the raucous paisley cover that even clashed with white. The end table showed a dent and two burn marks, but it had a drawer for pens and clipboards and a shelf underneath for videotapes.
    He knew it was ugly, and when he really looked at it, he winced. But he wasn’t here much, and even when he was, he seldom really looked.
    There had been a woman when he played for the Tornadoes who had wanted to decorate his place in Chicago. Kim had said he should think of his image. The way things had been going, he probably would have let her redecorate eventually. Then the injury.
    He gave her credit, though. She didn’t disappear when his knee—and his career—shattered. But seven months into the rehabilitation she’d told him she couldn’t compete any longer with machines, exercises and strength tests. It was just as well it had ended there; it never would have survived his swing through the league, to Italy, then back. And if by some miracle she’d still been around, the relationship surely would have withered at Ashton.
    The thing was, he knew himself well enough to recognize that the challenge here affected him much the way the challenge of rehabilitation had. He hadn’t really minded when Kim had left. To be honest, he’d barely noticed. He’d had a mission.
    Now the mission was to give Ashton a decent basketball program and give himself a shot at the big time. For five months he’d been going practically nonstop. He’d looked at every player, every highlight tape that had come his way, hoping to find