center and all-around asshole. It was another senior, Dex Slagle, who’d jostled him on the court. The two were tight. Carson had been flattered when they had accepted him into their circle.
He knew why they’d decided now he was the weak link. Daddy the principal. Stepdaddy, actually, but what was the dif?
Hearing the receding footsteps, voices and friendly taunts, he mopped his face with the towel, then draped it around his neck and took a long drink of the now lukewarm water.
“Your head isn’t on the court,” Coach McGarvie said from right beside him.
He closed his eyes for a moment, scrubbed the towel over his face again and faced his coach. “I guess it wasn’t today.”
“Hasn’t been since the season started.”
“I scored fourteen Tuesday night.” It had been only the second game of the season. The first game, right before Thanksgiving... Well, he’d mostly been shut out, but he thought he’d partly redeemed himself Tuesday.
“Good assists. You also fell over your own damn feet.”
He felt the flush climb his neck to his face. He had. Right here, in this gymnasium, in front of the entire student body. He had tripped and crashed down. People laughed. Afterward, he’d pretended his laces had come undone.
He couldn’t blame Zurenko for that one. His feet had grown two sizes since April. He was growing, too, but not keeping up with his feet. He wore a twelve now, but was only six foot one. He had dreams of the NBA, which meant he wanted to keep growing, but lately signals seemed to be taking too long to get to his hands and feet.
He stayed stubbornly silent. Like he had a choice.
Coach was about his height, not a big man. He’d played for some Podunk college—Ben said it was actually a fantastic liberal arts school, just not big-time where sports were concerned—and now taught history as well as coaching boys’ basketball. Last year, Carson had liked him. This year, McGarvie was all over his ass.
“Are you going to talk to me?” his coach asked.
He clamped his mouth shut. He couldn’t talk. Not about what was bothering him. It was...too big. And if he did, he’d be in deep shit. “Then I’m starting Guzman,” Coach said flatly. “You’re not concentrating, Carson. You’ve got all the ability in the world, but this season your heart isn’t in it.”
He couldn’t seem to help the surly reply. “I thought you said it was my head.”
McGarvie looked at him as if he was crazy, shook his head and walked away toward the locker room.
Carson went the other direction, past the bleachers, to where he could smack both hands on the porous wall of the gym hard enough to sting.
God. What am I going to do? he begged, with no more idea than he’d had since the morning after what he’d thought was the best night of his life.
Pride had him finally walking to the locker room. If he was lucky, everyone else would have showered and he could be alone while he took his.
* * *
BEN STOLE A glance at his stepson in the passenger seat where Olivia had been earlier. He could still smell her French fries and wondered if Carson could, too.
“Anything you want to talk about?” he said finally.
Carson shook his head, then grimaced. “I’m not starting tomorrow night.”
“What?” Ben hoped he didn’t sound as startled as he was.
“I’ve just been...I don’t know,” the boy mumbled. “Clumsy.”
“You have been growing fast.”
Head down, he shrugged.
“Let’s stop and get a pizza. I’m not in the mood to cook.” He’d almost suggested the Burger Barn, but that would make him think about Olivia, and he didn’t want to right now. Something was going on with Carson, and he needed to find out what it was.
The boy’s head came up. “Uh, sure. Cool.”
Four and a half years since the divorce, and he and his stepson were still feeling their way, or sometimes that’s how it seemed.
Ben waited until they’d been seated at Rosaria’s Pizzeria, agreed on their order and received their drinks. Then he asked casually, “Heard from your mother lately?”
Carson looked surprised. “No. Not since...I don’t know. Like, August?”
Ben had spoken to Melanie briefly that time, so he only nodded. Her life had been a mess, as usual. He refused to own any part of that, but he always worried that she’d succeed anew in sucking her son in. After her initial noble gesture—ceding custody to Ben—she’d tried a few times. Once, the second year, Carson had run away because he was sure she needed him. After he’d been hauled back, he and Ben had done a lot of talking, and Ben thought his stepson was doing well at letting go of an unrealistic sense of responsibility. Nothing in his expression now suggested he’d even been thinking about his mother.
So that wasn’t the problem.
He tried another not-so-random sortie. “You mad at Coach McGarvie?”
Hunching his bony shoulders, Carson didn’t want to meet Ben’s eyes. “Not really,” he muttered. “I haven’t been together. That’s not his fault.”
“Anything I can help with?” Ben asked. Years of practice kept his tone easy, not too pushy. Kids this age didn’t respond well to pushy.
Carson sneaked a look at him before his gaze skidded away. “Nah.”
Was that some kind of shame or embarrassment he was seeing? Ben wondered. Hard to tell in the dim lighting.
“You know, I’ll listen anytime you want to talk,” he said.
“Yeah. This is—” He hunched again as much as shrugged. What “this was” remained unsaid.
A girl? Carson was sixteen, a junior in high school. What could be likelier? Ben watched more closely than he let on, though, and he hadn’t seen any particular yearning looks. Not the kind he’d been directing Olivia’s way on the rare occasions when he saw her, he thought ruefully.
He heard himself say, “You must wonder why I don’t date.”
His son looked at him in alarm. Ben worked to keep his amusement from showing. A parental figure planning to talk about sex? What kid wouldn’t be panicked?
“I figured, um...” Carson’s throat worked. “It was, you know, because things were so bad with Mom. And maybe because you have me...”
Ben reflected on what was actually a pretty darned perceptive answer from a teenager. “I guess at first it was because of your mother. And it’s true I wouldn’t want to set a bad example for you.” He’d never been the woman-of-the-week kind of guy anyway, though.
“Grandma was whining the other day. She
