All Over Again - Chapter 6: Chapter 6

Ruth didn't have very many memories when it came to remembering her childhood in Oklahoma. She had a couple of glimpses, as she liked to call them, and they were as fast and memorable as the blink of an eye. There for the flash of a second and then gone the next. Almost as if it didn't happen at all.
She remembered the warmth of Uncle Rickey's hugs and how happy they made her feel. She remembered the sweetness of her Auntie Carolyne and Jana and Terry's consistent bickering. And the very last thing she remembered was a place. A place her uncles and father had taken her to hang out and teach her the ways of Native American basketball, or rezball, as they liked to call it.
The reservation's basketball court in the center of town was a place where anyone and everyone got to watch and take part in playing with one another. When Ruth was a young girl, Koi and Uncle Rickey would take her with them to teach her how to play rezball. She wasn't very good, being that she was only five, but she remembered loving the atmosphere of it. The laughter, the sweat, the scrapes, the long hair blocking your line of sight when you try to make a shot, and the stretched out basketball tank tops to pair with baggy gym shorts. The players on the court mostly knew each other from growing up on the Rez, and even if you didn't know anyone, you were still welcomed to join in and play like they've known you your entire life.
So coming to the basketball court on a Saturday to hang out with Jana and Terry, instead of finishing her statistics assignment, was exactly where Ruth wanted to be. Dressed in her usual shorts and black tank top, she shoved a blue and black plaid button up over her shoulders before exiting her car.
The air that day was already moist and hot, sticky and dry all at the same time. Though it was only noon, her wet curls were drying quickly down her back from the intensity of the heat, and the lotion on her legs felt slimy with sweat. Her eyes squinted across the parking lot to the basketball court that's surrounded by people of all ages, though 90% were boys and men from what she could tell. The few picnic tables that were scattered around the court were all taken up by those lounging on standby for their turn or just chilling with their friends to watch everyone else play. Terry and Jana had their arms looped through Ruth's, chattering in slang and joking about something Ruth wasn't paying attention to. Her mind was stuck on the feeling being here brought her, and though she had been back a few times since she started staying in Oklahoma, she couldn't help but still appreciate the feeling being back brought.
She could vividly see her father and her uncle teaching her to dribble and drawing her small body up to the basketball hoop to toss the ball in. She could hear the bellows of the other men on the court cheering for her and offering their hands in high fives, which she gladly returned in triumph. She hadn't been as shy then, and loved every ounce of the attention everyone granted her those few nights they visited. Koi had put her on his shoulders and treated her like a champion. Shantelle was awfully mad that evening over the sight of a minor cut on her knee, but Ruth thought the cut was worth it. It showed that she earned the mark like so many other men had that day. She felt like she was one of them. Her own personal role models that the world didn't get to see and understand how raw their talent was. No one else, not even her mama, got to see those hardworking souls on the court, so how could she discredit her slight cut with a backhand comment when she didn't see how proud she was to have it? How proud she was to be a part of them? The greatness of her people?
Jana called out to Ruth then, sucking her out of the whirlpool of her dazed mind. She hadn't realized they were walking up to a table full of people until they were maybe ten feet away. Well, she didn't think she knew anyone there, until her searching gaze landed on a familiar pair speaking to one another at the end of the table.
The girl had her hair curled in mermaid waves that brushed along her bare shoulders looked familiar to Ruth. She wore a sleeveless halter top that wrapped snuggly around her torso and mid-section that was the color of raspberry lemonade, and paired it with ash jean shorts. The man she spoke to animatedly wore an ivory muscle t-shirt to show off the bronze muscles packed onto his biceps. With a hat flipped backwards over his long locks of silky hair, the strands breeze away from his face as he flickered his bangs out of those familiar brown eyes with impatience. He looked relaxed and in his element being out here, half-smiling off and on at the group of people he was sitting with.
Ruth almost felt like she was intruding looking at them all. Especially the girl and Raffo.
"Earth to Ruth," Jana sung in her ear to recapture her gaze. She tugged on her arm for emphasis.
"Hmm?" Ruth mumbled, tearing her gaze away from the man who had no trouble keeping it in the first place. Granted, he didn't know that he holds her attention as easy as one breathes, but she still blamed him for it.
"We're gonna talk to Mirana for a second, if that's okay? We haven't seen the group in a while," she said, though her eyes twinkled with mischief. This didn't go unnoticed by Ruth.
Ruth squinted. "What are you-"
"Mirana!" Terry called, excitedly, interrupting Ruth's interrogation.
The girl who Ruth had ran into at the coffee shop, and saw with Raffo the other day, was the same girl in the pink top and ash shorts. She spun around on her seat, seeking Terry and Jana out instantly as they were all the only ones who were walking towards their table, and squealed in happiness. Her smile was radiant, and she wasted no time in standing up to embrace the two girls as they released an awkward Ruth from the chain of their arms.
Suddenly, Ruth wished she could be chained to them for just a little longer.
But she couldn't.
Not when Raffo was staring at her the way that he was.
Not when he was looking at her like he was surprised, and perhaps a little . . . happy? To see her?
Raffo's other friends at the table weren't paying the pair any mind as they talked among themselves or said something to Terry and Jana that only they would understand. They were handsome as well, but she was too preoccupied with walking towards Raffo, a half-smile stuck on her face as if to say, fancy seeing you here.
He crookedly smiled back, the movement illuminating his entire face with the lazy grin. His eyes brightened to a shade lighter than what they already were, and his entire expression gleamed with a natural beauty one can only ever hope to attain. Raffo was handsome, but he was also pretty and gorgeous and just . . . mysterious. She saw him around campus a few times, but could never work up the courage to talk to him so openly.
So imagine her surprise when she spoke first.
"You didn't strike me as a basketball fan when we first met," she said, shoving her hands casually into the pockets of her shorts.
Raffo tilted his head at this observation, but he doesn't seem at all offended. Instead, his curiosity was peaked and he found his shoulders relaxing in her presence. "You don't know me too well, Ruth. So how could I 'strike you' as anything?"
She tried not to feel giddy over the thought of him remembering her name. She knew it was just one syllable, and it started with the same letter as his own name, so it couldn't have been hard. Get it together, Ruth.
"I don't know. I thought I would at least get a sporty vibe or something, but I don't," she admitted.
"You hear what they say about assumptions?"
"Yeah, yeah. Assumptions make an ass out of you and me."
He chuckled at the ridiculous phrase, his eyes alight with amusement as she joined in on it too. Deciding to be temporarily bold, she continued walking over to the picnic table seat where Mirana had previously occupied, and sat down right in his line of sight. Seeing as how he was sitting across the seat from her, his long legs bumped against her knees under the table, but neither seemed to mind enough to pull away from the other. He rose an eyebrow at the taking of Mirana's seat, but said nothing about it.
"Alright then. No more assumptions," she decided. "Only facts."
This captured his attention immediately.
"Facts?" he murmured, his fingers picking at the wooden picnic table.
"Facts about you."
"And why would you want to know that?"
Ruth was quick on her feet even though she wasn't sure of what to say back at the time, so she rolled with it. "Just . . . humor me. I'm curious about the man who paid for my beers."
Raffo sat still for a second, his body stiffening at the statement. Instead of answering right away, he glanced away briefly, his eyes falling on the basketball court of focused players. She watched as his eyes rolled over each player at the hoops closest to them and saw his brain physically thinking. She didn't know what it was that he was thinking about, but she could sit there staring at him forever.
Not in a creepy way, but in the way of not being able to look away from someone so beautiful, that everything about them is capturing. He resembled the native word in his middle name. Nashoba. Wolf.
He was poised, watchful, and stuck in the valley of his head. That urge to paint him, or scribble him in a chapter in her ever-growing notebook, was growing even greater. Biting her lip at the absurdity, she glanced away, watching the Rez kids dribble and make slam dunks into the hoops.
"Do you play?" Raffo asked.
Ruth glanced over at him now and found that he was already staring at her expectantly.
She hadn't played basketball since she was a young girl. Ten years ago, Koi had let her try out for the Indian Health basketball team back home and while she had loved it, Shantelle didn't. Shantelle wanted her to join sports like softball and cheerleading, and while she loved them both, there wasn't a cultural connection there like basketball had for her. There was something about basketball that she just couldn't seem to shake.
But instead of explaining all of that, she simply just said, "I used to."
This intrigued Raffo as he glanced over at a less crowded hoop, and nodded his head over in that direction. "You up for some hoop?"
Ruth, taken aback by the offer, took a moment to ponder his request. Was she really in the mood to embarrass herself? Or was the offer enough for her to want to go out on that court and play? It didn't look like his friends or even Mirana were up for a game that he maybe wanted to play, so why not go with the latter?
"I'm up for a game or two. It looks like we might have to stick with one hoop though," Ruth said, gesturing to the impacted court.
"That's alright," he shrugged, standing up from his seat so that he towered over her. Ruth was quick to stand up with him. "We'll take turns at the same hoop. Whenever one of us makes a score, we can ask a question the other one has to answer. Deal?"
Ruth tried her damnedest to hide the smile from crawling across her lips, but it was a lot harder to prevent than she thought. She had to bite the flesh behind her bottom lip to keep from grinning too hard. "Deal."
One of Raffo's friends nudged the other, and both guys look back at him curiously. The one with his hair braided into two over his shoulders puckered his lips in the direction of the court, his eyebrows furrowed. The other boy looked at Ruth for the first time since she came over and smiled a pretty smile at her. Both of the other boys must be on Terry's list of five, Ruth thought.
"Don't think we've met yet. Haven't seen the girls in a year, so I'm guessing you're the cousin keeping them away?" he teased. His amber eyes are striking against his tanned skin, and his raven hair fell naturally to his broad shoulders.
"I guess so," she agreed as the other guy talked to Raffo.
He chuckled deeply and held out a hand for her to shake. "Johnny."
She placed her hand in his. "Ruth."
"Eddie," the other boy who had talked to Raffo greeted, nodding at her.
She introduced herself again with a small wave and her best model smile. They both were genuinely kind to her, but she didn't have much time to talk to them as Raffo was already making his way to the now empty hoop, a basketball tucked securely under his arm. Ruth, baffled by how quickly he walked away from them, excused herself from Eddie and Johnny and rushed down the hill as fast as her flapping legs could take her. She tried not to feel too self-conscious by it and just focused on trying to catch up with Raffo, ignoring the chafe at her thighs and the wiggle of her skin.
By the time Ruth got down to the court, she was already huffing with her cheeks flushed to a russet pink, curls wild around her. After tossing the ball easily into the hoop, Raffo glanced over at her trying to catch her breath and his lips twitch in amusement.
"Why are your legs so abnormally long?" Ruth wheezed.
"They're not that long. You're just short," he teased. "What are you? 5'1?"
"5'4, Sasquatch."
"I think you should get remeasured, tiny."
Ruth snorted at the nickname. She was anything but tiny.
"Okay. You remember the rules?" Ruth questioned, eyeing the ball attached to his slender hip.
"Of course. I'll even let you have the ball first," he offered, but Ruth shook her head.
"Why? Because I'm a girl? Hate to burst your bubble there champ, but I don't do handouts," she disagreed with an innocent smile. "Give me your best shot."
Raffo furrowed his eyebrows at the blunt coax, perhaps a little impressed and a little unsure of where she was going with this, but didn't comment any further. Instead, he dropped the ball from his waist and began to dribble it easily, his palm in complete control of where he wanted the ball to go. Ruth may not have played for a little while, but she still remembered all of the little tricks and how to distract the other player if need be. So when Raffo started crossover dribbling his way to the hoop, Ruth did a sneak attack move that Uncle Rickey had taught her and snagged the ball from his hand. With quick feet, she breezily tossed the basketball into the net with just a flicker of her wrist.
A victorious grin twisted her lips and she did a mini dance of triumph before him, her excitment uncontrollable. That familiarity of how this sport has always made her feel comes flooding back now at full force and she absolutely loved it.
I still have it, she thought happily to herself.
When she looked up at Raffo, he looked beyond astonished. He blinked at her as if still trying to figure out what the hell just happened in that two minute span.
"Get ready for a shitload of questions, Sasquatch," she teased.
"I let you win," he scoffed, though the amusement on his face tells her he was only teasing. "That was impressive, tiny."
"Thanks. Now stop distracting me by feeding my ego with your misogyny. Tell me your favorite color," she demanded.
For the first time since she's met him, Raffo gave her a full, genuine smile that stretched on for beautiful miles across his perfect lips. His teeth were bright and without a hint of yellow, despite his smoking, and they marveled under the light of the harsh sun. Almond-shaped eyes crinkling at the action, a dimple appeared to curve in his right cheek, sending Ruth's world tumbling to the asphalt below her knock-off brand converse.
He dribbled her poor little heart away into nothing but soot and dust.