All Over Again

| Chapter Five |

Ruth didn't have 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 a second and gone in 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 most of all, she remembered the smell of wet cement, rubber balls, and the sound of worn out sneakers against asphalt.

The basketball court in the center of town was a place where anyone and everyone could go to release their stress. 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 of course, 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.

And when she and her cousins came to hang out on that week's Saturday afternoon, Ruth was home. Dressed in her usual shorts and tank top, she threw on a flannel over her shoulders and exited the car. The courts were mostly filled, the picnic tables filled up by lounging watchers, and everyone overall tried their best to enjoy themselves in the humid heat.

Terry and Jana looped their arms through Ruth's, chatting in slang and making jokes about something she wasn't paying attention to. She was too caught up in the memory of seeing her father, her uncle, and her grandfather dribbling the ball with her and picking her up for a slam dunk. In the distance was the bellows of other men cheering on the court and offering high fives. Her father pranced her around on his shoulders like a champion on his shoulders, and nothing, not even Shantelle's anger at the cut on her knee, killed the joy of such a day.

Because for a day, Ruth was one of them. She got to be a part of her role models. The ones the world didn't see and understand enough to shine light on their talent. 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, sucking her out of the whirlpool of her dazed mind. She blinked and her eyes landed on the table her cousins were walking her to. She tilted her head at the two familiar people conversing with one another among the sea of unfamiliar.

The familiar girl's mermaid waves tugged at her memory. Her sleeveless halter top and ash jean shorts not so much, so she moved onto the next person. 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, she recognized those familiar brown eyes as he sat there smirking at whatever she had to say.

Ruth felt like she was intruding just by looking at them.

"Earth to Ruth," Jana sung in her ear, tugging on her arm.

"Hmm?" Ruth mumbled, tearing her gaze away from the man who had no trouble keeping it in the first place.

"We're gonna talk to Mirana. We haven't seen the group in a while," she said, though her eyes twinkled with mischief.

Ruth squinted her eyes and thinned her lips. "What are you—"

"Mirana!" Terry called, interrupting Ruth's interrogation.

The familiar girl—Mirana, she supposed—was the same girl Ruth ran into at the coffee shop, she realized. Mirana spun around on her seat to look at the girls and squealed in happiness. Her smile was radiant, and she wasted no time in racing to embrace the two girls as they released an awkward Ruth from the chain of their arms.