The stadium lights were the sodium kind.
Old. Warm. The color of late evening poured into bulbs and hung on poles forty feet up, washing the outdoor court in a flat, generous gold that made everything below it look slightly cinematic — the worn paint on the three-point line, the scuff marks from a thousand sneakers, the long clean arc of a basketball leaving a pair of hands and dropping through netting with a sound that was its own particular reward.
'Swish.'
Gareth caught his own rebound off the back of the board, spun, dribbled twice — the smack of rubber on concrete bouncing off the surrounding garden walls — and passed clean to Marcus on the left wing without looking.
Marcus fumbled it.
"Come 'on.'"
"I didn't see it coming that fast—"
"You never see anything coming." Gareth wiped his face with the hem of his shirt — dragging it up, the sweat-dark fabric pulling over the flat grid of his stomach, the lights catching the moisture across his abs — and let it drop.
