Sex, Love, and Basketball *Books 1 and 2* (Slowly Editing)

25. Perfect Timing

Sorry for any mistakes or grammatical errors

Malaya

I don't even know when I started hating Raquel. I don't know when or why. It just happened. She just started to piss me off for no good reason. Her smile. Her laugh. The sound of her voice. It all irritated the hell out of me. It made my blood boil and my heart pound irritably in my chest. But not in the good way. Not in the way that the main characters in romance novels go on about. This was different. This was a feeling of pure hatred.

I hated waking up at four in the morning just to have to see her stupid face at basketball practice. She's the only person I know of that is happy at hellish hours of the morning. She was the one lifting everyone up. Getting everyone in the mood to put in work on the court. Making everyone laugh when they'd rather be in their beds asleep. Everyone, but me.

She just has this pure love for the game. She enjoys it and puts everything she has into it. Basketball is her life. It's fun for her. Basketball has never been fun for me. It's an outlet for me. My escape. I've never loved the game. I loved that it helped me run away from my problems. I guess that's why coach gave her my spot as captain.

Everyone loves Raquel.

Maybe that's why I hate her. I wish I could possess that natural joy that she does. I wish I could be all free spirited and shit, but that's not how things work for me. The best thing that happened for me growing up was Nadia being born. She was like a sister to me. My actual sister just had too much going on to be a sister to me. My parents always talk about how much she had going for her until she slipped up and got pregnant. They tried to convince her to get married so she wouldn't have a child out of wedlock. She wouldn't do it, so they kicked her out. They didn't want a bastard grandchild.

I never understood how people could use religion to justify their hatred. How can you put your own daughter and future grandchild on the streets? Luckily for Nadia, her father's parents weren't assholes and let Melanie move in with them. When Nadia was born, my parents insisted that they see the grandchild that they pretty much abandoned. I was only three at the time, so I never understood how messed up the whole situation was.

I was just happy to see my niece all the time. As we grew up together, we just got really close. With us being children, we were completely oblivious to all the hell going on around us. My sister was slowly losing her mind. She dropped out of school even though her boyfriend's parents offered to help her in anyway they could with Nadia.

When I look back, it's not hard to see that my sister resented Nadia. She barely even wanted to hold her when she was smaller. She was never hesitant to pass her off to someone else. Even to our parents. The ones that kicked her out. I would have never let them see my child if they put me out while I was pregnant.

The older we got, the more I noticed. My sister started using drugs after her 21st birthday. She quickly got addicted. I was just eight at the time, but I started picking up on the things that were happening around me. I notice how different she was starting to look and act. There were days when she seemed normal, but most days were bad. Days when she was too high to function, Nadia would come stay with my parents and me. Nadia's grandparents on her father's side tried to get help for my sister. My parents were too busy trying to get custody of Nadia as if the girl didn't have a father that was trying his best. They didn't have a choice but to let Nadia stay with us when her mom got bad. They didn't want her around that.

My mother and father tried to use that against them though. They tried to make it seem like they were neglecting her. When really they were being parents to my sister while our parents had neglected her a long time ago. My parents suck. They always have. When my sister was in her normal state, she would tell me that it was her fault they were like that. She said she ruined it for me and she would just always apologize to me and back then, I didn't understand why.