Part 2 of Dashed Hopes and Dreams! Sorry this took awhile, I kept getting interrupted from finishing it off.

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“Two coffees,” the waitress set down the two cups for the pair. Cliff leaned cozily against his chair, feeling relief spring up after what he considered a good day. He watched Rodger, who sat across him maintain his strong posture, and with precise movements grabbed his cup and took seconds to enjoy the aroma before taking his first sip. The lynx smiled and took his cup and did the same, a colourful blend of wonderful tastes filling the roof of his mouth before he took the sip, enjoying the light, creamy yet acidic taste of coffee. As the warm drink poured down his throat, the silver-brown feline sighed.


“You know. You do a good job on Point,” Rodger remarked. The lynx purred, amused; a blush would’ve been apparent had the dim lighting of the café made it hard to distinguish.

“I’m glad you think so, Rodger,” he meekly answered. “I’m still nowhere near as good as some of the team though…”

“Wasn’t it you who said that you’d cover our weaknesses, way back when?” the husky referred to Cliff’s first year, where in a short conversation between the team the lynx had announced such to fill in the niche that was left open in the team. “Coach was…” the canine took a moment to find the right word, “Interested. I think he’s pretty happy.”

“I was happy to even get a contract after I was done,” the lynx had a toothy grin. “I was afraid I hadn’t done enough to get another offer.”

The offer to him was made sometime during the whole charity tournament debacle – it reached his ears almost a day after it had even been made, recalling how busy he was with papers and meetings. The world had been a smaller place when he arranged his first charity tournament at high school, and red tape was literally nonexistent in the poorer regions. Of course it would’ve been different from arranging a large tournament across nations, dealing with enormous sums of money. But they had their similarities and differences.

“I think you’d make a good leader,” the husky said after a long sip. “You’ve got the makings of one,”

The lynx thought of possibly being like his father – leader and owner of an entire company. The gravity of responsibility was heavy on him for just organizing one single event. If he was at the forefront of the entire organization, he was sure he’d collapse and give up. “Maybe the makings, but not the means,” he finally told him. “I don’t know if I …” he stopped himself, losing his words.

Rodger raised a single brow, followed by a drink. “You set plays up nicely, passing and scoring where you need to. You’re already pretty much doing what a point guard’s doing. You played in college, right?”

Cliff fondly nods, but is mildly surprised when Rodger just grinned. He answered anyway. “I did. That was a long time ago, though; didn’t think I’d ever come back to basketball.”

“You obviously love the sport. The crowd, the attention.” Rodger’s words so nicely grabbed the air out of the lynx’s lungs, which made him cough.

“Well…that’s…true.” It was strange; perhaps it wasn’t so much as the sport that he liked, as the feeling of being wanted by people. “Funny thing is I don’t like the idea of people clamouring up to me and asking for my autograph.”

The husky gave a knowing nod, followed by another drink. “I just have to bear with it. You will one day, too.” The firmness of his words – how positive he was that Cliff was going to be someone famous. It elated him.

“How’re you so sure?” he had to ask. There was still so much doubt in Cliff’s resolve with each miss he made, or each score he let the opponent make, or a play that didn’t pull through. He couldn’t even confidently ask his uncle anything without thinking of the inevitable, even this morning when he was in the finest of moods.

The husky chuckled. It was obviously a joke that Cliff didn’t catch – the lynx only flattened his ears, embarrassed. “We’re having coffee,” Rodger grinned. “Lighten up a bit. The coffee’s bitter enough, right?”

The feline nodded, still embarrassed, until he recalled who started the whole talk in the first place. “Hey, you’re the one who started the conversation.” He grinned, lightheartedly. The husky did the same.


The next half-hour passed with lighter topics such as plans for the break and what they did in college. Cliff was surprised how much ecology he recounted as he did; but he was happy to have Rodger listen, even if he wasn’t very good at explaining. The canine knew things though; intuition or maybe he had read about it before. When Rodger spoke about his degree in working with electronic software, it really set Cliff alight, the lynx finding the intricacies of software programming so delicate – but it seemed that Rodger knew everything he spoke about.

That clarity was something Cliff caught on from the start. In everything Rodger did, he had a good grasp of things. He doesn’t show the slightest bit of hesitation, and strives to be as good in it in his own style. The lynx wanted to be like him; straightforward, head strong. Even last night he held his dignity when he walked out the door, pressure kept to himself. It wasn’t healthy but it made the team respect him more.

Even as their cups were already empty and taken, they continued on. The topic of family came to pass eventually, and inevitably, Cliff’s uncle eventually came up.

“I read on Wikipedia about past FBA MVP winners – your uncle’s one of them, isn’t he.” The conversation rolled as naturally as that, the ball was in Cliff’s hands.

The lynx was uncomfortable. He didn’t know what to say. Rodger pressed on.

“So you actually live with him? Wiki and other sources never mentioned, just saying he quit the FBA in 1988.” Cliff regretted saying that he lived with his uncle at this point. But it was a valid question still to ask why his uncle is the way he is now, after such fame in his prime.

“I do, yeah. I didn’t know till Christmas last year who he was though, heh.” He chuckled. “Didn’t really look into the FBA’s history myself, and I’ve honestly never heard of him being a professional player, and he doesn’t talk about it much. Mom and Dad barely know much at all.”

Rodger raised his brows in surprise. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Didn’t you find it weird?”

“Kind of…” the lynx shifted uneasily. Ever since he found out, he found that fact so strange – then again, he never asked his parents or Andrew what his job was. Since staying with his uncle though, he had asked Andrew personally, but never got an answer, only anger. Dad would only tell Cliff what he already knew – that he used to play, and he quit when he felt he was done. Out of the sake of his uncle’s privacy, Cliff never told his dad or his mom about his drunken habits.

“From all I hear, you take quite a bit from him.”

Cliff purred, amused. “Feres said the same thing.” He chuckled.

“He’s a big fan of him too, I hear. You know, lynxes and all.”

“I think he’s got some kinda bias to them, maybe!”

“And do you?”

Cliff tilted his head, pausing to think. “Maybe? I’m the only lynx here – well, on the team, not including the manager. I do kind of admire Rocky Caracal’s fierce attitude, sort of – but I don’t think I really care as much as what’s on the inside.”

Rodger nodded, before checking his watch. “Mm, I think we should be off, then? We have a game with Santa Fe coming tomorrow, better get some good rest.”

“Agreed!”

The two left with a content feeling, their problems from just yesterday long forgotten. Cliff did, however, feel like as more and more people peeked into his relation with his uncle, the more he felt he had an obligation to find out what happened to this feline legend. He rarely saw his uncle the way he was this morning – and if he could find out why, perhaps it wouldn’t be considered a treat any more.

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FBA ©  buckhopper
Rodger Umaechi ©  jtigerclaw
Cliff Matthiews ©  rainwhisker
Thumbnail ©  d.chestnut