Page 74 of The Locker Room

motion by their secrecy and their game, by their love of basketball and

their love for each other, it was more than clear that it had already begun.

Amy Lane

Glory Days

WHEN all was said and done, they enjoyed Chapel Hill and loved

college ball. Xander got a degree in history (rather apologetically,

actually: he told Chris"s parents he really didn"t know what to do with

that, and Andi told him that"s what her degree was in, so maybe he was

meant to be a lawyer), and Chris got one in business, but that"s not what

either of them remembered.

They remembered the night they beat Duke, the Tar Heels" hated

rival, and took the ACC regular season. Xander had scored thirty-six

points in that game, and Chris had scored twenty-eight. Xander told the

press later that if he had flung the ball out into the crowd of the Dean

Smith Center, it would have rebounded, found Chris"s hands and ended

up in the basket, because, dammit, there was just that magic in the air.

The party had lasted until dawn, and sometime before then, they had

managed to sneak into Xander"s room and Chris had taken Xander

against the wall—then Xander had returned the favor.

They remembered being in the Sweet Sixteen, all four times, and

winning it in their senior year. They played in nearby Charlotte, and the

players had to be escorted out by security as twenty-one thousand people

screamed their names. The party that night consumed their entire dorm,

and there would be happily buzzed coeds sleeping on their couch and in

their basement and in their rooms (Xander kept finding one girl in his

closet and respectfully returning her to the main floor) for the next two

days. Even though each of them had their own room, they had no

privacy, and as Christian drank too much beer, and Xander listened to

the thousandth recap of the game from a fellow court warrior, they