Page 19

THEO

Saturday morning, just like every Saturday that wasn’t a game day, was busy.

Practices were less formal on weekends; they were usually dedicated to personalized training and pick-up games.

But because I didn’t like to let myself take it easy, I didn’t view weekends as a breather.

If anything, I loved weekends because we could usually rope some of the men’s team into playing with us.

Depending on the mood we were all in and who was playing, we would either do mixed teams or men’s versus women’s.

If we were all really having a good time—meaning the guys weren’t being assholes about how we could keep up with them—we’d play multiple games against each other.

Since we were all riding the high of winning on our respective teams, everyone was excited to be on the court and put in the work.

Usually, especially as the men’s team’s willpower started to dwindle and the losses started to stack up, there was less motivation to play casually like this.

“No chance you’re getting that in, McCall,” Danny from the men’s team said.

We were both seniors and had been keeping an eye on each other’s careers for as long as we’d been students here.

Unlike me, Danny hadn’t gotten a huge amount of attention when he’d been coming up through middle school and high school.

His stats were also—admittedly—not nearly as good as mine.

But men and women tended to play differently when it came to technical skills and approach to the game, so it was hard to compare.

We felt evenly matched enough on the court to play a decent game without either of us having to go easy on each other.

Other than Danny, I didn’t really bother with retaining the names of the guys on the men’s team. They all blended together, a mix of nicknames and last names. They weren’t particularly exciting to watch and none of them were expected to get drafted.

Not remembering them was mostly an act of pettiness, though; it hadn’t been until me that the women’s team had gotten any decent attention. People only seemed to want to pay attention to the men’s team here, even though they’d historically always been worse than us.

Some of the guys, like Danny, were cool about it and recognized where our team was in comparison to theirs.

Others were not so cool and usually did mental gymnastics to explain why we weren’t actually that good and why they were technically still better than us, even though their overall team record and individual records were worse.

“Oh, yeah?” I challenged. I dribbled the ball, my eyes dancing around the court for one of my teammates.

I played out all of the potential moves in my head like everyone on the court was a chess piece.

I could go left to GJ, but she had two guys who could move in quickly on her.

Mags was in a decent position, but she was prone to dropping passes and could be a liability from this far away.

Even though time felt like it was moving at a glacial pace and I was taking forever, only a few seconds had passed. We didn’t have a formal shot clock when we played casually like this, but we all knew when someone had held onto a ball too long.

“I have, like, six inches on you,” Danny said as he hopped and held out his arms.

“But can you run?” I asked before crossing him, ducking just out of his reach.

No one on my team was in any position to take the ball from me, so I went for the basket.

Even though I was tall, Danny was right that he—and most of the men’s team—had several inches on all of us.

They were bigger and stronger, but that just meant that we had to play smarter, and we always did.

I spun off of nineteen on the men’s team and went for a hook shot, dropping it through the net with ease.

Before the ball even hit the court again, we were cheering.

I tried not to let myself go too big with celebrating during games—mostly to avoid technicals—but I had no issue with doing it here.

This was where I really let myself go, getting as mean as I could be on the court.

I didn’t care if it wasn’t a real game; it was impossible to turn the competitive part of my brain off.

“Jesus Christ!” Six shouted. “Not one of you could get to her?”

GJ shrugged, always ready to come to my defense. “You think you can stop Theo McCall? ”

A few of the guys threw their arms in the air and wiped sweat from their foreheads, signaling that they were calling it. They walked over to get water as GJ jogged over to me.

“I can’t wait to see Cam Kerr humble you,” one of the guys yelled, clearly half joking from his tone but still half meaning it as well.

Men didn’t tend to take well to my success.

But it was also an athlete thing; everyone wanted to be the best. Everyone was always trying to find the best. Cam Kerr was my most obvious close competition, someone who might not get drafted first—I was holding firm that she wouldn’t beat me out on that—but would definitely make it onto every top ten list.

“They’re just mad because you got that three on them,” she said. “You guys are all a bunch of cowards giving up this easy!” she then shouted, laughing.

“You are such an asshole.”

“They should learn not to be sore losers.”

We walked over to get water for ourselves, and the rest of the girls joined us.

“Can we call it a day altogether? I’m cramping so fucking bad from my period,” Nia said as she squeezed water into her mouth. She gripped her side. “If I’m not horizontal in the next thirty minutes, I think I’m going to vomit.”

“Don’t let Coach Darlene hear you say that,” Gemma said. “She’d have you running laps in a heartbeat.”

“ Pain is in your head, ladies ,” GJ and Mags said in a near-perfect imitation of Darlene’s voice .

“I have a paper to write,” Ellie said quietly with a small shrug, always the neutral one.

When she was on the court, it was easy to believe she’d been recruited.

She was the youngest on our team, and she probably wouldn’t start in any of our games this season, but it was clear why Coach Darlene had wanted her.

She was tough, clever, and quick on her feet.

She also never had much to say to anyone about anything. I thought her quiet approach to playing was related to wanting to keep her head down, but I realized quickly she was quiet everywhere. While the rest of the team was loud and rowdy with each other, Ellie usually didn’t have much to say.

She didn’t know it, but I’d made it my personal goal to take her under my wing.

I wanted to see what she was capable of and what we could pull out of her.

My hope was that by junior year, she was able to match up to the stats GJ and I were pulling—and maybe also learn the art of shit talking along the way.

“I might hit the gym if anyone wants to go over with me,” I said.

“Do you ever take a break?” Mags asked.

“I’m only going for a little bit,” I said.

But the truth was that I didn’t really take a break.

I was always giving myself an excuse to work out—I needed to work on my arms, I should get some cardio in, I could run a few more drills.

It was hard for me to pull myself away from all of it sometimes, even when I was tired and drenched in sweat .

“Good game, fellas!” GJ yelled as the men’s team started shuffling out of the gym. One of them turned back and flipped her off before leaving. “They’re always so rude.”

“You told one of them that their height was wasted on them,” Nia reminded her.

“And I was right to say it. If I was 6’6”, I wouldn’t be fucking around like them,” GJ said. “Embarrassing.”

I snorted and packed up the rest of my things, ripping open a protein bar in the process.

“Bye!” Mags called out as she headed out with Gemma. Nia followed closely behind.

“Good game, Ellie,” I said as she was gathering up her things.

“Oh! Thanks,” she said, sounding somewhat surprised.

“Your fadeaway could use a little work, but it’s almost there.”

She smiled, taking the critique with zero ego. Her full cheeks flushed slightly. “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”

Ellie then headed off, leaving only me in GJ in the gym. GJ had taken a seat on a bench and was going to town on the orange she’d brought.

“If she doesn’t go pro, I’ll be so sad.”

“Yeah, she’s promising,” I said.

“Oh, no. I just meant with a name like that. Ellie Allison . That’s cool as fuck,” GJ said with her mouth half-full.

I rolled my eyes, and GJ gathered up her orange peels so we could head off together to the gym down the hall.

I spent my session working on my arms, music blasting in my ears as I lifted my hand weights.

GJ was across the room from me, the two of us the only ones in here.

The ability to coexist well in a gym was always one of my favorite things about GJ.

We understood when we could fuck around and when we both wanted a quiet moment to focus on working out.

The upcoming game was on my mind when my phone vibrated next to me with a text from Maya.

My eyebrows lifted with surprise. We hadn’t spoken since we’d hung out, and she didn’t strike me as someone who would really put in the effort to reach out first to initiate a conversation.

But then again, she did strike me as someone who was bold and straightforward.

If she didn’t want to hang out with me, whether platonically or not, I wouldn’t hear from her.

It was definitely a good sign she was texting first.