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THEO

I did not want to be here.

“Another beer, T?” GJ asked, waving her can in front of me.

“I’m good.” I brushed her off, pushing the can out of my face.

She threw herself down onto the couch next to me—way too close. She was the only person I ever let in my personal space like that off a basketball court. GJ tended to be my exception to a lot of things, though.

“Come on, Theodora ,“ GJ teased. “It’s just a beer.”

“Leave my great-grandmother out of it, Georgia Jane ,“ I shot back.

GJ was unfazed. She’d always been better at teasing me than I was at teasing her. We chalked it up to how she’d grown up with siblings and I hadn’t; she had more practice. “Drink up.”

“It slows me down.”

“It also gives life meaning.” She wiggled her eyebrows at me. “Come on. Just one more.”

“We have practice tomorrow.”

She clicked her tongue. “Your excuses are getting thin. We always have practice. And our first game of the season isn’t for, like, two weeks. Alcohol will be completely dispelled from your body within the next twenty-four hours.”

I looked at her half-pleadingly to leave me alone, and she threw her arm over my shoulders. Our long limbs fell into each other, her arms not as strong as mine, but her legs a little bit longer.

GJ Mitchell—Georgia Jane Mitchell, Georgia Jane reserved for her mother and myself when I wanted to piss her off—was my right-hand man.

She was a junior and the point guard on the team who would inevitably follow after me as captain next year after I graduated.

I loved her game and loved playing with her.

I’d never had a friend who’d understood me in the way that she had, down to us being lesbians whose types were not each other.

GJ threw herself back into the couch, playfully crossing her arms and pouting. “I hate that I can’t peer pressure you into anything. Makes this a lot less fun.”

I shoved my shoulder into hers. “It’s called standing firm, you should try it sometime.”

She snorted. “You need to take a very long, deep breath. That’s all I’m saying.”

“I’m relaxed ,“ I protested, immediately disproving my point.

She cackled, throwing her head back. “No one who is actually relaxed would say it that way.”

“I’m…” I tried to find a way to defend myself, but came up short. “You always act like basketball is my entire life. You make me sound so boring. ”

“Basketball is your entire life,“ GJ said. This wasn’t the first time we’d had this exact conversation.

We’d known each other for years, playing against each other at a middle school and high school during travel AAU.

Both of us were on the fast track to D1 recruitment, so we heard each other’s names and saw each other’s faces a lot despite growing up in different states.

It wasn’t until we ended up at the same university that she finally said to me, You don’t have much fun, do you?

I didn’t need another go-around of the same conversation.

Maybe basketball was my entire life, and people thought I was boring and stiff and whatever other uncreative adjectives they could think of, but that had always been who I was.

I knew what I was about. I didn’t hold myself on a tight leash because I’d been told to or someone asked me to.

I held my own leash—always had, always would.

“Mags—how would you describe GJ?” GJ said, yelling over the music.

We were all huddled together in the way we always tended to be at parties.

We had friends off the team, but there was a strong sense of community between a good number of us.

We had friends in similar circles and ended up at similar parties.

There wasn’t a group of people I beefed with more and loved more than them.

“Our motherfuckin’ captain !“ Mags shouted, clearly drunk. Mags was a shooting guard and also a junior, like GJ. Off the court, things were mostly cool between us but we butted heads on the court pretty relentlessly. Mags was a hothead with a big mouth—and was also, frankly, a ball-hog, even though none of us were allowed to say it. She was an acquired taste, and I didn’t think I’d ever fully get there, but her talent was undeniable.

“Right,” GJ said and turned to me.

“That’s a good thing!” I insisted.

“That’s a basketball thing,“ GJ said.

I nearly rolled my eyes. “Right. And I need to find other things to do and life is bigger than basketball and…” I said, reciting off all of the things that GJ had said to me over the years.

“Or just people to do.”

I couldn’t help it—I immediately started blushing. I turned my face away from her, shaking my head. “GJ.”

“I’m being so serious. You’re a senior in college. This is it for you, and then you’re leaving me forever. I can’t let you go off into the world having kept yourself in a locked box. This is your time to have fun. Get stupid. Go fuck some girls—“

I winced. “Jesus, dude.”

“Fine, go make love to some girls or whatever. I don’t care. Get drunk. Get laid. I know you’re about to have women falling all over you when you make it into the big leagues, but it’s different right now. It’s college. Flings that happen now really mean nothing.”

“It’s not guaranteed.”

“That women are going to flock to you when you’re playing in the W?” GJ scoffed, like that was the dumbest thing anyone could ever say to her.

“No, that I even make it to the W,” I said, punching her in the shoulder.

She laughed. “Man, if you don’t make it to the W, there’s no hope for the rest of us. It’s over at that point. I might as well give up now and actually start paying attention in class.”

My stats were the one area of my life I didn’t come by modestly.

I’d learned over the years that I preferred to let my numbers speak for themselves.

I was on track to beat the all-time scoring record in men’s and women’s college history before graduation, make first team All-American for a second time, and conference player of the year for the fourth time.

And possibly most importantly of all, I was prepared to bring my school its first-ever women’s basketball championship ring before I graduated.

After three seasons of feeling like we were close but not quite there, I had a really good feeling about our team this year. I was ready to go out with a bang.

I was, with no ounce of modesty, one of the most decorated female college athletes of all time and by far the top basketball player my university had ever seen—men’s or women’s.

Logically, I knew that. I knew I was good—better than good. But I also didn’t expect anything. Despite pretty much universal predictions that I was going to be a first-round draft pick for the WNBA, I never assumed that things would line up. The odds were in my favor, but never one hundred percent.

As much as I appreciated GJ’s attempt at cooling me off and giving me the chance to slow down, I didn’t see a good reason to.

There was always a way to be better, even if my only competition was myself.

There was never a time to take it easy or prioritize things like getting drunk and getting laid. I had to focus.

“The season’s too soon for me to start taking a break now,” I said.

I was a little more easily distracted in the official offseason, but that wasn’t saying much.

My flings were confined exclusively to the summer and were few and far between.

They tended to be weird more than anything else, just some random person I met at a party who I kind of knew, or a friend of a friend.

I preferred to take care of whatever needs I had by myself; it was less messy that way.

I refused to admit it to GJ, but that was more of the reason that I avoided fooling around more than anything else.

I could handle the casual aspect and didn’t feel particular about who I was having sex with.

But I did feel particular when it came to navigating life afterwards.

There was part of me that wanted the girls to basically vanish from the face of the earth after.

No mess, no potential for feelings, no hooking up more than once.

It’d also gotten increasingly more difficult to maintain any sense of normalcy in dating as I’d become somewhat of a celebrity on campus.

Everyone here knew me or knew of me. Even if the girls didn’t actually care that much, it took away some of the fun.

I wanted to be able to be a college student who got stupid sometimes, but there was a lot of risk that came with it now that I was public-facing.

I knew people I’d hooked up with texted their friends about it, mostly because they’d tell me that they were going to tell everyone they knew, like I’d find it funny or appreciate getting bragged about .

It was hard for me to imagine any world where I actually ended up with someone because it felt impossible. Teammates and people close to my teammates were all hard nos, but they also felt like the people who’d understand me best. It didn’t exactly leave me with much.

“What about her?” GJ asked, clearly ignoring everything I’d just said to her.

Without thinking, I looked up and locked eyes with a girl who was looking in our direction.

Her hazel eyes stayed on mine. I expected at least one of us to give in, but we didn’t.

Her lips turned up in a small smile, effortlessly continuing her conversation with her friend next to her through it all.

“She’s been looking over here for, like, five minutes.

I don’t know what she and her friend are talking about, but I feel like it has to be us,” GJ said, and with good reason.

It wasn’t anything the girls were doing in particular; it was that GJ tended to have that effect on women, and I also, admittedly, did too.

We were tall, muscular, celebrated college athletes and publicly queer.

We had our pick; it was usually our choice to engage with it or not.

And unlike me, GJ always wanted to engage.