Page 24

THEO

I was about an inch away from doing something so incredibly stupid.

I had to leave Maya’s house as soon as possible. The longer I stood there, the closer I was to throwing caution to the wind and kissing her. We were already standing so close we were nearly touching and I was pretty sure she’d been flirting with me throughout the night.

But I didn’t actually know any of it for sure. And if I asked, I risked asking too soon and scaring her off. I had to play smart with her, as someone who hadn’t exactly given me the impression she was looking for anything serious.

My uncertainty definitely wasn’t because she turned me into a coward who could barely remember my name when she looked at me like that, with her brown eyes on mine and her cheeks all flushed.

I could just kiss her. I could.

“Am I going to see you at the game tomorrow?” I asked instead, the one thing I could think of to say that didn’t make my palms slick with sweat .

“How am I supposed to know what’s going on when the person who’s supposed to teach me didn’t show me a single basketball movie today?”

I laughed. “Fair point.”

“But yeah, I’ll be there. Iris will keep feeding me basketball-related lines to say to you at the end,” she said. “Maybe we can go viral again.”

“Oh, we can only hope,” I teased.

She paused for a moment. “Maybe we really should keep it going. It’s kind of funny,” Maya admitted.

“Do you really think people would care that much?”

She shrugged. “It seems like they do. And most of the campus probably thinks we’re already dating—sorry to all of the other women in your life.”

“There aren’t any, so no one’s feelings can be hurt.”

“Except maybe your millions of fans who’ve all been holding out hope they’d get a chance with you.”

“Millions feels like an exaggeration.”

Having an online presence was one of my least favorite parts of the attention I’d been getting. I had no issue with posting stats or clips from a game or practice, but I wasn’t sure I really wanted anyone to know anything about me beyond that. It wasn’t their business.

But then again, knowing a woman like Maya—so beautiful and warm that it literally glowed through in a random picture of her—wasn’t such a bad thing to be known for. And if keeping it going meant that I’d have more time with Maya, I’d take it .

Maya raised her eyebrows playfully. “Come on. Do it for the story. Do it for the bit. It doesn’t have to be anything crazy, I’ll just show up to your games every once in a while.

And then when we get bored, you can have your post-breakup glow up where everyone compliments you on how well you’ve been handling it. ”

“I guess it is funny,” I said, because that was the only plausible reason why I’d agree to something like this.

I didn’t really need a relationship to help boost my public image, and I wasn’t sure it even would boost it that much.

But I couldn’t say yeah, I’m down to do it only because you—the prettiest woman I’ve ever laid eyes on—are asking me to.

Do you also want me to run through fire? I’d do it for you.

“What about all of the other women in your life?” I asked, because I realized I might not be giving up anyone for this, but Maya definitely was.

“There aren’t any,” Maya said a little too quickly. “Sometimes there are. But it’s never been anyone serious. It might be good for me to take a break, honestly. I’ve been in a bit of a slump lately.”

I tried not to latch onto sometimes there are because Maya was a single, autonomous adult who was allowed to do whatever she wanted. But the thought of anyone else with her made me sick to my stomach. I’d never considered myself possessive, but she was enough to bring it out of me .

Maybe I was just as competitive off the court as I was playing basketball; I’d just never had something I wanted that badly before.

Continuing to be photographed in public together might not lead to any professional gain for me, but it definitely had one major benefit: Having Maya to myself.

It was impossible to deny that I was feeling greedy about her time.

If she wanted someone else, I’d respect it.

But now that I had the chance to temporarily take her off the market—even in the context of pretending to date—I was absolutely going to take it.

“And you really get something out of doing this?” I asked.

She nodded. “You have no idea.”

All of my teammates would confirm that I was someone who was strict about my pre-game rituals.

I thrived on structure, so it made sense.

But there was also the tiniest bit of superstition behind it, just like with most athletes.

I ate the same meal the night before and the same breakfast the day of.

I always got a full night of sleep and restricted how late I would stay out, depending on how late in the day the game was.

I didn’t like to stray from it. I’d been keeping it up for as long as I’d been in college, and certain parts—like eating the same breakfast before every game—I’d been doing since I was in middle school.

But Maya was tempting me to break the routine.

I knew even going over to her house in the late evening was cutting it close. And that was before I’d accidentally spent four hours at her house, chatting with her as if there was no one in the world except for us.

And I didn’t want to leave.

It’d taken everything in me to get myself up from the couch and actually leave her apartment. I was pretty sure from the time I said I would leave to the time it took me to physically open the door and exit was at least twenty minutes.

I didn’t know how it happened. It was like time wasn’t real when I was with her, and I could never have enough time with her. It wasn’t a feeling I was used to. I was pretty sure it was a feeling I’d never experienced before.

The high of a game was the closest I’d ever gotten otherwise, and even then, this was different.

It was the kind of thing people would write songs about—the thrill of seeing her, the nerves around when I’d see her next.

The way it was impossible to get myself to leave, and all I wanted to do before I left was kiss her.

It was like I wanted to stay just to see if I could get more from her. I wanted as much time as I could possibly have next to her, hoping that at any point, maybe things would shift and she’d make a move on me. Or maybe she’d open the door for me to make a move on her.

Unfortunately, it was still nearly impossible to figure out where things were.

I could say that it was a good sign that we were fake dating and able to talk so much, but it also could mean that it was a good sign for friendship.

Maybe that was all this was. She was comfortable with me because there were no feelings at all on her end.

The entire walk back to my apartment, I was cycling through it. I would convince myself one second that she was into me; the next, I was certain that it was just the stereotypical lesbian experience of thinking a girl is flirting when she was really just being friendly.

It wasn’t until I started my usual routine of prepping my usual dinner, stretching, taking a hot shower, and taking a quiet evening for myself that things started to level out. I approached it like a game—force out the noise and focus on what mattered.

And what mattered was that I’d gotten time at all with Maya—who was amazing and smart and funny and still worth getting to know no matter what happened between us.

I just couldn’t help but also wish I could kiss her, too.

The next morning flew by. I got out of bed quickly for the game and got ready, warming myself up with pushups before heading downstairs for breakfast.

“Game day, baby!” GJ yelled, always with way more energy than anyone needed to have in the morning.

“Yeah,” I agreed with way less enthusiasm.

She slapped a hand to my back. “This is gonna be a good one. You ready for a blowout?”

“I don’t know if blowouts are really that fun,” I said. I didn’t mind winning, but there was something depressing about winning against a team that everyone knew didn’t have the kind of money or players that we did.

College basketball tended to be that way—there were the huge, big name teams that everyone knew, and then there were the smaller schools that were still in our division but were rarely ever championship-bound.

Sometimes, they’d surprise everyone. But mostly, the games wrapped with a record of 85-36, and the crowd leaving early.

I preferred the challenge of playing a game that was intense to the very finish. A buzzer-beater, the rush of pushing to the final second. I loved that feeling more than anything in the world; the uphill battle was irresistible.

Our morning and then afternoon moved through the same pre-game motions they always had. We focused on light workouts, getting our bodies warmed up and ready to play. We didn’t want to practice too hard and risk being fatigued before the game even started.

“Okay, ladies—let’s see some action,” Coach Darlene said in the locker room. “You already know the drill.”

“Suicides if we don’t blow them out as hard as we should’ve,” Mags mumbled from next to me, making a couple of other girls on the team giggle. It was fun to tease Coach Darlene about the predictable punishments she’d enforce upon us, but not so fun when we actually had to see it through.

We huddled, heat and adrenaline radiating off of everyone.

“Lakeside!” The team shouted and then erupted into cheers. We ran out from the locker room onto the court to warm up and then took our seats to wait for the game to start.

The other team was announced, met with scattered cheers and applause but mostly with boos. Then, it was our team.

The starters ran from our chairs to the court one after another, greeted with loud applause and hollering from the crowd. Our team’s hype up song pounded through the arena as lights flashed.

I shook out my muscles, getting myself ready for running out.