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MAYA

I was fighting the urge to check my email inbox every couple of seconds.

“It’s too early,” Iris told me as we walked to the gym. She’d made the executive decision that we were going to go together to get me out of my head.

The start of February meant graduate school decisions were going to come soon.

Maybe not this soon, as Iris reminded me over and over again, but soon enough.

The anticipation was killing me. I’d sent out six applications to different sociology doctorate programs, all of which would offer me exactly what I wanted.

I didn’t bother with location and instead went purely for what they could offer: what the students said about the program, what the professors specialized in, what kind of opportunities there were for research and training to become a professor.

It was the most excited and nervous I’d ever been for anything.

My expectations for my undergraduate degree had been minimal.

I knew I wanted out of Arizona, but that was as far as I’d gotten.

I didn’t fully know what it was I wanted to do or what I could do with a degree.

I anticipated some corporate office job, something passionless and with a vague title that only made sense to other people in my industry.

But instead, I started taking pre-requisite humanities classes and discovered the social sciences, and my career aspirations immediately became clear to me.

Ever since then, I’d been pushing hard to train for research and teaching positions in the future.

My professors had given me opportunities over the years to learn and grow and I felt ready.

Or at least, ready enough. I still felt a little bit like a kid playing dress up sometimes.

And just because I felt like I was ready didn’t mean I was actually going to get accepted into a program.

“I’m going to be so sad when you have to leave me,” Iris said, playfully frowning at me. “We’ve basically lived in the same skin for the past four years. It’s going to be so weird not seeing your face every day.”

“You might not, I applied for that one program in Colorado,” I said.

The rest were all over the map—east coast, west coast, midwest. I was leaving it all pretty much up to chance.

I wanted to say that if no one wanted me, I didn’t know what I would do but that wasn’t the truth.

I knew exactly what I’d do: I’d get a job, I just wouldn’t be happy about it.

“If the universe is on our side, it’ll keep us together,” she said. “I don’t want to have to find another roommate. Not that my current roommate is even around that much since she’s always over at her girlfriend’s house. ”

“Not girlfriends,” I specified. We hadn’t talked about labels yet and something stirred in me every time I thought about it.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be official—we basically were—but I couldn’t fight the feeling that something would change between us once we put a label on it.

I was worried things would suddenly go south, and I’d spend the rest of my life wishing we hadn’t pushed to make things so serious.

“And that’s part of what’s made me such a great roommate.

Isn’t it the ideal situation to have someone who still pays half the rent but is never around?

” “Not when I actually want to hangout with you,” Iris said, ignoring my girlfriend comment.

She knew better than to pick an argument with me on it.

I hadn’t budged once on my stance of refusing to talk about it or even acknowledge it.

“I’m not going anywhere, even if I do have to move,” I said.

I pushed down the feeling that was swelling inside of me at the thought of how a new chapter was coming.

Leaving Iris would be one of the hardest things I’d do in my life—even harder than leaving home.

I’d never had the kind of attachment to my hometown like everyone else did.

I’d been grateful to leave, grateful to meet more people, grateful for the opportunity to make friends who weren’t there out of convenience.

I thought I’d always have that somewhere in me, that trying to connect with others was hard for me. But Iris had proven me wrong. And Theo seemed to be proving me wrong, too, which was just as scary.

But graduate school was graduate school. It was what I’d been working for all this time. I didn’t want to completely give up on everything I’d been working for.

I took a deep breath. I had to go one step at a time. I’d worry about getting into a program and then worry about everything else.

Later that night, I headed over to Theo’s place after I finished my classes and reading for the night, and she finished her second practice of the day.

Her coach had been working her hard. Theo didn’t seem to ever get tired, so it was hard to tell, but her schedule seemed to keep getting busier and busier.

The closer March—and her game against Cam Kerr and Point Brook University—got, the smaller the windows of time Theo had for me seemed to get.

I’d started to get antsy when I didn’t hear from her in her usual amount of time, or at the times I usually heard from her. I was logical enough to know that she was busy and it had nothing to do with me, but it didn’t necessarily make her not being around any easier.

But I only felt it when we weren’t together. During the times when it was just us, it was something almost magical. Time slipped away quickly, neither of us ever running out of things to say to the other person.

“Hi,” I greeted her as soon as I stepped into her house.

Her hair was damp from her shower and I could still smell the lingering shampoo and body wash on her.

She was wearing athletic shorts and a long sleeve Lakeside Green basketball shirt.

I saw her in variations of the same outfit a million times over, and I found it irresistible every single time. It never, ever got old.

She pulled me into her arms, and all of the noise cut out. Every single worry about her not being around and how maybe I was a little bit of a hindrance to her schedule faded away in an instant.

It was only two weeks before what was arguably Theo’s biggest regular season game but there we were, pretending that nothing else was going on around us. No basketball, no pending championships, no upcoming draft, no graduate school decisions. We were just two normal people.

She kissed the top of my head. “Hi, pretty girl.”

“How was practice?”

“Same old,” she said. “I really think this is going to be a good year for us.”

“It’s been a good year,” I said, even though I knew Theo was too tough on herself and the team to actually think like that. A good year was the closest Theo ever got to talking about making it to the Final Four and then the championship.

The Coyotes were pretty much a shoo-in for making it into the first round of the tournament, but sports commentators seemed to be going back and forth on whether they actually stood a chance.

They had a good record, but it would be on the Point Brook game to know if they could actually bring it home against a major star-power team.

So far, it seemed like everyone’s odds were on Point Brook to win—unsurprising, since they’d won more rings than any other school.

It was still funny to me how basketball so casually came into my life.

Theo and I talked about the sport like it was any other job, any other hobby.

She didn’t treat it like she was about to get drafted into the women’s basketball league, or that she was the top pick and top college player of the moment.

As I played all of this out in my head, all I could think about was how Theo had turned me into the kind of person who talked about playoff odds and who was going to be taking home a ring. The transition had been subtle, and I couldn’t help but think it was at least a little funny.

I’d always imagined myself being one of those people who was steadfast in maintaining my own life and interests outside of my partner, but it felt so different in actual practice—and when it came to someone I actually liked.

Monotony and listening to someone talk about their day had never felt so comfortable, so easy.

“What are you thinking about?” Theo asked.

“Basketball,” I said.

Theo’s lips turned up in a smile. “Who are you?” she teased.

I chuckled. “I have no idea.”

She kissed my forehead and eased my purse off my arm and then my coat from my shoulders. “No more basketball unless it has to do with the Scott brothers.”

I moaned. “Ugh, you are so hot .”

“I got you something on the way back from practice,” Theo said and ducked into the kitchen.

I looked at her curiously. “What is it?”

“You have to sit down with me to get it,” she said, and I dragged her over to the couch.

We quickly settled in our usual position—Theo sitting upright with me lying my head in her lap.

It was my second favorite way she touched me, outside of when we fell asleep together at night, and she had her arms wrapped around me.

“Okay, let me see it,” I said, holding my hands out.

She handed off a Twix bar that she’d stuffed into her pocket. I gasped. “I’ve been craving one of these all day!” My face softened as I looked up at her from her lap. “Thank you.”

“Of course.”

I sat up and kissed her, the angle definitely as uncomfortable for her as it was for me, but I didn’t care.

It didn’t seem like Theo did, either. She took her time kissing me.

She pressed her lips gently against mine, really kissing me instead of making out or initiating sex.

It was so intimate. I’d come to love the soft, kind way she touched me.

Rather than wanting to run from her like I did with everyone else before, I leaned into it.

When we broke apart, Theo picked up the TV remote. “Shall we?” “Of course,” I said and settled back into position.