Page 36 of One on One
There must be flames flickering in my eyeballs now. I can’t swallow. “He said that was why I left?”
“Yeah?” Ben says warily. “You wanted more eyes on your work and we weren’t going to make the tournament…You got a job offer and…It was never clear to me whether it was at another school, or in the NBA, or what. He didn’t know.”
He didn’t know because the job offer didn’t exist. “I didn’t leave because we were bad or for another job. He and I didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of things, and I was going through personal shit. Even when they sucked, I loved that team more than anything. But I couldn’t do it anymore. That was it, okay?” My voice cracks.
He doesn’t say anything. He looks pensive, clearly shifting around the building blocks in his head, the ones he’s used to construct his assumptions about me and our shared history, testing to see whether the foundation still holds up the house. His face says he’s unsure.
“Okay?” I repeat.
He nods.
I read the street sign in front of us. Somehow we’re almost at my apartment, although hardly anything about the route we walked through downtown registered in my mind. Ben follows a few feet behind as I turn the corner.
He breaks the silence. “There must’ve been a misunderstanding, because Coach wouldn’t have said that if he didn’t think it was true.” He says this slowly, puzzling it out as he goes.
“You have a lot of faith in him.”
“Well, yeah, I do.”
I bite my lip hard, like it might prevent me from saying anything else. But I have to say something. Not about what happened to me. I have no interest in going anywhere near that subject with him, but I’m not the only one who got hurt. “You know he made Phil Coleman play on an injured heel, and that’s how he ruptured his Achilles?”
He doesn’t comment on the sudden change in subject, but it surprises him. “Uh. That’s not how I remember it.”
“He should’ve gone pro.”
“He was cleared to play.”
“He told him he didn’t feel ready.”
“Coach wouldn’t do that.”
He really believes it. We’ve reached my building, so I stop walking. I can hear my own agitated breathing. “You make a lot of wrong assumptions about people,” I say. “I don’t think you’re going to win theBeach Housebracket.”
There were points in this conversation when, if we had stopped talking, we might have ended our walk with some kind of peace. But no, we kept going, to the ugly tender spotat the heart of it all. There is no treaty, no resolution. There’s no anything. Ben stands there for a minute, his face resigned, and then Sasha pulls him away, and I wait until they’re out of sight before I summon a Lyft to pick me up and take me to my car.
ELEVEN
My job is easier whenwe play well, so January is a challenging month. In the first two weeks of the year, the team serves up two steaming losses and two anemic wins. Our opponents roll over us in the paint, and we look lost on offense, clanging desperate three-pointers off the rim. There’s no rhythm, no magic. Even Eric looks subdued on the sidelines.
Quincy misses an easy layup and the ESPN broadcast catches him yelling something profane at himself. At home somewhere, a parent covers a kid’s ears and writes an angry letter.
January taunts me:Now show me what you can do with that.The day after the first loss, I put together a “happy birthday” highlight reel for a former Ardwyn power forward who now plays professionally in Montenegro. It’s all I’ve got because there’s nothing worth posting about the game. Even the cheerleaders’ halftime dance was out of sync.
We go all the way to Omaha and lose again. After the game, I wait down the hall from the locker room so I can follow the team back to the bus. The postgame debrief is taking longer than usual. I’m cold, grumpy, and aching for my own bed, a thousand miles away.
Tonight, the budget cuts feel hopelessly unavoidable.
Someone flings open the door to the pressroom, a guy talking to somebody else over his shoulder. “See you tomorrow. Rise and grind, bro!” I spin around to face the wall.
“Mizzz Radford,” he says in a singsong voice, like the little brother I never had and don’t want.
JJ Jones works for ESPN and covers some of Ardwyn’s games. He has low straight eyebrows and a big chin, and he dresses like his mother bought his wardrobe with the proceeds of his father’s Ponzi scheme. He believes himself to be everyone’s best friend and vice versa, and without prompting he spits out phrases that belong on a free poster that comes with a two-pack of hypermasculine deodorant.
“Tough game,” he says. “That lineup isn’t working for you.”
“I think we’re all aware.” I offer a perfunctory smile to punctuate the conversation.
“Can’t be fun going all the way to Nebraska to lose. Cornhusker State! Omaha, man.”
