Page 78 of One on One
Later that week, I got another middle-of-the-night text:I hope I’m not scaring you off marriage with my venting. Just make sure you’re compatible with whichever lucky guy you end up with. You need to be on the same page about careers, family, sex. Unfortunately, Kelly and I are having issues with all three.
I felt sick when I read it. At that point I couldn’t pretend he wasn’t being inappropriate, but I convinced myself I could keep it under control. I told myself he had a crush, he was lonely, he had marital problems. Maybe a midlife crisis. Heknew my dad, recruited his players—why would he jeopardize that by making a move onme? If I found the perfect balance of acting like everything was normal, laughing off the flirtatious stuff without engaging with it, but not being so direct that I hurt his ego, he would stop. It was like walking a tightrope. I spent a half hour coming up with a response to each of his texts. I used to cry before going to his room. I figured eventually, he would get that I wasn’t interested and give up, and it wouldn’t affect my job.
But I was wrong about my disinterest and discomfort warding him off, because he never cared about whether I was interested. And I was wrong about him not making a move. It wasn’t a game I could win by saying all the right things and using denial and deflection as weapons. I thought I had agency, and I thought he had character. I was wrong about both.
I can’t tell Ben any of this yet. I don’t know how he’s going to react, and there’s no need to drop the bomb right now, before the season is over. “Do you want to know what’s fucked up?” I say instead. “I still love it. I feel so strongly that all those things are wrong, and I complain about them anonymously on the Internet, but I still love college basketball. Does that make me a huge hypocrite?”
He strokes my hair, thinking. “Every industry, every business, every institution has its issues. But you have to work somewhere, so work in the place where you get to do the thing you love. And if you’re here, you can make it better, even in small ways.”
“I don’t know if I believe that,” I say. “Sometimes the only way to make something better is to blow it up.”
“True.” He shrugs. “But I don’t know how to blow anything up. I just want to be good at what I do and make a difference that way.”
“You’re going to be a great coach,” I say.
He squeezes my waist. “Don’t you ever regret leaving? After college?”
I flop onto my back and look up at the ceiling. I can barely make out the shape of the fan. My eyes are heavy, and it’s getting late. There are some things you can only say in the dark.
“It’s complicated,” I start. “On one hand, no. But at the same time, I keep thinking about my best video.”
“Which one? The one with Keith Wesley?”
I smile. He has a favorite. He didn’t even have to think about it.
“No. I don’t know. See, that’s the problem.” I lay my forearm across my eyes.
Eight years is a long time.
I don’t know if I want to continue, but the words claw their way up my throat anyway, my voice jagged with the scratches they leave behind. “I’ve realized lately that I haven’t actually lived my life in a long time, and it’s made me wonder what I’ve missed. Sorry, this is really heavy.”
“You can be anything you want with me,” he says. “But please never be sorry.”
I nod. Swallow. “What if,” I hazard, “I never made my best video? What if I never did my best work? What if it’s something I would’ve done five years ago, and never did, and never will? That probably sounds like nonsense. And it doesn’t matter anyway, I’m not curing rare childhood diseases—”
“Annie.” He sounds surprised. Concerned. Maybebecause of what I said, maybe because of the vulnerability in it. “You haven’t made your best video yet. Even if you count all the ones you never made.” He punches out the words with force, like he wants me to understand how sure he is.
“How do you know?” My voice is small. I hate that it is.
“Because I know this team, and next week—I don’t care, I’m saying it—we’ll be playing for a national championship. And I know you. You’re going to turn it into magic.”
TWENTY-FOUR
“So much for Tennessee’s sweetassist-to-turnover ratio.” I pat Ben on the back. Ardwyn blew that stat to pieces in our rout of the Volunteers. I’m lucky to have spotted him when I made my way back to the court after packing my camera away. The band is blasting the fight song, and people—players, staff, media, VIPs, security—are moving in every direction. I grab his shoulder and pull him down so I can shout in his ear. “How will you cope?”
“I’ll manage,” he says with a smile. “Elite Eight is a decent consolation prize.”
Elite Eight. That means we’re three wins away from pulling it all off: winning a title, making history, and saving the athletic department and our jobs.
Looking around, it’s mind-boggling. At this stage of the tournament the games are in football arenas with basketball courts plunked in the middle. It’s like playing on the moon, plus spectators. Coach Thomas and Quincy are at centercourt, doing a post-victory interview with the sideline reporter. Taylor appears in front of me like a type-A mirage, squeezing through the throng, saying something I can’t hear.
“What?” I yell.
“I said, ‘There you are!’ ” Taylor yells back.
When the music stops, it gets quiet fast. Even the chatter of the remaining fans hanging back in the stadium isn’t enough to fill the vast space. It’s quiet enough for me to hear JJ Jones behind me, telling someone that Arizona Tech is trouncing St. Mary’s.
“What’s the score?” Ben asks, turning around.
