Page 91 of One on One
He chews his lip, reading further. “What thehell?” His nostrils flare. “He told you to come to hisroomto take notes while he watched film?”
“Yeah.”
“That doesn’t even make sense,” Ben sputters. “Helping with film was my job, not yours.”
I stare at him. “That wasn’t really why…”
“I know. I just don’t understand. How, and why.” His brows furrow as he continues reading.
My heart aches, watching him wrestle with this. It dredges up memories of what it felt like to have my conceptions of the world and the person I idolized pulverized. It’s jarring to see. But then I’ve had eight years to get used to these facts, and he’s had ten minutes. Maynard’s picture is sitting on his desk back at home as we speak.
“Can you put the phone down? Let me just tell you.” I wring my hands. “It all came to a head when we went to Florida for the holiday tournament.”
I’d been dreading it, because I knew it would be a shit show like every year. Four days in a hotel somewhere warm and everyone always acted like it was spring break. I was hoping Maynard would get too drunk at the bar in the lobby with the rest of the coaches to ask me to come to his room, but nope.
“When I got there, he tried to get me to drink a beer with him. He took a sip from the bottle first and then tried to hand it to me, like it was normal for us to share. I said, ‘No, thanks,’ and he told me, ‘It’s okay to let loose sometimes. We’ve been working hard and we deserve to relax.’ The next thing I knew he was touching my shoulders, giving me a back rub.”
Ben’s expression turns from heartbroken to homicidal.
“You’re probably sore from the plane,” Maynard had said. “I know I am.” I froze. Forget fight-or-flight—I sat there and couldn’t move. It felt like acid was burning a hole in my stomach and I couldn’t process the fact that his hands wereonme.
My throat closes up. I pull my water bottle from my bag and take a sip.
“After a couple minutes I was able to move away and a ridiculous story came out of my mouth, about how I hated massages and once got a spa gift card for my birthday but gave it to my sister, and I told him I wasn’t feeling well and left. The following night I went straight to my room after the game even though he told me to come by. I was climbing into bed when he sent me a text. It was a picture, the outline of an erection through his pants.”
My voice breaks. Ben leans forward on his elbows and picks up my hands, dropping his forehead to rest against them. I give myself a few breaths to regain my composure before continuing, but the memory of that night is vivid in my mind.
After I got the text, I went to the bathroom and threw up. Then I called Cassie and woke her up and told her everything, finally. We cried together, and then she went intoCassie mode and started talking through all the options, but none of the options seemed viable. What was I going to do? He was like a religious figure on campus. Even though I had proof, going up against him was unfathomable.
A little while later he texted again.I apologize. That was meant for Kelly.I knew he was full of shit, and I didn’t feel safe. I was sharing a room with Daria, the student athletic trainer, and thank god she came back to the room at that moment, because I was worried if he knew she was at the bar he would come to find me. But in the morning Daria had to leave early to tape ankles.
I squeeze Ben’s hands. “He came to see me the next morning. I shouldn’t have let him in, I knew that, but what was I going to do, make a scene in the hallway?”
As if all the people whose futures and livelihoods depended on his success would save me. No, my plan was to tell him I didn’t see him like that, but no hard feelings, and that we could pretend it never happened. No big deal. I kept thinking about the fucking video I had to finish editing to send to the recruits, how I needed footage from the game that day. How I needed to deal with this—him—to get to that. I was in that stage of shock where you go on with your daily routine because you can’t bear to accept that everything has changed. But he didn’t give me time to say what I wanted.
Ben’s face is hidden, resting against my hands, but my knuckles are wet with his tears.
“He told me he couldn’t stop thinking about me.” My voice wobbles. “That we had a connection, and he’d been trying to deny it, but he couldn’t anymore. That he wanted me so badly, and he knew I felt the same way. He told me I’dbeen dropping hints for months with my texts and the way I always made an effort to dress up. That I was constantly hanging around that spring, making excuses to spend time with him. Pretending it was all about the internship I wanted. The internship he’d gotten for me.”
The internship that, maybe, Ben would’ve gotten instead of me, if Maynard hadn’t had ulterior motives.
Ben’s head snaps up and he releases my hands. “Like you said earlier,” he says. “He’s a talented storyteller.”
I fiddle with the lid on my water bottle. “He told me I was sexy. And I said, ‘I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression.’ When I think about that, I want to rip my hair out.”
I finally got to say something and Iapologized. Afterward I fantasized about what would have happened if I’d told him he was delusional and needed to fuck off. Nothing different, I know that now. In the moment I wanted to de-escalate the situation, and honestly, part of me felt bad for him. I was worried about his feelings, which was a total joke, because he’d never given a single thought to mine.
I close my eyes. “Then he looked down at himself and said, ‘So, what, you’re going to leave me like this?’ I didn’t look. I walked right past him, out the door and down the hall, and sprinted to one of the team buses outside.”
Every sympathetic feeling I had for him, every remnant of admiration—it all went poof. I just felt bitter. This was the guy I thought was so capable, so supportive? That I looked up to? I went to the game. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. The footage was crap. I called Cassie at halftime, and she booked me a flight home.
“I left in the third quarter, packed, and was through airport security before anyone else left the arena. I never heardfrom him again. I got some texts from other people—you included—asking what happened, and I ignored everyone. I told my family, and Eric, and I begged them all not to tell anyone else. I wanted to forget it, and forget basketball.”
I just wanted it to be over. A system where a person like that has so much power, enough power to fool most people and control the rest, can’t be healthy, I decided. The whole thing was corrupt, rotten, top to bottom. I believed that for a long time.
I open my eyes. “I always thought—hoped—I was the only one. But I recently learned there were others. As soon as he left for Arizona Tech, he started pursuing a student manager there. No one before me has come forward, but Lily—the ESPN reporter—doubts I was the first. There’s always been at least one at any given time. There’s probably one right now.”
I fall silent, and relief seeps into my body. I’m done. I told him everything.
