lyricii

indiana's bench is already up, clapping, someone yelling something you can't hear over the blood in your ears your own bench is quiet in the specific way it goes quiet when they think you might actually get tossed you don't remember deciding to walk toward the ref. 

you just know you're moving, and coach fernandez is already off the bench, and there's a hand closing around your bicep from behind, not rough, not grabbing, just there, solid, familiar in a way your body recognizes half a second before your brain does. "hey." paige's voice, low, pitched just for you. "hey — look at me, not him."

you don't want to look at her looking at her has never once made anything easier. "that was a clean screen, paige, she was standing —"

"i know." she's already walking you backward, toward the bench, her hand sliding down to your wrist like she's done it a thousand times, because she has. "i know it was a bad call. you're not wrong. but you're about to be out if you don't sit down in the next ten seconds, so sit down."

the way she says it is not soft, not coddling, just certain is the only reason you let her steer you onto the bench instead of the girl who fouled you somewhere in the part of your brain that isn't currently on fire, you register that everyone is watching this. 

watching her handle you like it's nothing like it's normal like she isn't the one person on this team who used to know exactly what your hands were doing under a blanket at two in the morning in a dorm room three states from here. "breathe," she says, crouching in front of you so her back is to the court, blocking you from the cameras panning the bench. "in for four."

"i don't need —"

"in for four." her eyes don't move off yours. "you're not doing the ref any favors by getting a tech. you're doing it for you."

you breathe it's humiliating how easily your body still listens to her it wasn't supposed to be like this none of it was storrs, sophomore year, a supply closet that smelled like dry-erase markers, her hand fisted in the front of your jersey like she couldn't decide whether to shove you away or pull you closer. 

it had gone on for two years like that quiet, contained, folded into the corners of a life that had no room in it for anything that might get out.

people will make it about the team, she'd said, the night she ended it, the two of you sitting in her car in a parking lot because it was the only place that felt private enough. they'll say we're playing favorites with each other. they'll say it's why i get more touches. i can't have that follow me into the league.

you remember not crying you remember being proud of that, in the sick way you're proud of things that cost you something you remember saying okay like it was a normal word and not the worst one you'd ever had to use.

you didn't know then that you'd both end up drafted to the same team you don't know, even now, whether that was luck or something crueler. "you good?" her voice again, present tense, snapping you back into the arena, the scoreboard, the fourth quarter about to start without you in it.

"i'm good."

"you're not, but you will be in about ninety seconds, so." she stands, offers you a hand up like it's nothing, like her palm against yours isn't a small, private earthquake every single time. "coach wants you back in with four on the clock. can you give her four clean minutes?"

"yeah."

"say it like you believe it."

you almost laugh it startles you that she can still do that, pull something unclenched out of you in the middle of the worst quarter of your season. "yeah, paige. four clean minutes."

"good." she squeezes your hand once, quick, before she lets go quick enough that no one watching would call it anything quick enough that only you would know it happened at all. "go be a problem for indiana instead of the refs."

you give her four clean minutes you give her a game-tying three with forty seconds left, actually, and when you look to the bench on the way back down the court she's already looking at you, not celebrating, just watching, the way she used to watch you across a dorm room like she was memorizing something she knew she wasn't allowed to keep.

dallas wins by six in the tunnel after, your teammates peel off toward the locker room in loud, happy clumps, and you hang back to retie a shoe that doesn't need retying, and paige hangs back too, because some habits don't unlearn themselves just because you told each other they had to.

"you good?" she asks again, quieter this time, no bench, no cameras, no team five feet away pretending not to listen. "i don't know how you do that." you're not looking at her. you're looking at your shoe. "talk me down like it's nothing. like you're not —"

"like i'm not what."

like you're not the reason i needed talking down from in the first place tonight, you don't say. like some part of me was crashing out about a foul call and a bigger part of me was crashing out about four years ago and you can't tell the difference from the outside, but i can't stop knowing it.

"nothing," you say instead. "forget it." she's quiet for a second too long. "i don't forget it," she says finally, and it's not clear if she means the game, or the question, or something further back than either of those. "i just got good at not saying so."

you don't have an answer for that you're not sure there is one that doesn't reopen something you both agreed, once, in a parked car, to keep closed.

"good game, paige," you say, because it's easier than the truth, and you leave her standing in the tunnel light with her hands in her pockets and an expression you used to be the only person allowed to read.

she doesn't stop you, you don't know, walking away, if that's relief or the thing that's going to keep you up tonight maybe it's both it usually is with her.

it's eleven seconds of footage and it's everywhere by the time you wake up you, on the bench, reese crouched in front of you blocking the cameras her hand on your wrist the way you're looking at her not at the ref, not at the court, just at her, like she's the only stable thing in a building full of noise. 

someone's slowed it down and put a sad piano song under it and the caption says the way she talks her down every single time 🥹and it has four hundred thousand notes by the time your coffee's cold.

you don't watch it paige texts you a screenshot at 8am with no caption at all, which somehow says more than words would have the reporter asks about it before shootaround, phone already out, already recording.

"there's a clip going around from last night — you and paige bueckers on the bench. people are calling it one of the best teammate moments of the season. can you talk about that chemistry?"

chemistry like it's a stat like it's something that started this year.

"paige is good at keeping people even-keeled," you say, and it's true, and it costs you nothing to say, and it still feels like handing someone a photograph with half of it torn off. "she's been doing that for me since college, honestly. she just — knows how to get through to me."

you didn't mean to say since college it slips out easily, unremarkable, the kind of true thing that's dangerous specifically because it sounds so ordinary the reporter doesn't clock it why would she you and paige went to the same school; it's public record, it's nothing, it's two lines in both your wikipedia pages. only you know what's folded up inside those four words.

zaza finds you at your locker after, arms crossed, the specific look on her face that means she was your teammate in college too and she remembers more than she's ever said out loud. "since college, huh."

"we were teammates. it's not a secret."

"i didn't say it was a secret." zaza's voice stays light, easy, but her eyes don't. "i said since college, huh — because i was there, and i remember exactly how much keeping you even-keeled reese used to do for you at two a.m. in dorms she wasn't assigned to."

your stomach drops the way it does every time someone gets close to the thing without saying the thing. "zaza —"

"i'm not saying anything." she holds her hands up. "i'm just saying that clip is doing four hundred thousand notes of a story you two clearly haven't finished telling yourselves, let alone anyone else."

she leaves before you can answer, which is its own kind of mercy, because you don't have one as paige finds you in the hallway outside the locker room, hood up, eyes tired in the specific way that means she's seen the clip more than once. "you told a reporter since college."

"i didn't think —"

"i know you didn't think. that's not what i'm —" she stops, drags a hand down her face. "it's fine. it's true. it's not even the part that matters."

"then what's the part that matters?" she looks at you for a long moment, long enough that you feel it in your chest, that old specific ache of being looked at by someone who used to be allowed to look at you for as long as she wanted.

"the part that matters," she says finally, "is that four hundred thousand people watched eleven seconds of us and called it the best thing they saw all night, and neither of us can say why it looked like that. and i don't think either of us has figured out yet whether that's a coincidence or not."

you don't have an answer you're not sure there is one that doesn't require opening a door you both spent four years agreeing to keep shut. "i have to get to shootaround," you say, which isn't an answer either, just an exit.

"yeah." she steps back, lets you have it. "me too." neither of you moves for a second longer than the exchange requires then you both do, in opposite directions, and the clip keeps climbing notes behind you, telling a story neither of you has agreed to finish.

you beat the toronto tempo two nights later a real win, a statement win, the kind that snaps a three-game skid against them and has the whole locker room loud in a way that has nothing to do with clips or reporters and someone's parents have rented out the top floor of a bar downtown, and by eleven o'clock zaza is doing a truly unhinged rendition of a song from a movie no one under thirty has seen, and paige is sitting next to you on a bar stool with two drinks in her and her shoulder warm against yours. "can i tell you something," she says, the words a little soft at the edges.

"you can always tell me something."

"i think about the closet a lot." she says it into her glass, not looking at you. "the one at storrs. i know that's insane. i know it's been years. i just — i think about it a lot." your heart does something complicated and fast. "paige —"

"i think i made the wrong call," she says, still not looking at you, "back then. i think i picked something that felt safe and it wasn't even — it wasn't even that safe, it just felt like something i could control, and i traded you for it, and i've been regretting it for so long i stopped calling it regret and just started calling it normal."

you should say something you don't, for a second too long, and she seems to hear the silence for what it almost is, because she laughs, short and a little broken. "you don't have to say anything back. i'm just drunk enough to finally say it out loud." and that drunk enough is the exact thing that lets you off the hook, and you take it, because it's easier than the alternative.

"you're drunk," you say, gently, like you're handing her an excuse she can use tomorrow. "we don't have to talk about this right now."

something in her face closes, just slightly, just enough that you notice. "yeah," she says. "you're right. i'm drunk." she doesn't bring it up again that night you tell yourself that's a mercy you don't sleep much either way.

she finds you two days later, at your locker after practice, everyone else already gone, and she's not drunk this time, and her voice doesn't have soft edges anymore it's steady; it's the voice she uses on the bench when she needs you to actually hear her. "i need to say something and i need you to let me finish before you tell me i'm just something."

your stomach flips. "paige —"

"let me finish." she takes a breath. "i said something at the bar the other night and you let me off the hook for it, and i let you, because it was easier that night. but i wasn't drunk enough to make it up. i was drunk enough to finally say it. those aren't the same thing."

you don't move. "i picked my image over you," she says, "when we were twenty, and i've spent every year since then telling myself it was the smart choice, the responsible one, and maybe it was, for my career, i don't know. but it wasn't smart for me. and it's been four years of watching you across locker rooms and benches and tunnels, knowing exactly how you take your coffee and which shoulder you sleep on and what your face does right before you cry, and telling myself none of that means anything anymore because i'm the one who ended it."

"paige —"

"i'm not done." her voice shakes, just barely, just enough that you know it's costing her something to keep going. "i'm not asking you to forgive four years in one conversation. i'm not even asking you to want this back. i just needed you to know it wasn't the alcohol talking at the bar. the alcohol just made me brave enough to say out loud what's been true the entire time. i love you. i don't think i ever stopped. i just got very good at pretending i had."

the locker room is quiet enough that you can hear the hum of the vending machine down the hall. you can hear your own heartbeat, honestly, loud and stupid and four years overdue. "you can't just —" your voice cracks and you hate that it does. "you can't say that like it undoes what it cost me. you left me in a parking lot, res. you made a decision about both of us and only told me after it was already made."

"i know." she doesn't flinch from it. "i'm not asking you to pretend that didn't happen. i'm asking you to know that i've spent four years wishing i'd chosen differently, and i finally have enough nerve to say so, sober, in a locker room, with nothing to blame it on."

you look at her really look, the way you haven't let yourself in years, not the bench-crouch, careful, professional look, but the full weight of it and something in your chest that's been clenched since a car in a parking lot four years ago loosens, just slightly, just enough to feel dangerous. "i'm not saying yes to anything tonight," you say, finally, quietly.

"i'm not asking you to."

"but i'm not saying no, either." you exhale, and it shakes on the way out. "ask me again. properly. when it's not eleven at night and neither of us has just showered off a practice." something in her face breaks open, relief and disbelief tangled together. "yeah?"

"yeah, paige." you almost laugh, and it almost turns into something else. "ask me again."

"okay." she nods, like she's filing it away somewhere she won't lose it this time. "okay. i will." and then, like she can't quite help herself, like four years of holding back finally runs out of road she closes the distance and kisses you. soft, careful, asking permission even as she does it, one hand coming up to rest against your jaw like she's afraid you'll disappear if she doesn't.

you let her for a second, just one, you let yourself have this before you pull back. "that wasn't asking properly," you murmur, breathless, forehead still close to hers. "no." her thumb brushes your cheek, reluctant to let go. "that one was just for me. the real ask is still coming."

"good." you exhale, and it shakes on the way out, but it isn't just nerves this time. "make it count."

"i will." she presses one more kiss to your temple, brief, promise-shaped, before she finally steps back — and for the first time in four years, the space between you doesn't feel like distance it feels like something you're finally, both of you, walking toward.

she asks properly three days later not at a bar, not in a locker room with the vending machine humming down the hall she asks at your apartment, showered and sober and visibly more nervous than you've ever seen her on a court, holding a bag of takeout from the place you used to order from in storrs like she remembered on purpose.

"i said i'd ask you properly," she says, standing in your doorway, "so. can i come in, and can i ask you properly, and can you please not make this harder than it already is for me, because i've rehearsed this in my car for twenty minutes."

you step back and let her in. "you rehearsed it?"

"extensively." she sets the bag down on your counter like it's fragile. "okay. here it is." she takes a breath, and for a second she looks exactly like she did in a parking lot four years ago except this time she's not the one leaving. "i don't want to hide this anymore. any of it. not because i'm not scared of what people will say, because i am, i think i'll always be a little bit scared of that. but i'd rather be scared and honest than safe and lying to both of us again. i want to date you. actually date you. tell people, if you want to. not tell people, if you don't. i just don't want it to be a secret anymore just because that's easier for me." your chest does something complicated and warm. "that's a good ask."

"i practiced it twenty times."

"i believe you." you cross the space between you, slow, deliberate, the way she was with you in the tunnel that first night. "yes, res. i'll date you. properly. loudly, if you want. quietly, if that's what you need. i just want it to be real, however we do it."

relief breaks over her face like something physical, and this time when she kisses you there's no hesitation in it, no asking permission first just four years of waiting finally allowed to land somewhere. "for the record," she murmurs against your mouth, "i would've said all that even without the rehearsed speech."

"i know." you're smiling too hard to hide it. "but i'm glad you rehearsed it anyway."

"twenty times," she says again, like she can't quite believe she's here, saying it, meaning it, with nothing left to blame it on. "i wanted to get it right."

"you did." you pull her back in before she can say anything else. "you got it right."

the takeout goes cold on the counter for a while neither of you mind later, sitting cross-legged on your couch with cartons balanced between you, she tells you the rest of it the parts she didn't have room for in the doorway. 

how she almost said something after your first game together this season, and lost her nerve how zaza cornered her in the weight room two days ago and said, flatly, if you don't tell her, i will, and i'll embarrass you both doing it — which paige swears is the real reason she finally worked up the courage.

"i owe zaza," you say.

"zaza's insufferable and i owe her everything." as paige steals a piece of your food without asking, the way she used to. "she's going to be unbearable about this, you know. she's going to act like she orchestrated the whole thing."

"she kind of did."

"don't tell her that." you laugh, and it feels easy in a way it hasn't in years not careful, not folded into a locker room or a parked car, just yours, out loud, in your own apartment with no one to hide it from. "so what happens now," you ask, "with the team. the reporters. all of it."

"whatever we want to happen." paige shrugs, but her eyes stay steady on you. "we don't owe anyone an announcement. we also don't owe anyone a secret. if someone asks, i'm not going to lie about it anymore. i'm just done doing that part."

"okay." you set your carton down, lean into her shoulder, feel her arm come around you like it's always belonged there. "no more secrets, then."

"no more secrets." she presses a kiss into your hair. "just us. finally just—us."

outside, dallas is still buzzing about the win over toronto, and somewhere a clip of the two of you is probably still circulating, still collecting captions from strangers who don't know the half of it. 

it isn't dramatic that's the worst part she doesn't scream or cry or throw anything she just sits across from me at a table in a restaurant that's too nice for the conversation we're about to have, and she says the city's different now, the timing's different now, she doesn't think either of us were built for long distance, not really, not with everything else going on.

i want to remind her that six months ago she said the opposite that she said she'd do anything to keep this i don't say it i just nod, and pay for a dinner i don't finish, and go home to boxes i haven't unpacked yet that was four months ago.

i tell people i'm fine. i tell my new teammates i'm fine i tell cam and rae the two who've adopted me fastest, who drag me out for team dinners and make sure i'm not eating cereal for dinner alone in that apartment that i'm fine.

i am not fine i am, by rae's precise clinical assessment, "surviving on vibes and spite," which is generous so tonight, they don't ask. "we're going out," cam says, already holding my jacket out like she anticipated the protest. "not a discussion."

"i have a lift at eight tomorrow—"

"you have a lift at eight tomorrow regardless of what you do tonight, so you might as well enjoy the in-between," rae says, unbothered, already scrolling for a bar i go mostly because arguing with the two of them together has never once worked in my favor.

the bar they pick is dim in the right way — low gold light, the kind of hum that makes conversation easy without shouting i get two drinks in before i actually loosen, shoulders coming down from somewhere near my ears, laughing at something rae says about a rookie mixing up two coaches' names in shootaround that's when cam elbows me subtle as a truck.

"okay don't be weird about it," she says, "but table by the window."

i look i shouldn't have looked, because now i can't stop she's stunning in that inevitable, slightly unfair way dark hair loose around her shoulders, a black slip dress, the kind of face i've definitely seen before, on a poster, a screen, somewhere, i can't place it and i don't try very hard because she catches me looking and doesn't glance away first.

"i think that's the actress from that show," rae mutters. "the one everyone was talking about last year."

"the action one?"

"the action one."

i don't say anything i take a drink instead she comes over about twenty minutes later — actually walks over, drink in hand, easy smile already in place like she does this often, like strangers are just friends she hasn't been properly introduced to yet. "i'm told you're the reason golden state's offense looked confused all season," she says, sliding into the empty seat at our table without waiting for permission.

"i'm told you're the reason half of my group chat lost their minds last spring," i say back, and something about the surprise on her face like she didn't expect me to have an answer makes cam laugh into her glass. "madison," she says.

i tell her my name she says it back once, testing it, like she's deciding whether she likes the shape of it in her mouth i don't know how the night goes the way it goes after that, only that it does she stays. 

cam and rae fold her into the conversation easily, and she folds into it like she was always meant to be there, laughing at rae's stories, asking sharp, curious questions about the trade, about the city, about me specifically in ways that feel less like small talk and more like she's paying attention.

i have another drink and another by the time the bar starts to empty out, cam and rae have migrated to the other end of the table, deep in their own conversation, leaving me and madison in the kind of proximity that feels accidental and isn't.

"dance with me," i say it comes out before i can stop it, loosened by whatever's in my glass, by four months of feeling invisible in my own life she raises an eyebrow. "there's no music."

"there's music." there is, technically, a faint from the speaker near the bar it's enough that she stands anyway and takes my hand like she's been waiting for me to ask.

there's nothing choreographed about it, just her hand at my waist, mine loose around her neck, swaying more than dancing, her laugh low against my ear when i nearly trip over my own feet. "you're not usually like this," she says, not a question but an observation. "like what?"

"forward."

"liquid courage," i admit, and she laughs again, closer this time, and i feel it more than hear it. "i don't mind it," she says.

i kiss her first i'll think about that later that i'm the one who closes the distance, hand sliding to the back of her neck, her breath catching soft against my mouth before she kisses me back like she's been waiting all night for me to be brave enough when i pull back, she's watching me with something unreadable. "my place," she says. "if you want."

i should think about veronica i should think about the fact that i'm still not fully unpacked, that my heart's been sitting in a box somewhere in el segundo for four months but standing here, with madison’s hand still warm at my waist and her eyes steady on mine, i don't think about any of it. "yeah," i say. "i want."

her place is close, a high floor, floor-to-ceiling windows, the city glittering low and endless beneath us i barely register any of it, though, because the second the door shuts behind us, she's got a hand fisted gently in the front of my shirt, pulling me back to her. "tell me if you want to stop," she says, low, serious under the teasing. "any point."

"i won't."

"tell me anyway." i nod, and that's enough for her she kisses me again, slower this time, deliberate, walking me backward until my shoulders hit the wall beside her hallway, her hands framing my jaw like she's trying to memorize the shape of my face.

what happens after that stays between the two of us and the city lights bleeding gold through her window unhurried, quiet, the kind of night that asks nothing of either of us except to be present in it after, i lie tangled in sheets that smell like her perfume, her fingers tracing idle patterns against my spine.

"so," she says, eventually, voice rough and amused. "was that just the liquid courage talking?"

i think about it — actually think about it, veronica's face fading further from my mind with every second i spend here, in this bed, with someone who somehow doesn't feel like a stranger anymore. "ask me again in the morning," i say. "when i'm sober."

she huffs a laugh against my shoulder. "i intend to."

i wake up before she does as the light in her bedroom is different in the morning softer, less gold and more grey-blue, filtering in through the blinds she never fully closed. for a second i forget where i am, then i feel the unfamiliar weight of an arm slung loose over my waist and it all comes back at once, quick and warm and a little disorienting.

madison's still asleep, hair a mess against the pillow, face soft in a way it wasn't at the bar none of the easy performance from last night, just someone sleeping as i lie there for a while, not moving, doing the math on how i feel.

i wait for the guilt the reflexive kind, the kind that's been showing up uninvited for four months every time i so much as looked at someone new it doesn't come but what comes instead is quieter something closer to relief, though i'm not ready to call it that yet.

she stirs eventually, blinking slow, and catches me already watching her. "that's a lot of thinking for this early," she says, voice rough with sleep. "i think loudly."

"noted." she pushes up onto an elbow, hair falling across her face. "so. it's morning."

"it's morning."

"i believe i was promised an answer."

i almost laugh. "you don't waste time."

"i've found that's usually the better policy." but there's no edge in it just her watching me, patient, giving me room to actually answer instead of deflect so i try.

"it wasn't just the liquid courage," i say slowly, working it out loud as i go. "i mean — it helped. i wouldn't have had the nerve otherwise. but the wanting to dance with you, the wanting to kiss you — that part was mine, sober or not." something in her expression eases, like she'd actually been bracing for a different answer.

"good," she says. "because i'd hate to be a symptom."

"you're not a symptom."

"what am i, then?" i don't have a clean answer for that one yet, and she doesn't push for one that's the thing i notice most about her, still she asks the real questions without demanding you have the whole truth ready on command.

"i don't know yet," i say honestly. "i just moved here. i got out of something four months ago that i'm still figuring out how to talk about. i don't want to make you a rebound just because the timing lines up."

madison considers that, tracing an idle line along the sheet between us. "for what it's worth, i wasn't looking for anything last night either. i just liked you. still do, actually, in the daylight, which is usually where these things fall apart."

"so what does that make this?"

"undecided," she says, and smiles like the word doesn't scare her at all. "i'm fine with undecided. are you?"

i think about veronica about the version of me that would've needed an answer immediately, needed the label locked down before she could relax into anything but four months of unpacking boxes slowly has taught me something, apparently, about not rushing the parts that don't need rushing. "yeah," i say. "i think i am."

cam texts me twice before i'm even out of madison’s building, the second one just three question marks. rae's is more direct: you didn't come home. spill or i'm assuming the worst/best case scenario.

i don't answer right away either i stand outside on the sidewalk instead, sun is already too bright for how little sleep i got, and let myself just feel the morning for a second before i have to explain it to anyone as my phone buzzes again, not cam not rae.

madison: for the record, i'd like there to be a next time. no liquid courage required.

i look up at her building once before i start walking, something loosening in my chest that's been tight since a tuesday four months ago.

me: i'd like that too.

it isn't healed it isn't fixed, veronica's absence is still going to sit in that apartment in el segundo for a while yet, in boxes i still haven't opened, in the parts of me still learning how to be somewhere new without someone who used to make it feel like home but for the first time in four months, walking down a sidewalk in a city i didn't choose, i don't feel like i'm just surviving it.

i feel like maybe i'm starting to actually live in it.

three weeks after the morning i walked out of madison's apartment feeling lighter than i had in months, cam corners me at practice with the specific look she gets when she's decided something without consulting me first. "so are you dating the actress or not," she says. "because rae and i have a bet going and i need to win it."

"there's no bet."

"there is absolutely a bet."

i don't answer, mostly because i don't have a clean one, maadison and i have seen each other four times since that night dinner twice, a walk along the strand that turned into two hours of just talking, and once she came to watch me practice and sat in the stands with a coffee like it was nothing, like it wasn't the most normal thing in the world for someone to just show up and want to see my life up close.

we haven't called it anything we also haven't needed to there's something almost restful about not rushing toward a label, after a relationship that ended so quietly i still don't fully understand how it slipped through my hands but tonight she's asked me to come over, said she wants to talk, and something about the phrasing has been sitting in my stomach all day like a stone.

her apartment smells like something she's actually cooked, which surprises me i didn't peg her as a cook; she's barefoot in the kitchen when i get there, hair pulled back, looking more like the version of her from that first morning than the one from the bar. "you cooked," i say, still in the doorway.

"i attempted," she says. "don't get your hopes up." it's good, actually simple, a little overdone in places, but good in the way things are good when someone's tried we eat at her counter, talking easy about nothing important, and it isn't until the plates are cleared that she goes quiet in a way i've learned to recognize as her gathering herself.

"i want to ask you something," she says. "and i want you to actually think about it instead of giving me the polite answer."

"okay."

"what are we doing, kate?" there it is the question i've been half-expecting and half-avoiding since the morning after. 

"i don't know," i say, honest the way she's always been honest with me. "i like you. i like this — whatever this is. i just don't want to say the word before i mean it fully, and i'm scared i'm still catching up on meaning things fully after everything with veronica."

madison doesn't flinch at the name, hasn't ever, not once in three weeks. "i'm not asking you to be over her. i'm asking if you want to actually try this. those aren't the same question."

"i know."

"so which one are you avoiding?" i sit with that longer than i mean to she waits, patient the way she always is, not filling the silence just to ease her own discomfort. "i want to try," i say finally. 

"i'm just bad at trusting that wanting something is enough reason to go after it. last time i wanted something enough to move my whole life for it, and it wasn't enough to keep her."

"i'm not her," madison says, quiet but certain. "and you're not asking me to move anywhere. i'm just asking you to have dinner with me on purpose sometimes, instead of by accident after a bar or a lucky text." put like that, it doesn't sound so impossible. "okay," i say.

"okay?"

"yeah. okay. let's try this. on purpose." the smile she gives me then is different from the one at the bar less easy performance, more like something she actually means.

veronica calls two days later i almost don't pick up four months of silence, and then her name lighting up my screen like nothing happened, like the last conversation we had wasn't over a dinner neither of us finished i answer anyway some part of me still needs to know what she'd even say. "hi," she says, and her voice sounds smaller than i remember it. "i wasn't sure you'd pick up."

"i wasn't sure either." a pause i can hear her breathing, the particular quiet she gets when she's choosing her words with more care than usual.

"i've been thinking about that dinner a lot," she says. "the one where i ended things. i think i said it wrong. i think i made it sound like it was about timing when really i think i just got scared. you were building something new and i didn't know how to be someone who just — came along for it, instead of building my own thing at the same time."

it's the most she's said about any of it since it happened. veronica burton, careful with everything, finally not being careful. "i wish you'd said that then," i tell her, and i mean it, though there's less anger in it than i expected there to be.

"i know. i'm sorry. i'm not calling to ask for anything, i promise — i just needed you to know it wasn't about you not being enough. it was about me not knowing how to be brave in a new city. you were braver than me."

i think about myself four months ago, standing in an empty apartment with three boxes and a mattress on the floor, certain she wasn't being brave at all, just abandoned. "i wasn't brave," i say. "i just didn't have a choice. the trade wasn't optional."

"maybe. but you didn't fall apart. i would have."

we talk a little longer — nothing that undoes the four months, nothing that reopens what's already closed, just two people finally saying the true version of things instead of the careful one. by the end of it, something in my chest that's been clenched since that tuesday finally, quietly, lets go.

"i hope la's good to you," she says, before we hang up.

"i think it's starting to be."

i tell madison about the call the next time i see her, mostly because it feels dishonest not to. "how do you feel about it?" she asks, no jealousy in it, just genuine curiosity.

"lighter," i say, surprised to find it's true. "like i can stop carrying the version of the story where it was my fault."

"good," she says. "you deserve to put that down." we're on her balcony, the city doing its low gold thing beneath us, and she reaches over to lace her fingers through mine without making it a bigger moment than it needs to be.

"for what it's worth," she says, "i'm glad you didn't fall apart either. i don't think i would've gotten a version of you brave enough to ask me to dance."

"that was mostly tequila."

"sure. but you're the one who kissed me first. i remember that part very clearly, tequila or not." i laugh, and it's easy, unguarded, nothing like the practiced laugh i gave strangers for four months while insisting i was fine. "on purpose, then," i say, echoing her from two nights ago.

jealous of what?

the answer never comes because there isn't one, there can't be one kate has friends she's always had friends, teammates who gravitate toward her without trying, people who somehow end up telling her their entire life story after one conversation, strangers who stop being strangers five minutes after meeting her. 

she's warm in a way that can't really be taught. thoughtful without making a show of it, the kind of person who remembers the little things like your favorite coffee order, the name of your childhood dog, the song you mentioned listening to once three months ago.

veronica has never minded that if anything, it's one of the first things she noticed about kate one of the first things she,as she cuts the thought off before it can finish her phone buzzes against her thigh, pulling her back to the present.

kate :): game day.

veronica smiles before she even opens the message.

veronica: i figured.

the entire sparks account has reminded me at least twelve times already.

three little dots appear almost immediately.

kate :): only twelve? i expected more.

veronica shakes her head, laughing quietly to herself.

veronica: give them another hour.

kate :): fair.

there's a pause before another message appears.

kate :): good luck tonight.

veronica looks at it for a second longer than she probably should, good luck, simple normal, the kind of thing teammates who'd become friends sent each other before playing on opposite sides still she likes that kate always remembers.

veronica: you too. don't make me guard you all night.

kate :): no promises.

a blue heart appears a second later.

veronica's thumb hovers over the screen and she tells herself the smile on her face has absolutely nothing to do with one tiny blue heart outside, the bus turns into the arena entrance the rest of the team is already gathering their backpacks when the doors hiss open. "let's go," one of the assistants calls.

veronica slips her phone into her pocket and follows everyone inside game mode; that's what she tells herself to focus on basketball; everything else can wait the arena is already alive.

music pulses through the corridors, echoing off concrete walls before spilling onto the hardwood where arena staff hurry through final preparations photographers crouch along the baseline testing camera angles while television crews adjust lighting above the scorer's table. 

every few seconds another cart rolls across the floor carrying basketballs, towels, or equipment, the organized chaos somehow comforting in its familiarity there's something about game days that never changes.

it doesn't matter what city she's in, the smell of the hardwood, the sound of sneakers squeaking before the seats are even full, the distant voice of the public address announcer running through one last microphone check.

it always feels like home across the court, the sparks begin filtering out of their tunnel cam brink is the first one she notices, somehow already talking with enough enthusiasm that one of the assistant coaches is pinching the bridge of his nose.

rae burrell follows behind her carrying two water bottles then kate she has her backpack slung over one shoulder, earbuds hanging loosely around her neck, completely unaware that rae is already shaking her head.

rae tosses something toward her kate catches it looks down groans veronica can't hear the conversation from this far away, but she doesn't have to cam doubles over laughing.

rae folds her arms triumphantly kate rubs the back of her neck with that same sheepish smile she always gets whenever she's been caught forgetting something veronica smiles to herself some things never change. "what's funny?" one of her teammates falls into step beside her veronica shakes her head. "nothing."

"looked like something."

"just..." her eyes drift back across the floor. "kate forgot something again." her teammate follows her gaze before laughing. "somehow i'm not surprised."

"me neither." across the court, kate finally pulls on what was apparently her forgotten warmup shirt before jogging onto the floor with a basketball tucked beneath one arm.

left corner right corner free throw elbow three veronica knows the routine almost as well as kate does she's seen it enough over the years kate always starts the same way always it makes her smile. "earth to veronica." she blinks. "huh?"

"coach is talking."

"right." she tears her attention away from the opposite end of the floor just in time to hear the last few instructions before warmups officially begin.

focus communicates rebound simple enough the next twenty minutes pass in a comfortable rhythm stretching shooting passing running through the same drills every team in the league seems to know by heart.

every now and then, usually between repetitions, veronica catches herself glancing across the floor sometimes kate is laughing because cam said something ridiculous sometimes she's talking with rae once, she catches kate standing near the scorer's table looking down at her phone.

whatever she reads makes her smile not a polite smile, not one she'd give a reporter or a fan a real one soft around the edges, the kind that reaches her eyes before disappearing just as quickly cam notices immediately even from this distance, veronica can see her nudging kate's shoulder.

kate rolls her eyes cam says something else rae joins them all three laugh veronica finds herself smiling too they're impossible a few minutes later, the arena doors officially open fans begin pouring inside, filling the lower bowl with jerseys, signs, and excited conversations that slowly build into one steady roar.

children rush toward the tunnel hoping for autographs someone calls cam's name, someone else shouts for rae then another voice cuts through the noise. "kate!"

kate looks up instinctively, smiling as she signs a basketball before handing it back then, almost without thinking she looks toward the courtside seats not just a glance she actually looks like she's searching for someone.

veronica notices because she isn't looking anywhere else she watches kate scan the first few rows once twice then smile, small immediate like she'd just found exactly who she was looking for without meaning to, veronica follows her line of sight.

at first, all she sees is people settling into their seats then someone stands sunglasses pushed onto the top of her head an oversized purple-and-gold sparks jersey hanging comfortably over black jeans.

she waves both hands dramatically the second she spots kate, kate laughs actually laughs then lifts a hand in return veronica squints slightly the woman looks familiar, really familiar she knows she's seen her somewhere before she just can't place where.

before she has time to think about it any longer, the officials whistle both teams back toward their benches, warmups are almost over, tipoff is only minutes away and whatever thought had started forming quietly in the back of veronica's mind is forced to wait.

for now.

the whistle cut through the arena, sharp enough to quiet everything else for a fraction of a second then the ball went up, tipoff always felt strangely peaceful to veronica; everything leading up to it was loud. 

the music and the introductions, the lights sweeping across the crowd, the announcer somehow finding another level of enthusiasm every time he said a player's name. but the second the referee tossed the ball into the air, all of it disappeared.

there was only basketball the first possession moved quickly the sparks pushed the pace exactly the way veronica expected them to cam was already talking before she'd even crossed half court, kate pointing toward a cutter while rae sprinted into the corner, all three of them moving with the kind of chemistry that only came from spending every day together.

veronica smiled despite herself, she knew that they looked good together, unfortunately the first quarter settled into a rhythm almost immediately as both teams traded baskets, every possession answered by another on the other end. 

sneakers squeaked against the hardwood, coaches shouted adjustments from the sidelines, and the crowd reacted to every defensive stop like it was the final play of the game kate always played with more energy than people expected she never looked rushed and never looked flustered.

she simply kept moving, cutting communicating, making the extra pass celebrating everyone else's success as loudly as her own veronica had always admired that she still did the first time kate checked back into the game after a substitution, the crowd welcomed her with another wave of applause.

before the official even handed her the ballkate glanced toward courtside just for a second, it happened so quickly that most people probably would've missed it veronica didn't she watched kate's eyes settle somewhere behind the scorer's table before the ball was inbounded again.

the moment passed, play continued but still she found herself looking in the same direction the woman was still there still wearing the oversized sparks jersey still smiling every time kate touched the ball.

she clapped after a clean defensive stop, stood up after one of cam's blocks, and cheered just as loudly for rae's corner three as she did for one of kate's assists.

it wasn't performative if anything, it looked genuine like she'd forgotten cameras even existed late in the quarter, kate stole a pass near half court the arena erupted before she'd even crossed the three-point line.

she drove finished through contact and the whistle blew. "and one!" cam reached her first, throwing an arm around kate's shoulders while rae slapped the back of her head with a grin kate laughed, pointing immediately toward the free-throw line. "i know, i know."

"don't miss," cam warned. "helpful."

"i'm trying." the crowd hadn't even settled back into their seats when someone from the front row shouted, "let's go, kate!"

it wasn't unusual for players to hear their names all the time in this voice, though kate looked over instinctively madison was already standing both hands cupped around her mouth. "you got this!"

kate couldn't help smiling she shook her head once before bouncing the ball against the hardwood cam noticed immediately. "focus."

"i am focused."

"you smiled."

"can i not smile?"

"not at free throws." kate rolled her eyes. "you're unbelievable." she took one breath and released the shot, swish as cam nodded approvingly. "acceptable."

kate laughed all the way back down the court veronica watched the entire exchange from the opposite end it wasn't strange, not really friends came to games, friends cheered still she found herself looking back toward courtside more often than she'd expected.

the woman looked familiar really familiar she knew that face she just couldn't remember where from the first quarter ended with the sparks holding a narrow lead players headed toward their benches while arena staff rushed onto the floor to wipe away sweat and reset equipment before the second quarter cam immediately stole kate's towel. "give it back."

"make me."

"cam."

"yes?"

"that's disgusting."

cam laughed.

"you're dramatic."

"it's literally my towel."

"ours now." rae reached over without even looking and pulled it out of cam's hands before tossing it back toward kate. "children."

"thank you," kate said. "don't thank me."

"why?"

"because i'm tired of listening to you two." kate laughed, throwing the towel over her shoulders out of the corner of her eye, she glanced toward courtside again.

madison caught her looking and she pointed both thumbs up enthusiastically kate laughed then mimed drinking water madison looked down at the unopened bottle beside her chair before immediately picking it up and she exaggerated an enormous sip.

kate shook her head dramatically and madison grinned always. "who are you looking at?" cam asked kate didn't bother pretending. "Madison." cam followed her gaze. "still wearing your jersey."

"yes."

"interesting."

"what's interesting?"

"nothing." kate narrowed her eyes. "cam." cam smiled innocently. "i said nothing." on the opposite bench, veronica watched the interaction without meaning to she couldn't hear them she could only see kate smiling again then looking away then smiling to herself.

something about it felt different, maybe even comfort easy like this wasn't the first game that woman had come to like she belonged here the thought lingered longer than veronica wanted it to she shook it away as coach called everyone back together.

focus on basketball first, everything else later the second quarter began just as quickly as the first the pace never slowed every timeout felt shorter than the last the arena grew louder with every sparks run, only for valkyries fans scattered throughout the crowd to answer with cheers of their own whenever veronica's team responded.

through it all, the woman in kate's jersey never seemed to stop cheering for kate for cam for rae every time one of them made a play, she was on her feet before half the arena it made veronica smile despite herself whoever she was she clearly loved basketball.

she just wished she could remember why she looked so familiar the answer arrived halfway through the second quarter or rather the jumbotron found it first.

the timeout horn echoed through the arena, giving everyone thirty seconds to breathe before the game picked up again.

players drifted toward their benches, assistant coaches unfolded whiteboards camera operators scattered across the floor, already searching the crowd for reactions while the entertainment crew hurried through another routine.

veronica reached for the towel draped over the back of her chair, pressing it briefly against her forehead as coach talked through the next defensive adjustment she nodded automatically hedge the screen.

recover, communication as she'd heard it all before around her, the arena settled into that familiar timeout rhythm music pulsed through the speakers, kids waved at themselves on the big screen, and every few seconds another section erupted when the camera landed on someone willing to dance.

veronica barely looked up until the noise changed. it wasn't gradual; it exploded the kind of scream that only happened when someone unexpectedly appeared on the jumbotron, coach paused for half a second even though a few players looked over their shoulders.

veronica followed their gaze, the massive screen hanging above center court filled with a familiar face madison bailey for a heartbeat, she simply stared then it clicked that's where she'd seen her before.

interviews, movies, photos that somehow always found their way across social media the crowd grew even louder as madison laughed in surprise, looking from the screen back toward the camera before covering her face for a second.

someone behind her was already pointing toward the jersey madison noticed a second later she looked down, laughed then pinched the front of the oversized sparks jersey between her fingers and held it up toward the camera with an exaggerated grin the arena absolutely lost it.

"oh my god." one of veronica's teammates laughed from the bench. "is that madison bailey?"

"i think it is."

"is she wearing—"

"that's kate's jersey."

veronica looked again and really looked at the stitching, the number the name stretched across the back whenever madison turned slightly in her seat.

it wasn't just a sparks jersey it was kate's before she could stop herself, veronica's eyes moved toward the opposite bench kate had already seen the screen the second their eyes landed on each other, cam doubled over laughing she smacked kate's shoulder hard enough that kate stumbled sideways. "stop."

"i'm not doing anything."

"you're literally hitting me."

"because this is hilarious." rae wasn't helping; she had one hand over her mouth, trying—and failing—not to laugh as kate tugged the bottom of her warmup shirt over part of her face, shaking her head as if hiding would somehow make the cameras move on faster.

it didn't if anything, the director lingered another few seconds madison waved awkwardly then pointed toward the floor straight at kate the camera immediately cut to her the crowd roared again kate groaned cam looked like she might actually fall off the bench laughing.

"this is your fault," kate muttered. "my fault?" cam asked between laughs. "you manifested this."

"i absolutely did." rae finally managed to speak. "i've never seen you this embarrassed." kate rubbed both hands over her face. "can everyone relax?" cam leaned closer. "no."

"cam."

"absolutely not." kate looked toward courtside again despite herself madison shrugged innocently, pressing one hand dramatically against her chest like she couldn't possibly understand what all the fuss was about as kate pointed a finger at her.

you're unbelievable.

madison just smiled wider, veronica watched the silent exchange from across the floor it lasted barely three seconds, no words, just expressions, small gestures the kind people only understood after spending enough time around each other something about that realization settled heavily in her chest.

it wasn't the jersey, not really friends borrowed clothes all the time friends supported each other friends came to games.

so why did it feel different? the whistle signaled the end of the timeout players stood the moment dissolved as quickly as it had appeared basketball demanded everyone's attention again.

still the image stayed with veronica madison laughing beneath thousands of eyes kate trying unsuccessfully to hide her smile.

cam teasing her without mercy rae watching the whole thing unfold like she'd expected it all along the game resumed, but veronica found herself noticing little things she hadn't before.

every time kate checked out of the game, she glanced toward the front row not for long just enough every time she made a good play, madison was already clapping before anyone around her.

when cam blocked a shot into the third row, madison stood so quickly her drink nearly tipped over when rae hit another three, she celebrated just as loudly she wasn't only cheering for kate she was cheering for all of them for the sparks like she'd been doing it forever.

veronica tried to ignore the thought she really did instead, she focused on the game on the defensive assignments on communicating through switches on making the next pass but every so often, despite herself, her eyes drifted toward the same courtside seat and every single time kate's did too.

the final minutes of the fourth quarter arrived before either team really had time to catch their breath the sparks held a narrow lead and every possession suddenly mattered twice as much as the crowd rose to its feet coach called one final play.

veronica wiped her hands against her shorts, forcing every wandering thought back into the smallest corner of her mind, basketball first everything else later she had no idea that, by the end of the night, basketball would be the easiest part to understand.

the final two minutes felt longer than the entire game every possession carried weight now. every whistle drew a different reaction from the crowd the arena had long since become a wall of noise, purple and gold towels spinning through the lower bowl while the public address announcer somehow found enough energy to shout over thousands of people doing the exact same thing.

the sparks clung to a four-point lead and the valkyries refused to let it become comfortable veronica had stopped noticing everything except the next play, the next screen, the next pass, the next defensive rotation for a little while, basketball was enough.

kate caught the ball on the wing with less than a minute left, immediately drawing a defender before kicking it out to rae in the corner the shot left her hands the buzzer on the shot clock ticked lower.

swish.

the arena erupted rae turned before the ball had even finished falling through the net, pointing toward kate with both hands. "beautiful!" kate laughed as cam wrapped an arm around both of them while they jogged back on defense. "don't celebrate yet," kate called.

"i'm celebrating a little."

"cam."

"a medium amount." the valkyries answered with a basket of their own then another stop then another timeout everyone looked exhausted everyone except the fans they somehow found another level.

veronica rested her hands on her hips while coach drew up one final play, nodding along even though her attention drifted for the briefest moment toward the opposite bench.

kate was really listening, head lowered slightly, eyes fixed on the whiteboard while the assistant coach talked through every option.

there it was again that focus that quiet steadiness it was one of the first things veronica had admired about her no matter how loud everything around her became, kate never seemed to panic.

she just played, the whistle sounded again, one last possession, one last defensive stand the final buzzer echoed through the arena before anyone had time to think much beyond it.

the sparks won the building exploded kate closed her eyes for a second, exhaling before cam crashed into her side. "we survived."

"barely." rae laughed, pulling both of them into a quick hug before everyone separated again. "good game."

"you too."

the celebration was never very long, not against friends players met at half court almost immediately, the familiar line forming as jerseys of different colors mixed together.

veronica fell into step with the rest of her teammates, exchanging quick hugs and handshakes as she moved down the line then she reached kate for a second, the noise around them seemed quieter kate smiled first. "hey."

"hey."

"good game."

"you too." their hands met in a quick handshake that turned naturally into a brief hug, the kind athletes shared after playing each other, nothing unusual, nothing anyone else would've noticed. "you almost stole that from us," kate said veronica smiled. "almost doesn't count."

kate laughed. "fair." there was another beat, small and comfortable like maybe one of them was about to say something else instead, someone behind veronica gently nudged the line forward she stepped back. "see you."

"yeah." kate smiled again. "see you." and just like that, it was overplayers disappeared in different directions almost immediately afterward the valkyries headed toward their locker room for postgame media and the sparks gathered near the opposite tunnel.

the organized chaos returned camera crews, microphones, equipment managers, security everyone seemed to need someone at exactly the same time veronica answered questions she barely remembered hearing talked about defensive adjustments.

complimented the sparks mentioned the atmosphere inside the arena smiled for the cameras the entire time, another thought sat quietly at the back of her mind.

ask her.

it had been sitting there for weeks, months, maybe every time they'd texted after games, every time they'd met for coffee in the offseason, every time she'd caught herself wondering whether kate lingered after conversations for the same reason she did.

she was tired of wondering, it was only dinner, one question, one answer. whatever happened after that she'd deal with it by the time media obligations finally ended, the hallways beneath the arena had begun to quiet.

staff wheeled equipment carts toward storage rooms the distant sound of showers and laughter drifted from behind closed locker room doors security guards chatted near the tunnel entrances veronica tucked her phone into her pocket and started walking.

she already knew where kate usually came out after home games she'd waited there before not often just enough to know with every step, she rehearsed the sentence again.

do you want to get dinner sometime?

too formal.

want to grab dinner?

too casual.

are you free this week?

too vague.

she laughed quietly to herself she'd spent entire games making split-second decisions against professional athletes this, this somehow felt harder as she rounded the final corner toward the tunnel then stopped.

kate was already there still in her practice shirt now, hair damp from a quick shower, duffel bag resting against one leg she was laughing, not the polite laugh she'd given reporters a real one madison stood in front of her, still wearing kate's jersey.

up close, it was unmistakable the sleeves hung slightly past her shoulders the fabric was creased from sitting through four quarters the stitched numbers caught the overhead lights every time she moved. "you survived," madison teased. "barely."

"you missed a free throw." kate groaned dramatically. "you remembered."

"of course i remembered."

"traitor."

"supportive."

"those aren't the same thing."

"they are if i'm saying them." kate laughed again, shaking her head. "you're impossible."

"and yet..." madison spread her arms slightly. "you still invited me."

"questioning that decision."

"rude."

"honest."

they smiled at each other comfortably, easy like they'd had this conversation a hundred times before veronica stayed exactly where she was far enough away that they couldn't hear her close enough to hear every word she should leave instead she stayed.

for a moment, neither of them said anything they didn't seem to need to the kind of silence between them wasn't awkward or uncertain; it was familiar. comfortable enough that neither felt the need to fill every second with conversation madison rocked back lightly on her heels before looking down at the jersey again, smoothing a wrinkle near the hem with the palm of her hand. "i think i stretched it."

kate looked down too. "you definitely didn't."

"how do you know?"

"because it's about three sizes too big for you." madison gasped dramatically. "wow."

"what?"

"body shaming me after i came all this way to support you." kate laughed so hard she had to look away for a second. "that's not what i said."

"it's exactly what you said."

"it literally isn't."

"agree to disagree." kate shook her head, still smiling. "you're ridiculous."

"and?"

"and i don't know why i expected anything different."

"because you're optimistic."

"that's one word for it."

"i prefer hopeful." another laugh escaped kate before she rubbed the back of her neck. "did you have fun?" madison's expression softened immediately. "yeah." there wasn't even a second of hesitation. "a lot."

she glanced back toward the now nearly empty arena. "i've watched games on tv forever." she smiled to herself. "it's completely different being here."

"better?"

"way." she looked back at kate. "everyone around me was explaining little things i never would've noticed."

"like what?"

"one guy spent almost five minutes explaining illegal screens." kate groaned. "i'm so sorry."

"another woman told me she comes to every home game." madison smiled. "she knew everyone's stats."

"that sounds about right."

"and this little girl..." her smile somehow grew even softer. "...she couldn't have been older than seven." kate listened quietly. "she kept telling her dad she wanted to play basketball because of you." kate blinked. "...me?" madison nodded. "she had your jersey too."

for the first time all night, kate didn't have an immediate response; she looked down at the floor instead and a small smile appeared despite herself. "that's..."

"pretty cool."

"yeah."

"i thought so too." they stood there another second before madison nudged her gently with one shoulder. "you've got people looking up to you, martin." kate smiled without looking up. "don't make it weird."

"too late." they both laughed again as veronica watched every second, she couldn't explain why nothing about the conversation seemed unusual, nothing looked romantic, if anything it looked easy.

that's what bothered her; it reminded her of the way kate laughed over coffee the way she'd text random pictures of dogs she saw on walks the way conversations somehow stretched an extra thirty minutes because neither of them wanted to be the first to leave.

except someone else was standing in that space now someone else seemed to know the same version of kate she hated that thought almost as soon as it appeared because it wasn't fair.

kate was allowed to have close friends of course she was so why did it suddenly feel like she'd missed something important?

madison glanced down at the front of the jersey once more before pinching the fabric between two fingers. "seriously" she looked back up. "are you sure i can keep this?" kate frowned. "why wouldn't you?"

"because it's yours."

"i gave it to you."

"people say things." kate laughed. "madison."

"what?"

"i meant it."

"even after i embarrassed you in front of twenty thousand people?"

"especially after that." madison grinned. "good." she looked back down at the jersey. "because i was planning on stealing it anyway."

"i figured." without thinking, kate reached forward and the collar had folded slightly beneath madison's hair sometime during the game she straightened it carefully, smoothing the fabric back into place with an absentminded movement that lasted barely two seconds.

there wasn't anything deliberate about it she didn't even seem to realize she'd done it madison certainly didn't she kept talking as though nothing had happened. "next time i'll wear your shooting shirt." kate snorted. "absolutely not."

"coward."

"boundaries."

"boring." they were still laughing when kate opened her arms. "come here." madison stepped forward immediately and the hug was quick and warm, the kind shared by people who'd slowly become part of each other's everyday lives without either of them noticing exactly when it happened. "thanks for coming," kate said quietly. "thanks for inviting me."

"same time next game?"

"obviously." they pulled apart madison smiled. "now go before your coaches think i kidnapped you." kate laughed. "probably a good idea." a few feet away, hidden by the corner of the hallway, veronica finally remembered why she'd come.

dinner.

the word echoed uselessly in her mind now she looked at kate then at the jersey then back at the easy smile still lingering on kate's face she'd spent the entire game telling herself there was probably a perfectly reasonable explanation.

friends borrowed jerseys, friends hugged friends laughed like that friends looked at each other the way they just had...right?

the question lingered longer than it should have, veronica took one slow step backward then another the sound of her shoes against the concrete disappeared beneath the distant noise of arena staff finishing cleanup.

she turned before either of them could look up before kate could notice she'd been there before she'd have to ask a question she suddenly wasn't sure she wanted answered behind her, kate watched madison disappear toward the parking garage entrance before slinging her duffel bag over one shoulder.

she started to turn toward the tunnel when something caught the corner of her eye, someone walking away in a familiar build familiar posture. "...wasn't that..." she frowned. "what?" madison asked kate looked down the hallway again as it was already empty. "...nothing."

she wasn't completely sure but for just a second she could've sworn she'd seen veronica.

the hallway stayed quiet long after veronica disappeared around the corner kate looked after the empty space for another second before shaking her head. "you okay?" madison's voice pulled her back kate blinked. "yeah."

"you sure?" she nodded once. "i just thought i saw someone." madison glanced down the hallway. "anyone i know?"

"maybe."

"that's mysterious." kate laughed softly. "i don't mean to be."

"who'd you think it was?" there was another pause. "veronica." madison looked back toward her. "the valkyries guard?"

"yeah."

"weren't you just talking to her after the game?"

"for like thirty seconds."

"maybe she forgot something."

"maybe." kate looked toward the hallway one last time before letting it go. "probably just my imagination." madison bumped her shoulder lightly. "come on."

"yeah." they walked toward the arena exit together, still talking about the game.

about cam somehow stealing another towel about rae's fourth-quarter three about the little girl madison had met in the stands by the time they reached the parking garage, the conversation had drifted somewhere completely different.

the moment in the hallway was already gone for kate, anyway veronica sat in her car for nearly ten minutes before starting the engine the arena lights reflected faintly across the windshield while fans slowly filtered through the parking lot, still talking excitedly about the game.

she rested both hands against the steering wheel, dinner she laughed once quietly almost at herself she'd spent an entire week deciding she was finally going to ask all it had taken was one jersey to convince herself not to.

it felt ridiculous she knew it did kate had never promised her anything they weren't dating they weren't even whatever this was. there had never been a conversation, never a confession, never a moment where either of them admitted that staying after practice just to keep talking probably meant something or that texting each other good luck before every game had quietly become a habit.

or that neither of them ever seemed to be in a hurry to say goodbye none of that meant kate couldn't have someone else none of that meant the woman in the jersey wasn't simply important veronica looked down at her phone there weren't any new messages.

she set it face down in the cup holder and pulled out of the parking garage. los angeles was still awake, traffic crawled beneath glowing streetlights, restaurants buzzed with people finishing late dinners, music drifted through open windows at red lights.

the city kept moving she wished her thoughts would do the same by the time she reached the hotel, her social media had already begun filling with highlights from the game cam's block rae's three kate's steal.

she scrolled past them automatically then stopped madison had posted the first photo showing her sitting courtside before tipoff, smiling directly at the camera the second was cam pretending to photobomb from the baseline.

the third was kate head thrown back laughing so hard she'd closed her eyes the jersey was visible in every picture as the caption was simple.

first sparks game. think i might be good luck. 💜

veronica stared at it the likes climbed higher every time she refreshed comments poured in underneath people talking about the game about madison about the jersey her thumb hovered over the heart she pressed it unpressed it pressed it again.

closed the app opened it anyway another comment had appeared which was kate.

undefeated when you're here.

less than a minute later madison replied.

guess i'll have to keep coming.

cam liked it rae liked it half the sparks seemed to like it veronica locked her phone then unlocked it again she hated how much space this was taking up in her head because nothing had happened.

nothing.

friends went to games, friends borrowed jerseys, hugged friends and commented on each other's posts she repeated the thought enough times that it almost started sounding convincing.

almost.

her phone buzzed and she looked down immediately.

kate :)

hey.

think i saw you after the game.

did i miss you?

veronica stared at the screen the words blurred for a second before settling again she read them once then again.

did i miss you?

such an innocent question kate probably had no idea what she'd walked into, no idea what veronica had seen, no idea that she'd been standing only a few feet away before quietly turning around and another bubble appeared then disappeared.

kate had started typing and stopped, started again, stopped again, finally nothing veronica's fingers hovered over the keyboard.

yeah. i had to leave.

too short.

i saw you talking.

absolutely not.

i didn't want to interrupt.

that somehow felt even worse she locked her phone instead set it on the bedside table and rolled onto her back, staring up at the unfamiliar hotel ceiling.

to you, though, he was just dad but he was the man who woke up before sunrise on school mornings to make pancakes because your mom insisted he wasn't allowed to burn them anymore he was the one who sat through every dance recital before you realized basketball had quietly stolen your heart. 

he was the parent who somehow managed to make it home after west coast road trips just in time to tuck you and your siblings into bed, even if he looked exhausted enough to fall asleep standing up.

your mom, ayesha, liked to joke that basketball might have been the family business, but love was what kept the house together she wasn't wrong.

your childhood wasn't built around championships or trophies it was built around loud dinners where everyone talked over each other, movie nights that usually ended with canon falling asleep on somebody's shoulder, and competitive family game nights that somehow became more intense than an nba finals game.

riley had always been the dramatic one ryan had mastered the art of sarcasm before she was even a teenager, canon simply existed to create chaos and you?

you had inherited just enough of both your parents to keep everyone on their toes being the oldest meant there was never a moment where someone wasn't looking up to you. 

sometimes that felt like pressure, but most days it simply felt like home your father never pushed basketball on you not once.

the first time you picked up one of his old basketballs, you were barely tall enough to dribble without chasing it across the driveway after every bounce. 

stephen had leaned against the garage, coffee in one hand, watching as you stubbornly refused to give up after the ball rolled into the flower bed for what felt like the hundredth time. "need some help?" he'd asked.

you had shaken your head so hard your tiny ponytail whipped across your face. "i got it." he smiled. "yeah?"

"yeah." he didn't move instead, he waited he watched you stumble after the ball another five times before you finally managed three dribbles in a row.

when you looked up at him with the biggest grin he'd ever seen, he clapped like you'd just won a championship.

from that day forward, he never taught you how to become stephen curry he taught you how to become yourself there was never a conversation about living up to the curry name.

if anything, your parents worked harder than anyone else to make sure you didn't feel trapped beneath it.

"people are always going to compare you to me," your dad had told you one afternoon after a middle school game where reporters asked more questions about him than they did about your twenty-eight points.

he'd been driving home while you stared out the passenger-side window. "that's their job." you frowned. "it's annoying."

"i know."

"they keep saying i'm only good because i'm your daughter." he was quiet for a moment before pulling into the driveway then he turned the car off and looked at you.

"do you know why that doesn't bother me?" you shrugged. "because one day..." he smiled softly. "...they're going to stop saying you're stephen curry's daughter."

your eyebrows pulled together. "what'll they say?" he reached over and gently tapped your forehead. "they'll say i'm y/n curry's dad."

that sentence stayed with you through middle school through high school through every ranking, every tournament, every article that mentioned your last name before your first name.

people loved assuming your story had already been written they assumed growing up around greatness automatically made greatness easy.

they didn't see the mornings when your alarm rang before the sun came up so you could get extra shots in before class.

they didn't see the nights when you sat in an empty gym shooting free throws until your arms felt too heavy to lift.

they didn't see the tears after losses or the frustration after bad games or the days where nothing seemed to fall no matter how many shots you took.

your father saw all of it he never fixed those moments for you he simply reminded you to keep showing up. "bad shooting days happen."

"so do bad weeks."

"just don't let them become bad habits." those words became part of who you were by the time colleges started calling, your highlight tapes had taken on a life of their own.

every sports network had an opinion, some believed you should stay close to home, others thought you should create as much distance from your father's legacy as possible.

social media debated every visit, every commitment rumor, every smile caught on camera. you ignored all of it because your decision had never been about escaping your family.

it had been about finding somewhere that felt like home the first time you stepped onto ucla's campus, something clicked.

it wasn't the banners hanging from the rafters it wasn't the facilities it wasn't even the coaches it was the people.

they didn't introduce themselves by asking what it was like being stephen curry's daughter they asked who you were what kind of teammate you wanted to become.

what kind of leader you hoped to be that mattered, it mattered more than anyone realized so when you committed to ucla, the headlines practically wrote themselves.

"curry daughter heads west."

"basketball royalty joins the bruins."

"legacy continues."

you rolled your eyes at every single one because they still didn't understand this wasn't about continuing someone else's legacy.

it was about beginning your own the funny thing was, basketball wasn't the only thing waiting for you in los angeles the first time you met lauren betts happened completely by accident it wasn't some dramatic movie moment where time slowed down and violins started playing. 

there weren't sparks flying across the gym or teammates whispering, oh my gosh, they're going to fall in love instead, you quite literally walked into her hard.

your shoulder collided with hers as you rounded the corner outside the practice facility, sending the binder tucked beneath your arm tumbling onto the sidewalk. papers scattered everywhere, carried by a light california breeze before either of you had a chance to react. "oh my gosh," you blurted, crouching down almost immediately. "i'm so sorry."

"no, that's my fault," another voice answered just as quickly you reached for the same piece of paper at the exact same time your hands bumped together both of you froze for exactly half a second before laughing. "well..." she smiled sheepishly. "this is embarrassing."

"a little." she handed you the paper she'd picked up before extending her hand. "Lauren." you took it. "y/n." there was a brief pause, her eyes widened. "...wait."

you sighed dramatically.

"please don't."

"you're—"

"yeah."

"steph curry's—"

"unfortunately, yes." she immediately laughed.  "i wasn't gonna say it like that."

"everyone says it like that."

"fair point." you couldn't help laughing with her it was easy surprisingly easy before either of you realized it, ten minutes had passed while the rest of your papers sat forgotten on the sidewalk.

by the end of the conversation, neither of you remembered why you had been in such a hurry to begin with neither of you could have guessed that one accidental collision outside the practice gym would eventually become the best thing that had ever happened to either of you.

months later, the two of you had become inseparable then came dating then came winning and now, with an entire season behind you, one final game stood between ucla and history.

the national championship.

the lights inside the arena hadn't even dimmed yet, but the energy already felt electric students in blue and gold packed one side of the stands, waving signs and homemade posters that had taken days to finish. 

opposite them, south carolina's faithful answered with deafening cheers of their own, dressed in garnet and black as they waited for their team to take the floor. 

every seat was filled, every aisle crowded with camera operators, photographers, and arena staff making last-minute preparations before the biggest game of the season back in the tunnel as you bounced lightly on the balls of your feet as you adjusted the black compression sleeve on your shooting arm. 

music echoed through the concrete hallway, but it was muffled beneath the sound of your own heartbeat around you, your teammates stretched, laughed, and tried to shake off the nerves in their own ways. some wore headphones, others danced to whatever song was blaring through the speakers. lauren stood only a few feet away, calmly tying the laces of her shoes as though this were just another practice instead of the national championship.

you watched her for a second before walking over, bumping your shoulder against hers. "you nervous?" she looked up, pretending to think about it. "a little."

"that's it?"

"a healthy amount." you laughed quietly. "i think i'm gonna throw up."

"no, you're not."

"i might." she stood, smoothing her jersey down before reaching over to fix the collar of yours. "you're y/n curry." you groaned immediately. "don't start."

she smiled. "i'm serious." her hands rested gently against your shoulders. "you're also the hardest-working person i've ever met." she tilted her head. "trust yourself."

you stared at her for a second before leaning forward just enough for your forehead to rest against hers. "how do you always know what to say?"

"it's one of my many talents."

"your biggest talent is being taller than everybody."

"that's definitely number one." a laugh escaped you before the tension sitting in your chest eased, if only a little from somewhere farther down the tunnel, one of your teammates whistled dramatically. "save the cute stuff for after we win!"

more laughter followed, and you immediately stepped back, covering your face with one hand while lauren only grinned. "they're never gonna let us live that down," you muttered.

"probably not."

"worth it?" she didn't hesitate. "always."

far above the tunnel, the espn broadcast had already begun, cameras swept across the sold-out arena before settling on a familiar face sitting courtside as stephen curry smiled as the crowd recognized him, lifting a hand in acknowledgment while ayesha laughed beside him. 

riley and ryan waved enthusiastically at the giant jumbotron, and little canon, wearing a miniature ucla jersey that nearly reached his knees, sat happily swinging his feet from his seat, completely unaware that half the arena had just collectively melted at the sight of him.

cameras floated effortlessly through the sold-out arena, capturing every corner of the building as anticipation settled over the crowd like electricity before a summer storm the sea of blue and gold on one side answered every chant from the wall of garnet and black on the other, neither fanbase willing to be drowned out on the biggest night of the season. 

homemade signs stretched high above heads, students bounced in place despite the game still being minutes away, and every time the jumbo screen flashed across another section of the stands, thousands of people erupted simply because they knew the entire country was watching.

the opening montage rolled across television screens from coast to coast, highlighting both teams' journeys to the national championship clips of dominant defensive possessions, game-winning shots, emotional embraces after buzzer-beaters, and celebrations from earlier rounds filled the screen while the familiar voice of the play-by-play announcer welcomed viewers into the broadcast.

"good evening, everyone, and welcome to the national championship. i'm thrilled you could join us because tonight we've got two of the very best teams in college basketball battling for a title. it's ucla and south carolina, two programs that have spent the entire season proving exactly why they deserve to be here."

his partner smiled as another camera angle revealed both teams waiting inside their respective tunnels.

"you couldn't ask for a better matchup. you've got experience, you've got star power, you've got elite coaching, and maybe most importantly, you've got two teams that genuinely believe they're walking out of here with a championship trophy."

the production crew cut away from the tunnel and immediately searched the crowd for familiar faces it didn't take long before the cameras landed courtside and a murmur swept through the arena before growing into loud applause.

stephen curry looked up at the giant screen overhead, immediately realizing exactly why the cheers had grown louder he laughed to himself before offering a small wave to the crowd, never one to make a moment about himself when his daughter was preparing to play the biggest game of her career. 

sitting beside him, ayesha leaned comfortably against the back of her seat, smiling warmly as she noticed canon waving enthusiastically toward the camera without having the slightest clue that millions of people were now watching him.

the little boy's oversized ucla jersey nearly reached his knees, the sleeves hanging well past his elbows as he proudly held a tiny foam finger in one hand every few seconds he would point toward the tunnel, completely convinced his sister could somehow see him through several concrete walls. "y'see?" he asked excitedly, tugging on stephen's sleeve. "sissy gonna win."

stephen looked down at him before smiling. "i think she likes our chances." canon nodded with complete confidence, as though there had never been another possible outcome. "she make lotsa threes." that earned a laugh from everyone sitting nearby.

"she probably will," ayesha agreed, reaching over to smooth down the curls poking out from beneath his miniature championship cap they'd bought before the game. "but she's got to play defense first." canon gasped dramatically. "defense too?"

riley couldn't help laughing from the seat beside them. "yeah, buddy. that's kind of important." ryan leaned forward just enough to tease him. "you think all she has to do is shoot?" he thought about it very seriously before answering.

"...yeah."

their entire row burst into laughter across the aisle, lauren's family watched the interaction with matching smiles; they'd spent enough time around the currys throughout the season to know that this was simply who they were. 

despite the cameras, despite the celebrities scattered throughout the arena, despite the magnitude of the night, they still felt like a family first there was constant teasing, conversations overlapping one another, and an endless amount of laughter that somehow made one of the loudest arenas in the country feel surprisingly intimate.

the broadcast returned to the commentators, both of whom smiled after watching the exchange. "that's a family that's been here before," one of them said. "stephen curry has played in some of the biggest games basketball has ever seen, but tonight he's just dad."

his partner nodded. "that's something people forget. we've all watched y/n curry grow up from afar, but what she's done at ucla has been remarkable. yes, she'll always be connected to one of the greatest players the sport has ever seen, but she's earned every bit of this moment on her own. she's become one of the best guards in college basketball because of countless hours in the gym, not because of the last name stitched across the back of her jersey."

another camera found the tunnel just as the arena lights began to dim inside, the music grew louder, the conversations became quieter one by one, every player instinctively turned toward the entrance leading onto the court.

the moment had arrived the arena lights faded until only a handful of spotlights remained, sweeping across the lower bowl as thousands of fans lifted their phones into the air a deep bass line echoed through the speakers, vibrating through the hardwood beneath your shoes, and for a brief second everything around you seemed to slow. 

the chatter from your teammates disappeared into the background, replaced by the steady rhythm of your own breathing this was the moment every player dreamed about when they were little, not the trophies or the headlines, but the walk out of the tunnel knowing there was one game left and everything you had worked for came down to forty minutes.

coach cori close stood at the front of the group with her arms folded across her chest, waiting until every pair of eyes settled on her she didn't raise her voice she didn't need to after an entire season together, the room naturally grew quiet whenever she spoke. "look around." as everyone did.

"this group," she said, gesturing toward the circle of players surrounding her, "is the reason we're standing here tonight. not rankings. not predictions. not statistics. each other."

she paused, allowing her words to settle. "there are going to be moments tonight when south carolina punches first. they're too good not to. they're going to go on runs. they're going to make shots that don't seem possible. they're going to test everything we've built together."

her gaze landed on lauren before shifting toward you. "but we've spent months proving something to ourselves." another pause passed. "we don't break." a chorus of determined nods answered her. "they're going to throw double teams at lauren." lauren smiled.

"good." coach laughed softly. "yes, good. because we've practiced for it every single day."

she looked directly at you. "and when they collapse inside..." you finished the sentence without thinking. "...i'll be waiting." coach pointed at you.

"exactly." she moved the whiteboard into the center of the huddle, sketching quick circles and arrows across it while explaining the opening rotation lauren would establish position early in the paint, forcing south carolina's defense to make a decision. 

if they stayed home, she would go to work inside if they doubled, the ball would swing around the perimeter until it found an open shooter you already knew where that pass was supposed to end up coach capped the marker before looking around one last time. "trust your preparation." she tapped the center of the whiteboard.

"trust each other." then she smiled. "...and have some fun." the tension that had filled the tunnel only moments earlier seemed to dissolve as several teammates exchanged grins and someone started clapping as another player slapped the side of a locker before long the entire tunnel echoed with applause and encouragement. "family on three!"

coach shouted and everyone instinctively stacked their hands together in the middle. "one..." every voice joined hers. "two..." the noise from the arena outside somehow grew even louder. "three..."

"family!" the word exploded through the tunnel before the entire team broke apart and the public address announcer's voice boomed throughout the arena.

"ladies and gentlemen..." the crowd immediately answered with deafening cheers. "...please welcome your ucla bruins!"

the first player sprinted through the curtain to a roar that shook the building blue and gold lights flashed across the court as introductions continued one by one every teammate received thunderous applause, but as your name echoed through the speakers, the volume somehow climbed another level. "starting at guard... standing five foot ten..."

the announcer paused just long enough for anticipation to build. "...y/n curry!" your heart hammered against your ribs as you burst through the tunnel, jogging onto the court with a wide smile despite every nerve in your body reminding you exactly how important this game was. 

you pointed toward your teammates waiting near half court before clapping your hands together, feeding off the energy pouring down from every corner of the arena high above the floor, the camera immediately found the curry family again. "there she is!" riley shouted as she jumped to her feet.

ayesha couldn't stop smiling. "look at her." stephen watched quietly for a moment, his smile softening as you looked toward the stands you couldn't make out individual faces beneath the bright arena lights, but somehow you still found your family almost instantly.

you pointed toward them as canon gasped. "she sees us!"

he bounced excitedly in his seat before waving both arms over his head with absolutely no rhythm whatsoever. "hi, sissy!" the camera caught the entire exchange, prompting laughter throughout the arena.

one of the commentators chuckled. "i'm not sure who's more excited for this game, y/n curry or her little brother." his partner laughed. "canon has complete confidence."

"well, if you've watched y/n this season, it's hard not to."

across the court, south carolina emerged from their tunnel to an equally thunderous reception from their fans. every player carried the confidence of a program that had been here before, walking toward the opposite bench without looking rattled by the atmosphere they understood championship basketball they expected to win championships.

that confidence was exactly why tonight's matchup had everyone talking the teams met at center court for final instructions while officials reviewed the opening tip procedure sneakers squeaked against freshly polished hardwood as players settled into position, each of them bouncing lightly on their toes to stay loose.

you adjusted the tape wrapped around your fingers before glancing beside you lauren caught your eye immediately without saying a word, she reached out and lightly bumped her fist against yours a simple gesture one the two of you had shared before every game that season you bumped her fist back. "let's do this."

she smiled. "together." the referee stepped into the center circle with the basketball tucked beneath one arm the arena gradually grew quieter, not silent.

it never could be but quiet enough that anticipation replaced conversation every player locked into position the official looked around one final time before gripping the basketball with both hands the national championship was finally about to begin.

the referee's whistle pierced through the arena as the basketball rose into the air, spinning beneath the bright championship lights before reaching the peak of its climb. for one suspended heartbeat, twenty thousand people seemed to hold their breath alongside the ten players standing on the hardwood. 

then lauren exploded upward, extending every inch of her six-foot-seven frame to meet the ball first her fingertips redirected it cleanly toward the backcourt, where you stepped into the pass without breaking stride.

the roar that followed rattled through the arena and every bruin fan rose to their feet, clapping and shouting before the offense had even crossed half court you slowed your dribble just enough to let your teammates settle into their spacing, your eyes darting across the floor as south carolina quickly settled into their half-court defense. 

they wasted no time showing exactly what they had prepared for two defenders shaded toward lauren before she even reached the low block, while another remained close enough to discourage the entry pass they weren't going to let the nation's most dominant post player establish position without a fight.

"they're already loading up on betts," the play-by-play announcer observed as the offense unfolded. "look how quickly that second defender slides over."

"that's been the game plan all week," his partner replied. "make someone else beat you. force the ball out of lauren betts' hands and hope the perimeter shooters don't get comfortable."

you heard coach close call out the first set from the sideline, raising two fingers into the air the movement was immediate, gabriela sprinted through the lane, dragging a defender with her while kiki flared toward the wing.

lauren sealed her defender beautifully, planting one foot deep in the paint before raising her hand for a split second, the passing lane opened, but it disappeared just as quickly when another garnet jersey collapsed into the lane.

you didn't force it instead, you swung the ball around the perimeter, resetting the possession, patience had become one of the greatest lessons your father ever taught you not every possession required a highlight, sometimes the smartest basketball was the simplest basketball.

the shot clock continued to wind down as south carolina's defense moved together with remarkable precision every pass was met by quick closeouts, every cut was tracked, every screen was communicated. 

they looked exactly like the disciplined team everyone expected them to be with only five seconds remaining, you rose into a contested jumper from just inside the arc it bounced softly off the back rim before falling away the rebound belonged to south carolina.

"excellent defensive possession," one announcer said. "they never allowed ucla to get comfortable."

before anyone in blue could retreat, south carolina was already sprinting the other direction their transition offense was as dangerous as advertised, pushing the pace before the bruins had a chance to organize defensively. 

the ball swung from the point guard to the right wing in one fluid motion before finding tessa johnson in rhythm everyone inside the building knew exactly what she wanted she rose without hesitation swish the net barely moved.

south carolina's section erupted into deafening cheers as tessa backpedaled with quiet confidence, pointing toward a teammate who had delivered the pass. "and that's exactly why she's so dangerous," the color commentator said. "you give her even a sliver of daylight, and she'll make you pay." you caught the inbound pass from the baseline official and immediately glanced toward coach close. 

she remained calm, hands resting on her hips as she motioned for everyone to settle down there wasn't the slightest trace of panic on her face, and seeing that steadiness helped quiet the frustration beginning to creep into your own thoughts.

the next possession flowed far more smoothly lauren caught the ball near the free-throw line before turning her shoulders toward the basket almost instantly, the double team arrived exactly as coach had predicted. 

without trying to force a difficult shot, she pivoted away from the pressure and fired a crisp pass toward the opposite wing you caught it cleanly for the briefest instant, the defender hesitated and that was all the opening you needed.

your knees bent instinctively as years of repetition took over the release felt effortless, the follow-through freezing high above your shoulder as the basketball climbed through the air with perfect rotation inside the front row, stephen didn't even realize he had stood until ayesha reached over and laughed softly. "you're doing it again."

his eyes never left the ball. "i know." the shot looked perfect from the moment it left your fingertips it struck the back iron and popped straight into the air and spun out a collective groan rolled through the bruin crowd.

you exhaled sharply before turning to sprint back on defense, refusing to dwell on the miss. your father had spent years reminding you that confidence couldn't disappear every time a shot refused to fall. "next one," you whispered to yourself.

south carolina attacked again, they worked the ball around the perimeter with patience before finding tessa once more coming off a staggered screen your defender fought through the first pick, but she created just enough separation to receive the pass in rhythm.

another release, another clean look, another three the arena erupted again south carolina's bench leaped to its feet, waving towels overhead as their coaches applauded from the sideline.

"back-to-back triples for tessa johnson!" the announcer exclaimed over the growing noise. "she has come out absolutely fearless in this championship game."

you looked up at the scoreboard for only a second south carolina 6 and ucla 0.

the game had barely begun, yet momentum had already found its way to the defending powerhouse the building felt different now louder and faster every possession carried just a little more weight than the one before it.

coach close stepped closer to the sideline, clapping her hands together as loudly as she could. "heads up!" she shouted. "keep playing!"

you nodded immediately, signaling to your teammates as you crossed half court once again there was still an entire game left to play and somewhere deep inside, you could already feel that familiar rhythm beginning to settle in.

the same rhythm your father always said came right before everything slowed down.

the basketball reached the top of its arc before beginning its descent, and the instant the referee's hand disappeared from view, the noise inside the arena returned with enough force to make the hardwood beneath your feet feel as though it were vibrating. 

lauren got just enough of the opening tip to redirect it toward the backcourt, where you collected it cleanly before immediately settling into the offense your heartbeat was still racing, but years of playing under bright lights had taught you how to hide it no one watching from the outside would have guessed your stomach was tied into knots.

you crossed half court with your left hand, your eyes moving from one side of the floor to the other as south carolina settled into its defensive shell they weren't scrambling they weren't overcommitting. 

every player moved with purpose, communicating through quick hand signals and short calls that barely rose above the crowd the scouting report had clearly been drilled into them all week, because before lauren had even established position on the block, two defenders were already leaning toward her side of the floor.

"look at that attention," one of the commentators observed as the overhead camera zoomed in. "betts hasn't even touched the basketball yet, and they're already sending help."

"that's respect," his partner replied. "you don't wait for a player like lauren betts to beat you. you try to stop her before she ever gets comfortable."

you dribbled patiently near the top of the key before signaling for a screen lauren stepped up, planting her feet just long enough to create a sliver of daylight before rolling hard toward the basket. 

the defense collapsed exactly as expected, forcing you to pull the ball back out rather than threading a risky pass into traffic instead, you swung it around the perimeter, trusting the offense to find the better shot rather than forcing the first one available.

the possession lasted nearly twenty seconds before gabriela rose from the corner with a hand in her face the shot caught the front rim and bounced away, where south carolina immediately secured the rebound and took off in transition. 

they wasted no time pushing the pace, sprinting down the floor before ucla could fully recover. the ball moved from one side to the other in a matter of seconds before finding tessa johnson beyond the arc.

she didn't hesitate, the shot looked effortless and the net barely moved the south carolina section erupted into cheers as tessa jogged backward with a calm smile, raising one finger toward a teammate who had found her in rhythm.

"she is fearless," the play-by-play announcer said. "that is exactly the start south carolina wanted."

you accepted the inbound pass and immediately brought it back the other direction, refusing to let one possession dictate the next your father had repeated the same lesson so many times growing up that it had become an instinct but basketball had no memory unless you gave it one the last possession was over, this one deserved your full attention.

lauren established a deeper position this time, using every bit of her frame to pin her defender beneath the rim you looked inside, ready to feed her, but another garnet jersey slid into the passing lane before the ball ever left your hands. 

you quickly reversed it to the opposite wing, where kiki attacked off the dribble before kicking it back out to you with only a few seconds left on the shot clock.

the defender closed hard you stepped inside the three-point line and elevated the release felt clean the ball struck the back iron and it bounced high into the air before falling harmlessly into south carolina's hands.

"good look," coach close called from the sideline before you could even lower your head. "keep shooting it." you nodded once, already turning to sprint back on defense there wasn't time to think about the miss south carolina had already crossed half court again.

they flowed into their offense with remarkable discipline, making the extra pass whenever the first option wasn't there one swing became two, then three, until the basketball found tessa curling around an off-ball screen near the right wing as your teammate fought over the pick, but the smallest opening was all she needed.

another release, another splash the garnet section exploded for a second time as the scoreboard changed once again.

south carolina 6 and ucla 0.

the energy inside the building shifted almost immediately; every made basket seemed to fuel one side of the arena while quieting the other as you could hear the gamecocks' bench celebrating every defensive stop, clapping and shouting encouragement after each successful possession.

from the front row, stephen leaned forward with his forearms resting on his knees he wasn't worried if anything, his expression was almost familiar, like he'd seen this exact beginning play out hundreds of times before riley glanced toward him. "you're weirdly calm."

he smiled without taking his eyes off the floor. "she's feeling the game."

"she's zero for two."

"i know."

"doesn't that concern you?"

"not really." ryan looked between them before laughing. "dad has that look." ayesha smiled knowingly. "the 'don't worry, she'll figure it out' look." canon frowned as he stared up at the scoreboard. "why they got more points?"

stephen finally looked down at him. "because basketball's a long game, buddy." canon thought about that for a moment before nodding very seriously. "sissy fix it." stephen chuckled quietly.

"i think she will." back on the court, you wiped your palms against your shorts before meeting lauren's eyes across the lane as players lined up for an inbound.

she didn't say anything, she simply tapped her chest twice before pointing toward you a habit the two of you had developed sometime during conference play.

i trust you. you answered with the slightest nod. i know.

the next possession unfolded more patiently than the first few nobody rushed nobody tried to erase the deficit with one spectacular play; the ball moved from side to side until lauren finally received it near the elbow almost immediately, the double team arrived.

she had expected it without even turning toward the basket, she pivoted and fired the ball back out to you this time, the defender hesitated only for a fraction of a second but at this level, a fraction of a second was everything.

your feet were already set your shoulders squared naturally the basketball left your fingertips with perfect rotation everyone in the curry family's row stood before it reached the rim.

the shot looked perfect until it drifted just long enough to catch the right side of the iron the collective groan from the ucla crowd echoed around the arena you closed your eyes for the briefest instant before turning and jogging back on defense. "keep shooting!" coach close yelled.

"don't think!" you inhaled deeply, don't think just play.

the words sounded almost identical to something your father had told you years ago while the two of you stood alone inside an empty gym after one of the worst shooting nights of your high school career.

"confidence isn't built on the shots you make," he'd said while rebounding for you. "it's built on believing the next one's going in, even after the last ten didn't."

you hadn't understood how powerful that advice would become until moments exactly like this on because somewhere beneath the nerves..beneath the bright lights...beneath the expectations that had followed your last name your entire life...you could feel your rhythm beginning to return.

the flash of the camera lingered for just a moment longer than everything else, freezing the entire group in a frame that somehow felt too small to hold what the night meant the championship trophy sat at the center, reflecting the arena lights in soft gold tones while arms, laughter, and exhausted smiles wrapped around it from every direction. 

canon was still in the front, barely holding himself upright beneath the oversized championship hat, while riley and ryan leaned into each other laughing at something nobody else could hear. 

stephen and ayesha stood just behind them, their expressions quieter but no less full, the kind of pride that didn't need words to exist and right at the center of it all, you stood beside lauren.

not separated, not distant, not hidden behind implications or glances or unfinished sentences just there her arm was around your waist like it had always belonged there, steady and familiar even in the chaos of confetti and celebration. 

your fingers were loosely intertwined with hers, a small detail that didn't draw attention because it didn't need to nobody around you treated it like a surprise or something to explain it simply was what it was, the same way everything else in that moment simply existed without question.

lauren leaned slightly closer, her shoulder brushing yours as she smiled toward the camera, still trying to catch her breath from everything that had just happened when she glanced at you, it wasn't for the crowd or the photo or the trophy. 

it was for you and you met her look just as easily, like it was the most natural thing in the world to find each other in the middle of everything."you okay?" she asked quietly, barely audible over the noise still lingering in the arena you nodded, squeezing her hand once. "better than okay."

her smile softened at that, and she didn't say anything else she didn't need to because there was nothing complicated about it anymore no hiding no guessing no space between what you felt on the court and what you felt standing next to her off it.

just two people who had started as teammates, turned into something neither of you planned for, and somehow ended up here on the biggest stage of college basketball still choosing each other in every moment that mattered.

the photographer called out one last time. "perfect. hold it right there." another flash and then the image was gone but what it captured stayed.

afterwards, as the crowd slowly began to thin and families started to make their way out, lauren didn't let go of your hand. not even once. instead, she leaned in slightly as you both started walking back toward the tunnel, shoulder brushing yours again like it had become second nature. "so," she said with a small grin, "national champion girlfriend, huh?" you laughed under your breath. "that what you’re calling me now?"

"it has a nice ring to it." you bumped her shoulder gently. "you’re insufferable."

"mhm." she reaches over without looking, laces her fingers through yours, pulls your hand off your stomach and into her lap instead. "you okay?"

you are not okay you are eleven weeks pregnant and about to spend christmas in edwardsville, illinois, in a house full of martins who hug too hard and ask too many questions, and you have not told a single one of them that there's a person growing inside you who will, eventually, call this town home too. "i'm fine," you say.

kate glances at you just once just long enough for you to feel it. "you've been fine for like four days straight," she says. "that's never a good sign with you."

you don't answer outside the window, illinois goes by flat and brown and bare, fields stripped down to stubble, the sky the color of a bruise healing you think about telling her right now, in the car, just the two of you, before you're swallowed up by her mom's kitchen and her dad's terrible christmas sweaters and her sisters' twenty questions. you think about it and you don't do it.

"i love you," kate says instead, like she's decided to let it go for now. "whatever's going on in your head."

"i love you too."

the martin house smells like cinnamon and pine and something baking that you can't name, and the second you're through the door you're swarmed kate's mom first, then her dad, then a sister, then brother, voices stacking on top of voices, you made it, the roads weren't bad were they, oh my god you look so good, kate did you tell them about the—

you stand in the middle of it with your coat still on and your hand wants to go to your stomach again you don't let it kate finds your eyes over her mother's shoulder holds them. you're okay, she mouths, or maybe you imagine it, but either way it helps.

dinner is loud dinner is always loud at the martins' you sit between kate and her older sister and you do the math in your head before every dish gets passed to you is there wine in this, is this the soft cheese kate's cousin mentioned was unpasteurized, can you eat this, should you eat this and you push food around your plate more than you eat it, and you think no one notices.

kate's mom notices you catch her watching you from across the table, just for a second, her eyes narrowing the way kate's doing when she's working something out you look down at your plate fast. "you're not drinking," kate's youngest sister says later, holding the bottle of wine over your glass. "you always drink at christmas."

"i'm just tired," you say. "long flight." kate, beside you, goes very still for half a second you feel it more than see it. "leave her alone, she's allowed to not want wine," kate says, light, easy, covering for you before you even ask her to but her hand finds your knee under the table and stays there, and you know she's doing math of her own now.

it's after eleven when you finally get a minute alone with her, upstairs in the room that used to be hers, posters still half up on the walls from when she was seventeen and dreaming about a future that looked a lot like the one she actually got. "okay," kate says, closing the door behind her. "talk to me."

"about what?"

"y/n." just your name, that's all it takes, the way she says it, low and certain, like she already knows and she's just waiting for you to catch up to her. "you haven't had a drink in four days. you wouldn't eat the brie. you keep putting your hand on your stomach like you're trying to keep something in and you've been anxious since o'hare."

you sit down on the edge of the bed that's too small for the both of you and you feel your throat go tight. "i'm pregnant," you say just like that, no buildup, no soft landing, just the words out into the room before you can stop them.

kate doesn't move for a second then she crosses the room in three steps and drops to her knees in front of you, hands finding yours, eyes already wet. "you're—" she stops. starts again. "since when?"

"i found out six weeks ago. i didn't tell you because i wanted to be sure, and then i didn't tell anyone because i didn't know how to do it here, with everyone, and i kept thinking i'd find the right moment and the moment never came and—" you're crying now, you realize, somewhere between embarrassed and relieved. "i'm sorry. i should've told you the second i knew."

"hey." kate's hands come up to your face, thumbs swiping under your eyes. "hey, don't be sorry. don't you dare be sorry." she's smiling so hard it looks like it hurts. "we're having a baby."

"we're having a baby," you repeat, and saying it out loud, finally, to her, undoes something in your chest that's been wound tight for six weeks straight.

"this is why you've been weird the whole trip," kate says, half laughing, half crying. "you've been carrying this around the whole time and you didn't say anything?"

"i was scared," you admit. "of telling your family. of what they'd say, or — i don't know. i just wanted it to be ours for a little longer before it belonged to everyone else too." kate kisses your forehead, then your temple, then settles beside you with her arm around your shoulders, pulling you into her like she can absorb some of the nerves through sheer proximity.

"they're going to be so happy," she says. "my mom's gonna cry for a week."

"that's what i'm scared of."

"the crying?"

"all of it. being enough. doing this right, with your whole family watching." you press your face into her shoulder. "i don't know how to explain it. it's not that i don't want them to know. i just — i want to be good at this. i want your family to look at me and think i can do this."

kate pulls back enough to look at you properly. "y/n. they already think that. they've thought that since the first christmas you came here and helped my mom do dishes without being asked, and the time you remembered my dad's birthday before i did." 

she presses her hand flat against your stomach, gentle, like she's testing whether it's real. "they're going to love this baby before it's even born. and they already love you. this doesn't change that it just gives them one more reason." you laugh, wet and a little shaky. "you're very good at this."

"i've had practice talking you down for like six years." she kisses you, slow, soft, smiling against your mouth. "merry christmas, by the way. we're having a baby."

"merry christmas," you say back. "we're having a baby."

you don't plan the reveal that's the thing nobody tells you about secrets like this you can carry them carefully for six weeks and then lose your grip on them in about four seconds flat.

it's christmas morning, gifts half-unwrapped across the living room floor, kate's older sister halfway through a story about something that happened at practice, when kate's mom holds up a mug world's okayest grandma, a joke gift from kate's sister and laughs and says, "i guess i'll have to wait a while longer for an upgrade on this one." and kate, sitting cross-legged on the floor with wrapping paper in her lap, just says it with no buildup, no speech.

"actually," she says, "you might wanna start looking for a new mug." the room goes silent in that specific way rooms go silent right before they explode.

"kate marie martin," her mother says, very slowly, mug still held aloft like a held breath. "what did you just say to me." you feel every eye in the room swing to you, and your hand goes to your stomach on instinct, and that's it that's the confirmation, before either of you says another word then the room does explode. 

kate's mom is crying before she's even fully out of her chair her dad says something that might be a swear word and might be a prayer kate sister as well as her brother is screaming, actually screaming, the kind of sound that makes the dog start barking somewhere in the kitchen.

you're pulled into the middle of it before you can brace for it kate's mom's arms around you so tight you can barely breathe, her voice thick and broken saying thank you, thank you, oh my god, thank you into your hair like you've given her something she didn't know how badly she wanted. 

kate's dad hugs you next, quieter, just holds on a beat too long and says, "we're real glad you're family," in a voice that cracks at the end and through all of it kate doesn't let go of your hand once. 

not when her sister and her brother tackle her onto the floor, not when her mom makes everyone sit back down so she can ask forty questions in the span of ninety seconds, not when the whole room turns warm and loud and full in a way you didn't know you'd been bracing yourself against until it didn't hurt at all.

"you good?" kate murmurs against your ear, in the one quiet second the room allows you.

you look around at her mom wiping her eyes and already reaching for her phone to call someone, at her dad grinning like christmas came twice, at her siblings arguing over who gets to be the favorite aunt or uncle and something in your chest finally, finally settles.

"yeah," you say, and mean it completely. "i'm good." kate smiles like she knew you would be, all along.

the questions don't stop for the rest of the morning kate's mom wants to know everything how far along, when you're due, whether you've picked names, whether you've started the nursery, whether you know if it's a boy or a girl yet, and you answer as much as you can between the hugging and the crying and the second round of coffee someone makes because the first pot got forgotten in all the commotion.

"june," you tell her, for the third time, because she keeps asking like she's hoping the answer will change to something sooner. "we're due in june."

"june," she repeats, pressing a hand to her chest. "a summer baby. oh, that's good, that's a good month for a baby." she looks at kate like she's seeing her for the first time in years. "my baby's having a baby."

"mom." kate's voice goes soft and embarrassed in the way it only does around her own mother.

"i'm allowed," her mom says, dabbing at her eyes with a paper towel someone handed her in lieu of an actual tissue. "i get to be like this exactly one time per kid and you've used up your turn already, kate martin, this one's for y/n."

kate's dad, meanwhile, has gone quiet in the corner of the couch, and when you catch his eye he just shakes his head slowly, like he's trying to find words and not quite landing on any. "you alright over there?" you ask him.

"yeah." he clears his throat. "yeah, just my first grandbaby. gonna take a minute to feel real." he looks at kate, at you, at the spot where your hand has settled back over your stomach without you noticing. "you two are gonna be good at this. real good."

"we'll see," you say, but it comes out lighter than you expect, easier than the version of that sentence you'd been carrying around in your head for six weeks.

by the time the sun starts to go down, the house has settled into the particular kind of loud-quiet that happens after a big reveal, everyone still talking about it, but lower now, gentler, woven into the regular rhythm of the day instead of overtaking it. 

kate’s siblings have already started arguing about whether the baby will be tall, whether it'll play basketball, whether it's fair that they don't get to know the gender yet when they clearly have a right to know. "you don't have a right to know," kate tells the youngest one, lying back against the couch with your feet in her lap. "you have a right to wait, just like everybody else."

"i'm going to be the favorite aunt regardless," her sister says.

"absolutely not," says trevor. "i'm closer in age. i'm clearly the fun uncle."

"you're twenty-six, you're not 'the fun uncle,' you're just an uncle—"you laugh from your spot on the couch, and kate's hand finds your ankle, thumb tracing slow circles there, and when you look over she's just watching you, soft, like she's been doing it for a while.

"what?" you ask. "nothing. just — you look like you finally exhaled."

"i think i did," you admit. "somewhere around the mug thing."

"i wasn't planning that, by the way." kate winces a little. "it just came out. i saw the mug and i couldn't help it."

"i know. i felt it happen in real time." you nudge her with your foot. "it was perfect, though. i don't think i could've planned anything better."

"yeah?"

"yeah. i was so scared of doing it right that i forgot sometimes the right way is just — however it happens. however it's true." kate brings your foot up and kisses your ankle, easy, like it's nothing, like it's everything. "i love you and i love that you let me see you scared, even when you didn't want to be."

"i'm working on it."

"you're doing great at it."

later, after the dishes are done and kate's parents have gone up to bed and her sister and brother have disappeared into their old rooms with promises of texting you baby name ideas at ungodly hours, you and kate end up back in her childhood bedroom, the two of you crammed onto the twin bed with the lamp turned low.

"i keep thinking about today," kate says, her head on your chest, your fingers in her hair. "like, replaying it. my mom's face. my dad is not able to talk for a second."

"i was so scared of this exact day for six weeks," you say. "and now i don't even remember what i thought was going to happen instead."

"what did you think was gonna happen?" you think about it honestly. "i don't know. i think i was scared they'd think i wasn't ready or that i'd do something wrong, say it the wrong way, and it'd just be off. tainted, somehow. like there's a right version of this day and i'd miss it."

kate tilts her head up to look at you. "there's no right version. there's just the one that actually happens. and the one that actually happened today was about as good as it gets."

"yeah," you say, and you believe it now, fully, the fear finally loosened out of your chest after six weeks of carrying it tight. "yeah, it really was." kate's hand finds your stomach again, settles there, warm and steady, the same way it has all night, like she can't help checking, like she still doesn't quite believe it's real and wants proof every few minutes. "merry christmas," she says again, quieter this time, just for the two of you.

"merry christmas," you say back. "welcome to edwardsville, baby."

kate laughs, soft and surprised, and presses a kiss to the top of your head, and outside the window the snow starts up again, slow and steady, and for the first time in six weeks you fall asleep without a single knot left in your chest.

you almost forget about the picture it's kate who remembers, halfway through getting ready for bed, when she catches sight of your phone case and goes still for a second. "wait," she says. "did you bring it?"

"bring what?"

"the picture. from the appointment." she's already crossing the room toward your bag, like she can't wait for you to confirm. "you said you printed one."

you had you'd tucked it into the inside pocket of your bag almost as an afterthought, the morning you packed, half-convinced you'd never actually use it, that the moment would pass you by the way you'd let so many moments pass you by these last six weeks but it's there, folded once down the middle, soft at the crease from being carried around.

"i didn't know if i was gonna show anyone," you admit, handing it over. "i think i was scared of making it more real than it already felt." kate unfolds it carefully, like it might tear, and the second she sees the little gray smudge of it her whole face changes softer, slower, something private moving across it that you don't think you've ever quite seen on her before. "that's — that's them," she says, voice gone thick. "that's actually them."

"that's them."

"can i—" she stops herself, looks up at you. "can i show my mom in the morning? before we leave? i know we already told everyone, but i want her to see it. i want her to have something to hold."

"yeah," you say, throat tight in a way that has nothing to do with anxiety this time. "yeah, of course."

kate sits back down on the edge of the bed with the picture still in her hands, just looking at it, thumb tracing the curve of it like she's trying to memorize something that doesn't have edges yet. "i can't believe i get to be someone's mom," she says quietly. "i've thought about it before. but it's different now. it's a person. it's this person." you lean into her side, look down at the photo with her. "you're gonna be so good at it."

"yeah?"

"the best." you kiss her temple. "i've never seen anyone fall in love with a smudge on paper this fast." kate laughs, wet and a little embarrassed, and tucks the photo carefully into the nightstand drawer like it's something precious, which it is, and pulls you down into bed after it.

the morning you leave, the house is quiet in a different way than it's been the rest of the trip, softer, slower, everyone moving around in sweatpants and socked feet, nobody quite ready to let the visit end kate's mom finds you in the kitchen before anyone else is fully awake, two mugs of decaf already poured, one set down in front of you without a word. "i switched yours," she says. "figured you don't need the real stuff anymore."

"thank you." you wrap both hands around the mug, grateful for something warm to hold. "for everything. the way you all — i don't know. i was so nervous coming here."

"i know you were, sweetheart." she sits across from you, reaches over to squeeze your hand. "i could tell something was sitting on you the second you walked in the door. i didn't know what, but i knew you needed space to get there in your own time."

"i'm sorry i didn't tell you sooner."

"don't be sorry. you told us exactly when you were ready, and that was perfect." she glances toward the hallway, where you can hear kate's voice, low, showing the sonogram photo to her dad, his murmured response too quiet to make out. "you know, kate called me crying the night before you two started dating officially. did she ever tell you that?"

"no."

"said she'd never met anyone who made her feel like she could be soft and strong at the same time." kate's mom smiles, eyes glassy again already. "watching you with her and now this i just. i'm glad my daughter found someone who lets her be all of it and i'm glad that baby's gonna have you too." you don't trust your voice enough to answer right away, so you just squeeze her hand back, and she seems to understand that's answer enough.

kate finds you both like that a few minutes later, leaning in the kitchen doorway with the sonogram photo still in her hand, watching the two of you with an expression you'll think about on the whole drive to the airport. "you ready?" she asks eventually, voice soft.

"almost." you stand, pull her mom into one more hug, longer this time, both of you a little tearful and trying to pretend you're not. "thank you. really."

"june," her mom says into your shoulder, like a promise. "i'll see you and this baby in june."

the goodbyes at the door take twenty minutes longer than they need to kate's siblings fighting over who gets to hold the baby first once it's born, her dad pressing a folded twenty into your coat pocket "for gas" even though you flew, her mom standing on the porch in the cold with her robe pulled tight, waving until the car turns the corner and the house disappears behind the bare trees.

kate reaches for your hand the second you're back on the highway, the airport still forty minutes out, illinois going by gray and quiet around you. "so," she says. "edwardsville."

"edwardsville," you agree.

"better than you thought it'd be?"

you think about the six weeks of carrying it alone, the car ride in with your hand pressed to your stomach, the anxious math at the dinner table, the mug joke, the photo in the nightstand drawer, kate's mom's hand over yours in the quiet kitchen this morning. "so much better," you say. "i don't think i'll ever be scared of telling them anything again."

kate brings your hand up to her mouth, kisses your knuckles, smiles against them. "good. 'cause we've got about eighteen years of things to tell them."

"don't remind me."

"i'm just saying. get used to the crying. my mom's not gonna stop for a while." you laugh, and outside the window edwardsville disappears behind you, and ahead of you there's a whole year waiting june, and everything after it and for the first time since the plane landed, you let yourself actually look forward to it.

the nursery takes longer than either of you expects, mostly because kate refuses to let anyone help paint the walls. "i want to do it myself," she says, standing in the middle of the half-finished room with a roller in one hand and a streak of pale yellow across her cheekbone. "i don't know why. i just do."

"you've got paint on your face."

"i'm aware." she doesn't move to wipe it off. "i like it there."

you sit in the doorway on an upturned moving box, six months along now, too tired to do much more than direct from a safe distance, and watch her work she's meticulous about it in a way that surprises you taping every edge twice, going back over spots that already look even, like she's trying to get something exactly right for a person who won't be able to appreciate the effort for years.

"you don't have to be perfect about it," you tell her. "they're not gonna care if the corners are crisp."

"i know." kate steps back, surveys the wall like it owes her something. "i just want it to be good. like — really good. i want them to grow up in a room that somebody loved making." you don't have anything to say to that for a second. 

you just watch her, paint on her face, sleeves rolled up, the late afternoon light coming through the window she insisted on leaving uncovered "so they can see the sky," and you think, not for the first time, that you didn't know it was possible to fall in love with someone all over again in increments like this. "come here," you say.

"i've got paint on me."

"i don't care." she comes and sits on the box with you anyway, presses a yellow-streaked kiss to your cheek, and you both just look at the room together half-finished, smelling like primer, already more loved than most rooms ever get to be.

the shower is at kate's mom's house, because kate's mom insisted, and because by march the idea of you flying out to edwardsville again at seven months pregnant felt like more trouble than it was worth to fight her on it.

the whole martin family turns out for it, plus a handful of kate's old teammates from high school and teammates from college and the WNBA, plus your own mom flown in for the occasion, plus what feels like every woman within a thirty-mile radius of edwardsville who has ever met kate martin even once. 

there are too many decorations there is a cake shaped like a basketball that nobody can quite agree was kate's idea or her sister or maybe her brother there is a game involving guessing the circumference of your stomach that you lose spectacularly, off by almost six inches, to the delight of everyone in the room. "i can't believe you guessed smaller," kate laughs, watching you hold the string up against your belly for comparison. "you live in this body."

"i wasn't thinking clearly! i'm emotional today!"

"you're emotional every day."

"i'm pregnant, kate." kate kisses the top of your head, grinning, and doesn't argue further later, opening gifts on the living room floor with your back against kate's knees, you catch her mom watching you both from across the room with an expression you've started to recognize soft, a little overwhelmed, the look of someone watching something she prayed for arrive right on schedule. "you good, mom?" kate asks, noticing too.

"i'm wonderful." she dabs at her eyes, unembarrassed about it now in a way she wasn't even back at christmas. "i just keep thinking about how scared y/n looked walking in that door in december. and now look at this. look at all this."

you feel your throat tighten, surrounded by gifts and tissue paper and people who flew or drove hours just to be here for this. "i didn't know it could feel like this," you admit. "being this held. by people who aren't even technically my family yet."

"you've been family since the first christmas," kate's mom says, like it's the simplest fact in the world. "the paperwork's just catching up."

your water breaks at 4am on a tuesday, three weeks earlier than you'd planned for, and the next several hours blur together into something you'll only ever remember in fragments kate's hands shaking as she grabs the hospital bag you packed two months ago, the drive there too fast and too slow at the same time, kate narrating every red light like it's personally offended her.

"you're doing so good," kate says, over and over, through the worst of it, her hand a vice in yours, her forehead pressed to yours between contractions. "you're doing so good, i've got you, i'm right here."

"you said that already."

"i'm gonna keep saying it." somewhere around hour eleven, when you're exhausted in a way you didn't know a body could be exhausted and still function, kate leans down close to your ear and says, low, just for you, "edwardsville's already got a name picked out for them, you know. my mom's been texting me for weeks."

"kate—"

"i'm just saying. there's a whole town ready to love this kid and they haven't even shown up yet." it makes you laugh, which somehow helps more than it should, right in the middle of everything, and twenty minutes later, after the kind of effort you don't have words for yet and probably won't for a long time, there's a sound in the room that isn't yours or kate's small, furious, alive and kate's whole face breaks open in a way you've never seen before, not at christmas, not at the shower, not ever.

"you did it," she says, crying openly now, no attempt to hide it. "y/n, you did it, look—" and you look, and there's a person, a real actual person, red-faced and screaming and perfect, placed against your chest before you've even fully caught your breath, and kate's hand comes to rest over both of you like she still can't quite believe any of it is real.

"hi," you say, to the baby, voice wrecked. "hi, there you are."

"there you are," kate echoes, and presses her lips to your temple, then to the baby's tiny fist, then back to you, like she can't decide who to kiss first and has settled on everyone, repeatedly, for as long as it takes.

the drive to edwardsville is forty minutes from the airport, same as always, except this time there's a car seat in the back and a baby fast asleep in it, and kate keeps glancing back through the rearview mirror every few minutes like she still hasn't gotten over the fact that you're allowed to just take them places now. 

that they're a real, mobile, sleeping person who exists outside of a hospital room. "you're gonna get us in an accident," you tell her, "looking back there every ten seconds."

"i can't help it. they're so small."

"they were the same size five minutes ago."

"i know. i just keep checking." the martin house looks the same as it did at christmas, except the trees are full now instead of bare, and the porch is decorated with a single, slightly oversized "welcome baby" banner that somebody, probably kate's sister, by the handwriting clearly made themselves.

kate's mom is on the porch before the car's even fully stopped, practically running down the steps, and the second the car seat comes out of the back she's reaching for it with both hands, tears already starting.

"there she is," she says, voice breaking on the word, peering down at the sleeping baby like she's looking at something miraculous. "there's my girl."

"careful with her head," kate says automatically, and her mom just laughs through her tears. "i raised three of you, kate marie martin. i know how to hold a baby."

the whole family spills out onto the lawn after that kate's dad first, quiet and a little teary, then both sisters fighting immediately over who gets to hold her next, then a handful of neighbors who apparently got word and wandered over "just to see." 

it's loud and warm and a little overwhelming in the exact way edwardsville has always been, and you stand there on the lawn with kate's hand finding yours, watching your daughter get passed gently from arm to arm, getting introduced to a town that's loved her since before she could even hear them say her name.

"this is it," kate says quietly, just to you, watching her mom rock the baby slow and easy under the porch light. "this is the thing i promised her at christmas. june. here we are."

"here we are," you say back, leaning into her side, exhausted and full in a way you've never quite been before. "i don't think i've ever been less anxious about anything."

"yeah?"

she dropped her duffel beside the locker that had her name taped across the front and let out a quiet breath, taking in the room around her a few faces she already knew were scattered throughout the lockers, conversations overlapping as everyone caught up after the offseason. 

somewhere across the room someone laughed loud enough to turn a few heads before another voice immediately cut in to tell them to keep it down, it felt normal, comfortable exactly how the first day was supposed to feel as her phone buzzed in the front pocket of her bag.

emily ❤️

made it to the gym. figured you’d already be there too.

a small smile found its way onto veronica’s face before she even opened the message.

good luck today. don’t overthink everything like you always do.

another message appeared before she could answer.

love you.

she stared at it for a second longer than she meant to distance was strange there wasn’t one moment where everything suddenly became difficult it happened slowly, almost quietly. calls became shorter because one of them had an early lift the next morning.

facetime dates turned into quick check-ins between practices. “i miss you” became something they said every day because they had to instead of because it surprised either of them she still loved emily she knew she did she just missed when loving each other had felt easier.

love you too, she typed back before slipping the phone into her bag. “burton.” she looked up one of the assistant coaches pointed toward the court. “we’re about to get started.”

“coming.”

she grabbed her water bottle and headed out with the rest of the group, the familiar sound of sneakers against hardwood settling something inside her chest this was the part she didn’t have to think about.

conditioning started exactly the way conditioning always did: too much running, too many whistles, not enough water, everyone looked a little slower than they wanted to admit after the offseason, and the coaches looked entirely too pleased about it.

by the time the first drill ended, veronica’s legs were already burning. “first day?” someone asked beside her as she glanced over kate martin stood there with her hands on her hips, breathing just hard enough to prove she’d been feeling the same sprints.

veronica recognized her immediately they’d never actually known each other, but they’d played against one another enough in college that she would’ve recognized her anywhere kate offered an easy smile. “i’m kate.” like she didn’t already know.  “veronica.”

“i know.” there was something almost sheepish about the way kate admitted it. “we played against each other enough.”

“yeah.”

“i always hated guarding you.” veronica let out a quiet laugh before she could stop herself. “thanks… i think.” kate laughed too. “meant it as a compliment.”

before veronica could think of anything else to say, another whistle echoed through the gym. “guess we’re not done suffering,” kate said then she jogged back toward the next drill without waiting for an answer.

veronica watched her for exactly one second before forcing herself to look somewhere else she wasn’t sure why it had been a completely normal conversation nothing about it should’ve stayed with her for the rest of practice and yet every so often, without meaning to, she’d catch herself noticing where kate was on the floor.

she talked a lot encouraged everyone high-fived people after good reps laughed when drills went wrong instead of getting frustrated.

she had this annoying habit of making everyone around her relax veronica decided she probably just had one of those personalities.

that was all it had to be because anything more than that would be ridiculous.

she had emily she loved emily and kate martin was just another teammate.

practice settled into a rhythm over the next few days the first morning was all introductions and nerves, the second was about remembering names, and by the third everyone had already started slipping into routines without realizing it. 

people sat in the same seats during film and they gravitated toward the same racks in the weight room whereas the same groups lingered after practice, stretching a little longer just to keep talking.

veronica noticed all of it she always noticed things it was part of what made her a good point guard she noticed who looked tired before they admitted it who was frustrated after a missed rotation. 

who needed the ball to settle into practice and who preferred to disappear into the background until they found their rhythm.

she also noticed that kate seemed incapable of standing in silence for more than thirty seconds it wasn’t in an annoying way she just…talked to everyone.

she complimented the practice players after good possessions, thanked the equipment staff every afternoon when they wheeled fresh towels into the locker room, asked the interns how college finals were going, somehow remembered every coach’s name by the second day and greeted them every morning like she’d known them for years.

it was strange that most veterans spent training camp trying not to be noticed kate somehow managed to make herself memorable without making herself the center of attention.

veronica caught herself watching her once during a water break kate was standing near the opposite baseline, laughing so hard she had one hand on her stomach while kayla dramatically acted out something that had happened during the last drill.

“that’s not what happened,” kate managed between laughs. “that’s exactly what happened.”

“you are literally making things up.”

“am i?”

“yes.”

“prove it.” kate shook her head. “i can’t believe i have to share a locker room with you.”

“you love me.”

“that’s a strong word.”

“you tolerate me?”

“…barely.”

they both laughed again veronica looked away before either of them noticed she’d been staring as she bent down to retie a shoe that didn’t need to be tied. “you good?”

she looked up to find one of the assistant coaches standing nearby. “yeah.”

“thought you rolled your ankle.”

“no.” he nodded once before walking away veronica stayed crouched for another few seconds anyway she wasn’t staring she’d just…looked over.

everyone looked around during practice that was normal, it didn't mean anything. “booty cheeks!”

the nickname echoed across the gym veronica looked up before she could stop herself kate threw her head back with an exaggerated groan. “if you call me that one more time, i’m telling coach.”

kayla looked completely unfazed. “booty cheeks is a beautiful nickname.”

“it’s a terrible nickname.”

“it’s iconic.”

“it’s embarrassing.”

“same thing.”a couple of teammates laughed as kate walked over and lightly shoved kalya’s shoulder. “you’re impossible.”

“and yet here you are.”

“unfortunately.” they dissolved into another round of laughter before jogging back into the drill as the whistle blew.

veronica frowned, it was…easy that was the word that kept coming back everything between them looked easy they hadn’t known each other very long, but you’d never guess it watching them joke around.

it looked effortless, like they’d been teammates for years instead of days she tried not to think about why that bothered her because it didn’t it couldn’t.

later that afternoon, everyone filtered back into the locker room, exhausted from nearly three hours on the floor.

music drifted softly through the speakers while players packed their bags veronica had just finished changing when she heard footsteps stop beside her locker. “hey.”

she glanced up; it was kate close enough now that veronica noticed the loose strands of hair that had escaped her ponytail and the faint flush still lingering across her cheeks from practice. “hey.”

kate smiled. “i was gonna grab coffee before heading back.” veronica blinked. “oh.”

“you wanna come?” the question was so casual, so harmless, just teammates grabbing coffee veronica knew that still…her phone buzzed inside her bag almost instinctively, she reached for it.

emily ❤️

call me whenever you’re free.

guilt hit her so quickly it almost took her breath away she looked back at kate. “sorry.”

kate’s smile faltered just enough to notice. “i actually…i have to call my girlfriend.” there was only a second of silence then kate smiled again.

the same easy smile she’d walked in with on the first day. “oh.” she nodded. “yeah, of course.”

“maybe another time.”

“definitely.” kate gave her a quick wave before turning toward the exit.

“hey, kayla,” she called as she walked away. “you still getting coffee?”

“always.”

“let’s go before i pass out.” the two of them disappeared through the locker room doors together, still arguing over whose turn it was to pay.

veronica watched them leave then looked back down at the screen in her hand. “call me whenever you’re free.” she pressed the call button emily answered on the second ring. “there she is.” veronica smiled. “hey.”

“how was practice?” she leaned back against the locker. “good.”

“just good?”

“hard.”

“that’s more like it.” emily laughed, and for a moment everything felt normal again.

they talked about practice, about travel, about who looked good in camp and about how sore they both were already the conversation flowed the way it always had: comfortable, familiar, safe and yet.

halfway through the call, veronica caught herself looking toward the locker room doors, wondering if kate and kayla were still at the coffee shop across the street or if they’d already made it back to the hotel.

the thought came and went so quickly she almost didn’t register it almost she frowned at herself.

what was that? “ronnie?” she blinked. “what?” emily laughed softly.“i asked if you’re still there.”

“sorry.”

“you okay?”

“…yeah.” she answered a little too quickly. “just tired.” she hated how easy the lie came because she wasn’t tired, she was distracted and she had absolutely no idea why.

the next week passed quicker than veronica expected, conditioning slowly gave way to more basketball, practices stretching longer as coaches began installing offensive sets and defensive coverages, stopping drills every few possessions to correct spacing or rotations before blowing the whistle again. 

the soreness in everyone’s legs became easier to ignore, conversations in the locker room growing louder as the awkwardness of the first few days disappeared.

somewhere along the way, kate became part of the noise as if someone made a shot from half court, she was the first one celebrating and if someone looked frustrated after a bad rep, she’d clap her hands and tell them to get the next one.

if practice dragged, she’d find a way to make somebody laugh before the next whistle she had an energy that somehow never felt forced.

it was just there veronica told herself she barely noticed which would’ve been a lot more believable if her eyes didn’t instinctively search for kate the second she walked into the gym every morning.

it became a habit before she realized she’d formed one she’d step through the doors look toward the court to find kate then immediately pretend she hadn’t.

it annoyed her mostly because she couldn’t explain it but she wasn’t doing anything wrong, she wasn’t flirting wasn’t texting her hell, half the time they barely exchanged more than a “morning.”

so why did she keep looking?

“burton.” she turned at the sound of her name kate was standing a few feet away with a basketball tucked under one arm. “you mind?”

she tossed the ball over veronica caught it without thinking. “coach said you were first.” they were splitting into groups for a shooting drill. “thanks.” kate shrugged. “figured i’d save you the walk.”

“appreciate it.”

“don’t mention it.” there it was again that tiny pause like kate expected the conversation to keep going veronica could almost see the moment she realized it wasn’t going to.

“well…” kate rocked back on her heels. “guess i’ll see you in a minute.”

“yeah.” 

kate smiled politely before jogging over to the other basket where kayla immediately yelled, “booty cheeks! hurry up!” kate groaned loud enough for half the gym to hear. “i’m never answering you again.”

“you say that every day.”

“one day i’ll mean it.”

“can’t wait.” veronica bounced the ball once twice as she thought “why did she always sound so…different around kayla?”

not different comfortable that was the word comfortable she hated that she’d started categorizing the way kate spoke to different people.

she talked one way with the coaches, another with the rookies, another with the veterans and then there was kayla.

they had already developed that strange teammate language where half their conversations didn’t make sense to anyone else.

it had happened so quickly veronica wondered what it would’ve been like if she’d actually accepted that coffee invitation the thought hit her out of nowhere.

she froze and accepted it? she could’ve it was just coffee teammates got coffee together all the time except…she hadn’t said no because of coffee she’d said no because she’d panicked because emily had texted.

because somewhere in the back of her mind she’d worried that saying yes would’ve meant something it absolutely didn’t and now kate hadn’t asked again good that was probably for the best. “earth to veronica.” veronica blinked coach was looking at her. “you planning on shooting?”

a few teammates laughed and heat crept up the back of her neck. “sorry.”

she stepped into the drill, grateful to have something else to focus on basketball and never judged you for thinking too much.

it simply demanded your attention until there wasn’t room for anything else practice ended with a full-court scrimmage.

teams were thrown together almost at random, players rotating every few minutes while coaches scribbled notes onto clipboards.

veronica found herself matched up against kate more than once; it felt familiar, college, competitive and comfortable.

kate caught the ball on the wing and immediately looked for a cutter veronica slid into the passing lane, forcing her to reset. “nice.” kate nodded.

“good read.” the possession continued a minute later, veronica drove into the paint before kicking the ball to the corner.

“great pass,” kate called from the opposite end as everyone ran back on defense. veronica glanced over as kate wasn’t being sarcastic; she said it the same way she’d compliment anyone else simple genuine veronica nodded once.

“thanks.”

it should’ve ended there instead, as they lined up for the next possession, kate leaned over just enough to speak quietly. “you see the floor really well.” veronica looked at her. “what?”

“your passing.” kate just shrugs. “it’s fun to watch.” before veronica could respond, coach blew the whistle.

“switch!” kate peeled off to guard someone else the moment was over still those five words followed veronica all the way back to the locker room.

it’s fun to watch.

they shouldn’t have mattered, people complimented each other all the time teammates encouraged teammates, it wasn't special so why did she remember the exact way kate had smiled when she said it?

that night, emily called while veronica was lying in bed they talked about everything and nothing, what they’d eaten, how camp was going, who looked sharp, who looked exhausted.

emily laughed as she told a story about one of her teammates, and veronica laughed too, closing her eyes as she listened.

this was home, this was familiar, this was the person she’d chosen when the conversation finally slowed, emily’s voice softened. “i miss you.” veronica swallowed. “i miss you too.”

she meant it she really did but after they hung up, she lay awake staring at the ceiling long after the screen on her phone went dark.

without meaning to, her mind drifted back to practice to kate smiling after complimenting her pass to the way she’d waited half a second, almost like she’d expected veronica to say something back.

veronica rolled onto her side with a frustrated sigh, pulling the blanket over her shoulder this was ridiculous she was thinking about a five-second conversation she’d had with a teammate, nothing more she closed her eyes for once, she wished she could convince herself as easily as she kept trying to.

by the second week of camp, nobody really thought about introductions anymore whereas the locker room had found its rhythm music was louder in the mornings, someone always seemed to be stealing somebody else’s snacks, and every day kayla managed to come up with a new variation of the same nickname. “morning, booty cheeks.”

kate looked up from tying her shoes. “good morning, pain in my ass.” kayla grinned. “see? she’s learning.”

“i’m evolving.”

“into what?” kate shrugged. “a bigger problem.” the locker room erupted into laughter even one of the coaches walking past the doorway shook her head. “save it for after practice.”

“yes, coach,” kate called back, though the smile on her face said she wasn’t sorry in the slightest veronica rolled athletic tape around her fingers, keeping her eyes on the bench in front of her.

she wasn’t listening, she couldn’t have been except she knew exactly who was talking without looking she’d started recognizing kate’s laugh that realization hit her sometime during warmups not because she’d been paying attention because it had become impossible not to.

there were dozens of voices echoing through the gym every day hers somehow always stood out she hated that she’d noticed. “you good?” veronica looked up as one of the trainers was passing by. “yeah.”

“you’ve been staring at that tape for like a minute.” she blinked before realizing she’d completely stopped wrapping it around her fingers. “…guess i have.” as the trainer chuckled. “long week?”

“something like that.” practice started with shell drill before moving into live action coach stopped them every few possessions, pulling players into little groups to talk through spacing and defensive communication.

during one of the breaks, veronica found herself standing near half court waiting for the whistle. “hey.” kate stepped up beside her, bouncing lightly on the balls of her feet. “hey.”

“your pass yesterday.” veronica frowned. “…what about it?”

“i’ve been trying it all morning.” kate motioned toward the opposite basket. “still can’t throw it.” veronica couldn’t help the tiny smile that tugged at her lips. “it’s not that hard.” kate looked dramatically offended. “wow.”

“what?”

“i come over here looking for help and you humble me immediately.”

“i didn’t—” kate laughed before she could finish. “i’m kidding.” of course she was as she always seemed to know exactly when someone was taking her seriously. “seriously though,” she continued, “if you get bored later, show me?” veronica hesitated.

“…sure.”

“thanks.” the whistle blew kate jogged backward toward her spot. “don’t forget.” veronica watched her go. “burton!” she snapped her attention toward the coach. “eyes here.”

“sorry.” practice resumed and she forgot about the conversation almost immediately or at least she tried to after practice, a handful of players stayed behind getting extra shots up veronica usually did.

today was no different she’d made it through two shooting spots before hearing footsteps behind her. “you forgot.” she turned kate was spinning a basketball on one finger. “what?”

“the pass.”

“right.”

“unless you were lying.” veronica rolled her eyes. “i wasn’t lying.”

“good.” kate tossed her the ball. “teach me.” it was supposed to take five minutes to show her the angle and the timing where to look before making the pass instead, forty minutes disappeared.

kate messed it up a lot every time the ball sailed too high or bounced off the wrong spot, she’d throw both hands in the air like the pass had personally offended her. “there is absolutely no way you people can make this look so easy.” veronica laughed. “a little lower.”

“i am throwing it lower.”

“you’re not.”

“i feel like i am.”

“that’s the problem.” kate groaned dramatically before trying again the ball finally hit exactly where it needed to. “there!” veronica pointed. “that’s it.” kate stared at the pass she’d just made before looking back at her. “i did that.”

“you did.”

“…i’m amazing.”

“let’s not get carried away.” kate laughed so hard she nearly dropped the ball. “you know…” she said between breaths, “i honestly thought you didn’t like me.” the words landed harder than veronica expected. “what?”

“the first week.” kate shrugged. “every time i tried talking to you, you looked like you wanted to be anywhere else.” veronica’s stomach dropped. “i didn’t.”

“i know that now.”

“you do?”

“yeah.” kate smiled. “you’re just quiet.”

quiet if only it were that simple veronica wasn’t quiet around everyone just kate because talking to kate meant thinking about kate thinking about kate meant feeling guilty and guilt was exhausting.

“anyway,” kate continued, completely unaware of the war happening inside veronica’s head, “i’m glad i was wrong.” before veronica could answer, kayla’s voice echoed from across the gym.

“booty cheeks!” kate sighed toward the ceiling. “i swear she has radar.”

“booty cheeks! we’re leaving!” kate looked back at veronica. “duty calls.” veronica smiled despite herself. “apparently.”

“thanks for the help.”

“anytime.” the word slipped out before she could stop it. kate smiled a little wider. “careful.”

“what?”

“you’re making me think we’re friends now.” veronica felt her heartbeat stumble, friends right that’s all, this was friends as she forced herself to smile. “maybe.” kate pointed at her. “i’ll take maybe.” then she turned, jogging toward the exit where kayla was already waiting with two coffees balanced in one hand. “what took so long?” kayla asked.

“private coaching.” kayla looked between the two of them. “without me?” kate gasped. “are you jealous?”

“absolutely.” kate bumped her shoulder as they walked through the doors together. “you’ll survive.”

“debatable.”

their voices faded down the hallway veronica stood alone near the basket, absentmindedly spinning the ball in her hands.

friends.

that was good, friends were safe, friends didn’t make your heart race because they smiled at you friends didn’t stay on your mind the entire drive back to the hotel.

friends definitely didn’t make you replay a forty-minute shooting session over and over while you brushed your teeth that night she caught her own reflection in the mirror and frowned. “get it together,” she muttered quietly as her phone lit up on the bathroom counter.

emily ❤️

facetime?

guilt settled into her chest almost instantly she answered before the second ring because whatever this thing in her head was she was determined to make sure it stayed there.the facetime call lasted almost an hour long enough for emily to tell three different stories from practice, complain about the food she’d been eating all week, and somehow convince veronica that sleeping five hours a night was a perfectly reasonable life choice.

“you’re impossible,” veronica laughed, shaking her head. “i’m efficient.”

“you’re sleep deprived.”

“details.” veronica smiled, resting her chin against her hand as she watched emily grin through the screen as this was easy, this was what they did it reminded her why they’d worked in the first place.

emily could make her laugh without trying she knew exactly when veronica was overthinking because she’d been watching her do it for years. “what?” emily asked.

“nothing.”

“you’re doing the thing.”

“what thing?”

“where you stare at me instead of talking.” veronica laughed quietly. “i’m listening.”

“mm.” emily narrowed her eyes playfully. “you’re thinking.”

“maybe.”

“about?” veronica opened her mouth and closed it again as nothing came out she wasn’t thinking about anything she could actually explain, not without sounding ridiculous. “camp.”

it wasn’t a complete lie. “just trying to learn everything.” emily nodded knowingly. “don’t put too much pressure on yourself.”

“i know.”

“no, you don’t.” veronica smiled. “probably not.”

“ronnie.”

“yeah?”

“you’re there because you deserve to be.” the words settled over her more gently than she’d expected. “don’t spend every day trying to prove everyone else right.” emily smiled. “just play.” veronica swallowed around the sudden lump in her throat.

“i love you.” the words came naturally; they always had emily’s smile softened. “i love you too.”

when the call ended, veronica sat on the edge of the bed for a long moment, staring at the now-black screen in her hand.

she loved emily she did so why did it feel like she was trying so hard to convince herself?

the next morning started with film, everyone shuffled into the dark room carrying coffees and breakfast sandwiches, the lights dimmed before the projector flickered to life.

veronica slipped into an empty chair near the middle; she'd barely opened her notebook when someone dropped into the seat beside her. “morning.”

she looked over kate holding two coffees. “morning.” kate held one out. “peace offering.” veronica blinked. “for what?”

“making you stay forty minutes after practice yesterday.”

“you didn’t make me.”

“still.” she nudged the cup a little closer. “take it.” veronica hesitated for half a second before accepting it. “thanks.”

“don’t mention it.” they sat in comfortable silence while players continued filing into the room veronica took a cautious sip. “this is actually good.” kate looked dramatically offended. “what did you expect?”

“i don’t know.”

“a terrible coffee order?”

“kind of.” kate placed a hand over her heart. “you wound me.” before veronica could answer, kayla walked into the room. “there you are, booty cheeks.” kate didn’t even look up. “good morning to you too.”

kayla stopped beside their row then looked down at the extra coffee in veronica’s hand. “hold on.” kate slowly looked up. “what?”

“you bought burton coffee?”

“yeah.” kayla frowned. “where’s mine?” kate stared for a beat before smiling innocently. “you’re capable of buying your own.”

the room around them erupted into scattered laughter as kayla gasped loudly enough for everyone nearby to hear. “betrayal booty checks.”

“you’ll survive.”

“i don’t think i will.” kate shrugged. “thought you were tough.”

“i am.”

“then act like it.” kayla pointed an accusing finger. “this changes things.”

“does it?”

“absolutely.” kate laughed, shaking her head as kayla wandered off toward another row, still muttering dramatically under her breath veronica found herself smiling into her coffee. “what?” kate caught her. “nothing.”

“you smiled.”

“did i?”

“you did.”

“must’ve been an accident.” kate grinned. “we’re making progress.” before veronica could ask what that meant, the lights dimmed completely and coach stepped to the front film began veronica tried to pay attention she really did she wrote notes circled actions listened to every correction.

yet every few minutes she’d become aware of the person sitting beside her, kate leaned forward whenever coach paused the film she scribbled furiously in her notebook every so often she’d quietly mutter, “that’s on me,” after a missed rotation appeared on the screen she wasn’t embarrassed she wasn’t making excuses she simply owned it.

veronica respected that more than she wanted to admit when film ended, everyone stood at once, conversations immediately filling the room again kate stretched her arms above her head. “Well.” veronica looked over. “well?”

“guess we survived.”

“barely.” kate laughed. “see?”

“what?”

“you joke.” veronica frowned. “occasionally.”

“i knew you had it in you.” she bumped veronica lightly with her shoulder as they walked out of the room it was quick and yet so harmless the kind of absentminded thing teammates did all the time still veronica felt it long after they reached the gym.

she hated herself for that because it meant something to her and it probably hadn’t even crossed kate’s mind across the court, kayla called out, “booty cheeks, quit flirting with burton and get over here.”

the entire gym seemed to go quiet for one impossible second veronica’s heart stopped, kate’s face twisted immediately into confusion. “what are you talking about?”

“you’ve been attached at the hip all morning.” kate rolled her eyes so hard it was almost impressive. “i bought her a coffee.”

“exactly.”

“you’re unbelievable.”

“i know.” kate laughed, shaking her head as she jogged away. “you’re actually insane.”

veronica stood frozen where she was, it had been a joke everyone knew it was a joke everyone except the tiny, traitorous part of her brain that couldn’t stop replaying kayla’s words.

quit flirting with burton.

she wasn’t kate wasn’t they weren’t doing anything so why had hearing it made her chest feel so impossibly light…right before the guilt came crashing back down?

after that, veronica became painfully aware of how often she and kate ended up around each other it wasn’t intentional at least, she didn’t think it was.

the coaches constantly mixed up practice groups, rotated partners through drills, and switched defensive assignments every few possessions. 

if she ended up next to kate during shell drill one day, she’d probably spend the next guarding someone else. there wasn’t any pattern to it and yet somehow, kate always found something to say. “nice read.”

“good help.”

“that’s my bad.”

little things but never enough to keep a conversation going if veronica didn’t want one she appreciated that kate never pushed.

if veronica answered with a smile and one word, kate accepted it if she answered with two, kate grinned like she’d won something it was…easy which only made veronica feel worse because she found herself wanting to answer with three. “burton.”

she looked up from stretching kate was spinning a ball on her fingertip. “question.”

“…okay.”

“be honest.” veronica already didn’t like where this was going. “am i actually getting better at that pass, or are you just being nice?” veronica watched kate bounce the ball before catching it again. “you’re getting better.”

“see?” kate pointed at her triumphantly. “i knew it.”

“i also said you still rush it.” kate’s shoulders slumped dramatically. “you couldn’t let me have that?”

“no.” kate sighed. “that’s fair.” before either of them could say anything else, kayla walked by carrying two water bottles. “booty cheeks.” kate didn’t even bother looking. “yes?”

“you’re needed.”

“for?”

“moral support.”

“that’s not a real reason.”

“it is if i’m asking.” kate laughed. “give me thirty seconds.” kayla’s eyes shifted toward veronica before a grin slowly spread across her face. “am i interrupting something?” veronica immediately looked away. “no.” kate looked genuinely confused. “we’re talking.”

“that’s what i said.” kayla wiggled her eyebrows kate blinked. “…you’re weird.”

“takes one to know one.”

“doesn’t even make sense.”

“doesn’t have to.”

kayla wandered off before kate could come up with another response veronica let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding kate noticed. “does she always do that?”

“pretty much.”

“good.” veronica frowned. “good?”

“means it’s not personal.” veronica laughed quietly. “definitely not.”

“i was starting to think she’d declared war on me.”

“give her time.” kate smiled. “see?”

“what?”

“that.”

“what?”

“you laughed again.” veronica rolled her eyes. “you’re keeping track?”

“a little.”

“that’s weird.”

“a little.” they looked at each other for half a second before laughing at the exact same time it wasn’t loud it wasn’t dramatic it just happened and for the first time since camp started, the conversation didn’t feel awkward.

it felt normal the realization lingered with veronica for the rest of practice, normal when had talking to kate started feeling normal? when practice ended, everyone slowly filtered toward the locker room.

coach reminded them they had a team dinner that evening before dismissing them, earning a mixture of cheers and exaggerated applause. “free food,” someone yelled.

“that’s the spirit,” another coach laughed, by seven o’clock, everyone had claimed seats around a long table in the private room of a restaurant a few minutes from the hotel.

veronica ended up between two veterans, halfway down one side of the table kate was across from her kayla was beside kate she told herself not to look over.

she failed almost immediately, conversation bounced around the room, stories from college bad flights, terrible roommates favorite arenas.

someone asked kate about her first week and she shrugged. “honestly?”

“honestly,” kayla repeated, kate smiled. “everybody’s been awesome.”

“awe,” kayla teased. “don’t.”

“she’s getting emotional.”

“i’m literally not.”

“look at her.” kate reached over and shoved kayla’s shoulder. “eat your fries.”

“yes, ma’am.”

the table laughed, veronica smiled despite herself before taking another sip of her drink she didn’t think that kate caught it. “veronica.” veronica looked up kate was already looking at her.

“what’s been the hardest adjustment for you?”

the question caught her off guard but everyone else had gone back to their own conversations for a moment, it almost felt like they were the only two people at the table. “probably…” she thought about it. “trying not to overthink.” kate nodded immediately. “same.”

“really?”

“all the time.” kate reached for another fry. “i’ll make one mistake and spend the next three possessions thinking about it.” veronica laughed. “…that sounds familiar.”

“it’s exhausting.”

“a little.”

“a lot.” they shared another smile, which was all small, easy and comfortable. “see?” kayla interrupted from beside kate. “look at you two.” both of them turned toward her. “what?”

kayla grinned around a mouthful of food. “you’re having your own little conversation.” kate looked at her like she’d grown another head. “…yes?”

“cute.”

“you’re impossible.”

“i’ve accepted that.” kate shook her head, laughing to herself before turning back toward veronica. “ignore her.”

“i usually do.”

“smart.” the conversation moved on as someone farther down the table started telling an embarrassing rookie story that immediately stole everyone’s attention. veronica laughed with everyone else she should’ve been focused on that instead, somewhere in the back of her mind, one thought quietly settled in.

this was the longest conversation she’d had with kate and she’d enjoyed every second of it the realization followed her all the way back to the hotel she was brushing her teeth when her phone lit up on the bathroom counter.

emily ❤️

how was team dinner?

veronica stared at the message as her fingers hovered over the keyboard.

it was good.

she hit send another message came almost instantly.

make any new friends?

veronica’s thumb stopped moving she looked at the blinking cursor then at her own reflection in the mirror after a long moment, she typed.

yeah. everyone’s been really nice.

it wasn’t a lie it just wasn’t the whole truth and somehow that felt even worse.

the next few days blurred together in the way only training camp could wake up practice, film, lift, eat, sleep and repeat.

every morning felt exactly like the one before it until veronica realized she had stopped checking the practice schedule taped inside her locker because she already knew what the day looked like the team was settling in.

coach had started talking less, stopping drills less trusting them more mistakes still happened, but they weren’t the frantic, first-day mistakes anymore. 

they were cleaner fixable people who had started relaxing that included veronica or at least everyone else seemed to think so. “look who’s smiling.” veronica looked over from where she was lacing her shoes. “i smile.” one of the veterans laughed. “not this much.”

“i don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“sure.” the conversation died there, but it stayed with her longer than she wanted it to. was she smiling more? she didn’t think so she’d always smiled probably before she could think about it any longer, kate wandered into the locker room balancing a paper bag in one hand and two coffees in the other. “who ordered the giant breakfast?” kayla asked immediately.

kate held up the bag.

“me.”

“all of that?”

“don’t judge me.”

“i’m absolutely judging you.” kate reached into the bag before tossing something across the room kayla caught it one-handed. “you bought me breakfast?”

“don’t make it weird.” kayla looked genuinely touched for about half a second. “booty cheeks…”

“don’t.”

“i love you.” kate groaned. “i literally bought you a breakfast sandwich.”

“exactly.”

“eat your food.” kayla clutched the sandwich dramatically to her chest. “this means something.”

“it means i was already in line.” the room filled with laughter veronica smiled to herself as she finished tying her shoes she looked up just in time to catch kate’s eyes.

kate smiled, which was a small one the kind people exchanged when they were both in on the same joke without thinking, veronica smiled back.

it lasted maybe two seconds then kate looked away to answer something one of the coaches had asked that should’ve been the end of it instead, veronica found herself thinking about it all through warmups.

it was just a smile people smiled but normal people didn’t spend ten minutes replaying one in their head.

practice was lighter that afternoon coach split everyone into smaller groups for shooting competitions, the losing teams responsible for picking up basketballs afterward veronica ended up on the same team as two veterans.

kate landed with kayla. “you’re going down,” kayla announced from the opposite baseline kate looked at the scorekeeper. “are we allowed to switch teammates?”

“rude,” kayla said.

“honest.” the whistle blew, the gym instantly became louder, players cheered after every made shot, groaned after every miss, talking over one another until nobody could hear themselves think.

veronica was lining up another three when she heard kate yell from the other end of the court. “kayla!”

“what?”

“you were supposed to rebound!”

“i thought you were making it!”

“i would’ve if you rebounded!”

“that’s not how basketball works!”

“then explain why i missed!” veronica laughed before the ball had even left her hands it hit nothing but net. “nice shot!” someone yelled she turned automatically.

kate had been watching from across the court she pointed at the basket before giving veronica a quick thumbs up veronica lifted a hand in return.

it was nothing just teammates encouraging each other except when she turned back toward her own basket, one of the veterans beside her bumped her shoulder. “you two finally becoming friends?” the question came so casually that it caught her completely off guard. “what?”

“you and martin.” veronica frowned. “we’re teammates.”

“that’s not what i asked.” before she could answer, coach blew the whistle signaling the end of the drill, saved or so she thought as everyone bent down to collect basketballs, the veteran walked beside her. “she seems good for you.”

veronica almost dropped the ball she was holding. “what does that mean?”

“you laugh around her.” she stared, the veteran shrugged. “didn’t really happen the first week.” then she jogged ahead before veronica could ask what she meant veronica stood frozen near half court.

she laughs around her the words echoed louder than the whistles had all afternoon.

did she?

she didn’t think she stopped because she suddenly realized she could remember exactly how many times kate had made her laugh over the past week way too many her phone buzzed inside her bag while everyone headed back toward the locker room she smiled automatically.

emily.

call tonight?

veronica stared at the message then looked up across the hallway, kate and kayla were arguing over who had actually lost the shooting competition. “you missed three.”

“you missed four.”

“one rolled out.”

“a miss is a miss.”

“i reject that.”

“of course you do.” kate laughed, nudging kayla out of the doorway with her shoulder veronica looked back down at her phone. yeah. after dinner?

she hit send almost immediately, the guilt settled in again because for the first time since she’d gotten to camp she had answered emily’s text while thinking about someone else.

veronica called emily that night like she’d promised they would talk while veronica sat cross-legged on the hotel bed, the television muted in the background, nothing but the soft hum of the air conditioner filling the silence whenever one of them stopped talking.

emily was telling a story about one of her teammates when she suddenly laughed. “what?” veronica smiled. “nothing.”

“don’t ‘nothing’ me.”

“i’m listening.”

“you’re smiling.”

“is that a crime?”

“depends.” emily narrowed her eyes playfully through the screen. “is someone at camp making you laugh?” the question was innocent, completely harmless veronica answered a little too fast. “the team’s funny.”

it wasn’t a lie well not exactly emily nodded. “good.” she smiled. “i’m glad you’ve got good people around you.” good people just kept replaying as veronica swallowed. “yeah.”

they stayed on facetime for another half hour before both of them admitted they needed sleep. “love you,” emily said. “love you too.”

the words came automatically they always had but after the call ended, veronica stared at her own reflection in the now-black screen.

she didn’t know why she’d hesitated she’d meant it she knew she had so why had it suddenly felt heavier to say?

practice the next morning was louder than usual someone had connected their phone to the speakers before coaches walked in, music echoing through the gym while players stretched and shot around. kayla was dancing terribly on purpose probably. “you have absolutely no rhythm,” kate laughed.

“that’s a lie.”

“it’s actually impressive.”

“you’re jealous.”

“of what?”

“these moves.” kate looked toward the ceiling. “coach.” the coach looked over. “yes?”

“can you cut her?” the entire gym burst into laughter kayla placed a hand over her heart. “after everything we’ve been through.”

“it’s been two weeks.”

“exactly.”

“that’s not a long time.”

“it is emotionally.” kate shook her head, unable to stop laughing veronica was halfway through a layup line when she caught herself laughing too.

she missed the layup completely the ball hit the back of the rim and bounced away. “burton!” one of the assistants called. “finish.”

she jogged after the ball, cheeks warming, focus she needed to focus coach split them into teams for a scrimmage veronica and kate ended up together for the first time. “finally,” kayla said dramatically. “what?” kate asked.

“i don’t have to guard booty cheeks.” kate rolled her eyes. “you were barely guarding me anyway.”

“that’s because i’m saving my energy.”

“for what?”

“being funny.”

“debatable.” they lined up for the opening possession kate drifted toward veronica while everyone got set. “guess we’re teammates today.” veronica nodded. “looks like it.”

“try not to yell at me.” veronica blinked. “i don’t yell.” kate smiled. “exactly.”

the ball went up the scrimmage started fast as coach let them play through almost everything, only stopping the action to correct major mistakes.

late in the second quarter of the scrimmage, veronica drove into the lane before kicking the ball out to kate in the corner. kate caught it cleanly and didn't hesitate the shot splashed through the net. “good pass!” kate called immediately as they ran back on defense as veronica pointed toward her. “good shot.”

“keep doing that.”

“making shots?”

“passing me the ball.” veronica laughed. “i’ll think about it.”

“please do.” they settled into an easy rhythm kate cut veronica found her kate rotated early veronica trusted she would be there it felt surprisingly natural. “nice chemistry,” coach called after another possession.

neither of them thought much of it coach said things like that all the time, still the words lodged themselves somewhere in the back of veronica’s mind.

after practice, everyone slowly wandered toward the locker room, exhausted and dripping with sweat. veronica was digging through her bag for a clean shirt when she heard kate’s voice behind her. “hey.” she turned kate leaned against the locker beside hers. “thanks.”

“for?”

“today.” veronica frowned. “you made my job easy.”

“you made mine easier.” kate smiled. “see?”

“what?”

“we’re getting somewhere.” veronica couldn’t help smiling back. “apparently.” before either of them could say anything else, kayla appeared between them out of nowhere. “there you are, booty cheeks.” kate jumped. “how do you keep doing that?”

“talent.” kayla looked between the two of them before smirking. “am i interrupting?”

“yes,” kate deadpanned. “perfect.” kate laughed. “what do you want?”

“food.”

“okay?”

“you’re coming.” kate sighed dramatically. “do i have a choice?”

“absolutely not.” kate looked back at veronica. “you wanna come?”

the invitation hung in the air for just a second a week ago, veronica would’ve said no immediately today she almost said yes almost then her phone vibrated inside her bag.

she didn’t even have to look she already knew; emily, the tiny spark she’d felt disappeared as quickly as it had come. “i can’t.” kate nodded without a hint of disappointment. “another time.”

“yeah.”

“no worries.” she smiled. “a rain check.” before veronica could answer, kayla was already pulling on kate’s sleeve. “come on, booty cheeks.”

“i’m walking.”

“faster.” kate laughed, letting herself get dragged toward the door. “you’re so impatient.”

“because i’m hungry.” their voices faded down the hallway veronica slowly pulled her phone out.

emily ❤️

free to talk?

she looked toward the now-empty doorway then back at the screen for reasons she couldn’t explain she wished the timing had been different.

the rain check sat in the back of veronica’s mind longer than it should have, not because she’d wanted to go because she’d almost wanted to go there was a difference at least, that was what she kept telling herself.

she’d spent the rest of the evening on facetime with emily, listening to her talk about practice and travel plans, laughing at stories she’d heard a dozen different versions of before. 

it was comfortable and familiar it’s the kind of conversation that had always come naturally between them still, every now and then, there’d be a lull, not an awkward one just quiet and lately, veronica had started noticing them. “what are you thinking about?” emily asked, resting her chin on her hand veronica blinked. “nothing.” emily smiled knowingly. “that’s never true.”

“just tired.”

“you’ve been saying that a lot.”

“training camp.”

“yeah.” emily nodded. “i get it.” she did that was the thing emily always got it as she understood the pressure, the uncertainty, the constant feeling that one bad day could change everything she never asked veronica to explain what it felt like because she’d lived it too.

so why did veronica suddenly feel like she was the one holding something back? “Hey.” emily’s voice softened. “don’t disappear on me.” veronica smiled. “i’m here.”

“good.” they stayed on the phone another twenty minutes before finally saying goodnight when the call ended, veronica lay awake staring at the ceiling she wasn’t thinking about kate she wasn’t she was thinking about why she’d almost said yes that was different.

the next morning brought an announcement that immediately changed the mood around camp. “we’ve got an off day tomorrow,” coach said before practice a chorus of relieved cheers filled the gym. “don’t get too excited,” she continued. “you’re still expected back here the following morning ready to work.”

“yes, coach,” half the team answered in unison. kayla pumped a fist into the air. “i’m sleeping until noon.”

“you wish,” kate laughed. “don’t ruin this for me.”

“someone has to.” practice flew by without conditioning eating up the first hour, everyone looked lighter on their feet.

shots started falling passes were crisper the team was finally beginning to look like a team during a break between drills, veronica wandered toward the cooler to refill her water bottle. “perfect timing.”

she looked over kate was already there. “i’ve got another question.” veronica laughed quietly. “you always have questions.”

“it’s how i learn.”

“what is it?” kate leaned against the table. “how do you always know where everyone’s gonna be?” 

“what do you mean?”

“you’ll throw a pass before somebody’s even open.” she mimicked the motion with her hands. “then somehow they’re exactly where you thought they’d be.” veronica shrugged. “i don’t know.”

“yes, you do.”

“i just…” she searched for the right words. “…watch people.” kate tilted her head. “watch people.”

“their habits.”

“okay.”

“everyone moves differently.” kate listened without interrupting. “once you know how somebody likes to cut…” veronica gestured toward the court. “it gets easier.” kate smiled. “that’s really cool.” veronica looked down at her water bottle. “it’s just basketball.”

“maybe.” kate screwed the cap back onto her own bottle. “doesn’t make it any less cool.”

before veronica could respond, coach called everyone back in as kate jogged away, she glanced over her shoulder. “thanks, v.” veronica stopped walking.

v. it had slipped out so naturally that kate probably hadn’t even realized she’d shortened her name she watched kate rejoin the drill.

v.

no one on the team had called her that yet she wasn’t even sure why it made her smile. “burton!” she snapped out of it and coach pointed toward the opposite baseline. “let’s go.”

“coming.”

practice ended just before lunch everyone showered quickly, eager to start their first real afternoon off in weeks veronica was stuffing a hoodie into her backpack when she heard kayla from the other side of the locker room. “mall?”

someone answered yes another player suggested coffee instead within seconds, half the room was throwing out ideas. “booty cheeks.” kate looked up. “what?”

“you’re driving.”

“who made me the chauffeur?”

“your face.”

“that doesn’t even make sense.”

“none of this does.” kate sighed dramatically. “how many people?” hands shot up around the room. “absolutely not.” everyone laughed. “i have, like, four seats.”

“figure it out.”

“i’m leaving people behind.”

“survival of the fittest.” veronica zipped her bag closed, trying not to smile she almost made it to the door unnoticed almost. “hey, v.”

she froze it took her a second to realize kate was talking to her. “Yeah?” kate smiled. “a bunch of us are going to the mall.” kayla nodded enthusiastically. “come with.”

veronica glanced between them there were at least six or seven teammates standing nearby it wasn’t just kate it wasn’t one-on-one it was a team outing completely harmless. “i…”

before she could finish, her phone vibrated in her back pocket she already knew who it was. she didn’t have to look but she did anyway.

emily ❤️

good morning. call me when you get a chance?

her smile faded just enough for kate to notice. “everything okay?” veronica locked her phone. “yeah.” she forced a small smile. “i just promised emily i’d call her.” kate nodded immediately. “gotcha.” not disappointed, not offended just understanding. “next time.”

“yeah.”

“have fun talking to her.”

“thanks.” kate smiled one last time before turning back toward the group. “okay, who’s sitting in the trunk?”

“not it!” kayla yelled. “i called shotgun.”

“you call shotgun every time.”

“because i’m committed.” their voices slowly faded as they headed toward the parking lot veronica remained where she was for another moment, her phone still in her hand she pressed cal emily answered almost instantly. “hey, you.”

veronica smiled. “hey.” as emily started telling her about her morning, veronica walked toward her own car alone; she never looked back; she didn’t see kate glance over her shoulder as the group climbed into their cars didn’t see the brief flicker of confusion cross her face before she shrugged it off.

from kate’s point of view, veronica always seemed happy to talk during practice she just never seemed to stay once practice was over.

kate figured that was just who she was; she had no idea that every time veronica walked away it wasn’t because she wanted to, it was because staying was starting to feel a little too easy.

the off day came and went faster than anyone wanted it to by the following morning, everyone was back inside the practice facility before the sun had fully come up, coffees in hand, conversations noticeably louder after twenty-four hours away from the gym.

kayla was somehow already talking. “and then she tells me i can’t have dessert.” kate looked horrified. “that’s actually cruel.”

“right?”

“who says no to dessert?”

“a monster.”

“exactly.” veronica smiled to herself as she walked past them toward her locker; she'd gotten used to hearing their voices before she ever saw them.

it was becoming routine she wasn’t sure if that was a good thing. “morning, v.” she looked over kate was already smiling at her. “morning.”

“good off day?”

“yeah.”

“do anything fun?” veronica shrugged. “mostly relaxed.”

“same.” kayla immediately cut in. “that’s a lie.” kate sighed. “here we go.”

“you spent forty-five minutes trying to convince me to buy a pair of shoes.”

“because they looked good.”

“they were orange.”

“they were stylish.”

“they looked like traffic cones.” kate laughed. “you have no vision.”

“i have functioning eyes.”

“debatable.” veronica couldn’t stop the laugh that escaped it was quiet barely more than a breath but both of them heard it but kayla pointed dramatically. “see?” kate turned toward veronica with an unnecessarily smug smile. “thank you.”

“for what?”

“validation.” veronica shook her head. “i wasn’t agreeing with you.”

“too late.”

“that’s not how that works.”

“it does today.” coach walked in before the conversation could continue, clapping her hands together. “let’s get to work.” everyone scattered.

practice was easily the most physical they’d had all camp coach let almost everything go.

hands, bumps, hard screens if someone hit the floor, they were expected to get back up by the end of the second scrimmage, everyone was breathing hard.

veronica wiped sweat from her forehead as they waited for the next possession to start kate lined up beside her. “you alive?”

“barely.”

“good.” veronica looked over. “good?”

“means i’m not the only one suffering.”

“that’s a terrible way to motivate people.” kate smiled. “it’s working though.” before veronica could answer, the ball was inbounded the possession moved quickly.

veronica brought the ball up the floor, calling out the set before driving toward the middle the defense collapsed without thinking, she fired the ball toward the weak side.

kate was already there she caught it in stride and laid it in before the help defender could rotate the whistle blew. “nice!” coach yelled.

kate immediately turned toward veronica. “that’s what i’m talking about!”

without thinking, she jogged over and reached out their hands slapped together in a quick high five.

it lasted less than a second just enough for kate to grin before jogging back on defense veronica stood there for half a heartbeat longer than she should have.

it was nothing, teammates high-fived each other all day still her palm felt strangely warm. “burton.” she looked over and one of the assistants smirked. “you planning on getting back on defense?”

heat rushed into her face. “right.” she hurried back as everyone laughed, focus just focus.

practice finally ended nearly three hours later the locker room was unusually quiet everyone looked exhausted kayla flopped dramatically onto the bench. “i think coach hates us.”

“probably,” kate answered. “did we do something?”

“exist.”

“rude.” kate chuckled as she pulled a hoodie over her head veronica was digging through her bag when she heard someone clear their throat beside her.

she looked up kate holding out a protein bar. “what’s this?”

“peace offering.” veronica laughed. “for what this time?”

“coach made us suffer.”

“you didn’t.”

“doesn’t matter.” she wiggled the protein bar. “take it.” veronica accepted it. “thanks.”

“you’re welcome.” there was that pause again only this time neither of them seemed in a hurry to fill it. “so…” kate said. “so?”

“i’ve been meaning to ask.” veronica looked at her. “how come you always leave right after practice?”

the question wasn’t accusing if anything, kate sounded genuinely curious, veronica’s fingers tightened slightly around the wrapper. “i…” she searched for an answer that didn’t feel dishonest.

“i usually call emily.”kate nodded almost immediately. “that makes sense.” she smiled. “long distance’s gotta be tough.” veronica felt something sink inside her chest. “yeah.”

“a friend of mine did it.” kate shrugged. “said it was harder than people realized.”

“…it is.” kate studied her for a second before smiling softly. “well…” she pushed herself away from the locker. “tell her i said she picked someone who throws really good passes.” veronica laughed. “i don’t think that’ll come up.”

“missed opportunity.” before kate could take another step, a voice echoed through the room. “martin.” everyone instinctively looked toward the doorway and one of the team’s staff members stood there. “coach wants to see you.” kate frowned. “right now?”

“yeah.”

“okay.” she looked back at veronica. “see you tomorrow.”

“see you.” kate disappeared down the hallway kayla watched her go before shrugging. “hope she’s not in trouble.”

“she probably forgot to fill out some paperwork,” another teammate guessed. “or she stole another towel,” someone else joked.

the room laughed, veronica smiled faintly before looking back down at the protein bar still sitting in her hands.

she turned it over once twice then slipped it into the front pocket of her backpack instead of leaving it in her locker.

she didn’t know why she only knew that when her phone buzzed a few seconds later with another message from emily for the first time since training camp had started she didn’t answer it right away.

the next morning, kate was quieter it wasn’t obvious, not unless you knew what she’d been like every day before she still smiled when people said good morning still thanked one of the trainers for taping her ankle. 

still laughed when kayla nearly dropped an entire tray of water bottles before practice but the laugh didn’t linger it disappeared almost as quickly as it came.

veronica noticed before she’d even finished putting her shoes on she frowned to herself maybe kate was just tired camp had a way of wearing everyone down eventually. “booty cheeks.” kayla nudged kate’s shoulder. “you alive?” kate looked over. “unfortunately.”

“that’s dramatic.”

“a little.”

“a lot.” kate smiled. “probably.” it was enough to satisfy kayla, who immediately launched into another story about getting lost on the way to the grocery store.

kate listened and she laughed in the right places she looked normal, almost.

practice started a few minutes later coach kept everyone moving, running through offensive sets before splitting the team into small groups for situational work veronica and kate barely crossed paths all morning.

when they did, kate still complimented a good pass still clapped after a defensive stop still looked exactly like herself except she seemed somewhere else during a water break, veronica filled her bottle beside one of the veterans. “you hear?” veronica looked up. “hear what?”

the veteran lowered her voice. “martin.” veronica’s stomach tightened. “what about her?”

“heard she and claire broke up.” the words landed so unexpectedly that for a second veronica wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. “what?”

“one of the staff mentioned it this morning.” the veteran shrugged. “sounded pretty recent.” before veronica could ask anything else, coach blew the whistle from the middle of the court. “let’s go!” everyone immediately scattered but veronica stood still for half a second longer.

kate and claire broke up; she wasn’t sure why her chest suddenly felt so tight; she hated herself for noticing she hated herself even more for wondering if that was why kate had seemed quieter.

throughout the rest of practice, her eyes found kate more often than they should have kate missed a shot she normally made she shrugged it off.

she got beat on a backdoor cut she clapped for the teammate who scored instead of getting frustrated.

she smiled and she laughed she looked fine.

maybe the veteran had been wrong, maybe it wasn’t true or maybe kate was just really good at pretending.

practice ended just after noon.

players wandered toward the locker room, conversations picking back up now that coach wasn’t barking instructions every thirty seconds.

veronica was unlacing her shoes when kayla dropped onto the bench beside kate. “you wanna grab lunch?” kate was quiet for a second. “maybe later.” kayla glanced over. “everything okay?” there it was just four simple words; everything okay?

kate looked down at the floor before answering. “yeah.” kayla didn’t say anything, she just waited finally kate sighed. “claire and i ended things.”

the locker room suddenly felt much smaller it wasn’t silent people were still talking on the other side of the room music was still playing softly from someone’s speaker but the small circle around kate went still as kayla’s expression softened immediately. “oh.” kate nodded once. “yeah.”

“when?”

“a couple days ago.”

“why didn’t you say anything?” kate shrugged. “didn’t really wanna make it a thing.” kayla reached over and bumped their knees together. “you okay?”

kate smiled a real smile, this time small a little sad. “i will be.” kayla didn’t push, she just nodded. “okay.” after a second, she stood. “don’t move.” kate blinked. “why?”

“because i’m getting you food.”

“kayla—”

“that’s not a request.” kate laughed quietly. “you’re bossy.”

“and you’re sad.”

“i’m not—”

“don’t argue with me, booty cheeks.” kate rolled her eyes. “fine.”

“good.” kayla disappeared out the locker room doors before kate could protest anymore veronica looked down at the towel in her hands she shouldn’t have listened.

she hadn’t meant to the conversation had just happened a few lockers away she folded the towel once twice then, before she could stop herself, she looked up.

kate was sitting by herself now, elbows resting on her knees, absentmindedly turning a roll of athletic tape over in her hands. she looked nothing like the girl who’d been making everyone laugh an hour earlier.

she just looked heartbroken but something inside veronica ached, it wasn’t excitement, it wasn't relief if anything, it made her feel worse because the very first thought that crossed her mind wasn’t kate’s single but it was i hope she’s okay and somehow that scared her even more.

her phone buzzed she already knew who it was.

emily ❤️

thinking about you. hope practice went well ❤️

veronica stared at the message then looked back across the locker room kate was still sitting exactly where she’d been, staring down at the floor while she waited for kayla to come back.

veronica looked down at her phone again, her thumbs hovered over the keyboard.

thinking about you too.

she typed it she read it and for the first time in a very long time she couldn’t bring herself to hit send.

after that afternoon, something shifted, not with kate with veronica because now every time she looked at kate, she couldn’t stop herself from remembering the expression on her face after everyone else had left the locker room.

the smile she’d forced the way she’d kept turning that roll of athletic tape over and over in her hands like she needed something to do besides think she’d looked lonely the thought lingered for days.

kate, meanwhile, did exactly what everyone expected her to do she showed up, she practiced, she laughed if anything, she leaned even harder into being around her teammates.

especially kayla it wasn’t difficult to understand why kayla refused to let her sit by herself for more than five minutes.

if kate was stretching alone, kayla somehow appeared beside her, if kate grabbed lunch, kayla was already pulling out the chair across from her if kate looked even remotely lost in thought, kayla immediately found something stupid to say until kate laughed.

veronica watched it happen over and over and she told herself she was glad kate had someone she meant that.

she really did, that didn’t stop the uncomfortable feeling settling in her chest every time she looked across the gym and found them together. “booty cheeks.” kate sighed dramatically.

“yes?” kayla pointed toward the shooting machine. “loser buys coffee.”

“didn’t you lose yesterday?”

“that’s irrelevant.”

“it’s literally the only relevant part.”

“are you scared?” kate laughed. “of you?”

“exactly.”

“not even a little.”

“wow.”

“truth hurts.” they spent the next twenty minutes talking trash while firing shots at the basket, neither of them keeping score correctly by the end because they’d gotten too busy arguing about whose math was worse.

veronica tried not to watch, she failed every single time it wasn’t even the jokes anymore it was how naturally kate smiled around kayla how comfortable she looked how easy everything seemed she hated that word now.

easy, because nothing about this felt easy. “burton.” coach’s voice pulled her back. “you’re up.” she blinked. “right.” she stepped into the drill, mentally scolding herself.

this had to stop it was becoming distracting she’d never been the type to lose focus during practice yet lately every time kate laughed, her eyes found her before her brain had a chance to stop them.

that evening, emily called just after dinner veronica answered from her hotel room, sitting cross-legged near the window. “hi.”

“hey.” emily smiled through the screen. “you look tired.”

“feel tired.”

“camp?”

“yeah.” they fell into another familiar conversation; practice, coaches travel, everything was exactly the same as every other call.

except veronica kept checking the clock not because she wanted to end the conversation but because she realized she was struggling to stay present. “ronnie?” she blinked. “sorry.” emily smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “you keep doing that.”

“doing what?”

“drifting.” veronica looked down. “i know.” a quiet silence settled between them but it wasn’t uncomfortable, it was honest emily broke it first. “is everything okay?”

the question hurt because it deserved the truth and veronica didn’t know what the truth was anymore. “yeah.” the word came out softer than she’d intended. “just a lot going on.” emily nodded slowly. “okay.”

she didn’t push she never pushed they finished the conversation a few minutes later, exchanging another “i love you” before hanging up.

this time, when the screen went black, veronica didn’t immediately set the phone down, instead she stared at her own reflection but she was starting to hate the person looking back at her.

the first preseason game crept closer and suddenly practices felt sharper rotations had tightened as coach spent more time talking about scouting reports than conditioning everything became intentional.

the locker room buzzed with a different kind of energy there was excitement now, anticipation players joked a little louder music played a little earlier everyone could feel the season inching closer. “tomorrow,” kayla announced while pulling on her practice jersey. “finally.” kate nodded. “can’t wait.”

“you nervous?”

“a little.”

“good.”

“why is that good?”

“means you care.” kate considered it. “Fair.” kayla bumped her shoulder. “you’re gonna be fine.” kate smiled. “thanks.”

“don’t get emotional.”

“i wasn’t going to.”

“looked like you were thinking about it.”

“i’ll cry just to make you uncomfortable.”

“please don’t.”

“tempting.” veronica laughed before she could stop herself, both of them looked over kayla pointed immediately. “see?” kate grinned. “told you she’s funny.” veronica’s cheeks warmed. “i didn’t say anything.”

“didn’t have to.” kayla nodded in agreement. “silent comedy.”

“that’s not a thing.”

“it is now.”

kate laughed again and god there it was that laugh veronica looked away before anyone noticed she’d been smiling too her phone vibrated against the wooden bench beside her.

emily ❤️

good luck tomorrow. i’ll be watching. proud of you. love you. ❤️

veronica’s smile faded she stared at the message for a long time long enough that the locker room around her faded into the background.

she loved emily she knew she did so why did reading those words make guilt hit before anything else? “v?”

she looked up kate was standing a few feet away, gym bag over one shoulder. “you coming?”

veronica glanced toward the doorway most of the team was already leaving together kayla was waiting just outside, bouncing impatiently on her heels. “booty cheeks!” kate laughed. “i’m coming.” then she looked back at veronica. “you good?”

veronica locked her phone. “yeah.” kate studied her for a second before smiling. “see you tomorrow.”

“see you.” veronica watched as kate caught up with kayla in the hallway she didn’t hear what kayla said.

she only saw kate throw her head back laughing before lightly bumping their shoulders together as they disappeared around the corner.

for reasons she couldn’t explain, the sight stayed with her long after they were gone tomorrow would only be a preseason game.

it didn’t count not really it was just another step before the season officially began veronica had no idea that by the time it ended…

everything she had spent weeks trying not to admit to herself would become impossible to ignore.

game day arrived before veronica felt ready for it the energy inside the practice facility was different, lighter, everyone moved a little quicker, music echoing through the locker room while players finished taping ankles and lacing shoes. 

coaches weren't barking quite as much there was still work to do, but today wasn't about drills today they finally got to play someone else kayla was already talking before she'd even sat down. "booty cheeks." kate looked up from tying her shoes. "good morning."

"you nervous?"

"a little."

"perfect."

"why is everyone happy? i'm nervous?"

"because it means you're human." kate smiled. "i would've preferred superhuman."

"too late."

"guess i'll settle."veronica couldn't help smiling as she pulled her jersey over her head and she caught herself almost immediately she needed to stop doing that. "v."

she looked over kate tossed something toward her, a small packet of fruit snacks veronica caught it. "what's this?"

"pregame fuel." veronica laughed quietly. "fruit snacks?" kate shrugged. "they work."

"according to who?"

"me."

"that's not exactly scientific."

"i've never claimed to be a scientist." kayla leaned across kate's shoulder. "don't encourage her." 

"too late," kate answered veronica tucked the fruit snacks into her warmup pocket. "thanks."

"good luck."

"you too."

it was a simple exchange completely ordinary still, it stayed with veronica as the team loaded onto the bus as her phone buzzed before they pulled away.

emily ❤️

good luck today. i'll be watching. you're going to be amazing.

veronica smiled.

thank you ❤️

another message appeared almost instantly.

call me after?

her fingers hovered over the keyboard.

of course.

she hit send then slid her phone back into her bag across the aisle, kate and kayla were arguing over music. "absolutely not."

"why?"

"because every playlist you make has the same ten songs."

"that's because they're good."

"it's because you refuse to listen to anything else."

"quality over quantity." kate laughed. "you're impossible."

"and yet you still sit next to me."

"i'm starting to question that decision." veronica looked out the window she didn't need to hear the rest she already knew kate would laugh again she was right.

the arena buzzed with the strange mix of excitement and nerves that only preseason could bring families filled the lower bowl.

kids leaned over railings hoping for autographs as everything felt just a little less serious than the regular season and yet for every player on the floor, it meant everything.

warmups flew by introductions and the national anthem, one last huddle as coach clapped her hands. "have fun."

the ball went up and the game started fast veronica settled in quicker than she'd expected she found teammates in transition knocked down an early jumper.

forced a turnover every good possession made the nerves fade a little more basketball had always been the easy part late in the second quarter, kate checked into the game.

the crowd gave a warm cheer kayla met her near half court. "you ready, booty cheeks?" kate laughed. "been ready."

the two of them immediately brought energy diving for loose balls talking on defense celebrating every stop like it was the playoffs.

veronica noticed of course she noticed she always noticed midway through the third quarter, kayla drove into the lane before kicking the ball out the possession swung around the perimeter until it found kate.

she let it fly nothing but net, the bench exploded, players jumped to their feet, kate turned toward the sideline, grinning so hard it looked like her face might hurt as kayla met her halfway.

"there you go!" without thinking, without hesitation kate reached out and gave kayla a quick, playful smack on the butt before pointing back down the floor. "good pass!"

it lasted less than a second just teammates celebrating the kind of thing that happened every single game kayla laughed. "you're welcome, booty cheeks." then both of them sprinted back on defense like nothing had happened but nobody reacted.

the coaches didn't, their teammates didn't the crowd certainly didn't because there was nothing to react to except veronica couldn't breathe.

the court suddenly felt too big, too loud, too bright she stared after them for one impossible second before forcing herself back into the next possession.

what was that? it was nothing.

it was literally nothing, teammates did things like that all the time she'd seen it a hundred times.

so why, why did something twist painfully inside her chest? she missed the next defensive rotation. "burton!" coach's voice snapped at her back. "wake up!"

"sorry."

she recovered just in time barely for the rest of the game, she couldn't stop replaying it.

kate laughing kayla smiling that quick little tap.

so casual, so natural, so… affectionate before she could stop herself, a thought slipped into her mind. i wish that had been me.

the realization hit like a punch her stomach dropped no absolutely not she'd imagined it.

she hadn't meant she didn't she had she wished kate had looked at her like that she wished kate joked with her like that.

she wished she made kate laugh that easily she wished, she wished she'd been the one standing there.

guilt crashed over her so hard she almost felt sick emily, oh god emily.

the final buzzer sounded before veronica even realized the fourth quarter had ended players exchanged handshakes.

families filtered toward the exits, teammates congratulated one another on little moments throughout the game kayla immediately wrapped an arm around kate's shoulders as they walked toward the tunnel. "told you you'd be fine." kate laughed. "you were right."

"obviously."

"don't let it go to your head."

"too late." they disappeared into the hallway together veronica looked away she couldn't watch anymore.

the locker room was loud after the game as coaches handed out quick feedback, players laughed over missed assignments, someone replayed a highlight on their phone and it all sounded distant like she was underwater.

she changed quietly packed her bag and avoided looking across the room. "v?" she froze kate was standing beside her locker, still smiling, still completely unaware. "good game." veronica forced herself to meet her eyes. "yeah you too."

"you okay?"

"just tired." kate nodded. "yeah." she smiled. "me too." then she walked away that was it, she had no idea she'd just shattered something.

the bus ride back was quieter, everyone was exhausted, some people slept others scrolled through their phones veronica stared out the window, the darkness outside reflecting her own face back at her, her phone buzzing.

emily ❤️

i'm so proud of you. you looked amazing tonight.

tears stung unexpectedly behind veronica's eyes because all she could think about was how undeserving those words suddenly felt she answered the facetime as soon as they got back to the hotel.

emily smiled the second the screen connected. "there she is." veronica smiled back or at least she tried to. "how'd it feel?" emily asked. "good."

"just good?"

"it was fun." emily talked excitedly about a pass veronica had made in the second quarter a defensive possession late in the game.

a jumper she'd hit from the wing she'd noticed everything she'd watched the entire game veronica listened, answered and smiled when she was supposed to but she wasn't really there. "ronnie."

she looked up. "yeah?" emily's smile had faded. "where'd you go?"

veronica's throat tightened and she wanted to tell her not about kate not yet but about this feeling about how something inside her had changed and she didn't know how to stop it but instead she lied. "i'm just exhausted." emily nodded slowly. "get some sleep."

"yeah." another quiet pause. "i love you."

veronica closed her eyes for the briefest second when she opened them again, emily was still looking at her with the same warmth she always had.

waiting, trusting and loving her. "i love you too."

the words came out but they didn't sound the way they used to after the call ended, veronica sat alone on the edge of her bed the hotel room was silent.

she thought about kate laughing with kayla about the effortless affection about the impossible thought she'd had in the middle of the game. i wish that had been me.

she covered her face with both hands for weeks; she'd convinced herself it was just a harmless crush, something that would disappear if she ignored it long enough. 

she couldn't tell herself that anymore because somewhere between coffee offers, passing drills, shared laughs, and one meaningless little celebration...

she had stopped wanting kate's attention as a teammate and started wanting it as something else.

tiff hayes is a vet, is someone who taught kate how to read a closeout her rookie year, who sat next to her on every bus for a season and called her “rookie” until she didn’t anymore, who covered for her on a switch in a playoff game two years ago and never once brought it up afterward like it was something kate owed her for.

so kate is there, crouched, hand on tip’s shoulder, before the whistle even finishes. “i’m fine,” tip says, which is what vets always say, flexing her wrist experimentally and wincing in a way that says she is not fine, actually, not even a little.

“you’re not fine, you’re making the face.” kate’s already waving toward the bench, toward the trainer, her own pulse ticking up in a way that has nothing to do with the run of play and everything to do with the particular flavor of helplessness that comes from watching someone you love get hurt in a way you can’t fix with your hands.

kate looks up finds the player who did it some forward with a number kate doesn’t bother to clock, doesn’t want to clock, because clocking it would mean admitting she’s going to remember it already walking away like nothing happened, like she didn’t just put her whole arm through a teammate’s wrist on a closeout that had no business being that hard.

there’s a looseness to the walk, a couldn’t-care-less set to her shoulders, and that’s the part that does it, more than the foul itself fouls happen that walk is a choice.

“hey.” kate’s voice doesn’t carry far it’s not built to but emily’s does as emily engstler gets there second, but loud enough that it doesn’t matter.

she’s got six inches and a different relationship to her own anger than kate does kate runs hot and quiet, the kind of mad that sits in her jaw and waits, but emily runs hot and immediate, the kind of mad that announces itself to the whole arena before it’s even finished deciding what it’s mad about.

“that’s a flagrant,” emily says, to no one and everyone, already squaring up toward the other team’s bench like she’s looking for someone to agree with her. “that’s a whole ass flagrant, somebody better—”

“emily.” kate, still crouched by tip, not even looking up.

“no, kate, that’s—” emily’s hands are doing something agitated, something kate recognizes from a dozen film sessions, a dozen times emily’s had to be talked down off a tech by a coach with a hand flat on her chest saying breathe, breathe, you’re better than this. “she can’t just do that and walk off like—”

the forward, the one with the number kate didn’t clock turns around says something kate doesn’t catch all of it over the noise of the arena, the buzz of nineteen thousand people simultaneously realizing something’s happening, but she catches enough. catches the shape of a word that isn’t about basketball at all, aimed at emily, low and ugly the way these things get when someone wants to make it personal instead of just physical.

the kind of word that’s designed to find the exact seam in a person and pull emily goes very still for half a second and kate knows that stillness.

has seen it before, has learned to read it the way you learn to read weather, the false calm before something breaks loose and she’s moving before she’s finished standing up, hand already out, already reaching for the back of emily’s jersey, already saying her name again, sharper this time, the way you’d say it to a dog at the edge of traffic

“emily, don’t—” and that’s when veronica gets there veronica doesn’t run onto a basketball court. veronica has never run onto anything in her life that wasn’t strictly necessary, conserves her energy the way she conserves everything else — words, emotion, the particular currency of herself that she doesn’t spend carelessly.

she’s a guard who reads situations before she enters them, who’s spent a career learning that the fastest way through chaos is to already know where it’s going before it gets there but she’s fast tonight, fast in a way that doesn’t feel like a choice so much as a fact of physics, because she looked over at the scrum near the baseline and found kate in the middle of it with her hand half-closed around the back of emily’s jersey and her whole body angled toward a fight that wasn’t hers, and something in veronica’s chest had gone cold and clear and very, very fast.

“hey — hey, both of you—” she’s already between them by the time she finishes the sentence, one hand flat against emily’s sternum, not shoving, just present, just a wall built out of will alone, the other hand finding kate’s wrist where it’s still fisted in emily’s jersey. “stand down. both of you, now.”

“she said—” emily starts. “i don’t care what she said.” veronica’s voice doesn’t rise it never does. it’s the thing kate loves about her, actually, in the moments when she has room to think about loving anything in the middle of an arena full of noise that veronica’s calm isn’t an absence of feeling, it’s a decision, made over and over, every single time, the way some people choose courage and veronica chooses stillness because she’s learned that stillness is its own kind of strength.

“you throw a punch right now, you’re out for six games and it doesn’t undo whatever she said to you. it just gives her something to feel good about. so stand down.”

emily’s jaw works she’s still looking past veronica’s shoulder at the forward, who’s being herded the other direction by two of her own teammates and a ref who finally, finally noticed there was a problem, hands up, whistle going, the whole machinery of de-escalation creaking into motion ten seconds too late to matter.

it’s kate who breaks first, like always kate whose anger burns fast and hot and then goes out all at once, leaves her shaky in the aftermath instead of fueled by it, hands trembling slightly with the comedown of adrenaline that has nowhere left to go.

“v—” she says, and veronica’s hand is already moving from her wrist to her shoulder, steadying, grounding, the kind of touch that says i’ve got you without needing the words, that’s had years of practice saying exactly that without a single syllable.

“i know,” veronica says, even though kate didn’t finish the sentence. she never needs kate to finish the sentence. “i know. tip okay?”

“i don’t know. she’s holding her wrist.”

“go check. i’ve got emily.” kate goes, casting one more look back over her shoulder as she does at veronica’s hand still flat against emily’s chest, at the particular steadiness of veronica’s spine, the way she’s standing like she could hold that line all night if she had to.

veronica turns the rest of her attention to emily, who’s still vibrating with something that hasn’t found anywhere to go yet, energy with no outlet, the worst kind. “she called me—” emily starts again.

“i heard.” veronica didn’t, not really, not the specific word, but she heard enough of the shape of it to know it was the kind of thing you don’t say to someone on a basketball court, the kind of thing built specifically to detonate. “and in about ten seconds a ref’s gonna ask you what happened, and you’re gonna say ‘she fouled my teammate hard and i had words about it.’ that’s it. that’s the whole story. you don’t get to give her the rest of it, emily. you don’t get to make this about what she said. you make this about tip’s wrist, and you let tip’s wrist be the only thing anybody remembers tomorrow.”

“that’s not fair.”

“no,” veronica agrees, and there’s something almost gentle in how readily she agrees, like she’s not interested in pretending the world is fairer than it is.

“it’s not fair. but it’s what happens next.” she doesn’t let go of emily’s arm until she feels the tension actually leave it, not just quiet down on the surface there’s a difference, and veronica’s spent enough years reading teammates’ bodies in huddles and locker rooms to know exactly where that difference lives. “you good?”

emily exhales long, through her nose, shoulders dropping half an inch. “i’m good.”

“good. go find your guy, get water, walk it off by the bench for two minutes before they sub you back in. you’re no good to us with a tech, and you’re no good to tip if you’re sitting next to her in the locker room still running hot instead of actually being there for her.”

emily looks at veronica for a second longer than necessary, something shifting in her face not quite gratitude, something more complicated than that, the specific look of someone who got talked off a ledge by a person who didn’t make her feel small for almost walking off it. “thanks, veronica.”

“go.”

it isn’t a fight that actually breaks not really, not the all-benches-clear kind that makes highlight reels for the wrong reasons, the kind that gets dissected on sports talk shows by men in suits who weren’t anywhere near the building.

it’s the kind that almost happens, the kind that exists for thirty adrenaline-soaked seconds and then gets walked back by exactly the right number of cooler heads, which tonight happens to be one veronica, planted between two people who needed someone to be the reason they didn’t do something they’d regret for the rest of the season.

tip’s wrist turns out to be a sprain, not a break she sits the rest of the game with ice on it and a look on her face like she’s already plotting what she’s going to say to that forward next time they play each other, vet-petty in the most affectionate way kate’s ever seen pettiness expressed already composing, out loud, to anyone who’ll listen, the exact tone of voice she’s going to use the next time she boxes that girl out.

the locker room after is loud in the particular way a win is loud, but underneath the noise there’s a current of something else kate can feel it, the way the rookies are a little quieter than usual, watching tip get her wrist wrapped like they’re cataloguing it for later, like this is the kind of thing that teaches you something about the league whether you wanted the lesson or not.

emily sits near to tip, well more so her respective bench but doesn’t say much, just keeps refilling her water bottle and handing it over without being asked, which is the closest emily ever comes to an apology for almost making things worse.

“you good?” kate asks her, low, while they’re both peeling tape off their ankles. “i’m good.” emily glances over at tip, then back at kate. “i wasn’t actually gonna swing.”

“i know.”

“i was gonna think real hard about it, though.” kate laughs despite herself, the tightness in her chest finally easing all the way out. “yeah. me too.”

the valkyries win by eleven it doesn’t feel like the headline of the night, not in the locker room, not with emily still a little keyed up and kate still replaying the half-second where she had her hand in emily’s jersey and every intention of getting in the middle of something stupid, of throwing away a clean six years of never once getting a technical for a fight that wasn’t even hers to throw.

veronica finds her after, in the hallway outside the locker room, both of them in the lull between media and the bus, the arena emptying out around them into something quieter, the kind of post-game hush that always feels a little unreal after the noise of the game itself like the building is exhaling.

“you okay?” veronica asks. she’s got her bag over one shoulder, hair still damp at the temples from the shower, and she’s looking at kate the way she looks at her sometimes not checking a box, actually looking, actually waiting for the real answer instead of the easy one, patient in a way that makes it impossible for kate to deflect for long. “i wasn’t gonna actually do anything,” kate says, which isn’t quite an answer.

“i know.”

“i just—” kate shrugs, looks down the hallway instead of at veronica, which is usually how she gets honest, sideways, like eye contact makes the truth too big to say out loud all at once. “tip’s been doing this for over fourteen years. she taught me how to play this game. and someone just put their whole arm through her wrist like it was nothing. and then walked off like it cost her nothing either.”

“i know,” veronica says again, softer, closing the last of the distance between them until her shoulder’s nearly against kate’s. “and emily’s right there yelling and i just—i didn’t even think. i was already moving before i decided to move. like my body made the call before my brain even got a vote.”

“that’s what protecting people looks like, kate. it’s not supposed to be a decision. it’s supposed to be a reflex.” veronica reaches out, tucks a piece of hair back behind kate’s ear, the gesture so small and so familiar it almost gets lost in the hallway noise, the hum of the building settling down around them. “i’m not mad you went. i was scared you were gonna actually swing on somebody, but i’m not mad you went.”

“would you have?”

veronica considers this with the kind of honesty she always gives kate, even when it’s inconvenient, even when the easy answer would serve her better. “if it was you on the floor instead of tiff? i wouldn’t have walked. i would’ve run.”

a beat, her hand settling at kate’s waist now, thumb finding the strip of skin where kate’s shirt has ridden up. “so i don’t really get to lecture you about reflexes. mine aren’t any better. they’re just quieter.”

kate laughs, finally, something in her chest unknotting that’s been tight since the whistle blew. “you’re the one who broke it up, though. you’re the reasonable one.”

“someone has to be.” veronica’s mouth curves, not quite a smile, something quieter than that, something kate’s spent two years learning to read in the dim light of locker room hallways and the backseats of cars and the three a.m. quiet of their own kitchen.

“doesn’t mean i wasn’t standing there with my heart going a thousand miles an hour, hoping nobody made me actually hold somebody back for real. hoping you weren’t gonna do something i’d have to watch you serve a suspension for.”

“thank you,” kate says, and means it more than the two words can really carry. “for getting between us. for — for emily, mostly. she would’ve thrown that punch if you hadn’t been there.”

“i know.” but veronica doesn’t let it go at that, lets her hand stay where it is, lets the moment stretch instead of cutting it short the way she usually does when the hallway’s too public for anything more than a hand at someone’s back. “and for you. i wasn’t just there for em, kate. i saw your hand on her jersey before i saw anything else.”

something in kate’s chest goes soft and unsteady at that, at being seen first, at being the reason veronica moved at all she finally turns, finds veronica’s eyes instead of the middle distance of the hallway, and whatever’s sitting in her face must be easy enough to read because veronica’s free hand comes up to her jaw, thumb tracing the line of it slow and certain.

“hi,” veronica says, like they haven’t been standing here for five minutes already, like this is the part of the night that’s actually starting.

“hi.” kate’s voice comes out smaller than she means it to.

veronica kisses her then unhurried, like there’s nowhere else either of them needs to be, like the whole arena could empty out around them and it wouldn’t matter and kate’s hand comes up to fist in the front of veronica’s jacket the same way it fisted in emily’s jersey twenty minutes ago, except this time there’s nothing to pull her back from, nothing to stand down from, just veronica’s mouth soft and sure against hers and the particular relief of an adrenaline spike finally finding somewhere safe to land.

“come on,” veronica murmurs against her mouth, eventually, reluctantly, when a door somewhere down the hall reminds them both that the building isn’t actually empty. “let’s get you home before you decide to relitigate it in the group chat.”

“that’s not — i wouldn’t—”

“you absolutely would. you already have a whole speech for emily’s defense lined up, i can see it on your face.”

kate doesn’t argue, because she’s not wrong she lets veronica’s hand find the small of her back as they walk toward the bus, the same steady weight as it was on the court not holding her back, exactly. just holding her.

it isn't a lie it's just not the whole truth the whole truth is that the golden state valkyries's locker room had started feeling like a minefield it's small things first kate and veronica sitting one seat further apart at film sessions than they used to.

veronica taking the back of the bus instead of the window seat next to kate that had been hers, unofficially, for one season the coaching staff noticing before either of them said a word, the way kate's passes started going just slightly behind where veronica was cutting, the way veronica stopped calling for the ball when kate had it.

nothing dramatic, just two people who used to move like one organism, slowly learning how to be strangers on a court that doesn't forgive strangers their teammates noticed too, you can't hide a fracture from people who watch film of you for a living but nobody said anything, because what is there to say, really, when two of your best players break each other's hearts quietly and then have to guard each other in practice the next morning.

so when the front office calls kate in and says we think a change might be good for everyone, she doesn't fight it, she packs her bags and she doesn't look back, not because she doesn't want to, but because she's not sure she'd survive looking back.

los angeles is loud in a different way than san francisco but the sun doesn't ask permission to be everywhere at once, and kate finds she doesn't hate it finds, actually, that she's good, at this good at being someone new.

the sparks take her in fast cam's already folded her into the group chat within forty-eight hours, sending memes at 1am with no context, treating kate like she's always been there rae's dragged her to three different brunch spots and one (1) extremely overpriced pilates class that kate complained about for a week straight but went back to anyway.

the rest of the roster is loud and young and a little chaotic in a way that never was practice is competitive but it isn't tense, and kate finds herself laughing at shootaround for the first time in months, surprised every time by how easy it is.

nobody on this team knows the weight she's carrying, nobody asks her to perform fine, because nobody knows there's anything to perform it's almost a relief, almost so when madison bailey's people reach out about the release event for her show, it's an easy yes.

madison's been a real friend since a charity thing two summers back, the kind of friendship that survives time zones because neither of them ever made it complicated. kate texts cam and rae — come with me, it'll be fun, free drinks — and they're in before she finishes the sentence.

she wears the green suit (mr green iykyk) rae picked out she laughs at madison's terrible jokes and means it, and at some point in the night someone's phone is up and madison's pulling her into frame and kate doesn't think twice about smiling for it.

cam's somewhere behind her doing something embarrassing with a mocktail rae's already exchanging numbers with someone from madison's cast it's a good night it's the first good night in a while that doesn't feel like she's faking it for an audience she should've thought twice about the photo.

by morning it's everywhere kate martin's los angeles era, somebody's stitched together a whole narrative out of one picture and a caption that just says love this woman 🤍 sports blogs run it next to trade analysis like the two things belong in the same sentence, like a girls' night out is a referendum on how a breakup is going.

it's nothing, it's a friend supporting a friend at an event but nothing travels fast when there's a breakup-shaped hole for people to pour it into, and this league's fans have never met a vacuum they didn't want to fill.

back in san francisco, the golden state valkyries are mid-trip, and veronica is sitting in a hotel room two cities away from anyone who knows her well enough to ask if she's okay her teammates have tried, in the careful, sideways way teammates try things.

someone leaves a protein bar on her stool without being asked, someone else starts boxing her out a little softer in practice, like her body's made of something more breakable than it used to be.

the coaching staff has noticed her shots aren't falling the way they did two months ago, noticed the half-second delay before she calls for a screen, the way she's started icing a knee that was never actually hurt.

nobody says we know this is about kate they don't have to know the whole locker room knows the whole locker room has known since before the trade was even official.

veronica tells herself she's not going to look she looks anyway kate, golden under event lighting, head tipped back laughing at something off-camera kate, looking like leaving was the easiest thing she ever did kate, surrounded by a team that gets the version of her that's easy and light and untouched, while veronica’s stuck here running the same plays in a gym that still smells like her.

she gets to do that, veronica thinks, and hates how much it sounds like an accusation. she gets to just be fine. she gets a whole new team and a whole new city and she gets to be fine.

it isn't fair, the math she's doing she knows that even as she does it — knows that one photo isn't a whole life, knows performance and presence aren't the same thing, knows all of this in the part of her brain that used to be a basketball player and is therefore unreasonably good at recognizing

when someone's playing through pain she knows it and she still lies awake hating the version of kate she's built out of a single instagram post, the one who left and got to keep all the light she doesn't see the part where kate sat in her car for twenty minutes outside the venue, hand on the ignition, not ready to go in.

doesn't see her in the bathroom at 2am wiping off the night like it's a costume that doesn't fit anymore doesn't see cam knocking on kate's hotel room door at 1am two nights later because she heard something through the wall and wanted to make sure kate was alright, doesn't see kate lying about being fine to the one person in la who might've actually believed her if she'd told the truth doesn't see the second phone, the one with no group chats, where kate types out i miss you into a draft she'll never send, four times, on four different nights since the trade.

veronica doesn't know any of that; she only knows the photo and the photo is winning.

the los angeles sparks lose that night, badly, and veronica plays the worst game of her season six points, four turnovers, a defensive lapse in the third quarter that the broadcast keeps replaying in slow motion like it's trying to teach a lesson nobody asked for.

her coach pulls her with four minutes left and doesn't say anything about it afterward, which is somehow worse than if he had been in the locker room, one of her teammates, the rookie, the one who hasn't learned yet when to leave things alone asks if she saw the kate martin thing going around.

veronica says no she's already seen it eleven times three thousand miles away, kate sits in her new apartment with the tv on for noise she isn't listening to, phone face-down on the counter because she knows what's on it if she turns it over cam texted an hour ago; u good? and kate typed yeah just tired and meant neither word the way cam probably hoped.

two women, two teams, two cities built around two completely different versions of the same person the one the internet decided to love, and the one nobody's checking on.

kate wakes up to fourteen texts and a missed call from her mom, who definitely saw the photo, and a single message from a number she still has saved as v 🤍 — heart and all, because she never got around to changing it, because changing it felt like admitting something she wasn't ready to admit.

the message just says; saw the pictures. looks like la's good for you, no punctuation that gives anything away, no real punctuation at all, actually, which is somehow the most veronica thing about it veronica has never once used a period like it owed her money.

kate reads it four times before she understands it isn't a compliment it's not quite an accusation either it's something flatter and sadder than both, a woman trying to sound fine while typing with her thumb shaking kate doesn't know that part she just knows the words.

she types it's just madison, she's a friend, you know that and deletes it. types i miss you too, if that's what you're actually asking and deletes that faster ends up sending nothing at all, because every version of the truth feels like it costs more than she has to spend before 9am.

cam finds her in the kitchen twenty minutes later, hair still damp from a shower, eyeing kate's untouched coffee like it's a crime scene. "you didn't sleep," cam says not a question. "i slept some."

"kate." cam pulls out the stool across from her, sits down with the specific patience of someone who has clearly decided this conversation is happening whether kate wants it to or not. "i heard you on the phone at one in the morning. you weren't talking to anyone. you were just sitting there."

kate doesn't have a good answer for that, so she doesn't give one she pushes the coffee mug an inch to the left like that fixes something. "you know we're not going to make you talk about it," cam says, gentler now.

"but you also gotta stop telling rae you're fine every time she asks, because rae's started asking me if you're fine, and i don't know what to tell her, because i don't actually know if you're fine."

"i'm—" kate starts, and even when she hears how automatic it sounds, the word loaded and ready before her brain's even caught up she stops tries again. "i don't know what i am. is that an acceptable answer?" cam reaches over and steals a sip of the coffee kate wasn't drinking anyway. "yeah," she says. "that one i believe."

four hundred miles away, give or take a road trip's worth of time zones, veronica is sitting in the golden state valkyries facility an hour before anyone else needs to be there, working through free throws nobody asked her to shoot.

she's not thinking about kate she's thinking about the rim, and the rotation of the ball, and the fact that her shoulder's been a half-second slow on the release for two weeks now and nobody's caught it yet because nobody's looking that closely she's thinking about anything except the message she sent at 7am that she's already regretted four separate times. looks like la's good for you.

she'd meant it to sound easy breezy, the kind of thing you text an ex when you've truly moved on and you're just, you know, making conversation instead it came out sounding exactly like what it was a woman standing outside a window watching someone else's party, asking permission to be hurt about it.

kate hasn't responded as it's been three hours, veronica checks her phone between every fifth free throw like that'll change anything.

her teammate, one of the vets, somebody who's been around long enough to know what a person looks like when they're unraveling quietly in a gym at 7am comes in early too, takes one look at veronica’s face, and doesn't ask.

just racks a second ball and starts rebounding for her without a word but sometimes that's the kindest thing a teammate can do as veronica makes eleven in a row after that, which doesn't fix anything but feels, briefly, like it might.

the call happens by accident, the way most honest conversations do kate means to text her thumb slips, or her heart does, and instead the phone's ringing and it's too late to hang up without making it weirder, so she just lets it ring.

veronica picks up on the third one. "hey," kate says. her voice comes out smaller than she means it to.

a pause on the other end kate can hear a gym somewhere behind veronica a ball bouncing, somebody laughing too loud, the particular echo of a facility before practice officially starts. "hey," veronica says back. "you butt-dial me or—"

"no. i meant to call." kate sits down on the edge of her counter, presses her palm flat against the marble like it'll hold her up if her legs decide not to. "i saw your text."

"it was just a text."

"veronica."

"it was just—" veronica stops herself kate hears her exhale, hears the specific frustration of someone losing an argument with themselves in real time. "it wasn't just a text. okay. it wasn't."

"i'm not — los angeles isn't good for me, like, in the way that makes it sound." kate's gripping the counter edge now, knuckles white, surprised by how much she needs veronica to understand this part.

"i went to one event. for a friend. i smiled in one photo. that's — that's not a whole life, v, that's not me being fine, that's just a tuesday that somebody decided to turn into a headline."

"i know." veronica's voice cracks on the word, just slightly, just enough that kate hears four years of practice in the way she catches it and smooths it back over almost immediately. "i know that. i just i see you laughing in a photo and i'm standing here playing the worst basketball of my career and missing you so much i can't see straight, and it felt like you got to leave and i got to fall apart, and that's not i know that's not fair to think. i know it isn't. i still think it."

kate closes her eyes. somewhere in la, the sun is doing the thing it does, golden and indifferent, completely unaware that this conversation is happening at all. “i have a second phone number saved in my notes app,” she says, quiet, like a confession. “no, that’s not — i mean i have a draft. i’ve had it for weeks. it just says i miss you. i’ve never sent it because i didn’t think i was allowed to still feel like that. you requested — i mean, i requested the trade, and i thought that meant i had to actually be okay with it, like, performatively okay, all the way through. i didn’t know i was allowed to still be falling apart on the inside while everyone thought i was thriving.”

silence on the line kate can hear veronica breathing, can hear the gym noise behind her fade out, like maybe veronica stepped into a hallway, away from teammates, away from witnesses. "you should've sent it," veronica finally says.

"i know."

"i would've told you i miss you back. probably immediately. probably embarrassingly fast." kate laughs, wet and surprised, the first real laugh she's let herself have in days that isn't performed for somebody else's camera. "we're so bad at this."

"we're so bad at this," veronica agrees.

neither of them says anything else for a moment, but neither of them hangs up either, and somehow that's the part that feels like the truth finally catching up to both of them not a grand declaration, not a fix, just two exhausted women sitting with the quiet instead of the performance of being fine, for the first time since the trade went through.

it isn't a reunion, it's not that easy, and the story knows it there's still a city between them, still a locker room each of them has to walk back into and pretend they're whole in front of teammates who already know better.

but it's a start the first honest five minutes either of them has had since this whole thing started. "i should go," veronica says eventually, soft. "practice."

"yeah. me too." kate doesn't move from the counter. "veronica?"

"yeah?"

"i'm glad you texted me this morning. even if it took us until now to actually say anything true." a small pause. then, quieter; "yeah. me too."

the schedule comes out on a wednesday, buried in a press release about national broadcast slots and primetime matchups, and kate finds the golden state valkyries-sparks game before she finds anything else on the page three weeks she reads the date four times like it might change if she stares hard enough.

she doesn't tell anyone she circles it on the calendar in her kitchen in pen, which feels significant somehow, like ink makes it more real than it already is.

the three weeks move strange some days drag, practice and treatment and film sessions stacking up slow, and some days she blinks and it's suddenly only ten days out, then five, then the team's boarding a charter to san francisco and kate's staring out the window at clouds doing absolutely nothing to calm her down as cam clocks it almost immediately. "you've been weird all week."

"i haven't."

"you organized the snack cart on the plane by color. you don't do that. nobody does that."

kate doesn't have a defense for the snack cart she also doesn't have a defense for the fact that she's checked her phone forty times since boarding, and veronica hasn't texted, and kate keeps telling herself that's fine, that's normal, that's just two professional athletes about to play each other and not two women who had an entire emotional reckoning over a phone call three weeks ago and then said almost nothing about it since.

they've talked a little careful texts, mostly; good luck thursday, saw your block on the highlight reel, show off, nothing that touches what actually got said that morning it's like they both agreed, without ever agreeing out loud, to let the real conversation sit untouched until they could have it somewhere that wasn't a phone line between two time zones.

rae notices the snack cart thing too, on the bus from the airport. "okay but for real," she says, sliding into the seat next to kate, "you're acting like we're playing the finals. it's february."

"i'm fine."

"you keep saying that word like it means something different than what it actually means." rae says it lightly, but there's something underneath it, the particular kindness of a teammate who's been watching you carefully for weeks without making a thing of it. "whoever's got you like this, i hope they're worth it."

kate doesn't answer but she also doesn't deny it, which rae seems to take as answer enough, because she just pats kate's knee once and goes back to her phone, leaving kate to sit with the fact that apparently her whole team has known for a while now, in the quiet way teams always know things before anybody says them out loud.

shootaround the morning of the game is its own kind of torture both teams use the same facility on back-to-back schedules, which kate forgot was a possibility until she's walking off the court and veronica's team is walking in, and there she is veronica burton, gym bag slung over one shoulder, hair pulled back, looking exactly like she did the last year and also entirely unfamiliar, the way someone you love always looks slightly new after enough time apart.

their eyes catch across the court; neither of them says anything there isn't room to, not with eight teammates and two coaching staffs and a facility manager all moving through the same space, but v's mouth does something small and helpless that kate recognizes instantly as the exact same thing happening on her own face.

cam, beside her, follows her line of sight and goes very quiet. "oh," she says, soft, like several weeks of context just clicked into place at once. "oh. okay."

the game itself is chaos, in the way rivalry games always are physical, fast, both benches yelling, the kind of basketball that makes for a good highlight reel and a worse night's sleep.

kate and veronica guard each other for stretches at a time, and it's strange, how the body remembers things the heart's been trying to negotiate around the way veronica still goes left more than she goes right, the way kate still knows exactly which fake she'll bite on and which one she won't.

there's a moment in the third quarter where veronica drives baseline and kate cuts her off clean, and instead of the usual chirping that comes with a good defensive play, they just look at each other for half a second too long, breathing hard, something unspoken passing between them that has nothing to do with basketball at all.

the ref blows the whistle for a foul that probably wasn't one neither of them argues it but at the end the sparks win by six; it's not the part anyone in this story actually cares about.

after the game, kate showers fast, skips most of the media obligations she's allowed to skip, and finds herself standing outside the visiting locker room like a teenager waiting outside a school dance, hands jammed in her jacket pockets, heart doing something embarrassing.

veronica comes out twenty minutes later, hair still damp, and stops short when she sees kate leaning against the wall.

"hey," kate say same word from the phone call, three weeks and four hundred miles ago as it means something different in person, heavier, and somehow lighter too.

"hey." veronica doesn't move for a second then she does, crossing the hallway in four steps and kate's pulling her in before either of them really decides to, face pressed into veronica’s shoulder, breathing her in like she's been holding her breath for three weeks and just remembered how lungs work.

"i missed you so much it was embarrassing," kate mumbles into her shoulder. "i organized a snack cart by color today. cam staged an intervention."

veronica laughs like really laughs, the kind kate hasn't heard from her in months, not since before everything got complicated. "i benched myself emotionally for like a week and a half. my coach thought i had a knee thing. i didn't have a knee thing."

"we're so bad at this."

"we're so bad at this," veronica agrees again, the same words from the phone call, except now she's saying them with her forehead pressed against kate's, both of them still in arena clothes, both of them not caring even a little that anyone could walk by.

somebody does walk by, eventually rae, looking for kate to head to the bus, who takes one look at the scene in the hallway and very loudly says "oh thank GOD," to absolutely nobody, before turning around and walking the other direction to give them a minute, already pulling out her phone to text the group chat.

cam's response comes back almost instantly: FINALLY. i've been managing her feelings for a month, somebody else's turn.

it doesn't get fixed overnight, not really there's still a trade, still two cities, still a question of what this actually looks like long-term that neither of them has answered yet.

but that night, sitting in veronica's hotel room with takeout going cold between them because neither of them remembered to actually eat, kate finally opens the notes app and shows veronica the draft she never sent.

i miss you. four words, dated weeks ago, sitting there unsent the whole time like a wound that never got to close.

veronica reads it twice then she takes kate's phone, opens a new message thread, and types back: i miss you too. i would've said it the second you sent it. i'm saying it now instead.

she hits send to herself, which makes no sense and makes complete sense, and kate laughs until she's crying a little, the good kind of crying, the kind that comes after weeks of holding something in alone and finally getting to set it down in front of someone who actually wants to help carry it.

"so what now," kate asks, eventually, head on veronica's shoulder, both of them too tired and too relieved to move.

"now," veronica says, "we figure it out. for real this time. no performing fine for an audience that doesn't actually know either of us."

"i can do that."

"yeah?"

"yeah." kate closes her eyes. "i'm done being fine for cameras. i'd rather just be a mess with you, honestly."

veronica presses a soft kiss to the top of her head. "deal."

outside, two cities wait for two teams, two locker rooms full of people who'll be insufferable about this in the group chats for weeks, two schedules that don't line up nearly as often as either of them would like.

you guard her for three of those minutes before your coach mercifully switches you off, and even getting torched by her feels like getting let in on a secret nobody else on the floor understands yet.

after the game, in the handshake line, she does something nobody expects she doesn't just slap your hand and move on she stops. "you're tall," she says, like an observation, like a scouting note.

"i'm aware."

"you used your length wrong on that switch. you were trying to mirror my hips instead of just standing in the lane and making me go around you." she says it without any heat, like she's handing you something useful instead of rubbing it in. "you've got four inches on me. use them."

you don't know what to say to that but you say, "thanks, i guess," and she's already moving down the line, already gone, and you spend the bus ride home replaying it more than you replay the sixteen point loss.

you don't see her again until the regional all-star thing in march, some exhibition the conference throws together, mismatched jerseys, half the gym empty where you end up, by pure scheduling accident, on the same five-on-five squad. 

she runs the offense like she's been running it with you for years instead of forty minutes she finds you on a backdoor cut you didn't even know you'd set up correctly when you finish it, she points at you across the gym, no smile yet, just acknowledgment.

after, she finds you by the water table. "told you," she says. "the length. you used it."

"i had a good teacher for one possession."

"i'm efficient," she says already, even then, like it's a fact about her she's decided to state plainly instead of let you discover slowly and something about the dry certainty of it makes you laugh out loud, loud enough that a few heads turn.

you get her number that night, ostensibly to talk about basketball you do talk about basketball, for a while you also talk about everything else, for longer.

the draft takes her the following spring first round, no surprise to anyone who'd watched a single possession and you stay one more year at louisville to finish your degree, and the distance between your two lives stretches out long and inconvenient and entirely worth it. 

she calls after every wnba practice, still buzzing with whatever new thing she learned that day you call after every class still buzzing with whatever new thing she'd said the night before. 

it isn't simple you make it work anyway, the two of you, on facetime calls that run too late and flights you can't always afford and the dumb, stubborn certainty that this is worth being inconvenient for.

"i'm not waiting around for nothing," she tells you once, late, her face lit up small and blue on your screen. "i don't do anything i'm not all the way invested in. you know that about me by now."

"i know that about you."

"so don't go anywhere."

"i'm not going anywhere, amoore."

her rookie wnba season is the year you officially become hers, in whatever way two people separated by half the country can belong to each other phone calls at odd hours around her practice schedule, a drawer of her hoodies slowly migrating into your apartment despite the miles between you, your name showing up, more and more, in the post-game interviews she gives about adjusting to the league.

"who's helping you handle the transition," some reporter asks her in october, fairly innocently.

"my coaches. my teammates." a pause, the kind you'd come to recognize even through a phone screen as her deciding something. "my girlfriend, when i need someone to tell me i'm not actually bad at this, i'm just new at it."

you watch the clip nine times she calls you forty minutes later, half-laughing, half-bracing. "i didn't ask if that was okay to say first."

"it was okay to say first."

"yeah?"

"georgia. i would've put it on a billboard if you'd asked me to."

by the time her rookie season ends, she's an all-rookie selection and you've finished your degree and the question of what comes next stops being a question, because you'd both already answered it months earlier without saying so out loud you weren't going to keep doing this from two time zones away forever, not when one of you could simply walk on, eventually, to where the other already was.

the 2026 draft class is deep and loud and, for one terrifying green-room hour, you're convinced your name isn't going to come out of anyone's mouth at all and then it does, called early in the first round, and the noise in your ears drowns out everything except the four words that matter most: same team as georgia.

it isn't a fix, isn't a favor your college tape speaks for itself, your numbers your senior year at louisville speak for themselves but you'd be lying if you said you didn't immediately, the second your name was called, look for her face in the crowd of league staffers like she might somehow already be there.

she isn't there; she's three states away, watching the broadcast from her own apartment, and she calls you before you've even made it backstage for the jersey photo. "i didn't pull any strings," she says, before you've even said hello, already laughing, already defensive about something nobody's accused her of yet.

"georgia, i haven't even said anything."

"i know how this looks. i want it on record i made zero calls."

"i believe you. i also don't care if you did."

your draft class comes in deep at your position lauren, cotie, angela, a handful of others everyone's already comparing to past classes and the rookie group chat lights up within the hour, equal parts excitement and chaos, lauren sending nothing but exclamation points, cotie immediately asking who's got the worst rookie hazing duties this year. 

you end up, by the kind of luck that feels less like luck and more like something finally going right, on georgia’s roster the same city, same gym, same locker room you'd been picturing since a regional all-star game years ago.

"i made an introduction, once, a long time ago, unrelated to this," georgia tells you anyway, the night before your first team practice, like she still needs the record corrected. "you earned this. the draft board doesn't care whose girlfriend you are."

"i know."

"i need you to actually know it. not just say it."

"amoore." you say it soft, the way you've said it a hundred times by now. "i know."

it's georgia who's there at the end of your first practice as a professional, the way she was there at the end of that handshake line years ago, except now there's no league rule, no distance, nothing keeping either of you from doing what you actually want to do which is close the gap between you in front of an entire locker room that's known for exactly four days that the rookie is dating their starting point guard.

"rookie," she says, the way she did the very first time, except now it isn't a scouting note, it's something gentler, something with years built into it.

"vet," you say back, and she laughs short, surprised, the same sound from the handshake line and lets you kiss her right there with half the team pretending very hard not to watch.

the height thing follows you straight into the league, the way it followed you through every gym before this one georgia’s teammates, your teammates now, which still doesn't feel entirely real pick it up fast. 

she's five foot six and she's never once acted like it, and you're a rookie with four inches on her who, somehow, still ends up bending down at her insistence more often than not she hooks two fingers in your jersey to pull you down in the layup line and calls it efficient.

she stands on a folding chair in the locker room once just to make a point about something during film, and nobody on the team so much as blinks because this is, apparently, simply who she is. 

a veteran posts a photo of the two of you standing back to back after practice you a full five inches over her captioned new rookie's first lesson: georgia amoore does not believe in inches. your teammates throw a towel at both of you at the next team dinner when she makes you crouch so she can fix your collar like you're incapable of doing it yourself.

"you like this," you tell her one night, weeks into your rookie season, the two of you the last ones in the practice facility after film. "making me do things at your height."

"i don't know what you're talking about."

"you just made me crouch so you could point at something on the whiteboard you could've pointed at standing normally."

"it was for emphasis." she's not even trying to sell it, smiling at the floor, arms crossed when she finally looks up there's something steadier under the joke the same steadiness that's been there since a handshake line years ago. "is that a problem, rookie?"

"no," you say, honest, quiet, same as you said it back at louisville before any of this was official. "it's never been a problem."

she closes the gap herself, like she always has, has to go up on her toes to do it, palm flat on your chest like she's deciding something all over again even though she decided years ago and you bend without being asked, because some things you've known all the way down to instinct since the first time she told you to use your length.

by midseason, it isn't a bit anymore, hasn't been for a long time it's just true she likes being the small one, the one person in her whole life she gets to hand the lead to instead of carrying it herself she runs the offense for a team that would follow her into traffic, calls every late-game set, takes every big shot with a confidence that makes broadcasters reach for words like generational all over again, and comes home to you wanting, more than almost anything, to be the one who has to reach.

you like giving her that you like it more than you've liked almost anything, maybe more than you even like the league itself, which is saying something. "you're doing the hands thing again," she says, one night after a win, her cheek against your sternum because that's still, after all this time, exactly where it lands best.

"i don't know what you're talking about."

"you do. careful hands. i like the careful hands." she tips her head back to look at you bare-faced now, hair down from its game-day braid, swallowed in your hoodie instead of the other way around for once and there's nothing small about the way she's looking at you, there never has been. "don't make me say it twice."

"yeah?"

"amoore doesn't repeat herself."

"amoore is literally your last name."

"i'm aware," she says, and pulls you down by the collar to prove the point properly, the exact same way she's been proving it since a regional all-star game neither of you remember the score of anymore.

it's slow, after that her back finding the wall, you bending to meet her because the height difference stopped being a locker-room joke a long time ago and became, instead, just the shape the two of you fit into. 

she has to reach, has to ask, fingers fisting in your shirt, soft frustrated sounds when you take your time giving her what she's after. you like watching the most in-control person on the roster lose just enough control to need you, the same way you liked it at louisville, the same way you'll probably like it for as long as she lets you.

"amoore," you say low, just to feel her shiver at her own name in your mouth. "don't," she breathes, "don't use that voice unless you mean it."

"i've meant it since february of your sophomore year." that gets her a real laugh, breathless, half into your collarbone before she pulls you back in properly. 

it stays unhurried after that, her hand lacing through yours instead of grabbing at it, the two of you trading the lead back and forth the way you have for years now, on the court and off it, neither of you in a hurry to get anywhere else.

when it's over she goes quiet for a long minute against your collarbone, breathing slowing, your hand mapping absent lines down her spine. "what are you thinking," you ask, because she's gone uncharacteristically still.

"that the team's gonna ask how the game felt tomorrow and i'm gonna have to lie about which part i mean. again."

"you're unbelievable."

"i'm efficient," she says again, sleepy, smug even half-unconscious, the exact same two words from a gym in february all those years ago, and you hold her like that all five foot six of her, all the room she's somehow always taken up anyway and think, not for the first time, that she'd been right back then too. 

you'd just needed a few years to learn how to use the length she handed you.

the thing about away games is there's nothing to do for the first twenty minutes after shootaround but sit in the visitor's locker room and wait, and somewhere in your second month as a rookie this becomes, without either of you really deciding it on purpose, your time. 

georgia's and yours, the two of you on the end of the bench by the equipment bags, half-watching film clips on someone's tablet, talking about nothing in the specific way you've always talked about nothing half basketball, half everything else.

tonight it's quiet enough that you can hear the visiting crowd starting to file in three levels up. georgia’s got her ankles crossed, leaned back against the wall, and at some point you don't even notice when it starts, it's that natural her hand finds your thigh, resting there, thumb moving slow back and forth, not going anywhere, not trying to be anything except close. "you're nervous," she says, not a question, eyes still on the tablet.

"i'm not nervous."

"you're doing the thing with your jaw."

"i don't have a thing with my jaw."

"you do. it's cute. doesn't mean i'm not gonna mention it." her thumb keeps moving, slow, absent, the kind of touch that isn't for anyone but the two of you, that isn't performance, that's just comfort backcourt shorthand. "first real road environment as a starter. you're allowed to be a little in your head about it."

"i'm not in my head."

"you're a little in your head." you laugh, and lean into her shoulder, and her hand goes still on your thigh for a second just resting there, warm, grounding before it starts moving again, soft circles this time, absentminded the way you rub a bruise without thinking about it. 

somebody's tablet is playing a clip of last week's defensive rotations neither of you is really watching it anymore. "for what it's worth," she says, quieter now, "i was terrified my rookie year too. first real road game i didn't have anyone."

"you had nobody?"

"i had a phone and a girlfriend three states away who picked up every single time no matter what time zone she was supposed to be sleeping in." she tips her head, just enough to catch your eye. "you're not gonna have that problem tonight."

"no?"

"no. you've got me on the bench and in the locker room and at the hotel and in the backcourt for the next forty minutes, so. i'd say you're covered." it's such a simple thing to say and it undoes you a little anyway, the way she still manages to do after years of this and you don't even think about it, you just turn your head and kiss her, quick, soft, nothing dramatic, the kind of kiss that's more habit than event at this point.

what neither of you accounts for is the bench cam.

you don't find out until after the game a good one, your first real road win as a starter, marin running the offense like she's been doing it for a decade because she basically has, the two of you connecting on a backdoor cut in the third quarter that gets the broadcast booth saying things like that chemistry doesn't come from nowhere when you walk into the locker room and the entire team is already looking at you.

not upset, not even surprised, exactly just looking, in the specific way a locker room looks at two people who thought they were being subtle. "so," cotie says, holding up her phone, the in-arena broadcast clip already circulating in three group chats, "thigh rubs. on the bench. during shootaround prep."

"it was a supportive gesture," georgia says, completely unbothered, toweling off like this is a normal postgame conversation. "georgia, you were holding her thigh like a stress ball for four full minutes, the production truck literally cut to it twice."

lauren's already got the clip pulled up too, replaying it with the kind of glee reserved for exactly this situation. "i thought we were being professional about this."

"we are professional," you say, mortified, sitting down hard on the bench like it might swallow you. "we're extremely professional."

"you held her hand walking off the bus," angela points out, not even looking up from retying her shoes. "i saw it from the second row."

"that's just — that's logistics."

"it's not logistics," georgia says, unhelpfully, sitting down next to you anyway, shoulder against yours, not even trying to deny anything anymore. "it's not even new information. i don't know why everyone's acting shocked."

"because you two have been doing this silent eye-contact thing across the locker room for two months and pretending it's coaching feedback," cotie says. "we're not stupid. we just didn't have video evidence until tonight."

"the chemistry's good for the offense," georgia says, like that settles it, like that's the actual point. "you're welcome, by the way. that backdoor cut doesn't happen if i don't trust her."

"nobody's arguing with the basketball," lauren says. "we're talking about the thigh." you put your face in your hands georgia, beside you, laughs that same short surprised sound from a handshake line years ago, except now it's surrounded by a whole team instead of an empty gym and finds your hand again under the bench, lacing her fingers through yours in front of literally everyone, no more hiding left to bother with.

"so it's official, then," cotie says, already typing something into the group chat that you will absolutely regret tomorrow. "backcourt duo. on and off the court."

"it was already official," georgia says. "you all just didn't have the clip yet."

later, on the flight home the rookies clustered in the back, georgia in the row ahead of you because of some seating chart nobody questions, her hand reaching back between the seats to find yours somewhere over middle she turns around just enough to catch your eye. "you good?" she asks, soft, just for you, the team noise washing over both of you like static.

"i'm good." you squeeze her hand. "i think i liked it. the finding out part."

"yeah?"

"yeah. it's nice not hiding the easy parts anymore."

"told you," she says, smug, sleepy, already turning back around, already done with the conversation because she's said the thing she meant to say. "i'm efficient. i don't waste energy hiding things that don't need hiding."

you spend the rest of the flight with your hand in hers over the seatback, and somewhere behind you cotie is narrating the whole thing into her phone for posterity, and none of it not one second of it feels like something either of you needs to be careful about anymore.

your rookie season ends the way most rookie seasons do short of a title, longer on lessons than wins, but with your name on an all-rookie ballot and georgia's hand finding yours under the table at exit interviews like she's been waiting all year to stop pretending the two of you arrived separately.

"i told everyone in october you'd make the team," she says, at the end-of-season dinner the org throws, leaning into your side in a dress that makes you forget, briefly, how to use silverware. "nobody believed me."

"you told them i'd make the team, or you told them you were already dating me?"

"both. simultaneously. very efficient announcement." she says it with her chin tipped up at you, the exact angle she's used since a handshake line years ago, and you bend down without thinking about it, the way you always do, to kiss her at the angle that's always worked best for the two of you her on her toes just slightly, you meeting her the rest of the way.

cotie, three seats down, doesn't even look up from her dessert. "every single time. you'd think the two of them would get tired of doing that in public."

"we will never get tired of it," georgia says, completely unbothered, and goes back to her food like she hasn't just confirmed, out loud, in front of half the roster, exactly how unbothered she actually is.

the height bit never really dies, not all the way it just changes shape, season over season, the way everything between the two of you does there's a banner the team makes as a joke at the year-end party, a photoshopped image of the two of you standing back to back with a tape measure drawn in, captioned the gap that built an offense. 

there's lauren, every single road trip, narrating the seating chart out loud georgia's in 14a because she likes the window, rookie's in 14b because rookie does whatever georgia says. there's angela, deadpan, informing a reporter during a postgame scrum that the team's best defensive rotation is "whatever height difference exists between amoore and her girlfriend, scientifically unguardable."

you let it happen you've let it happen since february of georgia’s senior year, since a gym that smelled like rubber and gatorade, since four words from a stranger in a handshake line that turned out to mean a great deal more than a scouting note.

"you ever think about it," you ask her, much later, the two of you finally alone after the party, her shoes off, feet bare on the hotel carpet, somehow smaller than ever and exactly as unbothered as always. "the first thing you ever said to me."

"that you were tall?"

"that i used my length wrong."

"i think about it constantly," she says, not even joking, climbing up onto the bed to sit at your eye level the way she still likes to, the way she's liked to since the very beginning. "i think about how i almost didn't say anything. how i almost just slapped your hand in that line and moved on like everybody else."

"what stopped you?"

"you looked like you actually wanted to get better. most people just want to survive getting torched by a sophomore." she shrugs, like it's simple, like it's always been simple, even though you both know better by now. "i don't waste effort on people who don't want it. you wanted it. i could tell."

"i wanted you," you say, "if we're being honest. the basketball note was just a good excuse to keep talking to you."

"i know. i let you think the basketball note worked because i wanted an excuse too." she pulls you down by the collar, same as always, same as the very first time in a quiet gym after a film session, same as a kitchen counter, same as every single time since and you go, the way you've always gone, the way you'll probably keep going for as long as she keeps asking. "i'm efficient like that."

"amoore."

"i'm aware it's my last name." she's smiling against your mouth now, the kind of smile that's stopped being a punchline and just become the shape her face makes around you. "ask me something else."

"what comes next."

"more of this." she says it simply, the way she calls a play, the way she's never once doubted a read in her life. "more seasons. more height jokes the team refuses to retire. you, probably bending down to kiss me in a hundred more locker rooms i haven't seen yet."

"that's the whole plan?"

"that's the whole plan." she settles against you, head finding your sternum, exactly where it's landed since a gym in louisville years ago, exactly where it'll probably keep landing for as long as either of you has anything to say about it. "i don't lose on purpose, remember and i'm not planning on losing this."

you didn't put it on for anyone that's what you tell yourself, anyway, smoothing your palm down your hip for the fourth time in an hour, feeling the fabric cling and give the way it's supposed to you didn't put it on for anyone, but you knew exactly what it would do when you zipped it up in your mirror two hours ago, and you'd be lying if you said the knowing wasn't half the point.

across the room, grace knox is failing to have a conversation you've clocked her three times tonight already impossible not to, the way she takes up space even sitting still, all long limbs and restless hands, six-foot-something forward poured into a black tee that's doing its own kind of advertising.

you've seen her on campus everybody's seen her on campus lsu's worst-kept secret, the freshman who dunks in warmups and pretends she doesn't know cameras exist right now she's not looking at the girl talking to her she's looking at you has been, you realize, for embarrassingly long.

her friend, tall, mouth permanently arranged like she's in on a joke nobody else heard, follows the line of grace’s stare across the bar, finds you at the end of it, and grins like christmas came early.

you watch the whole thing happen in profile, the friend says something, grace shakes her head, the friend says something else, grace’s jaw goes tight in a way that makes you feel low in your stomach for no reason you'd admit out loud and then the friend just shoves her.

physically a palm flat between grace’s shoulder blades, propelling her two stumbling steps in your direction like she's tired of watching the staring and wants the talking to start.

grace catches herself on the bar an arm's length from you, straightens up slowly, tries visibly tries to look like she meant to walk over here the whole time, like this was always the plan and not a friend's patience running out.

"hey." her voice is lower than you expected rougher. "hey yourself." you don't bother hiding that you're amused. "your friend's subtle."

"my friend's a menace." grace glances back and the friend gives an exaggerated thumbs up from across the room, no shame whatsoever and when she looks at you again something in her face has eased, like she's decided to stop pretending this is an accident.

"but she's not wrong that i've been trying to figure out how to come over here for like twenty minutes."

"twenty minutes is a long time to think about walking ten feet."

"you're terrifying. that's why." she says it easy, a half-grin pulling at her mouth, but her eyes are doing something else entirely dragging down, slow, the kind of look that lingers exactly as long as it wants to and doesn't apologize for it. "that dress is not helping my case."

something low in the bar's speakers shifts into a new song sleeker, slinkier, the kind of groove that changes the temperature of a room without anyone deciding to let it.

you feel it more than hear it at first, just a shift in the air, people around you settling into the bassline.

grace's eyes flick toward the speaker overhead and then back to you, and you watch the exact moment the song registers for her the corner of her mouth twitching like she knows it, like it means something, like it's annoyingly perfect timing.

"what." you tip your head, daring her to say it. "nothing." but she's biting back a laugh now, stepping half a step closer, close enough that you catch the low note of her cologne under the bar smell of spilled liquor and air freshener. "just — this song is kind of insane timing, is all."

"yeah?"

"yeah." her voice drops, pitched for just you, the rest of the bar receding into noise. "it's basically about exactly what i'm thinking right now."

"and what's that." she doesn't answer right away, just looks at you really looks, the kind of look that makes you aware of your own pulse and lets a beat of the song fill the silence instead of words, like she's letting the track make the case she's too cocky to make outright.

you get the gist anyway you'd have to be deaf not to."you gonna keep being mysterious," you say, "or you gonna dance with me." that's all it takes as she doesn't need a second invitation.

her hand finds your waist like it already knew the way, warm through the fabric of your dress, and she pulls you in close enough that there's no pretending this is casual anymore.

you let her hand slides up to her shoulder, then the back of her neck, and you feel her exhale against your temple like she'd been holding her breath since you walked in.

she's an unfairly good dancer, hips finding the rhythm of the bassline like her body just understands music the same way it understands a basketball court instinctive, unbothered, a little showy.

her thigh brushes between yours on a turn and you feel the question in it, feel her gauge your reaction in the half-second before she does it again, slower. "you're not subtle either," you murmur.

"didn't say i was trying to be." her mouth is right at your ear now, low enough that it's just for you.

"you've had me losing my mind since you walked in. you know that, right?"

"i had a feeling."

"yeah?" her hand at your waist tightens, just slightly, fingers pressing into the curve of your hip like she's testing how much she's allowed. "what gave it away."

"the staring. the friend shoving you across the bar like you're a middle schooler at a dance."

she laughs actual laughter, surprised out of her and for a second the cocky front slips into something more real, something younger and warmer, and it does something to you that the staring alone hadn't managed. "okay, that's fair. that's — yeah, okay." she pulls back just enough to look at you properly. "can i be honest with you?"

"please."

"i don't actually wanna dance with you in a bar full of people who are not gonna remember this on monday." her thumb traces one slow line along your hip, deliberate.

"i wanna get you somewhere quiet and find out if you taste as good as you look in this dress." heat rushes up your neck, equal parts want and the thrill of being wanted this plainly, no games left in it. "that's forward."

"you want me to be slow about it?"

"i didn't say that." her grin turns wicked. "didn't think so."

her place is fifteen minutes and an entire conversation's worth of tension away her hand on your thigh in the backseat of the uber, fingers tracing slow idle patterns that have nothing idle about them, her mouth at your ear the whole ride telling you exactly what she'd been thinking watching you across that bar.

by the time the door shuts behind you in her apartment you're already breathless, already reaching for her, and she meets you halfway like she's been waiting all night for permission she didn't actually need.

she kisses like she does everything else confident, unhurried, like she already knows she has all the time in the world to take you apart properly.

her hands map you through the dress first, slow drags up your sides, over your ribs, thumbs grazing just beneath your chest like she's cataloguing every spot that makes your breath catch before she commits to anything else.

"this dress," she breathes against your jaw, walking you backward toward her bed, "has been killing me for two hours."

"you gonna do something about it?"

"oh, i'm gonna take real good care of you." the words land low and certain, more promise than flirtation, and she punctuates it by finding the zipper at your spine and dragging it down with agonizing slowness, baring you to her inch by inch. "gonna make sure you remember exactly who had you like this."

the dress falls away, her gaze drags over you like she's committing the sight to memory, and something in the way she looks at you reverent and hungry at once makes you feel more seen than you have in longer than you'd admit.

"lay back for me," she murmurs, and you do, sinking into the sheets while she follows you down, settling her weight between your thighs like she belongs exactly there.

her mouth finds your throat first, then lower, unhurried, mapping every inch of you with lips and teeth and the occasional graze of her tongue that has your hips already lifting toward her, chasing more.

she presses a broad palm flat against your stomach to still you, a quiet command you feel everywhere. "patient," she says against your skin, amused. "i'm not in a rush, baby. i want this to last."

she makes good on it takes her time working down your body, hands and mouth both, until she's settled fully between your thighs and you're a trembling, gasping mess above her, fingers tangled in the sheets, in her hair, anywhere you can find purchase.

when she finally puts her mouth on you it's unhurried at first, devastatingly slow, like she's savoring it, and the noise that tears out of you makes her hum in satisfaction against you.

"there she is," she murmurs, the vibration of it nearly undoing you on its own. "that's it. let me hear you."

she works you open with her tongue and then her fingers, two thick fingers curling deep with a precision that has your back arching off the bed, her name spilling out of you in broken pieces.

she doesn't let up, reads every twitch and gasps like she's studying game film, adjusting, chasing the exact angle that makes your thighs shake around her head.

"good girl," she breathes, the praise dragged low and rough against your skin, and it hits you somewhere that has nothing to do with logic, has you clenching tight around her fingers, chasing the edge she's building so carefully. "that's it, just like that you're doing so good for me."

the praise undoes you faster than anything else could you come apart around her with a cry you don't bother muffling, hips grinding against her mouth as she works you through every last wave of it, unrelenting, drawing it out until you're boneless and trembling and reaching blindly for her to pull her up to you.

she comes willingly, settling over you with a satisfied, lazy grin, lips wet, eyes dark. "you good?"

"barely," you manage, dragging her down into a kiss that tastes like yourself and her smugness in equal measure.

"good." her hand finds your thigh again, hooking it over her hip, settling herself back between your legs with the unmistakable intent of someone who has no plans of stopping there. "'cause i told you. i'm not in a rush tonight."

so when she leans in to kiss you again, slow and certain, you can still hear that bassline from the bar humming somewhere under your skin the song that started this, playing on a loop now in your head, every bit as true as it had sounded across a crowded room hours ago.

she's still catching her breath against your collarbone, mouth pressed lazy and unhurried to your skin, when you decide you're done letting her run the show.

it's not a complicated decision, it's the way she keeps looking at you even now, wrung out and grinning like she's pleased with herself like she thinks she's got you figured out already like the first round was the whole story.

you push at her shoulder, light but certain, and she goes easily, rolling onto her back with an easy laugh, hands coming up in mock surrender. "okay, okay what's that look?"

"you said you weren't in a rush." you swing a leg over her, settling yourself across her hips, and watch the laugh die in her throat, replaced by something hungrier. "didn't say anything about me taking a turn."

"didn't think i needed to." but her hands find your thighs anyway, thumbs pressing into the muscle there, like she can't help herself. "i was kind of hoping you would."

"yeah?" you brace your palms on her stomach, feel it tense under your hands, feel the way her breathing changes when you roll your hips slow against her. "you've been running this whole night like you've got something to prove."

"maybe i do."

"mm." you lean down, mouth at her ear the way hers had been at yours hours ago in that bar. "let me prove something instead."

you take your time with it more time than she gave herself patience for, dragging your mouth down her throat, her collarbone, finding every place that makes her breath catch and lingering there deliberately, watching her composure fray thread by thread.

she's not used to this, you can tell the stillness, the surrender, the not being the one in control of the pace and there's something deeply satisfying about watching a girl this confident go quiet and pliant underneath you.

"you're killing me," she breathes, hands fisting in the sheets instead of reaching for you, like she's making herself wait for permission. "that's the idea."

by the time you finally settle between her thighs she's already trembling, already saying your name like it's the only word she remembers, and you take your time there too slowly, deliberately, drawing every reaction out of her like you've got nowhere else to be tonight.

she's vocal in a way that surprises you, all that bravado dissolved into broken, honest sound, hips lifting toward your mouth before she catches herself and stills, like she's trying and failing to hold onto some shred of the control she walked in with.

"you don't have to be quiet," you murmur against her, feeling her shudder at just the vibration of it.

"wasn't planning on it," she manages, and then loses the rest of the sentence entirely when you prove her right.

you work her with the same patience she'd shown you reading her like she'd read you, adjusting, chasing the exact rhythm that has her thighs tightening around your head and her hand finally, helplessly finding the back of your neck, not guiding so much as holding on.

when she comes it's nothing like the easy, satisfied confidence from before it's a long, unraveling thing, her whole body going taut and then loose beneath you, your name breaking apart in her mouth like she didn't mean to say it that honestly.

you crawl back up her body slowly, pressing a kiss to her breasts, her throat, finally her mouth, and she meets you there dazed and grinning, breathless in a way you don't think happens to her often.

"okay," she says, when she's got enough air back to manage words. "okay. i stand corrected."

"about?"

"thinking i had the upper hand tonight." she pulls you down against her chest, arm settling heavy and warm across your back like she's not in any hurry to let you go anywhere. "you're not what i expected when my friend pushed me across that bar."

"good or bad?"

"the best kind of bad." she presses a lazy kiss to your hair, and you feel the rumble of her laugh against your cheek. "remind me to thank her."

the three of you have been trading the game back and forth all half like it's something only you can hear, some private language built out of screens and cuts and the half-second looks you throw at each other before the ball even moves.

dawn is having a moment on the sideline you don't even have to look to know it you can hear it in the way her voice cracks through the noise, sharp and short, the particular fury of a coach who knows her team is one bad possession away from blowing a ten-point lead. 

bree hall is having the game of her life on the other end, and for a second it feels like uconn's grip on this thing is loosening, finger by finger.

so when bree picks up her dribble too high at the top of the key, you don't think you just go your hand gets there first. 

the ball's in your fingers and you're already moving, already counting the steps in your head three, two, one and the rim is right there, close enough that you can already feel the shot leaving your hand before you've actually let it go.

it goes in you hear it go in you don't get the chance to feel good about it your knee buckles on the landing in a way knees aren't supposed to buckle, some wrong-feeling give in the joint, and then you're on the floor and the sound of the gym goes underwater distant, all the way at the bottom of something. 

you try to get up your leg has other plans azzi gets there before the trainers and do you remember that more than almost anything else from the next ten minutes her face above you, wide open in a way she never lets it be on camera, saying your name like it's the only word she has left.

her parents are courtside you find them in the crowd for one disoriented second before they wheel you out her mom's hand pressed flat against her own chest, her dad standing so still he could be a photograph as they don't know what you and azzi are to each other, not really, not out loud but they know enough to look like that.

uconn wins you hear it through a hospital hallway, a nurse's radio left on too loud, the final buzzer and then a roar that sounds like it's coming from somewhere very far away from your life.

you don't see the locker room you hear about it later that kk went live in the chaos right after, phone propped up somewhere, paige half in the shot looking like she hadn't fully exhaled yet. 

you've seen the clips since someone in the comments asking where's y/n over and over, the question multiplying every time the video gets reposted, no one in the frame quite knowing how to answer it. 

paige doesn't say much, paige never does, on camera but there's a beat small, almost nothing where she glances off to the side like she's listening for something that isn't there.

you don't think about any of that yet you're somewhere with too much white light, signing things, answering questions about pain levels on a scale you don't actually believe in, watching a doctor's mouth move through words like acl and surgery tonight like they're being read off a script you already know the ending to.

azzi gets there a few hours after you wake up still in something that isn't quite her game clothes anymore, hair pulled back too tight like she did it herself in a hurry, eyes swollen in the specific way that means she cried in the car and tried to fix it in a bathroom mirror before walking in.

she doesn't say anything about the net, the trophy, the banner that's probably already being ordered. 

she just gets into the chair beside your bed and takes your hand like she's checking it's still attached to you. "you scared me," she says just that like it costs her something to say it.

you don't have an answer for that yet, so you don't try to find one she goes and gets you chick-fil-a from somewhere you don't ask how, this late, this far from anything that should be open and you eat it slow, propped up against pillows that smell like a hospital and not like home, and for a little while it's almost normal. 

her hand finding yours between bites her laugh, small and real, when you complain about the ice in your drink being wrong somehow, too much, too loud against your teeth.

somewhere, a phone is still recording kk doing a postgame interview, fielding the same question in four different forms — is y/n okay, do we know anything, is there an update — and she keeps saying i think so in a voice that doesn't sound sure of anything. 

you don't watch it azzi tells you about it instead, quiet, like she's trying to keep the outside world a little further away from this room than it actually is it should feel like enough for a night, it almost does.

recovery doesn't look like the movies it looks like a couch where you start to know the shape of better than your own bed it looks like phone notifications you stop opening group chats moving on without you, highlight reels that don't have your name in them anymore, a season ending without you in the part of it that matters.

azzi comes by when she can less than either of you say out loud there's media, training, a life that kept moving the second the clock hit zero and never really looked back to check if you were still standing. 

you tell yourself you understand you tell yourself it a lot, actually, more than a person should have to tell themselves something true.

what you don't say not for weeks is the other thing the quieter, uglier thing, the one that doesn't show up until 2am: that you've started flinching a little every time she talks about next season.

that you watch her get brighter, faster, more her with every week you spend re-learning how to walk down a hallway without holding onto something, and some small, mean part of you has started keeping score like her getting better at this is a referendum on what you lost.

you don't tell her that you let it calcify instead it comes out wrong, the way these things always do not in some big cinematic blowout but in a kitchen, late, over something that shouldn't have mattered. 

she says something about a tournament next month, casual, hopeful, and you say something back that isn't about the tournament at all.

"you don't have to keep doing this," you tell her. "the visiting. the calling. you don't owe me a recovery."

"i'm not doing it because i owe you anything." her voice goes tight, fast. "what is that supposed to mean."

"it means i watch you get further away every week and i don't know how to stop being the reason you slow down to check on me." it comes out before you've fully decided to say it, and once it's out you can't take it back, can't soften the shape of it. "i don't want to be something you're managing."

"i'm not managing you, i'm with you—"

"i know." and you do you know it's true, and you say the next part anyway, because the truth and the right thing to do have stopped being the same sentence. 

"i think i need you to not be, for a while. i think i need to be the only one in the room when i figure out who i am on this leg. not — not someone watching, keeping tabs, feeling guilty every time you have a good practice."

she goes very still. "you're breaking up with me because i'm good at my job."

"i'm breaking up with you because i don't know how to watch you be incredible right now without it costing me something i can't afford to keep paying." your voice cracks somewhere in the middle of it and you let it. 

"and you don't deserve to be on the other end of that. you didn't do anything wrong, azzi. that's the whole problem. you didn't do a single thing wrong and i still can't be in this the way i need to be." 

she doesn't cry, not in front of you she just nods, slow, like she's filing it away somewhere she'll have to unpack later, alone. 

"okay," she says just that the same two letters she used the first time, in the hospital, except now they mean something closing instead of something opening.

later months later, a season and a half away from that kitchen you'll think about how it never really had a villain. 

no blowup big enough to deserve the ending just two people who loved each other clean through a championship night and a surgery and a chick-fil-a bag eaten too slowly in a hospital bed, and then ran out of road on the other side of it. 

you'll think about therapy, the kind you actually go to now, and how much of the first few sessions were just you trying to explain that you weren't angry at her. 

you were just tired of being something she had to be brave about you don't know, yet, if you'd do it again love someone that fully, knowing how loud the ending gets. 

some nights you think you'd take all the blame twice over just to keep her a little longer whereas other nights you're not sure you'd survive loving anyone that hard again at all.

there's a version of grief no one warns you about the kind that doesn't come with a funeral or a box of things to give back. 

you just wake up one day and your whole life has quietly rearranged itself around the absence of someone who's still, technically, alive. 

still playing basketball three states away still posting blurry gym mirror selfies you have to actively avoid, not because you're checking, but because you're trying not to.

the knee heals on its own schedule, indifferent to anything else going on in your life six months out, you can jog again eight, you can cut without your whole leg sending up a flare of protest. 

the trainers keep telling you you're ahead of pace, like that's supposed to mean something, like your body healing faster than expected is some kind of consolation prize for everything else that didn't.

you start therapy in month three, mostly because your mom asks you to in a voice that doesn't leave room for no. 

the therapist's office has a plant in the corner that's somehow always a little dusty, and for the first four sessions you talk about the injury like it's the whole story the knee, the surgery, the rehab until she asks, gently, almost as an aside, and what about everything that happened around it?

you don't have a good answer the first time you don't have a great one the fifth time either but you keep going back.

"i think i ended it to protect myself more than her," you say, eventually, somewhere around month five. it comes out smaller than you meant it to. "i told her it was for her. i think some of it was."

"some of it."

"some of it was just i didn't want to be the one left behind, watching. so i left first. made it look like generosity." you laugh, but it doesn't have anything funny in it. "i don't know if that's worse."

the therapist doesn't tell you whether it's worse she just lets it sit there, which somehow is the part that actually gets to you.

you watch the season anyway you tell yourself you won't, every single time, and then you do it anyway quiet, alone, volume low enough that it feels less like watching and more like checking on something.

azzi's better than ever you knew she would be there's a version of you that's almost proud in a clean, uncomplicated way, the way you'd be proud of anyone and then there's the other version, the one that watches her hit a stepback three and feels something in your chest fold in on itself, because you used to be in the gym for that. 

you used to be the first text after now you're a stranger with a remote, learning her season through a broadcast like everyone else.

she doesn't mention you in interviews you don't expect her to but there's a clip that goes around anyway some postgame question about her growth, her composure under pressure, and she goes quiet for a second too long before she answers, something passing behind her eyes that the interviewer doesn't catch but you do, because you spent two years learning every version of her face there is.

you don't reach out she doesn't either you tell yourself that's its own kind of answer, and some nights you believe it.

the anniversary of the championship comes around before you're ready for it espn does a one-year-later piece, all highlight reels and slow-motion nets, and there you are for four seconds on the floor, azzi's face above you, before the cut moves on to somewhere happier. 

you watch those four seconds more times than you'd ever admit out loud you write her a text that night you don't send it you write it again two weeks later, shorter this time, and you don't send that one either. 

there's a version of you that thinks one day you might there's a bigger version that thinks the kindest thing you ever did for her was meaning what you said in that kitchen that she deserved a season she didn't have to be brave about, and you'd already cost her enough of that.

so you let the messages sit in drafts, the same way you let the question sit unanswered, in some part of yourself you're still in therapy trying to excavate whether you'd do it again, love someone completely, knowing exactly how it ends. 

some nights the answer is yes, immediately, no hesitation; other nights you're not sure you'd survive opening that door twice.

you don't get an answer that sticks you're not sure you're supposed to, yet you just keep going to therapy, keep doing the rehab, keep not sending the texts and somewhere underneath all of it, quieter every month, you keep loving her anyway, in the specific, useless way you love someone you've decided not to reach for.

the draft is in april, in a city you've never been to, and you're only there because your agent insists it's good for visibility — let people see your face attached to something other than the injury, she says, and you don't have a good argument against that. 

you tell yourself it's a coincidence that azzi's in the green room too, two years out from that championship, finally at the part of the timeline where her name gets called early and everyone already knew it would.

you see her before she sees you she's in something simple, orange, her hair down for once instead of pulled back tight for competition, and for a second you just stand there relearning the shape of her like a language you haven't spoken in a while but never actually forgot.

then she turns, and she sees you, and whatever you'd planned to say goes straight out of your head.

"hi," she says. just that. the same economy of words she's always had, the kind that used to drive you a little crazy and now just sounds like home.

"hi." you don't know what to do with your hands. "congratulations. you earned every bit of this."

something flickers across her face pride, maybe, or just relief that you're still capable of being glad for her without it costing either of you anything. "thank you." a pause. "you look good. like — healthy. moving good."

"i am." you almost laugh. "knee's the strongest part of me, probably. therapist would have a field day with that metaphor."

that gets a real smile out of her, small and quick, the one you used to wait whole practices for. "you're still in therapy?"

"every week. it's — it's helped." you find yourself being honest with her in a way you didn't expect to be, here, under bad green-room lighting with people in headsets weaving around you both. "i had to figure out a lot of it without you in the room. that part wasn't fun."

"i know. i did the same thing." she looks down at her hands for a second, like she's deciding something. "i never sent you anything. i wrote things. i just — i didn't know if i was allowed to."

"i wrote things too." your throat goes tight. "never sent them either."

"what would yours have said?" you tell her the truth, because two years and a lot of unsent drafts have worn the easy lies down to nothing. 

"that i didn't leave because you were good at your job. i left because i didn't know how to watch you become everything you were always going to become without feeling like i was the thing slowing it down. and i know now that wasn't fair to either of us. you never once made me feel that way. i did that to myself and i handed you the blame for it."

she's quiet for a second when she talks again, her voice isn't steady. "mine would've said i let you go too easy. i kept telling myself i was respecting what you needed, and some of that was true, but some of it was just — i was scared of asking you to stay and getting told no again. so i didn't ask. for two years."

neither of you says anything for a moment somewhere behind you, someone calls a five-minute warning for the next round of picks, the ordinary noise of the night going on without waiting for either of you to catch up to it.

"i don't know what this is," you say finally. "right now. i don't know if this is just — closure, or something else."

"do you want it to be something else?" she asks, and there's no performance in it at all, just the plainest question she's maybe ever given you.

"yeah." it comes out steadier than you feel. "i think i'd rather try again than spend another two years writing texts i never send."

her hand finds yours, careful, like she's checking the same way she did in a hospital room two years ago, except this time neither of you is afraid of what the answer might be. 

"okay," she says a third time now the word that used to mean something closing, and now, finally, means something opening back up instead.

you don't get the whole story fixed in one green room conversation under bad lighting before a draft. 

that's not how any of it actually works but you leave that night with her number re-saved under a different contact photo, a dinner already half-planned for whenever both your schedules let you have one, and the particular, unfamiliar lightness of a person who spent two years convinced she'd rather never love again finding out, slowly, that she was wrong about that.