she came off a ball screen in the second quarter and you picked her up at half-court, dropping into your stance, and she looked at you and really looked at you and smiled. 

not a trash-talk smile, not cocky just like she'd finally found something worth her attention your chest did something you didn't have language for. 

you told yourself it was adrenaline you stayed disciplined you stayed in your stance she scored anyway it didn't feel like it was about the points.

by the fourth quarter the galen center was loud in the way that only hostile venues get loud — not the organized cheering of your home crowd but something rawer, a sound that wanted something from you. 

usc was up six you had the ball at the top of the key and juju was on you, close enough that you could hear her breathing, and she said  quiet, not for anyone else you keep going left.

you went left she was there you threw it out before she could strip it and you heard her exhale, something almost like a laugh, and you set your jaw and ran back on defense because that was all you could do.

stanford lost by four you'd cut it to two with forty seconds left and then a turnover happened that wasn't your fault but lived in your body like it was. 

you were still in the tunnel, the locker room not yet reached, when you heard footsteps behind you and turned and juju was there, still in her warmups, her team thirty feet back at the court entrance as she looked at you for a second then she said “good game.”

not patronizing, not smug and you knew she meant it the way you only mean something when you've earned the right to say it.

you said “yeah” and walked away and spent forty-five minutes in the shower that night trying to figure out why it felt like losing even when you'd been the one she'd said it to.

she got your number from maya, who you would be having a very serious conversation with as soon as you figured out what to say the text came three days after the game you were in the stanford film room, watching your own footage with the lights off, and your phone lit up with a number you didn't have saved and a message that said

UNKNOWN: you had 22 and 7 assists. that turnover wasn't on you

UNKNOWN:  this is juju by the way

you stared at your phone for an embarrassingly long time. the film paused on your own face, mid-possession, eyes reading the defense. 

you looked tired in the freeze frame, you looked like someone who had not stopped thinking about the game even once in three days. you typed and deleted four things but you settled on. 

YOU: how did you get this number

JUJU: i have my ways

JUJU: also you're not going to say thank you?

YOU: thank you

YOU: why are you texting me?

JUJU: because i wanted to

JUJU: you play like you have something to prove. i like that

you saved her contact whereas you told yourself it was so you'd know not to block her you texted back at eleven-thirty that night and neither of you mentioned what team you played for.

it became a thing without either of you deciding it would be late nights mostly after practice, after film, after the particular exhaustion of being a division one athlete whose body was always slightly more depleted than she was willing to admit. 

she'd text something a clip she was studying, a question about read-and-react sets, something funny that happened at practice and you'd text back, and then somehow two hours had passed and you were lying in the dark in your stanford dorm room talking to juju watkins about whether zone defense was intellectually cowardly and you were laughing, actually laughing, at something she said.

you didn't talk about this to anyone not even maya, who had started giving you a very specific look whenever your phone went off after ten pm you ran into her at a tournament in february neutral site, a showcase event, and your teams weren't matched up but you were warming up on adjacent courts and you looked over and there she was, three lanes down, and she saw you at the same moment. 

she grinned when you looked away but first you made six three-pointers in warmups, which was two more than usual, and tried very hard to feel normal about that.

she texted you that night: six threes in warmups show-off.

you wrote back: you were watching.

she took four minutes to respond: obviously.

the thing you were refusing to name got louder after that the transfer decision had been building for a while you'd been honest with yourself about it before you were honest with anyone else stanford was extraordinary and you were grateful and it also wasn't quite right, the system, the fit, something you couldn't articulate clearly but felt every day in practice. 

you started making calls in march you told your parents first you told your coach with the kind of conversation that was professional and respectful and hurt anyway you told juju before you told most of your teammates. 

you didn't plan to, she'd texted you something about your upcoming schedule and you'd typed i'm transferring and then stared at it and then sent it before you could make a better decision.

YOU: i'm transferring

JUJU: what

JUJU: where

YOU: ucla

JUJU: ...

JUJU: you're going to be in my conference

YOU: yeah

JUJU: okay

JUJU: i mean you're still going to lose

YOU: keep telling yourself that

JUJU: ...i'm glad you're staying in la

you read that last message six times you put your phone face down you picked it up and read it 

again you didn't respond for twenty minutes and then you said; me too and that was the closest either of you came to saying it for a very long time.

ucla was good, it was the right call you knew it the first week of practice, the system clicking into something that felt like it was built around the way you saw the game, and your teammates were sharp and funny and welcoming in the way only a team that already knows what it wants can be los angeles was also the same city as usc, which you had known intellectually and which now lived in your body as a constant low-frequency awareness you couldn't fully explain to yourself.

you saw juju at a preseason event in october — a women's basketball media day at the staples center that both programs attended, separate tables, separate interview schedules, the whole thing very officially organized and entirely insufficient at keeping you on opposite sides of the room. 

she found you by the water station during a break between sessions she was in usc gear, hair back, exactly as composed as she always was, and she said you cut your hair and you said i did and she said it looks good and you said thank you and neither of you said anything for just a half-second too long.

she said: “how's the system?”

you said: “really good actually.”

she said: “good and she looked like she meant it and that was somehow worse than anything she could have said to be difficult.”

you texted each other after you kept texting each other after every time you were in the same room, like proximity recharged something that distance had been slowly depleting you had a conversation at two in the morning in late october about zone rotations that somehow became a conversation about what you wanted after college, what the league looked like from where you were standing, what you were afraid of, what you wouldn't say to anyone on your own team because it would cost something to say it. 

she told you things you got the sense she didn't tell many people. you told her things you'd barely told yourself you stopped pretending you didn't know what it was you just didn't do anything about it, because she was juju watkins and she was usc and you were ucla and the season was starting and the thing you had whatever it was felt too careful to risk on the wrong moment.

the film room incident happened on a tuesday it was a shared facility, one of the auxiliary buildings used by multiple programs, small, always slightly cold, the kind of room that felt designed to disappear you from the world for a few hours. you had a key card. you'd been using it late at night since october, after the main film sessions, just to sit alone with footage and think without anyone watching you think.

you came in at ten-thirty on a tuesday in november and juju was already there she was sitting in the second row, laptop open, headphones around her neck, footage paused on a half-court possession she looked up when the door opened and her expression did something complicated  surprise, and then something else that settled into careful neutrality before you could read it fully.

you said: “i didn't know you used this room.”

she said: “i didn't know you did either.”

you stood in the doorway for a second and she didn't tell you to leave and you didn't leave. you walked to the third row and sat down and pulled up your own footage and you sat in the dark together for a while in a silence that wasn't uncomfortable, which maybe should have told you something after a while she said, not looking away from her screen: your pull-up has gotten cleaner.

you looked at her as she was watching your footage she'd pulled it up on her own laptop sometime in the last hour without saying anything, and she was watching you play with her chin in her hand and her expression was the same one she got when she was genuinely studying something.

you said: “you're watching my tape.”

she said: “i watch everyone's tape.”

you said: “juju.”

she finally looked at you in the dark of the film room, with the blue light of the screen catching the side of her face, she looked — not careful, for once she looked like something she'd been holding was getting heavy.

she said: “yeah i'm watching your tape.”

neither of you said anything else. you turned back to your screen you stayed until almost midnight and when you left you both walked out at the same time and stood in the parking lot in the november air and she said same time thursday? like it was the most natural thing in the world.

you said yeah.

you came back thursday and the thursday after that. and the one after that.

the game was in december and usc won by three and you had a good game twenty-four points, six assists, played forty minutes and felt every one of them and it didn't matter because you lost and losing to juju's team was its own particular category of awful.

you were in the tunnel when she found you, you'd seen her scanning the court after the final whistle and you'd left before she could cross it because you did not have the capacity right now for whatever carefully composed thing she would say to you.

you needed to be somewhere without her face in it for approximately forty-five minutes and then you would be fine but she was fast and you'd stopped moving and now she was in the tunnel with you and she said your name and you turned around.

she looked like she'd been trying to get to you for several minutes and the relief of having done it was doing something to her composure whereas she was still in her uniform there was a fold of court chalk on her knee.

she said hey. you okay? and something about the gentleness of it cracked something open that you'd been managing very carefully and 

you said: “don't do that.”

she said: “do what?”

you said: “be nice to me right now i just lost to you i don't need you to be.”  and you stopped because you didn't know how to finish the sentence without it becoming something else, something shifted in juju's expression. 

not frustration — something rawer than that, something that had been living under the composure for a long time and was done being contained she said: “i'm not being nice to you because i feel sorry for you.”

you said: “then why—”

“because i like you,” she said, and her voice came out louder than she intended, sharp in the empty tunnel, and she looked almost startled by herself for a half second before her jaw set and she kept going. 

“because i have liked you since that first game and you know that, you have to know that, and you just — you keep acting like you don't feel it too and i don't understand it. i don't understand how you can be in that film room with me every week and text me at two in the morning and look at me the way you look at me and not”— she stopped.

her hands came up and she pressed her knuckles to her mouth for a moment like she was physically holding the rest of it in the tunnel was completely silent then she said, quieter “i'm not doing the nice thing because i beat you. i'm doing it because i care about you and i'm tired of pretending i don't and i just need to know if you”— she exhaled, sharp, and looked at the ceiling for one second “just tell me you don't feel the same and i'll leave you alone i mean it. i'll walk away and it'll be fine i just—”

“juju.”

she looked at you.

“i've been making you crazy on purpose,” you said a beat something moved through her face — confusion, then understanding, then something that wasn't quite fury but was adjacent to it you said “the going-left thing. first game i knew you were going to be there i wanted to see what you'd do. and the film room, and the texts — i know exactly what it is and yet i’ve known for a long time.”

she stared at you the sharpness in her face was still there but it was changing shape, becoming something else. so you do feel it.

you said “yeah” and she said “i cannot believe you,” and then she crossed the two feet between you and kissed you.

it wasn't soft it was the kiss of someone who had been holding something a long time and had finally decided the holding was no longer worth it her hand coming up to your jaw, her mouth certain, and you made a small helpless sound and kissed her back and the forty-five minutes you'd needed dissolved into nothing.

she pulled back just far enough to breathe her forehead dropped against yours. her hand was still on your face and her thumb traced the line of your cheekbone and you felt the careful thing you'd been protecting come loose entirely.

she said, very quietly “you are so annoying.” but you said “you like it.” she kissed you again instead of answering, which was an answer when she pulled away she looked at you for a moment and then said “come on.” but you said “where.” she said "film room” and when you raised an eyebrow she said “obviously not to watch film,” like you were being incredibly slow, and took your hand and you laughed and let her pull you forward into the rest of the night.

the film room was cold and dark and she sat down in the wide chair at the back row and pulled you into her lap before you'd finished closing the door behind you you settled against her and she looked up at you for a moment with her hands resting on your hips, like she was letting herself actually see you now that there was nothing in the way then she reached up and tucked a piece of hair behind your ear and said “hi.” and you said “hi.”

she kissed you soft the first time — nothing like the tunnel, which had been all release and urgency. this was slower. intentional her hands moved to your face and she kissed your mouth and then the corner of it, the line of your jaw, the curve just below your ear, and you felt something loosen in your chest that you hadn't known was still held tight.

she said, against your cheek “i've been thinking about this since october.” and you said “just october?”

she said “okay fine, february,” and you laughed and she kissed the laugh off of you then she shifted and drew back and looked at you with something settled and certain in her expression, and she said “can i—” and you said yes before she'd finished asking, because you already knew and the answer had been yes for a long time.

she was methodical about it in the way she was methodical about everything that mattered she found the hem of your warmup jacket and pulled it off your shoulders and set it aside and then she pressed her lips to your collarbone, the base of your throat, the soft skin just below your shoulder — unhurried, like she had a plan and intended to execute every part of it. 

you had your hands in her hair and your head tipped back and she kissed every inch of you she could reach with the patience of someone who had been waiting and was no longer in any rush now that the waiting was over your shoulder the inside of your wrist when she lifted your arm the space behind your ear that made your breath catch she catalogued your reactions the way she catalogued everything, filed them away, came back to them.

she said, low, against your skin “you okay?” you said “yeah yes don't stop” she didn't stop later you were tangled together in the dark, her chin resting on your head, her fingers tracing absent patterns on your shoulder, and she said “you're still going to lose in february.” and you said “i'm already prepared.” she lifted her head to look at you “that's my line.” you said “i know. i've been studying you for a year.”

she looked at you for a moment and then she smiled the real one, the one she didn't deploy on the court, the one that made her look entirely like herself you thought about the first time you'd seen it, in that tunnel after the galen center game, and how far you'd traveled to arrive at this version of it: her arms around you in the dark, los angeles cold outside, nowhere else either of you needed to be.

she kissed your temple. you settled back against her “i like you,” she said simply like it was easy now that she'd said it once you said “i know i like you too.”