It all started with a perfectly arced three-pointer at the buzzer to win the game. Well, if there’d been a buzzer. If there’d been a game, as opposed to a single shooter on a playground with faded paint competing with grass to crack the pavement. It was one of those moments where time stands still for everyone -- the ball in the air, eyes drawing a dotted line straight through the net, faces frozen in the same expression despite differing motivations of elation or fear -- and I was thinking about him. More precisely, I was trying to remember how we met. I remember how we met, of course -- I’ve told the story a thousand times. It’s a great story, the thing a thousand romantic comedies are made of. But what tripped me up was whether I actually remembered meeting him, or just remembered the story. Memory’s funny that way. I think I remember moments from childhood, but really I only remember the stories that have been told about the moment repeatedly -- my own life’s urban legends. Perhaps this is one of those as well. Perhaps, in the telling and retelling, I’ve made it so, made it grander than what it was, imparted far more significance to it than it ever had at the time. There’s really nothing special about it absent the “and they lived happily ever after” payoff. As that ball reached the peak of its arc, I remembered how my story had been colored by his side of it. My memories weren’t of my feelings and thoughts in isolation, and they never would be -- his were included as well. I was a storyteller. Had I been telling this story so long that it had ceased to be a memory, and instead become a story that I could control and alter at whim to suit my fancy? As the ball began to descend, I realized the story was the most beautiful thing to come of the relationship -- that I’d held onto the relationship as long as I had to do justice to the story. Perhaps I’d watched too many movies, but it seemed that any story with an opening that strong needed an equally strong finish. The finale shouldn’t let down the start and the whole should have a triumphant message that somehow included the word fate. The ball swished the net and I realized I was more committed to the story than I was to him, and that I was an unreliable narrator. If I was the shooter, that ball would’ve bounced off the rim. I am the shooter, and this is my story.