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She laughed her real laugh, the one with the dimple, and the sound of it ran through me the way it always had.
Behind me, my team had arrived.
"CAP!" Destiny yelled at considerable volume, from about two feet away. "I need everyone to know I have been waiting for this for weeks. WEEEEEKS!"
"She has," Trish said, appearing at my shoulder, warm all the way through. "We all have. Hi, Harper."
"Hi, Trish." Harper clung to my jersey. "Great game."
"Great kiss."
"Thank you, I thought so too."
"It's on the big screen," Morgan said, pointing up.
We all looked.
There it was, enormous and completely unambiguous above center court: Cameron Russo, team captain, in uniform after a Finals win, kissing Harper DuBose in a RUSSO 4 jersey, like the game and the crowd and the twelve years before this moment had all been one long project of arriving exactly here.
I looked at it for a long moment.
I thought: so that's what it looks like from the outside.
Then Harper tugged my jersey, and I looked back down at her, and that was better.
"Tag me on Instagram," she said.
"I don't know how."
"Cam." She closed her eyes for a second. "You have two point four million followers."
"Bianca's team manages the account."
"You're going to learn how to use Instagram. I'm going to teach you. This is happening." She already had her phone out with her free hand, already lifting it, already framing the shot. "Look at the camera."
"Harper."
"It's for posterity. Look at the camera."
I looked at the camera. I managed not to smile as big as I felt.
She took the photo. She looked at it, and her expression was complicated and luminous, the kind of expression I was going to spend a long time learning to read in all its variations.
"What?" I said.
"Nothing." She turned the phone around.
It was the two of us. The arena behind us still lit and roaring, the big screen visible above our heads with the evidence. My name on both of us, on my jersey and on hers. My hands still at her waist. We were both looking into the lens. We were both, visibly, completely, undeniably, exactly where we wanted to be.
"Now, go do the part where you talk to the press and say 'we executed the game plan' seventeen times," she said. "I'll be here."
"You'll be here."
"I'll be right here."
I kissed the top of her head.
"Don't be sweet to me right now," she said, without any conviction at all. "I'm brainstorming captions, Captain."