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“I’ll stand,” she said and looked back up at Layne, who seemed filled with the confidence that Shay didn’t possess right now.
“I want us back,” Layne told her then. “I want to get back together. I miss you. I miss you so much. I miss everything.”
“I want that, too,” Shay replied.
“You do?”
Shay nodded and said, “But…”
“After?” Layne guessed.
“We could lose the next game. Hell, we probably will, and I’ll be done playing college basketball. I’ll know not long after that if I’m making a team.”
“After the draft?”
“No, after our last game. Whenever that is, I want us to start over.”
“But we’re getting back together?”
“Yes,” Shay said with a little laugh. “We can, I don’t know, acknowledge that I made a horrible mistake letting you go and just say we’re back together right now but keep all the pressure off until after the last game of the year.”
“I made mistakes, too. But I swear, I heard you.”
“I know. I know you did.”
“So, you’re no longer my ex-girlfriend, then?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure I ever was. It’s you, Layne. I want you. Only you.”
Layne smiled beneath her mask and said, “For me, too.”
???
They’d had five days between their last game and this one, Dunbar’s first-ever Sweet Sixteen appearance, and it had been hard to deal with the break. They’d practiced, watched film, and had their meetings, but Shay was ready to play. She was also ready to get to be with her girlfriend, but they’d been stuck with their open-door talks whenever people were asleep and their video chats until they could finally not have basketball to worry about.
“Okay. Shay Amos, you’re up.”
Shay walked up and let them shove the stick up her nose. She sat back down in her chair and waited while she stared at Layne, who was sitting in a chair across the room. They texted back and forth, and Shay was more than ready for those specific kind of texts they’d only exchanged a few times before they’d broken up.
Shay: You know that stuff we used to text?
She sent that to Layne, who looked up at her with a lifted eyebrow.
Shay: That stuff, babe. When we were alone in our rooms.
Layne looked up at her with wide eyes. Yeah, she got what Shay was talking about.
Shay: I want to do that again.
Layne: When?
Shay: Tonight, maybe.
Layne: Tonight is the game.
Shay: Before the game.
Layne: Before?
