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“Then, call her and tell her that you made a mistake. Grovel if you have to, and you get her back.”
“I need basketball, Mom. This is it; this is my whole life plan.”
“And your father and I warned you against that. You shouldn’t put all your eggs into the professional sports basket, Shay. Take your sister; she wanted to play pro softball and got hurt during her sophomore year of college. That ended that dream, but she had a backup plan. I know you think we’re against you playing basketball professionally. We’re not. We just wanted you to have a backup plan.”
“I know. I know. But Layne…”
“What about her?”
“She’s too much, Mom.”
“Too much what?”
“She’s…”
“Oh,” her mom said when Shay didn’t add anything else. “She might be the one, huh?”
“I don’t know. I’m twenty-three; I’m not supposed to find the one yet. I’m supposed to be having fun right now.”
“Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Having fun? Are you having fun right now?”
Shay sighed into her phone and replied, “No.”
“You’re in that championship game of your final senior season; you know this might be your last game if you don’t win; and you’re not having any fun?”
“Not really, no. We’ve barely made it through the conference tournament. We got lucky in one game. The ref made a few calls for us more than we played well last game. Layne plays a few minutes a game, at most, and it’s hard for her to do that, but she’s getting back to her old self, and all I want to do is talk to her, tell her that I love her and that I’m sorry. But she’s too much, Mom. She scares me.”
“Because you can see yourself with her?”
“Yes. And we talked about it all the time… All we’ve been able to do for months and months is talk. It’s been a year of talking, and we went over everything. If I got drafted. If she moved to Chicago. If she stayed here. If she moved near to wherever I got drafted. If I didn’t get drafted and I had to just get a job somewhere. We went over all of that, and it didn’t bother me. I loved talking about that with her, planning that possible future together.”
“Okay. Then, what’s the problem?”
“She got sick, and I freaked out. First, because she was sick, and I thought I might lose her, but then I remembered how it felt during the summer, when she wasn’t talking to me. I found out when we got back that she was sick the first time. She didn’t tell me. I was angry that she didn’t let me in, you know? When I got back from that away game after her positive test, she told me that she’d had a fever and had been coughing, and I got upset all over again because she didn’t tell me. I know she doesn’t want to worry me, but I was worried. There’s no changing that. I love her. She was sick, and I couldn’t do anything but yell at Jessop and get her kicked off the team for violating so many team and school rules. And I was mad at Layne, but it hit me that I’d been so focused on her and wanting her to get better that my game wasn’t my number one anymore.”
“Shay, basketball is just a game. I know it’s what you want to do professionally, but it’s still just a game. You might play pro. You might not. You might make it and get injured. You could play for ten years, but you’d only be thirty-three. Life will, hopefully, go on for you a whole lot longer than that, so even if you stay in the sport somehow, by coaching or something else, you’ll want someone by your side. You’ll want someone like Layne, it sounds like, to share your life with. And if you love her, and you’ve been miserable without her, I think you know what you need to do.
“We’re so close, Mom. If we win this game tonight, we’re back in the tourney.”
“I know. Your dad and I will be watching on the channel you told us about. You’re going to do great. But, Shay, when it’s all over, when you’re no longer playing basketball, you need to think about what your life is like. Maybe Layne is the one for you right now. Maybe she’s the one for you forever. Either way, you need to think about who’s standing next to you if you win or lose tonight, when you graduate, when you get an email or a call for that draft or a job offer. Those are the moments when you’ll want someone. If it’s Layne for you, you should figure that out now before you do graduate and she leaves.”
Shay knew her mom was right, but talking to Layne on the night of the conference championship game, where they’d made it in by the skin of their teeth, was not an option. She needed to be focused on her play, and Layne would likely be coming off the bench and needed to focus on hers.
Shay grabbed her stuff and headed out of the hotel room, down the hall, and then hit the stairs since they’d been told not to take the elevators unless it was necessary. She fixed her mask when she got onto the bus that would take them from the hotel to the arena and sat down in the back row. When she looked back up after settling in, she saw Layne heading down the aisle, and Layne looked at her. She didn’t smile. She didn’t even seem to register that it was Shay at all. She sat in the middle of the bus on the opposite side of the aisle, and her head went to the window.
Minutes later, they were on the road, and Shay thought about the past couple of weeks without Layne. She couldn’t remember much of them. She knew she’d gone to practice. She’d done some homework. She was pretty sure she’d eaten something because she was still alive, but the specifics of any of those things eluded her. When they got to the venue, she waited for everyone to get off first and was the last one to leave the bus. She’d been giving Layne some extra space during practices and the few games since their breakup, and she wasn’t going to stop that now.
They were deep in the second quarter, and Shay was tired already. She’d only sat for a minute because they were down by twelve, and it was way too early to let the other team pull away like that, so Coach couldn’t take her out. The buzzer sounded, and for the first time in her career, Shay looked over, hoping that the sub was for her. It wasn’t. It was Layne getting her first minutes of the game, coming in for someone else. Shay nodded at her and tried not to think about the fact that her ex was on the court with her.
Layne inbounded underneath the basket, getting the ball quickly to Hilton with a nifty bounce pass, and Hilton made a quick shot off the glass. They were down by ten now. Shay tried not to look over to check on Layne, but it was too hard not to because Layne was still struggling with lingering issues. Shay knew she was using her inhaler now when she never had to before and that Layne would use it when she got back to the bench, whenever that would be. She looked to her left just in time to see the ball go past her head. She hadn’t been prepared for a pass, so the ball went by her and out of bounds.
“Shay!” Coach yelled.
“What was that?” Layne asked as she jogged past her to get to the other end of the court for their opponent’s possession.
