The Y gym is empty when I walk in at nine the next morning, which is exactly what I’d been hoping for when Dad dropped me off.
Even though I got up with the alarm I set for the Tabbi-thon this morning, I knew before I fell asleep last night that there was no way I could go. It’s too much to handle. It really is awesome, and I’m sure it will be a huge, tear-soaked success, but I don’t think I can survive twelve hours of feeling like an outsider at an event for someone I knew better than anyone. Still too much resentment. Too much jealousy. Too much potential for galactic meltdown.
Plus dancing.
I do feel guilty. I can hear Tabby’s lecture in my head, her telling me to get over myself, that it’s for something actually important, while punching me in the arm. But it’s too much still.
And, really, it’s not like every one of her lectures was successful. There’s a reason they happened with such frequency.
So I’m here.
I take a deep breath and jog to the nearest basket for an easy layup. It’s the first shot I’ve taken in over two weeks. I know, big deal. But that’s the longest I’ve gone without shooting since Dad put up the driveway hoop in fourth grade.
I go straight into my driveway shootaround routine, and it immediately feels right, like my brain clicks into place again. I have nine months until next season starts, and I am determined to follow Grampa’s advice: Play hard. Be good to your teammates. And be good to yourself. One and three I can start now.
I lock into a rhythm and run through my entire routine three times in a little over an hour, and move on to free throws. For the first time in a while, as I hit shot after shot, my brain can look forward and not see only shit. It’s not what I imagined a few months ago, but it’s okay. Some of it’s even good.
I’m over a hundred free throws in when Branson walks through the door, alone.
Shit.
I keep shooting without any acknowledgment, like maybe I don’t recognize him in this crowd of two, or maybe I’m too laser-focused on my game to notice. I brick two straight, though, naturally, before I’m back in a rhythm.
And the weirdest thing, without a word, Branson slides in under the basket to rebound for me, feeding me at the line shot after shot, which, I’ll admit, is more nerve-racking than any end-of-game scenario I could have concocted on my own. What the hell is he doing here? Why is he not at the Tabbi-thon?
But I just keep shooting.
And Branson keeps rebounding.
Finally, after a stretch where I hit ten in a row, Branson rests the ball on his hip and looks at me.
“Wainwright, do you have any idea how fucking jealous I am of you?” Like we’re in the middle of some argument and not actually shooting baskets in an empty gym in utter silence.
I stare at him, confused, unable to speak. Is he serious?
“She talked about you all the time,” he continues, again like we’re mid-conversation. “Every story she had involved you somehow.”
Again, I have nothing to say to this. I never imagined Tabby telling Branson our stories—I’m not sure I even imagined anything beyond them staring longingly at each other, or making out, or everything else my shitty brain refused to shut off. Not sharing goofy memories of childhood, and laughing together. Being friends.
A new wave of jealousy hits me, which is stupid, but I also realize that, for the first time, I really do feel sorry for him. For his loss.
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly.
He slings the ball underhand back to me at the foul line. “Why would you be sorry for that? You were friends.”
I realize he doesn’t understand what I’m sorry for, that we’re on two different trains of thought, but I’m again at a loss.
“Look,” he says. “I know you loved her. It wasn’t that hard to tell.” I pretend to focus on dribbling. “But I loved her, too. I really did.”
He says it like he’s trying to convince me, like he needs me to understand this point.
“I’m sorry about the locker room,” he says, looking at the floor. “For weeks, I don’t know, it was like you didn’t think I had any right to be upset. Like I was some kind of fraud for being crushed over her. And it made me crazy. I mean, I can’t help that I didn’t know her as a kid. But, fucking-A, Wainwright, I still really loved her. And when you laughed at it, I don’t know, I lost my mind. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “It was well deserved.”
And he looks up, relieved almost. I can’t believe he’s been torturing himself over what I think. He had Tabby—why would he give a fuck what I think?
But I mattered to Tabby. I did.
And Tabby mattered to him.
“Why aren’t you at the dance-athon?” I ask, taking another shot, trying to steer us out of this.
“I was there,” he says. “For about an hour, at the beginning, but I had to get out of there. I couldn’t handle watching all those people who didn’t even know her crying and gushing about her.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah. I know what you mean.”
This is weird. But after a few more shots, he holds the ball again and says, “So are we good?”
I look at him. He really needs us to be good. It’s crazy, but he really needs it. Liam Branson, senior stud athlete, heartbroken heartthrob of Franklin High—he needs us to be okay. I don’t hate him. I really don’t.
“We’re good,” I say.
And no, shitty movie director, he doesn’t wrap me in an emotional, tear-soaked bro-hug at the foul line, the ball dropping meaningfully between our feet on the floor, our shared love of Tabby bringing us together in our loss. (You’re still fired, by the way.)
Instead, Branson nods and, after my next shot, takes one of his own. We rebound for each other then, feeding it back after makes. Once his shot’s warmed up, he says, “One-on-one?” and proceeds to whoop my ass for the next hour.
Which seems fair, I guess. And honestly, the last thing I want is for him to go easy. If I plan on taking his spot next year, I’ve got to be able to hang at this level.
He praises and encourages me after every shot I make, like he’s coaching me up, and I think, He really is this nice. Dammit.
After our fifth game to twenty-one, we’re both hanging on to our shorts, our shirts soaked through.
“So are you really going to Gettysburg next year?”
He drops his head, maybe catching his breath, then stands up straight.
“I haven’t decided yet,” he says. “I was going to. Before…” He pauses to wipe sweat from his face with his shirt. “But now I’m not sure. The coach at Guilford—this D-three school in North Carolina I was going to go to—he still wants me. He called again the other day.”
“That’s awesome,” I say. “I can’t imagine playing college.”
“Me neither,” he says. “That’s always been my goal.” He takes another deep breath and scoops the ball up off the floor, sinks a lazy jumper. “Anyway, I’ve still got time to decide.”
“You should do it,” I say. And, for once, for the right reasons.
He nods.
“I think I’m headed out,” he says. “You want a ride home?”
“No, thanks; my mom’s coming soon, I think.”
“All right, man.” He nods again, holds out his fist. “I’ll see you later.”
“Later,” I say. And he’s gone.
“So how did the last three games go?” I ask, sucking down a root beer float in Trip’s basement later that evening.
“Eh, not great. We beat Eastern Adams because they suck. Lost by eight to Central, by twelve to Spring Garden.”
“Damn.”
“Yeah. Heiner somehow reinjured his ankle against Central.” He throws air quotes around reinjured. “So thanks for being there, asshole.”
I laugh. He doesn’t ask about where I was or what I was doing for the past two weeks, for which I’m grateful.
After a few more rounds of bloodbath on his Xbox, we stand to gather our trash and glasses to take upstairs and reload on snacks. I’m about to tell Trip about Branson at the Y, but instead I ask, “Did you go to the Tabbi-thon today?”
He’s gathering up an empty pizza box, but pauses and sits it back on the coffee table. He looks at me, stone-faced.
“Why, yes, Matt. I went to a twelve-hour dance-athon by myself. In fact, it’s still going. I’m there right now, doing an awkward step-slide behind a group of upperclassmen in a dark corner of the gym.” He starts step-sliding while he talks, his arms going into awkward, arrhythmic clapping motions, his face dead serious. “I’m having the time of my life.”
I start laughing then, hard, and with that stupid look on his face, I can’t stop. And suddenly—either because I still need to be in time-out or because I need to get a restraining order against this jaded movie director in my brain—I’m crying, just as hard, and I grab Trip in a hug.
“Right,” he says, over my shoulder. “Because this is what happens when I dance.”
I squeeze my eyes closed and laugh-cry more, unable to pull my shit together and break this terrible, awkward embrace.
“Would this be an inappropriate time to grab your ass?” he says, and I let him go, more laughing than crying now, and because I seem to have lost all control of my brain functions, the words spurt out.
“I loved her, Trip.”
Trip stares at me for a minute, then shakes his head.
“Listen, dumbass,” he says. “Is there some reason you think you’re smarter than me? That maybe you’re so deep and mysterious that no one could understand what’s in your head? Or do you think that I’m a complete fucking moron?”
He shakes his head again in disgust and picks up the empty pizza box.
“You’ve followed the girl around relentlessly since I’ve known you.”
“I know. I just—”
The insides of my nostrils suddenly burn, and I have to turn my head away.
“Holy shit, was that you?”
“Yes. Yes it was.”
“Seriously? You farted now? What is this, our tree scene?”
“Yes, Matt. It is our tree scene.”
“Dear God, Trip, that is pungent.”
“That’s what you get,” he says, and walks past me up the steps.