Los Angeles | 2009
Bradley's POV
First week of summer break.
Always felt the same. A quiet hum in the house, the kind of silence that lets you hear the A/C breathe. It was the feeling of court lights warming up before the first shot even leaves the rack. A beginning.
Out back, my court waited. Polished maple and the faint, familiar smell of varnish and yesterday's sweat. I filled a water bottle, the sound loud in the kitchen, and slid the glass door open.
The routine is the routine. It doesn't change. Band work, hips and ankles. A slow spine roll. Then just a minute, eyes closed, letting the noise in my head settle. It never goes away, but sometimes you can get it to sit in the corner and watch.
Then, the click. The metronome in my brain starts its count, and I'm moving. German drills. Perimeter. Corner touch. Lane slide. Backpedal. Again. The first rep is always a lie; the lungs are still waking up.
Second rep, the turns get sharper. Dad's voice is in my feet—square your body.
Third, it's just angles. A chessboard that smells like hardwood.
Fourth, a skip in my breath and… damn it. There she was.
Alex.
Parked in the back of my mind like she'd paid rent, and I couldn't evict her. It wasn't just a thought; it was a physical thing, a shift in gravity that pulled at my stride. She'd said no. A simple invitation to play a video game, and she'd said maybe some other time, and the rejection stuck in my chest like a cheap plastic trophy for participation.
My foot missed the corner touch by inches. A hot flush of anger. Stupid. The mistake was just stupid. Self-inflicted.
Reset.
Fifth rep. Breathe in, two counts. Out, two counts. The lane is smaller than the ball. The ball is smaller than your breath.
It didn't work. The question pushed through my focus like a bad screen. Why did a simple invitation feel like a referendum on… something? Why did a "some other time" feel heavier than a turnover in the final seconds of a tied game?
I stopped, hunched over at the sideline with my palms on my knees, waiting for the burn in my lungs to fade. The familiar, translucent gold of my Status screen flickered into view. A reflex. I was looking for an answer, a number to fix the problem.
Two slow laps to cool the noise. I rolled the rack to the right corner and started my shooting progression.
One-dribble pull-ups just to find a rhythm. Right-left plant, release soft as a sigh. Then five catch-and-shoots—corner, wing, slot, opposite wing, opposite corner. The old geometry. The kind that keeps you honest. The first ball kissed the front rim. The second rattled home like a reluctant confession. The third was clean enough to believe in.
On the fourth, a memory of a laugh from Sal's Pizzeria—her laugh, bright and surprised—cut right through my focus and knocked my follow-through a degree wide. The ball grazed the iron like it didn't even know me. Ridiculous. Letting a pizza-night fungus debate mess with my elbow alignment. I re-stacked my shoulder, sank the fifth, and gave myself a direct order: leave it in the booth where it belongs.
Opposite corner. Heel-toe set, eyes soft on the rim. Two makes, one long, one a rainbow arc that sounded like a decision.
I wanted to be the kind of person who could treat a "no" like wind—note it, adjust for it, and keep moving. But I couldn't. I kept circling the way she'd said it, the hesitation in her voice, like the words cost her something. I could list ten logical reasons for it—cello, family, pride—but none of them stopped the corner of the court from feeling like it had a question mark painted on it. The ball felt heavier than leather has any right to feel. I hated the weight of it, because it meant I hadn't let the moment be the size it actually was.
Wing work next. Catch high, dip to the pocket, no lie in the knees, let the wrist finish the sentence. Four fell clean before I clanged the fifth, the thought arriving with the ugly sound: I wonder what Alex thinks of me.
I had to laugh at myself for that one. Paranoia doesn't wear well on a point guard who prides himself on reading the floor. If Alex had wanted to wound me, she'd have been more direct. "Am I the backup plan because Leo and David are busy?" But she hadn't. Her grace stung more than the rejection itself.
I drifted to the slot, the place where pure rhythm lives, and let five fall quiet. Added two more, just to prove the sound was repeatable. The opposite wing fought me for three ugly reps before the fourth listened, the fifth following like a good soldier.
I racked the last ball, held its familiar texture a second longer than I needed to, and let it go with the kind of calm that only shows up when the question in your chest finally agrees to sit still.
Swish.
No smile. Wins without witnesses are for the person who needs them most.
My watch timer beeped. Three-minute conditioning block. Full-court zigzag slides, a suicide ladder for any weakness I tried to lie about. Time to work.
By the second minute, my legs were sirens. Out of nowhere, I heard it—the old SMACK of Caleb's block, that halftime hand swallowing my layup and my ego in one clean noise I refuse to forget. That memory should have been permission to be merciless, to drill the flaw until the fix became instinct.
Instead, it just asked a different question.
What do you do when the only person you trust on the court is yourself, and the person you're thinking about off the court doesn't want to play?
Keep running is one answer. Change the game is another. Stop counting is sometimes the only right one.
I stopped at the half-court line and listened to the quiet like it was an older player with something to teach. The court always tells the truth slowly, and today it said this: she doesn't owe you her time, and you don't owe yourself a reason she didn't give. It also said: be the captain anyway—even if the only team on the floor is the part of you that keeps refusing to get back on defense.
So I toweled off, dragged a chair to the baseline, and scouted the room like it was an opponent, analyzing my own habits—the lazy angles, the wasted distances, the way the ball dies in the corner pads if a pass is soft.
I pulled out my notebook and sketched a mind map: conditioning hours, shooting volume, a fix for Leo's footwork, a note on David's positioning. I added study blocks for school, and then there was one thin, empty branch left over. I didn't label it. I knew what it was for, and I didn't write it because honesty on paper is easier than honesty out loud. The empty space on the page looked back at me like patience, which is not a thing I'm famous for.
My phone sat face down on the floorboards, a coin nobody wants to be the first to pick up. I typed and deleted three versions of a text I would have hated to receive, then wrote something that didn't ask or assume:
Have a project outline worked out—answer-first, research second. No pressure, just sharing if you want to see it.
Send. Screen down. Back to the rack. Time passes better when your hands have a job.
Five from each spot again. Five high-arcing shots from the elbows, eyes on the inside back of the rim, because that target saves you when the heart tries to talk louder than the form. I missed back-to-back from the logo and called it—arrogance is a tax, and I have better places to spend my energy. The last swish trailed behind me like a scarf as I walked away, and I let the quiet tie it off for me.
Dad appeared in the doorway then, sleeves rolled to his forearms, with that practiced lean that says, I'm here, but this is your mission.
"Head's running faster than your feet, something troubling you son?" he said, his voice even.
I let the words land. "Adjusting the asks," I answered, which was as close to the whole truth as I could get.
"Good but you don't have to carry the demands of the world on your shoulders, son. Your mother and I are here for you even if you believe you don't need us" he said.
"I know Dad I just…this is one of those things that I need to overcome on my own but I appreciate the support from Mom and you", I assured him.
He sighed, "I get it I've been in a similar spot before sport and I handled it on my own, it's just that after the fact, I realized that, had Maggie been with me then and had I shared my burdens with her, all the pain would have still been there but it would have been bearable. People, Bradley have the strange power of easing the weight of the world on our shoulders. I have my people to help me, you should find yourself a crew as well."
"It feels strange to rely on people Dad when they are not able to meet my expectations, why should I dumb it down for anyone when I deserve people who get me for me"
"You're right but more than them not being able to keep up with you what matters is their intent to keep up with you. Their desire to support you and their actions in pursuit of those desires mean more than what they can or cannot accomplish. People are not a zero-sum game son, they are people just like you and me." He picked a stray ball off the floor and set it carefully back on the rack, giving it a respectful spin. He left without another word.
I just stood there thinking about what he told me. Dad in his own way was right I was too focused on efficiency and what makes things best for me, it was selfish. One rejection is not a sign for me to be disappointed in a person. I returned to practice. One thing at a time.
I finished with free throws. Ten straight, with my eyes closed between five and six, because darkness forces the body to tell the truth about repeatable motion.
Nine of ten. The miss was short. I logged it in my head like a captain who expects to fix what can be fixed.
Inside, the cool water from the tap tasted like a solved problem. The shower felt like a truce I hadn't realized I'd negotiated with myself. Mom passed me in the hall on her way downstairs. She glanced at my open notebook on the table, traced a single fingertip down the blank, unlabelled branch in the margin, and said nothing. Which is its own kind of grace.
Upstairs, I opened Empire: Total War to the main menu and just looked at it. I found myself thinking how she'd appreciate that supply lines matter more than bravado in the game. Then I shut the laptop, and for the first time, didn't resent the thought for showing up.
When my phone buzzed on the floor, it was her. A thumbs-up emoji and the words, "Hey, sure. I can look it up. Send the outline." It was neutral, open, and exactly the size of conversation the day deserved. I sent the file and set the phone facedown again. Not as a test. Just as a boundary I could keep.
Lying on my bed, the ceiling fan became a metronome once more, counting out the quiet seconds. My legs promised to complain later tonight when I'd inevitably run another block of German drills. The court promised to be there tomorrow. Courts don't leave.
The last promise was the one I owed myself: say the thing clean.
I've said out loud that I respect her mind. The way she moves like a knight in chess—strange, efficient, always tracking more than one idea at a time. All of that is true. And it still isn't the whole truth.
The "no" hurt not because it was a no.
It hurt because it came from her.
When that sentence finally formed in my head and stopped fighting me, the room felt correct. I said it out loud to the quiet, just to see how it felt on the air.
"I like her."