Chapter 17 #3
Tomorrow morning, a door will open. We’ll pick a diner that doesn’t care who we are.
He’ll slide into the booth across from me in a hoodie and a cap and the careful posture of someone who knows how many cameras live in the world now.
I’ll order coffee and eggs and pretend my hands aren’t shaking.
He’ll pick at toast and then eat all of it.
We’ll talk about the game in a way he can stand to talk about it, which is to say we’ll talk about the breath he had to take at the line after he missed the first free throw and how the second felt like dropping a stone into a lake and listening for the splash.
I’ll tell him the real reason why I’m in town, and about sound check and how the house smelled like cold electronics and lemon cleaner and the kind of faith that belongs to people who build rooms for noise.
He’ll make a face when I tell him I’m nervous. I’ll make a face back when he tells me he is too. Our knees won’t touch under the table because we’ll be careful, but I’ll feel a current through the laminate anyway, some stupid short circuit that says we built this ourselves.
The thought makes my eyes sting, which is ridiculous and true.
I tilt my head against the glass and watch a fountain erupt in blue light three hotels over and think about the way he laid the ball in when he could have hammered it.
Flash is a currency in this town. He chose points over posters.
It says something about him I already know and still want to write a whole album to understand.
My phone buzzes one more time, and I’m on it like a man who hasn’t had water in days.
Ollie: I can’t call. Roommate’s glued to me like a bodyguard.
Me: That’s fine, and I’m not surprised. You played like a rock star. That or a god!
Ollie: Don’t. You’ll make me blush.
Me: You already are. I saw it when you spotted me.
A pause follows.
Ollie: I was… yeah. Didn’t believe it was really you.
Me: Surprise.
Ollie: You ruined my focus for like ten seconds. Worth it, though.
Me: Ten seconds for a win? I’ll take the trade.
The dots blink again, vanish, then return.
Ollie: I missed you. More than I thought I would.
Me: Yeah?
Ollie: Yeah. And when I saw you, I—God, Rafe, I wanted to kiss you right there. Cameras be damned.
The words land somewhere deep, right between my ribs. I stare at them until the screen dims.
Me: Then you’ll just have to make up for it at breakfast.
Ollie: Deal. And Rafe…
Me: Yeah?
Ollie: Thanks for being there. For real.
I type Wouldn’t have missed it for anything and erase it. Type You burned and erase that too.
What’s left is the only thing simple enough to carry everything I feel.
Me: Proud of you, Captain.
The dots flash once.
Ollie: Sleep, troublemaker. See you in the morning.
I put the phone face down on the carpet and breathe like that’s a job I can take pride in, in and out and in again, letting the city’s white noise move through me until the hum in my bones and the hum outside line up like a harmony.
Tomorrow, I will stand in a room that was built to amplify and ask it to carry my voice. Tonight, I sit on a hotel floor and believe in a thing I didn’t know I wanted until it was already in my hands.
He’s here. I’m here. We’re both about to step under lights—him the draft he so desperately wants—we’ve wanted for so long our wanting learned to speak without us.
For once, the future doesn’t feel like a cliff.
It feels like a stage. It feels like a court.
It feels like a booth in a bland diner where the coffee is strong and the scrambled eggs are dry if you don’t ask for extra butter, where two different lives can set their elbows down and share a small corner of morning like a secret nobody gets to take.
Eli rolls over and mumbles something about fish.
Drew snores like someone dragging a chair across a floor.
A casino-cheer rises and falls somewhere below like the ocean pretending to be money.
I close my eyes and see him again at the end of the half—how shock bent his mouth, how quickly he built himself back into the captain, how the color didn’t leave his face even when he pretended it had.
I see the layup and the choice inside it.
I see tomorrow’s door opening. I see my own name in my mouth like a vow I might be ready to make, not to the crowd or the agent or the stage, but to the fact that whatever this is, it’s not noise.
It’s music. It’s heartbeat. It’s two people in a city that sells spectacle choosing small, true things and letting them be enough for a night.
I lie back on the mattress next to Drew and let sleep slide over me in thin sheets. When it comes, it brings a song with it, and I don’t try to write the words down. I know them already.
Tomorrow, I’ll sing them. Tomorrow, I’ll say them out loud for a room full of strangers. Tomorrow, I’ll learn which parts of me are brave and which parts need more time.
Tonight, I just hold the shape of his name behind my teeth and think: Breakfast. Just us.