24
“Where’d you go last night?” asked Heath as he walked into the small kitchen area of the hotel suite.
I didn’t look up, continuing to sauté peppers and onions in a pan. “I had to deliver the food to David’s room and then finally got something to eat. I figured when I didn’t hear from you that you were all set on your own.” I finally glanced at him, and he was unshaven and disheveled, fresh out of bed. Kyle looks like this most of the time , I thought, but on him, it was endearing. On Heath, I found it annoying. Everything he did now was irritating to me.
“I thought you would have at least crawled into bed with me,” he muttered. “That’s why I chose the king bed.”
“Oh,” I replied, not knowing what else to say. “You were snoring pretty loudly when I got back here, so I thought it was better if we both got a decent night’s sleep.” Had Heath snored the one time I had slept at his apartment? Or the two times he had slept at mine? I hadn’t noticed it.
“I do that when I’m overtired,” he said. He slept for an entire transcontinental flight and went to bed before I did. How could he be so exhausted? Whatever. “What’re you up to now?”
“Food for David for before the game. I need to bring this over to him this morning. And usually, he wants me to hang out for a bit before he goes over to the arena. You might want to plan to meet me at the game. I’ll make sure your ticket is at Will Call.”
“Still on the floor, right?” he pressed, and I tried not to roll my eyes.
“Yes, you and I will be seated together on the floor,” I answered. I wished I didn’t have to sit next to him, but there was nothing I could do at this point. I kept thinking back to everything Charlie had said the night before. He actually hadn’t said much at all—he was just very good to me when I needed it the most—but it was the question he asked in reply to my initial question that kept coming back to me. Are the two people involved better suited for each other now than they were then? I looked over at Heath, who was scrounging through the groceries in the refrigerator. I’m here with the wrong guy , I thought.
I got ready for the game, knowing there was no way in hell I was coming back to the hotel and dealing with Heath any more than was necessary that day. As I walked across the street to the Ritz, I got a text from David’s mom, alerting me that he was having a rough morning and if I could go see him soon, that would be great. I picked up the pace and made my way past the security guard whom I had met the day before. I took a deep breath and knocked on David’s door.
“It’s me,” I announced. “Devon.”
The door opened, and David was standing before me, phone pressed to his ear, tears streaming down his face. “Okay, Mom, Devon’s here… Yeah, I think so… See you tomorrow night… Love you.” He threw the phone on the bed, and I put down my bags so I could hug him. I felt his long, muscular arms around me and squeezed him back as tightly as a woman of average height and build could, but hugging him always felt a bit strange. He towered over me.
“What’s going on?” I asked. I had experienced this with him a few other times over the years, but it was certainly stressful. I felt a huge responsibility to get him past whatever was bothering him so that he could play in the game that night. “Let’s sit.”
We sat down on the small couch, and I pulled a box of tissues closer. He took one and blew his nose before grabbing both sides of his head with his big hands and dropping his elbows to his knees. “I watched that show on the Sports News Now channel this morning.”
“The one where they go through all the players who should be traded? David, I told you to stop watching that shit. It messes with your head every time.”
“I know, I know, I can’t help myself. It’s there on the TV, I know it’s on, and I know they’re gonna talk smack about me. Why are they always talking about me?” The tears were streaming again, and I grabbed a tissue and wiped his cheeks.
“They talk about a lot of players, not just you. Who else did they mention?”
“I don’t know. I shut it off once they were done, saying that I was underperforming and probably should be with a less prestigious program so I could grow as a player. What if that’s true? What if I get traded? I have a hard enough time with the only team I’ve known since college. You know change is tough for me.”
“Of course; I know that. Your mom knows that. Your agent knows that. And we’ll always help you figure it out. Are you still talking to that sports psychologist?”
He pulled one of my cooler bags over to him and opened it, finding one of the steak wraps, removing the foil, and biting into it with a vengeance. “She told me I have imposter syndrome. That I’m worried I’m not as good as other players and that I think I’m a fraud.”
“Sounds about right, but I’ve been telling you this for the whole time I’ve known you. Can you hand me one of those wraps? I didn’t have breakfast.”
“Yeah, here you go. It’s good. Thanks, Dev. And yeah, I know. I probably don’t need a shrink to tell me the same shit you’ve been telling me for years.”
I took a bite. “This tastes great. Well, hopefully, she can give you better tools for getting through it. I don’t know how useful I am with coping mechanisms. I just feed you things.”
“Good things, Dev. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” He dug through the cooler and found a tumbler packed in ice. “Is this what I think it is?”
“I made sure there was a blender in my room. Enjoy your smoothie.”
“You’re the best,” he said, taking a drink. “I think that’s part of it,” he said quietly. “If I get traded, say, to, like, Oklahoma City, what happens? I don’t think you’re going to move to the middle of the country. You’ve got a real job, and now you’ve got this ambulance dude.”
I sighed. “First of all, I’m ready to kick ‘ambulance dude’ to the curb. He’s not who I thought he was. I can’t believe you got him to come out here.”
“Don’t blame me,” he said, gently pushing my shoulder. “You could’ve told me no. Or brought Tam or something.”
“You put me in an awkward situation,” I conceded. “But I’m dealing with it. And don’t worry about any of the rest of it. We’ll cross those bridges when we get there. I’m not making any promises to anyone about anything work-wise right now. One day at a time. I think you should try to do the same, but what do I know? I’m not the sports psychologist.”
“You’re a lot smarter than her, I think,” he said, polishing off his wrap. “And my guess is she can’t cook for shit.”
“We’ll probably never know the truth where that’s concerned.” I stood up and opened the shades in the room, letting the LA sunshine in. “You’ve got a game to get ready for.”
...
The arena was packed, with plenty of Boston fans in green sprinkled among the red and blue colors of Clippers supporters. I took my seat next to Heath, having waited until the last possible minute to join him. He was drinking a beer and eating a pulled pork sandwich when I arrived.
“Hey,” he said. “You were right when you said you’d be busy. I thought you would just be dropping food with him and leaving. What did you do all this time?”
I left out the details about spending two hours drinking cappuccino in the lobby of the Ritz, followed by aimlessly wandering through a nearby shopping area. “There’s lots of stuff for me to do pregame to help David,” I lied. Well, there were plenty of things, but it didn’t take eight hours. I wanted to get through the game and then maybe investigate changing flights and hopping on the red eye instead of going back the next day. I could easily make up an excuse for something that I suddenly needed to do the next day at Rockwood.
I scoured the area where David’s mom assured me Charlie would have a seat. I spotted him sitting and watching the players warm up, sipping a beer. He saw me looking his way and waved. I waved back and smiled, forgetting for a moment that Heath was next to me.
“Who’s that?” he asked, gesturing to Charlie.
“An old friend,” I answered. “Looks like they’re about to get underway,” I said, eager to change the subject.
David was never in the starting five, so I split my time between watching the action on the court and glancing at him as he nervously waited from the bench for the coach to signal that it was time. I felt his anxiousness surge through my body, and I wondered if this was normal or even healthy. I did worry that David depended too much on me and that I took on too many of his emotions as my own, but maybe this was what family was. Yes, David is my family now. As an only child, I didn’t know what having a sibling felt like, and perhaps this was it. I cared about his happiness as much as I worked toward my own.
He finally checked into the game. From that point, everything changed. The crowd marveled, howled, and yelped as he took control, hitting virtually every shot, getting fouled as Clippers players attempted to block his moves and steal the ball from him, failing at almost all their efforts. I marveled as the Celtics’ coach beamed with excitement, watching his perhaps most misunderstood player finally break out. He subbed David out when he looked spent, soaked from head to socks in sweat, but he was eager to return to the court, and that he did. By the time the game-ending buzzer rang while David nailed his final three-pointer, he had scored fifty-eight points. The Celtics crushed their opponent by thirty.
The Boston fans in attendance erupted, and David ran off the court to where I was sitting. He scooped me off the ground and threw me over his sweaty shoulder, and I was laughing and crying with abandon, all while clinging to his jersey so I wouldn’t slide off. When he finally put me back down, he grabbed me by the shoulders and yelled, “We did it, Devon!”
“You did it!” I shouted back. “David, it was all you!”
Reporters flooded the floor, with most crowding around him and a few pulling me aside. “Who are you?” one man with a microphone asked.
“I cook for him,” I said simply, enjoying every minute of watching David rip out of his shell and finally open himself up to the media. He was glowing, and I still felt all his feelings. This time, though, it was pure magic.
“Oh, you’re the woman who in Boston—” the reporter continued, and I knew where this was going.
“Excuse me,” I said, running out of the arena through a pair of heavy doors to an empty stairwell. I pulled out my phone and called Kyle.
“Dev!” he exclaimed. “Oh my God!”
“Kyle! Did you see it?”
“It was amazing! And I saw you afterward. Everyone on the broadcast was trying to figure out who you were. Like if you were his girlfriend or something. And then—”
“Yeah, I’m sure someone knew who I was. It happened here, too. Whatever. Kyle, he finally did it! I knew he could.”
“Everything’s going to change now for him. I feel it.”
“I feel it, too,” I said, and then we were silent until a crowd of spectators opened the doors and descended onto my hiding place to rush down the stairs and out of the arena to head home or to the bars or wherever they were going. “I gotta go, Kyle!” I shouted, not sure if he could hear me over the sudden din.
“What?” he asked.
“Bye!” I stood there as people rushed past me, and I realized that I needed to keep moving so I wouldn’t get trampled. I followed them down the stairs until I reached an exit and stepped outside into the warm December Southern California air. I stood in the middle of the street and took a big breath. Disappointed Clippers fans walked past me while the scattered Boston supporters fist-bumped each other and celebrated David’s amazing night.
When I walked back into our hotel suite, Heath was standing on the other side of the doorway with his suitcase. “You’re going home?” I asked.
“Oh yeah,” he answered. “You didn’t even notice me leave.”
“When did you leave?”
He shook his head. “I saw you bolt out of there and go into that stairwell. I followed you, and then I saw your face. Your face said it all. I knew you were talking to Kyle.”
“Heath, I don’t know –”
“No worries, Devon. I got the message.” He walked past me into the hallway. “Best of luck to David. He had the game of his life.” And with that, he wheeled his bag toward the elevator.
I closed the door behind him and looked around. There was a bit of a mess in the kitchen, but it wasn’t too bad. I had barely unpacked, so there wasn’t much stuff out in the queen bedroom or adjacent bathroom. I lay down on the bed for a few minutes, staring up at the white ceiling. I thought back to my phone conversation with Kyle in the stairway and smiled. I was so glad he had watched the game and could understand everything I was so excited about. Kyle. I bolted up from the bed and began throwing everything into my suitcase. I dragged it into the kitchen and living area and grabbed the things I needed to bring back with me, leaving the rest. I hated not cleaning everything up, but I had to get to the airport. I fished a twenty out of my wallet, threw it on the counter, and left.
In the cab on the way to LAX, I realized there were four different airlines I could choose from, but I wanted to avoid being on a flight back to Boston with Heath. The challenge was that the four possible airlines were in four distinct terminals, so I didn’t dare book anything yet. The first terminal that was a possibility was Terminal Three, so I asked the driver to drop me off there. I ran to the check-in area and spotted Heath’s hoodie sweatshirt from behind at a Delta kiosk, so I dashed back outside and hopped on the first shuttle bus I saw. Then I realized it was for the rental car facility.
“Is there any way you can drop me at Terminal Four? Or Five? Or Seven? Any of them would be fine,” I said to the driver.
“You forgot Six,” he said gruffly. “Fine. Here’s Four.”
“Thank you!” I cooed as I sailed down the bus stairs and scurried into the American Airlines Terminal.
Once I was inside, I realized that I could finally just open the app on my phone and book the flight. I knew there were seats available; I had checked all that en route to the airport. Within minutes, I was booked and heading through security on my way back to what I hoped could possibly be home.