Chapter 15
“They couldn’t have gone for a slightly more inspired color scheme?” Ramona asks, gesturing to the cobalt blue jersey with red and white accents she ordered for the occasion.
“Say it a little louder?” Nick pretends to glance around, as though some kind of basketball police are waiting to arrest her for being a fake fan. If all goes well, by the end of tonight, she’ll be a real one.
With the jersey, a Clippers baseball cap, and red-and-blue lensless glasses, she fears she may have overdone it.
At least everyone’s so immersed in their own worlds, hyped on pregame adrenaline as they stream through the doors, that no one gives her a second glance, but she’s still too anxious to take off the prop glasses.
“If you can believe it,” she said when they met outside the arena, “these were rated five out of five for celebrity disguises.”
Nick, for his part, is in a Go Clips T-shirt and vintage jacket he tells her he found on eBay a couple years ago, because he really wasn’t kidding about being a huge fan. With faded jeans and New Balances, this is casual Nick. Weekend Nick.
Unfortunately, Weekend Nick might be her favorite version of him so far, with an easygoing comfort that makes him seem like the human equivalent of a favorite sweater.
Now she’s certain that peppermint scent comes from his shampoo, while his soap or cologne must be cedar—when they were in his office, she couldn’t get enough of it.
And that slim hoop earring she still can’t stop staring at, to the point where she absolutely must be seated on his right side so she keeps her libido in check.
Professor Nick Navarro, her newest friend.
She can’t believe he agreed to it, and if the fluttering in her chest is any indication, she’s just as nervous about this new venture as he seemed at the library the other day.
Ramona knows how to have the kinds of relationships with men that begin and end in dark rooms. She assumed that was where they were headed during the Great Sexting Debacle of Two Weeks Ago, and then in his office—and she couldn’t have imagined wanting something beyond that.
She thought she knew exactly what to do with a man like Nick, but maybe she didn’t know him at all.
Because this is entirely new.
Even Betty managed to get her to crack during their training session yesterday. “You’re hiding something,” she said, and that was all it took for everything to spill out. Betty wasn’t judgmental, just wary, and Ramona got it—that’s her natural state too.
When they get past security, Nick grazes her back with his hand to guide her in the direction of the escalators.
And then they go up…and up…and up.
“Maybe we should have sprung for courtside after all,” he says with a grimace as they take their seats on the top level.
“Nah. Courtside’s for losers. The real action is up here. With all the…” She glances around. “Empty seats.”
Ramona’s sat courtside at games before, made eyes at the cutest players. And inevitably wound up in the tabloids the next day.
The anonymity up here is incredible.
“So tell me about the Clippers,” she says after they return from concessions, which she recognizes is probably an absurd statement from someone wearing as much Clippers gear as she is.
They both got sodas and a slice of oily pizza, Ramona keeping the brim of her cap low while she ordered.
She wanted to tell him he didn’t have to keep from drinking on her account, but she didn’t want to assume he wasn’t drinking because of her.
“Any scandals or gossip I should know about?”
Nick presses his lips together as though holding back a smile. “Why are scandals and gossip the first things you want to know?”
“I told you when we first met, I’m a Pisces! I can’t help it.”
“I mean, sure. Every professional sports team has its share of scandal,” he says. “The biggest one—they made a miniseries about it. The guy who owned the team from ’81 to 2014 said some super racist shit on a recording that led to a lifetime ban.”
“Oh well, fuck him.”
“Yep. He had some housing discrimination and sexual harassment lawsuits too. He’s generally considered the worst owner in NBA history—we’re all glad he’s gone.”
“Not a scandal, but there was that drafting embarrassment back in ’85,” offers an older man from the row below, twisting to talk to them.
“Clippers drafted Benoit Benjamin as their first-round pick, number three overall. And he was a massive flop. What were they, 12 and 70 during the ’86–’87 season? ”
“I forgot about that,” Nick says.
Ramona scoffs, though she’s impressed by the guy’s ability to recall all these details. “And here I was, thinking you were a scholar.”
“Even the way the Clippers relocated up here from San Diego wasn’t officially approved by the NBA,” says a woman on Nick’s other side. “Only time in history.”
The first man nods his agreement. Solemn. “From that point on, some people would say they were cursed.”
“They’re not cursed,” Nick protests, with all the indignity of someone who’s argued this before. “Maybe they’ve never won a title, but they’re getting close. I can feel it.”
Ramona is delighted. By all of this. None of these Clippers diehards seem like her target demo, and slowly, she allows herself to relax, even stowing her glasses in her purse. After all, a normal person wouldn’t have to wear them.
“Okay, so they’re this subpar, possibly cursed team,” she says. “And you love them because…”
“Doesn’t everyone love an underdog?” Nick takes a sip of soda, gives her a genuine smile that borders on goofy.
“I told you I grew up in San Bernardino. Even though we weren’t that far away, my parents hated driving into LA, though my sister and I were always begging to go to Disneyland or the beach.
For my tenth birthday, they got tickets to a basketball game in LA, and I was so excited because I’d just started playing it at school.
And I just assumed we were going to see the Lakers. ”
“Oh no.”
“So we sit in traffic, it’s hot as hell outside and our AC breaks down on the way there, and it costs way more to park at the arena than my parents want to pay.
But when we finally get there…” Ramona bites down on her lower lip to keep from laughing, anticipating where the story’s going.
“…I found out they’d gotten Clippers tickets instead, because they were much cheaper.
I was devastated at first, but eventually I got really into it.
And maybe they needed all the cheering they could get.
I thought, anyone could like the Lakers, but it takes someone special to root for the Clippers, year after year, no matter how much they break our hearts.
” He holds a hand to his chest sentimentally.
“And now…here I am. Twenty-six years later.”
She pictures him as a kid with that same goofy smile. Devoting his life as a sports fan to this team that’s always disappointed him, but he keeps right on hoping. There’s that hope in his hazel eyes even now, more endearing than it has any right to be.
For a few minutes, she feels like a regular girl at a basketball game with a regular guy.
“That,” she says, “is extremely sweet.”
And then something terrible happens: the first raw notes of “Never Be Prom Queen” echo through the arena.
Ramona digs her nails into her thigh. Urges herself to breathe.
God, she sounds so young on this recording.
And obviously, she was only seventeen. There was always an irony to this song—she’d never be prom queen, it was true, because she’d never go to high school.
Yet it was instantly relatable, turning her from a kids’ TV star into someone legitimately famous.
His Clippers reverie burst, Nick gives her a concerned look. “You okay?” he asks in a low, even voice, as though the whole bathroom scenario is flashing through his mind.
“We never really intended for this song to be a woo-go-sports track.” A tight smile, a long slurp of her Diet Coke. “Yeah. I’m fine. I can handle three and a half minutes of nostalgia.”
The Diet Coke suddenly tastes like acid in her mouth.
She’s never really liked it, but it’s another holdover from the Before, something ingrained in her by her mother.
If she’s going to have soda, though she probably shouldn’t, it should be diet, sugar-free, flavorless.
How many things like this does she still do without thinking?
The chorus blares around them, this insistent phantom from her old life, and some people are singing along. Completely unaware that she’s in their midst.
Ditched class and torched the football field
Sold answers to the highest bidder
Don’t you know I did it all for you
I guess I’ll never be prom queen now
“It must be strange, hearing your music in public,” Nick says, and she’s grateful that he’s talking over her angry vocals. “If someone got on the speaker and started narrating one of my books or playing one of my lectures, I’d probably need to go into witness protection.”
“It’s this weird kind of dissociation, actually.
I know it’s me singing, but I can’t get into the mindset of who I was back then.
I don’t remember being in the studio for every single song, because most of the time I was exhausted or not eating enough.
” She fidgets with the end of her ponytail.
“Sometimes I wondered how much people could tell that my heart wasn’t always in it. ”
“When I went to that show…” He shakes his head, drifting back in thought. “I already told you—you were electric.”
“I believe magnetic was the word you used.”
This earns her a really? lift of his eyebrows.
“That too. And of course, everyone there was half in love with you and I didn’t want to be a creep, but…
” He flushes a deep pink, and it strikes her that if she were in fact debating which color her next album cover should be, it would be that one.
“You were twenty-two, I think? I, uh, checked afterward to make sure I wasn’t a complete perv. ”