Chapter Nine

NINE

I go down to the court to set up and distance myself from Ben. My fingertips are still tingling from the adrenaline rush of unleashing my frustration, but now my stomach is roiling too. My outburst was pure emotion. I didn't think about the mechanics of how I would manage filming afterward. It's not ideal for rapport building to berate someone immediately before you interview them.

This video series was Coach Thomas's idea. He likes seeing his people get recognition, and he's sought me out to comment on each profile I've done so far. This is important to him. I can't allow it to suck.

Ben shows up five minutes early with the demeanor of a pallbearer. He's changed his shirt, combed his hair, and found a razor to clean up his stubble.

"Thanks for coming," I say tentatively.

He sits in the obvious spot, the single illuminated chair in the vast darkness, surrounded by thousands of empty seats. I check the microphone and make a few adjustments to the camera. When I step into the light to turn his chair by a few degrees, we make miserable eye contact. There's nothing else to look at in this lighting, unless you want to stare into the void. We're like a pair of kidneys on an operating table.

Up close, his immovable stone eyes are laced with seams of gold, a detail I've never noticed before. My heart does a traitorous pancake flip.

Christ.

He swallows audibly. "Again, I'm sorry."

"We're doing it now, no harm done." I steadfastly avoid eye contact, studying the rest of him to make sure he's camera-ready. One side of his collar needs to be straightened. "Can I?" I point.

He nods.

I fix it gingerly with my fingertips and back away. "All done."

He shifts in his seat and rubs his arm. "Should I have done anything to prepare? I don't want to look like an idiot."

"It won't be that bad." It's a lie. If he looks this wretched in the video, people will think he's a hostage, and all the incoming recruits will decommit. "I'm not a journalist. I'll ask easy questions. And besides, I can edit it however I need to later."

"Is that supposed to be comforting?"

"I'm planning to use the puppy filter, but if you act like a diva, I've got two words for you. Talking. Potato. "

He laughs a little. More of that. I need him to loosen up.

"Hey, what if we play a game?" I say.

"What kind of game?"

"I'll shoot free throws. If I make a shot, I get to ask you a question. If I miss, you can ask me a question. You can collect embarrassing information to use against me in the future."

Nothing truly embarrassing, obviously, but enough for him to relax and give me decent footage to work with.

He considers. "How old were you when you stopped playing basketball?"

"I did one year of rec. Third grade. I got stuffed by Emily Chou in the first quarter of our first game and cried. I told everyone I had to go to the bathroom and hid in the stall the rest of the game. My parents made me stick it out until the season was over."

He snorts, then pauses, probably trying to calculate the average free throw percentage of an unathletic string cheese thief who's been retired from the sport for twenty years. "Okay, fine."

I find a ball. After dragging a spare light over so I can see, I take a few clumsy dribbles and pass the ball back and forth from one hand to the other, familiarizing myself with the weight of it. I can feel him watching me, but I don't look at him. I look at the basket.

It's been a long time since I've done this. My first attempt is off, but it takes a lucky clanging bounce off the rim before dropping through the net like a fingertip against silk. An unsportsmanlike yelp escapes my mouth, and he grabs his head with both hands. "That was a hideous shot. That shouldn't even count."

I can feel how wide my grin is, all teeth, gloating. "Sportsmanship, Callahan. Don't be a sore loser." I clear my throat and modulate my voice, assuming a more professional tone. "Now, what's your role with the team? And with each question, restate it so I can cut my voice out. It won't feel natural at first, but it'll sound more natural."

"Nothing about this feels natural," he mutters.

I make a get-on-with-it motion with my hands.

He exhales and looks at the camera. His face slides into a neutral expression. I'd prefer something a bit warmer, but I'll take what I can get. "My role is to compile and analyze data about our team and our opponents, to make recommendations to improve the team's performance."

"Good." I kick off my ankle boots before returning to the free throw line. They have a heel, and I have no interest in making this game harder than it needs to be.

The second shot falls straight through the hoop, barely touching the net.

I raise my arms in triumph. "You can't tell me that one wasn't pretty."

He shakes his head. "Somehow I've been conned."

I ask him about easy topics: his favorite basketball memory, a fun fact about Coach Thomas, what superpower he'd want to have on the court. Eventually I overshoot one, and the ball hits the back of the rim and sails out of bounds.

"Finally." He crosses his arms. "Okay, please tell me why a third-grade basketball dropout is shooting eighty percent from the free throw line?"

"Because beating you is great motivation."

"Just in this game, or is that your general life strategy?"

I pretend to chuck the ball at him. "My dad always worked late during the season. And my mom was never a disciplinarian, so she did the whole ‘Wait till your father gets home' thing. My dad parented like he coached. He didn't know how to do it any other way. When he walked in the door and my mom asked him to deal with me, he took me out to the driveway until I made twenty-five in a row."

We'd stand in front of the garage in the dark, the floodlights illuminating the hoop, me huffing about how unfair Mom was being or how misunderstood I felt. It wasn't the same for Kat. She and Dad butted heads, and Mom was the one she turned to. With me, Dad would listen quietly as I ranted and missed shots until he figured out what I needed: tough love to help me pull my head out of my ass, or a chance to vent. Sometimes it was enough to spend twenty minutes not talking about whatever was upsetting me, so we reviewed proper free throw mechanics instead.

I look down at the ball in my hands, my heart heavy. "He could never resist correcting my form."

"Well, you're pretty good at free throws. You must've gotten in trouble a lot."

A laugh bubbles out of me, catching me by surprise. "Look who's suddenly full of jokes," I say. I make another shot. "Who's your role model and why?"

"My role model is, um"—he hesitates for a millisecond, his eyes flicking over to me—"My role model is Brent Maynard, my coach when I played here at Ardwyn. He's a basketball genius and an incredible person. He taught me so much about the game and also gave me a lot of guidance and support off the court. He's like family." He takes a breath as if preparing to say more.

I study my list of questions, trying to maintain a look of clinical detachment, but my chest is tight and my heartbeat has reached my skull, where it's pounding aggressively. "Okay, that's enough, it'll be clear to everyone that you want to marry him." I'm going to cut this whole answer anyway.

I miss the next shot. He hums contemplatively and asks, "What's your most embarrassing basketball-related story?"

Thank god for a chance to change the subject. "I once got ejected from one of my dad's games," I offer.

He barks out a laugh. "No way. Why?"

"There was a guy sitting behind me, mouthing off." I jog over to retrieve the ball. "Calling my dad overrated, accusing him of recruiting violations—total bullshit. I know criticism comes with the territory, but the guy got personal. And he kept yapping about how we should run a full-court press. He had no idea what he was talking about."

"So you did what?" Ben asks.

"I corrected his misconceptions." I shrug. "And I told him his mustache was ugly. In what some might call an ‘elevated voice.' Some did call it that, in fact. The referees. They said I was causing a disturbance and had security remove me. The other team's student section booed me on my way out."

Ben's posture is loose as he rests his elbows on his knees and shakes his head. He's amused enough to forget the camera for now. "Fans are brutal. It must've been hard when you were in high school, with your dad having a high-profile coaching job. Hearing people pick apart his decisions."

"Sure," I chirp. "But this was three years ago." Dad's final season, not that any of us knew at the time. His last game was a completely unremarkable state quarterfinal loss with no fanfare. It's not fair that he didn't get to retire properly.

Another surprised laugh from Ben. "You're not actually embarrassed by this story, are you?"

"Not at all." I square up for my next shot, which drops neatly through the basket. Only a few questions left. "What do you love about working for Ardwyn basketball?"

He pulls on the cuff of his shirt. "What do I love ? Um." His eyes defocus, and he slips away somewhere in his head. Somewhere heavy. He's no longer thinking about basketball, he's about to give an on-screen confession to a cold-case murder. "Pass," he finally says.

"What? Isn't that an easy question?"

He rubs the back of his neck. "Kind of defeats the purpose of passing if you have to explain yourself."

"There are so many things you can say. The people, the history, whatever. The ‘Ardwyn Family,' everyone always likes that one."

"I'm getting tired." His voice is gravelly.

I step closer. "Me too, but we're almost done. Come on, this should be easy for you. The only person who's worked here longer than you is Donna. You bleed Ardwyn Blue."

"Jesus Christ. Can you turn the camera off? I want to say something."

His expression is raw and I want to stop him, say Never mind, but I don't. Instead I press the button.

When he speaks, he does so with jagged stops and starts, pausing to select his words with care. "The main reason I've been avoiding this interview is I've been dreading talking about my job on camera. Sorry I made you think it was personal. I know you and I haven't been…" He stops and shakes his head. "I'm so frustrated right now, and I've been taking it out on you, and that's not fair. I'm sick of fighting for my job, but that's not even the most important part. I'm disgusted with how badly this school has screwed up its finances."

"What do you mean?" I ask.

He works his jaw. "They're not just going after the department with a scalpel; they're using a bludgeon too. Entire sports will be cut. My sister is supposed to come here next year for gymnastics. Competing for Ardwyn has been her dream since she was little, since we started taking her to meets here because I got free tickets. It's an expensive sport for the school and it brings in no revenue, so it's probably going to be gone.

"At the same time, I'm here burning out, and I may have nothing to show for it in four months. I've been here for, what, a third of my life? I'm still in the same role. The numbers guy. Do you remember when we were in school, and we did anything that had to get done, even if it wasn't our job?"

I nod silently, my chest tight. I once did Coach Maynard's annual ethics training for him, sitting through an online seminar, answering the multiple-choice questions when they popped up. I picked out his wife's birthday present three years in a row.

Ben continues. "Well, I still do that. Kyle is in over his head as director of operations, so I do half of his job during all the free time I don't have. Do you know what he did a couple months ago? He booked all of our travel for the first half of the season using last year's calendar. Hotels, meals, flights. Guess who had to clean that up? Me."

Kyle screwing up the travel schedule—I knew about that. But nobody told me Ben was the one who fixed it.

"It's thankless, and I'm tired and angry," he says. "I don't have it in me to talk about how much I love being part of the ‘Ardwyn Family' right now."

Silence. He's done.

"I'm sorry to hear that," I hear myself say. I can't wrap my head around this information. Ben is a believer. He would wear Ardwyn Blue even if he were a True Autumn. (He's not. It looks great on him.) But if even he's jaded enough to use air quotes around "Ardwyn Family," there's no hope for anyone else.

"Yeah, so. Should we finish?" His mouth is a flattened coin.

There are a few more questions I'm supposed to ask, but the interview feels over. "I have what I need," I say. "Let's get out of here." I turn off the camera and start unplugging things. Neither of us speaks. I take my time wrapping an extension cord into the neatest possible coil, detaching the microphone and breaking down its stand, trying to process what Ben said.

His behavior makes more sense now. It's not an excuse, but it's something, and it's a relief to learn it hasn't all been personal. He's under a lot of pressure. His sister's future hanging in the balance, plus his own. He sounds as drained as I feel when I think about what's at stake for me.

He sits for a while, apparently not ready to move. When he stands, he reaches for the chair. "Where do you want this?"

"I'll do it. It's my job," I say, waving him off. "It's late. Go. Thanks for doing this." He doesn't move as I nestle the camera in its case, and I'm not sure whether I want him to say something more or leave.

The latches are loud when I click them shut. By the time I look up, he's gone, and I'm surprised to find myself disappointed.

Say something more, I will him, too late.

The latest season of the hottest nonsense on television begins the first Monday in January. Eric and Cassie live farther from campus than I do. It's a short drive or a long walk. I never remember the door code, so I slip into the building behind a guy carrying a bag of groceries and take the stairs to the third floor.

The layered sounds of multiple conversations happening in the same room float down the hall as I approach their condo. Uh-oh. When Eric invited me over to watch The Beach House, I assumed it would be just the three of us. Not a party.

I look down at my stretched-out leggings and pull up the waistband, which droops again immediately. A few stray stubby bits poke out of the bun piled on my head, and my sweater is a muddled taupe anti-color. I adjust the neckline so my necklace is visible, dangling over my collarbone, and drag a finger under each eye to wipe away any black smudges. A classic schlump-to-slob transition.

The door is unlocked. I kick my sneakers off and leave them next to the mat. To my relief, the first people I see are Cassie's law school friends, standing in the kitchen.

I join the circle. "The last time I saw you guys, we were all wearing the same dress."

"Annie!" Jade hugs me first, then Talia and Grace. One of them pours me a glass of wine and they ask me about the move and the new job. I haven't seen them since the wedding.

"What happened with the guy?" I ask Grace.

"I DM'd the other girl. She asked me for screenshots of the texts but as far as I know they're still together."

I make a disgusted noise.

I ask Jade about her mom's health and chat with Talia about her Etsy shop. I've only met them a handful of times, but there's an accelerated familiarity there, the kind that applies to close friends of close friends. Cassie talked about them for years before I met them, so I've always known about their jobs and personalities and love lives, the same way I know about the characters on the teenage murder show Kat talks about even though I've never seen it. And then I did meet Jade and Talia and Grace, and drank a lot of tequila with them at Cassie's bachelorette party, and boom. Bonded.

I take one of the blank brackets from the pile on the counter. "I'm guessing I need to fill this out."

"Oh, yes." Jade hands me a pen. "Eric's orders. Episode one for now. We'll do the rest after tonight."

"Was I supposed to do research?" I eye the names running down each side of the page.

"We have a printout of their headshots here. For the first episode you'll have to go purely on looks."

The structure of the show is only vaguely familiar to me. There's a romantic element, where people have to couple up to stick around, but there's also a monetary prize at the end. I pick a few people from the photos based on gut instinct and fill in the rest of the names at random. When I'm finished, I make my way over to Eric, who's standing by himself, studying everyone's brackets.

He takes in my outfit. "Did you just get out of ballet practice?"

I roll my eyes and hand him my bracket.

He appraises it with interest, running his finger down each column. "Lots of people picking Jasmine," he says. "We've got ourselves a front-runner."

"Well, yeah. It's because of her face."

There's a group of guys on the other side of the pass-through. I recognize them, other athletic department employees who aren't exactly in my orbit. One of the academic advisors, a guy from the development team, the football facilities coordinator.

I introduce myself. They're friendly enough, and they talk to me for a bit, but after a few minutes they fall back into the conversation they were having before, about people I don't know doing things they haven't explained to me.

I'm considering returning to the kitchen when I see the dog. A Lab mix, curled up into a U-shape on the floor.

I crouch down. The dog sniffs my hand, and I scratch it behind the ears. It groans and leans into my palm.

"What's your name?" I murmur. Eric and Cassie don't have any pets.

I look up to ask someone about the dog. That's when I see Ben, sitting on the couch next to Cassie. They're laughing and he's slouching back against a pillow, one foot on the opposite knee. His hair is damp and undone, sticking up in every direction.

My stomach tightens. How am I supposed to interact with him after our conversation before the holidays? Fighting, playing that game, laughing. Me needling him, him sharing something deeply personal with me. I haven't even concluded whether the whole thing went well or poorly.

"Annie! I didn't know you were here." Cassie hops up.

I climb off the floor to hug her. "I was saying hi to everyone. How was New Orleans?"

Cassie tells me about her time at home, the family parties, the attempts at warding off questions from aunts and uncles about her plans for her uterus. She brought back andouille sausage in her suitcase, which means there's a tall pot of gumbo on the stove. She looks rested, like she might make it through the entire episode tonight without passing out in a chair.

"I didn't realize this was an actual party," I say.

"Did we not tell you that? Sorry, I thought you knew. We've been doing this for a few years now."

"Whose dog is that? I love him. Her?"

"Ben's," Cassie says. She leans over the coffee table and picks up a near-empty bowl of tortilla chip crumbs. "She's a girl. Right?"

Ben nods. "Sasha," he tells Cassie, and not me.

The show is about to start, so Cassie takes the bowl to the kitchen to refill it. I beg her for a chore to do, but she waves me off.

There's only one place to go now. I perch on the end of the couch, ready to jump up if somebody needs help opening a bottle or making guacamole or scrubbing a toilet. I glance at Ben but he's looking at his phone. Back to the cold shoulder, then?

He's wearing fitted sweatpants with a thin, worn-in gray T-shirt that stretches over his biceps. Next to his socked feet sits a pair of pristine sneakers that have a name I can't remember and a stock price on those niche websites for die-hards. Of course. He probably gets a new pair every time they get scuffed. Minutes pass and his face is still in his phone, his fingers tapping away at the screen.

I look at the dog longingly, wishing I could give her a belly rub. Maybe get some more hand nuzzles. I haven't had substantial physical contact with any living creature since before I moved. How long will I have to sit here in silence before Ben will initiate a conversation? Maybe I'll try waiting it out.

I last eight seconds. "I didn't know people were allowed to wear those shoes. I thought they were for decoration."

His head snaps up, and he slides his phone into his pocket. "They're shoes. They're for feet." He gestures at the TV. "I didn't know you watched The Beach House. "

"This is my first time. Big fan?"

He lets his head loll back against the couch and narrows his eyes. "Eric and I started the fantasy league together. I don't care if you make fun of us for it."

"Sure," I say. "Because people who don't care always make a point to tell you they don't care. Isn't making fun of the show the point, anyway?"

He tilts his head back and forth. "It is and it isn't. Wait and see." He hesitates, and then adds, "Please don't ruin this for me."

He doesn't say it in a nasty way. He says it like he understands I might not be able to help it, and it would be a big favor to him if I resisted the impulse. This pleases and confuses me.

"You really like it?"

"It's my favorite thing."

I can't tell if he's serious. It's the messy hair. It's throwing me off completely. All of his usual expressions look different with that hair. How am I supposed to—it's so distracting, it's like—and why can't I stop looking at it?

He's looking at me too. At the necklace dangling over my clavicle. I graze it with my fingertips self-consciously, my face growing inexplicably warm. It's nothing unusual-looking, just a thin gold bar with a tiny diamond, my birthstone.

He turns his head away quickly, toward the TV. People are starting to squeeze onto the couch and pull over the counter stools and sprawl out on the floor. Time for the show.