Content Warning: This chapter includes themes of unrequited love, teenage heartbreak, and emotional confusion. Readers sensitive to experiences of social rejection or identity invalidation may find elements of this chapter emotionally resonant.

I Don’t Even Like Basketball

Her name was Becky. We were classmates, sharing several classes together. She was tall, thin, with a hawked nose and long black hair. She was amazing—and I was in love.

So was my friend Tyler. We both liked her.

“Neither of us has a shot in hell,” he’d say.

“Sounds like exactly what the loser says,” I’d reply.

It was her birthday, and I got her a silver necklace with a locket. I included a letter asking her out.

She said yes. I really, really didn’t expect that.

I wasn’t prepared for her to say yes. Like, not at all.

I asked Boompa what I should do—where I should take her.

“Your Uncle Gary has some extra tickets to the basketball game next week.”

That settled it. I told Becky, and she was in.

I knew nothing about basketball. I really just wanted to make out with her all night, but that was off the table—we were in public.

Turned out, she wasn’t really into basketball either. We wandered off to the concession stand to see what kind of trouble we could cause.

Eventually the third period ended—and with it, the game.

That caught us both off guard. Weren’t sportsball games supposed to have quarters? Or halves?

We got scolded a bit. Uncle Gary and Boompa drove us home. She lived in the same subdivision as Granny and Boompa, and we started spending more and more time together.

On the days I still went to the high school, we’d ride the bus there together. We were pretty much inseparable on the weekends.

One evening, shortly after I got my car, we went to play laser tag. She introduced me to the older kid behind the counter as her boyfriend.

He was tall, a few years older than her, and several years older than me. His skin was a deep ebony that made his gold-rimmed glasses pop against his hazel eyes.

When he asked my name, I just said, “Nobody, really.”

I felt small. My stomach flipped like I was on a roller coaster.

I wasn’t quite sure what to do. I felt pretty fucking devastated.

He handed us our laser tag fobs and we went to gear up.

Later that night we were parked just down the road from her house, our usual end-of-night make-out spot. I asked:

“Does you having a boyfriend mean we need to break up?”

“Oh, you’re not my boyfriend,” she said.

I was crushed. I didn’t really hang out with her much after that.

I don’t think I got it at the time. I should’ve asked more questions, or maybe I just shouldn’t have stopped showing up.

It was many years later that I’d look back on that relationship and realize what it really was.

She’ll always have a place in my memory.