* * *
Lourdes
Now that I’min love, I talk to Marshall more.
I don’t need Mama to fill in the missing pieces of his life and I don’t need to drag his backpack around to feel connected to him. I see his face in the burst of maroon in the stadium and hear him in every man that screams for Lockwood with his chest.
Today isexactlylike the reporters said it would be—History breaking. Record setting. Awe-inspiring. An all-black team prancing around in America’s big dance because Marshall’s old best friend wouldn’t let go of a dream Marshall didn’t get to fulfill.
Our cheerleaders grin into the hundreds of cameras moving around. Their makeup looks painted on and they laid their edges perfectly for the biggest day of their cheerleading lives. In fact, it’s the biggest day for anybody who ever stepped foot on Lockwood’s campus and fell in love with it. This morning Stephen A. Smith said Ace was the Lions’ savior, but Ace said he was just full of shit. I didn’t tell him that Marshall said the same thing in my dreams one night.
“Are you blind?” I scream, shooting up from my seat. “That was a foul! There was contact! Number two fouled him!”
Ace’s lip sneaks under his teeth while he glides toward the ref. He sits his hand on the ref’s shoulder while winking at me.
Even in a football sized stadium crammed with thousands of people screaming for him, he always finds me in my spot right behind the team’s bench. Sometimes I hear Marshall laughing at the secret language me and Ace concocted, even though I don’t remember how it sounds. I know he’d be happy that the one thing Ace didn’t have to fight me on was basketball.
The HPE was the first place I ran to when Mama got discharged from the hospital, and it’s where I’d been ever since. Coach Williams liked to joke that it wasmyhouse. I guess that’s why I never felt all the curious eyes burning holes in the side of my face when Ace found me before and after each home game or when random visitors like Dr. Andy popped in to see Ace in his element.
Ace talks to the ref, sweeping his hand out. He pleads his case and apologizes for my outburst, while keeping his eyes on me. After he finishes, he squeezes the ref’s shoulder and points toward me.
I ease back in my seat while Mama laughs, leaning into my side. “I think I know what that means.”
She’s weak and woozy, and me and Marcus argued while loading her wheelchair into the back of Gus’ truck, but she promised Ace she wouldn’t miss this day.
“Yeah, it means she better sit her ass down before they kick us out,” Marcus mutters around a mouthful of popcorn.
The refs huddle at the score table and watch the replay. Afterward, they decide what I’d already been trying to tell them—there was absoluteunequivocalcontact.
Ace claps, walking to the free throw line.
“They can’t kick us out.” Chelsea grins in her pink sweatshirt, leaning over Marcus. “We’re with Coach Williams.”
“Shittt.” Marcus snorts. “These folks don’t care who we with. She better shut up. I can’t miss my bro win his second national champion—”
“Take your time, baby!” I yell, as Ace swipes his hand across the back of his shorts and looks at the ceiling like he’s talking to Angie.
I hope he’s telling her how we almost didn’t make it to his last game this morning, but she probably already knows. Mama ringing the bell at her last chemo appointment, their semifinal win, and his defamation victory shook him worse than any hangover ever had and in some ways I’m still Angie’s lil’ wannabe daughter-in-law so I didn’t know how to pull him out of the spontaneous funk that all of those good things caused.
We made love as soon as he got in from the airport and I picked out the charity I wanted to donate Cheyenne’s money to while he went to their last open practice. Afterward, he came home and slept for the first time in a long time. While he slept, I cleaned up, attempted to cook dinner, and then tried to shake him awake, but he still wouldn’t get up. Mama told me to give him time, so I gave it to him until I had to pull him out of bed to play the second most important game of his life.
“Come on, Ason.” Mama rests her head against my shoulder and brushes her sparse hairs against my skin while the stadium quiets.
Ace takes a deep breath and bounces the ball like there’s not two minutes left on the clock and they weren’t two points away from being tied up with Gonzaga in the second half. I asked him once what he thought about at that free throw line.
“Nothing,”he said.“Pops always told me that Marshall said the best thing to think about at the free throw line is absolutely nothing. So I don’t.”
Today’s different though. He’s thinking and talking to Angie at the free throw line, despite Marshall’s advice.
He pulls up with his eyebrows furrowed and then takes the shot. The ball goes in like we expect. His spontaneous funk makes his shoulders droop after he makes another and ties the game up, but it’s like I’m the only one in the crowd that can see the weariness on his face.
The rest of the team takes turns slapping his back and then they get back at it, but Ace moves slower this time.
“He’s tired,” I mutter, glancing at the clock while he brings the ball down the court.
“He good,” Marcus replies, leaning forward. “Let him cook. We talked this morning before he left LA. He said he was good.”
The funny thing about love is that I can even translate the most basic ass words Ace says. After hearing that white jury remind the world that Cheyenne was a liar, there’s no way he was justgood. Good meant he was tired of carrying the world on his shoulders and now he’s tired of carrying it in his hands.
