Logos.
People trying to turn exhaustion into language while your blood still hasn’t realized the game is over.
I take my seat at the podium with sweat still drying at my temples, stat sheet in front of me, Coach to my left, SID off to the side.
The first three questions are what you’d expect.
Tempo.
Coverage.
The second-half run.
How did it feel to close in transition.
I answer.
Coach answers.
We move.
Then a girl from one of the campus outlets lifts her hand and says, with the kind of false-casual tone people use when they know exactly what they’re doing:
“There’s been a lot of attention today around your relationship with Stella Cortez and whether it’s changing her public identity on campus from athlete to, well, your girlfriend. Do you have a response to that?”
The room goes very still.
Coach doesn’t move.
Neither do I.
Because here it is.
The moment.
The lights on.
The question in public.
The exact place where the old version of me used to get slippery.
Not tonight.
I lean toward the mic.
And because I am suddenly calmer than I have been all day, my voice comes out low and clean.
“Yeah,” I say. “I do.”
No rush.
No heat.
That’s what makes everybody listen harder.
“Stella Cortez is one of the best athletes on this campus,” I say. “She was before me. She is now. She’ll be that long after a gossip cycle gets bored and moves on.”
The room is silent enough I can hear somebody shifting a camera strap.
