I start to lock my phone, but another message comes through.
Emma:
Also—your appointment is today. Don’t think I forgot. Are you good?
My thumb hovers over the screen for a second before I respond.
Yeah. I’m good.
Emma:
Call me after.
I send it, then turn the screen off and rest the phone against my leg as Liam merges onto the highway.
A minute passes before he tries to shoot his shot again.
“So what kind of appointment?” Liam asks, glancing over. “Doctor, lawyer, secret-second-life I should know about?”
I look at him. Liam’s one of the few people who didn’t ignore it when things started to slip. How the noise in the arena started to crush in on me, and the way it didn’t shut off after. The way one mistake turned into three because I couldn’t reset fast enough mid-game.
He noticed, pulled me aside one night, and said something. Because he didn’t make it a joke, I think that’s what got me in front of the team psychologist in the first place.
Dr. Phillips told me I was overprocessing. That I needed to talk to someone who could actually help me figure out what to do with it. So I did. And now?—
“I’m seeing a therapist,” I say.
Liam nods once, like he knew that was the plan all along. “Okay.” He waits a beat. “And?”
I glance back out my window.
“They think I’m on the spectrum.”
The car stays quiet for a second. I feel a little wobbly because it’s the first time I’ve said it out loud to someone I’m not related to.
“Yeah?” Liam says, shrugging a shoulder. “And?”
“Did you hear me?” I let out a slow breath. “Turns out I’m a thirty-year-old man who just found out he’s autistic.”
He takes that in without reacting right away. Then he nods.
“Alright,” he says. “That makes a lot of things make sense.”
I glance over at him. There’s no pity in his voice, no change in demeanor. The energy in the car is…as it was. There’s only quiet and understanding.
This is why we’re friends.
“We can talk about it if you want,” he continues, like we’re going over a play from last week’s game. “But I won’t push.”
I shouldn’t be surprised, because it is Liam, but that was easier than I expected. Which is funny, since talking hasn’t always been.
There were stretches where I knew what I wanted to say, but it didn’t come out in the right order. Or at the right speed. Too much at once, or not enough. People would fill in the gaps before I got there. Parents, teachers, girlfriends—all frustrated and thinking I was taking my time on purpose. Not knowing I was processing in real time when I did that, slowed myself.
Dr. Phillips said that happens. That sometimes it’s not about saying it faster—it’s about having someone who waits long enough to hear it.
I’ve had a few of those people over the years. Not many. My sister is one, and my mom. A few close friends in high school may have seen my cracks, navigating around them before they or I could label it, but Liam is the first person in Alexandria who figured it out.
Back when everything in the arena started stacking—noise, mistakes, the way I couldn’t reset cleanly. He saw it and gave me space, and then circled back when I was ready. And I guess I am.
