Page 53 of Considering Us

“Yeah, here you go. It’s good. Thanks, Dev. And yeah, I know. I probably don’t need a shrink to tell me the same shit you’ve been telling me for years.”

I took a bite. “This tastes great. Well, hopefully, she can give you better tools for getting through it. I don’t know how useful I am with coping mechanisms. I just feed you things.”

“Good things, Dev. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” He dug through the cooler and found a tumbler packed in ice. “Is this what I think it is?”

“I made sure there was a blender in my room. Enjoy your smoothie.”

“You’re the best,” he said, taking a drink. “I think that’s part of it,” he said quietly. “If I get traded, say, to, like, Oklahoma City, what happens? I don’t think you’re going to move to the middle of the country. You’ve got a real job, and now you’ve got this ambulance dude.”

I sighed. “First of all, I’m ready to kick ‘ambulance dude’ to the curb. He’s not who I thought he was. I can’t believe you got him to come out here.”

“Don’t blame me,” he said, gently pushing my shoulder. “You could’ve told me no. Or brought Tam or something.”

“You put me in an awkward situation,” I conceded. “But I’m dealing with it. And don’t worry about any of the rest of it. We’ll cross those bridges when we get there. I’m not making any promises to anyone about anything work-wise right now. One day at a time. I think you should try to do the same, but what do I know? I’m not the sports psychologist.”

“You’re a lot smarter than her, I think,” he said, polishing off his wrap. “And my guess is she can’t cook for shit.”

“We’ll probably never know the truth where that’s concerned.” I stood up and opened the shades in the room, letting the LA sunshine in. “You’ve got a game to get ready for.”

...

The arena was packed, with plenty of Boston fans in green sprinkled among the red and blue colors of Clippers supporters. I took my seat next to Heath, having waited until the last possible minute to join him. He was drinking a beer and eating a pulled pork sandwich when I arrived.

“Hey,” he said. “You were right when you said you’d be busy. I thought you would just be dropping food with him and leaving. What did you do all this time?”

I left out the details about spending two hours drinking cappuccino in the lobby of the Ritz, followed by aimlessly wandering through a nearby shopping area. “There’s lots of stuff for me to do pregame to help David,” I lied.Well, there were plenty of things, but it didn’t take eight hours.I wanted to get through the game and then maybe investigate changing flights and hopping on the red eye instead of going back the next day. I could easily make up an excuse for something that I suddenly needed to do the next day at Rockwood.

I scoured the area where David’s mom assured me Charlie would have a seat. I spotted him sitting and watching the players warm up, sipping a beer. He saw me looking his way and waved. I waved back and smiled, forgetting for a moment that Heath was next to me.

“Who’s that?” he asked, gesturing to Charlie.

“An old friend,” I answered. “Looks like they’re about to get underway,” I said, eager to change the subject.

David was never in the starting five, so I split my time between watching the action on the court and glancing at him as he nervously waited from the bench for the coach to signal that it was time. I felt his anxiousness surge through my body, andI wondered if this was normal or even healthy. I did worry that David depended too much on me and that I took on too many of his emotions as my own, but maybe this was what family was.Yes, David is my family now.As an only child, I didn’t know what having a sibling felt like, and perhaps this was it. I cared about his happiness as much as I worked toward my own.

He finally checked into the game. From that point, everything changed. The crowd marveled, howled, and yelped as he took control, hitting virtually every shot, getting fouled as Clippers players attempted to block his moves and steal the ball from him, failing at almost all their efforts. I marveled as the Celtics’ coach beamed with excitement, watching his perhaps most misunderstood player finally break out. He subbed David out when he looked spent, soaked from head to socks in sweat, but he was eager to return to the court, and that he did. By the time the game-ending buzzer rang while David nailed his final three-pointer, he had scored fifty-eight points. The Celtics crushed their opponent by thirty.

The Boston fans in attendance erupted, and David ran off the court to where I was sitting. He scooped me off the ground and threw me over his sweaty shoulder, and I was laughing and crying with abandon, all while clinging to his jersey so I wouldn’t slide off. When he finally put me back down, he grabbed me by the shoulders and yelled, “We did it, Devon!”

“You did it!” I shouted back. “David, it was all you!”

Reporters flooded the floor, with most crowding around him and a few pulling me aside. “Who are you?” one man with a microphone asked.

“I cook for him,” I said simply, enjoying every minute of watching David rip out of his shell and finally open himself up to the media. He was glowing, and I still felt all his feelings. This time, though, it was pure magic.

“Oh, you’re the woman who in Boston—” the reporter continued, and I knew where this was going.

“Excuse me,” I said, running out of the arena through a pair of heavy doors to an empty stairwell. I pulled out my phone and called Kyle.

“Dev!” he exclaimed. “Oh my God!”

“Kyle! Did you see it?”

“It was amazing! And I saw you afterward. Everyone on the broadcast was trying to figure out who you were. Like if you were his girlfriend or something. And then—”

“Yeah, I’m sure someone knew who I was. It happened here, too. Whatever. Kyle, he finally did it! I knew he could.”

“Everything’s going to change now for him. I feel it.”

---