ask: georgia amoore x reader after georgias first game off injury or georgia headcannons maybe
author's note: hii! i've never written for georgia before so this is my first time. i hope you like!! also i wanted to say, that aside from kuhl, i also secretly ship them. like that video of them together at dawg camp a couple years ago???? yes. reqs are open!
masterlist || wattpad || tiktok
✶ okay, so basically, you and Georgia had been dating for a while, like through college. when she first got to the W, you were so so happy for her
✶ i feel like your dynamic in college was sort of a little pazzi-ish, like you didn't explicitly come out together until the draft, but you definitely looked close in public. you might've just referred to each other as best friends or something. you would always attend her games courtside, and she would, of course, like to come up to you and chat during warmups. fans obviously noticed the way she would blush and smile at you during these little pockets of conversation before games. they also noticed how you were the first person she would go up to after games, immediately running to you when she won a big one, or falling into your arms when she lost one, shoving her face into the crook of your neck
✶ you would always like post tiktoks and instagram posts, hinting towards something more than friends, but never explicitly saying it until you're well past college
✶ during the actual draft, maybe you would like soft launch together, like with an instagram story of you holding hands before she gets drafted, or fans spotting you in the crowd, like whispering to each other
✶ i feel like you guys wouldn't officially come out until after she, like, heals- not fully, but kind of healed. like maybe she proposes to you one night at dinner. she'd totally be super nervous about the whole thing and while she's like getting onto one knee you would be giggling and crying, trying to help her because you feel bad about her acl and don't want her to hurt herself more. but you guys would come out with an engagement post together. fans obviously absolutely freak out
✶ flashforward to her "first" wnba season, you're like super excited to watch her actually be able to play again.
With your best friend following you, together you make your way down the stairs to the Mystic's court. Smiling, you wave at the cameras as you pass by, posing for what will be most certainly posted all over social media within minutes. You can practically imagine the captions already, "Georgia Amoore's Fiance pulling up to Her First Pre-Season Game!" You really don't hate the attention, though. You obviously don't relish it, but it's nice being able to pull the spotlight on Georgia, even if a lot of articles include both of you. She deserves the attention, she deserves the recognition for her hard work.
Finally, you make it to your seats. With drinks already in hand, you lean into Megan, your best friend.
"What do you think she's gonna do when she sees you?" You whisper, smiling as you pull away.
Laughing, Megan sips her drink. "Probably stick her tongue out at me,"
"or flip you off,"
She shrugs, nodding as you wait. "You're probably right,"
The girls jog onto the court, their warm-up outfits on, and picking up your old ritual, Georgia beelines for you, ignoring the girls already tossing balls.
As predicted, she shoots Megan a raised eyebrow and a middle finger before leaning down to hug you. Her arms wrap around your back as she kisses your cheek.
"I forgot how pretty you look wearing my name," She whispers into your ear, smiling as she pulls away.
Smirking, you hold her gaze. "It might be prettier off."
With her eyebrows raised now, her cheeks turn red. "We're in public,"
But you just shrug, pulling Megan away from a conversation she started with a neighbor.
Pretending to look unimpressed, Georgia looks your best friend up and down, disapprovingly shaking her head. "We're gonna lose now,"
"Girl, I'm your lucky charm, shut it,"
Breaking into a smile, your fiancé can't be serious for too long, or even pretend to be serious for that matter.
She leaves to practice a bit after that, coming back only to give you a quick kiss, promising to "not be too distracted" on the court (she always is when you're there).
It was honestly heartwarming to watch, being able to see your partner be able to do something, finally, that brings them so much joy. Watching Georgia in her element will not be tiring to you.
JUST A REMINDER THAT AZZI ONLY HAS 7 DAYS LEFT OF BEING A HUSKY. 2 MORE GAMES AS A HUSKY ‼️‼️ LET’S ALL BE POSITIVE AND CELEBRATE HER NO MATTER HOW SHE PLAYS 💙💙💙💙💙
requesting a lauren betts x reader wearing matching shirts or something for a pregame fit and fans go insane
on purpose
pairing: washington mystics!lauren!dating x wag!reader!dating
wc: 5.7k
summary: she knew exactly what she was doing when she said yes, and so did lauren, and that's the thing about three years of careful—eventually you both stop pretending the word means anything at all.
🏷️: @ladybugluvs, @timunhater
lyricii yaps: i've missed you guys so much i'm very glad to be back and to be consistent as much as i can
it starts the night before you're lying across her bed, one arm folded behind your head, watching the ceiling fan turn slow, while she's still halfway inside her closet doing something that involves hangers scraping and the occasional quiet sound of consideration.
you've been here long enough that her apartment has started to feel like yours in the peripheral sense you know which cabinet has the good mugs, you know the shower runs cold for thirty seconds before it corrects itself, you know that when she goes quiet in the closet she's not ignoring you, she's thinking, and thinking for lauren looks like stillness and takes up a lot of room.
she comes out holding two pieces of ivory structured jacket in each hand, held up level like she's presenting evidence. "what do you think," she says when you look at them you look at her you say immediately "yes."
"you didn't let me finish."
"yes anyway."
she gives you a look, the one that means you're doing that thing and you sit up properly and look at the jackets with the seriousness they apparently deserve they're beautiful, they're the kind of piece that costs more than it looks like it does and looks like it costs exactly what it does, which is a particular kind of expensive thing that you've been learning about since you started spending time in her orbit.
the color reads ivory in her bedroom light but you know in the arena it'll go the softest shade of cream, warm, tonal, the kind of palette that photographs clean from twenty feet away and from a hundred feet away still reads as coordinated. "we're going to look insane," you tell her.
she hangs them both carefully on the back of the door and sits down next to you on the edge of the bed close enough that her knee presses into yours. "we're going to look good," she says, which is a correction, and she says it the way she says most things not like she's being arrogant, like she's just stating the geometry of the situation she is usually right about the geometry it's one of the more annoying things about her.
you look at the jackets on the door you look at her profile you say "they're going to lose their minds."
"probably."
"you know that, right? you know exactly what you're doing."
she turns her head and looks at you, and something in her expression settles into a register that doesn't have a name but that you've been cataloguing for three years, the one that means she's being precise on purpose, choosing her words the way she chooses her shots not rushed, not careless, just very clear about what she's going for. "yeah," she says. "i know."
you hold that for a second. "okay," you say.
"okay?"
"okay," you say again, and lie back down, and stare at the ceiling fan, and try to keep your face entirely neutral, which you fail at, and which she clocks and doesn't mention, because she is also, sometimes, merciful.
you've known maya since sophomore year at ucla, which means she predates lauren by about four months and has watched the entire arc of this from front-row seats with the specific energy of someone who invested early and is still waiting to cash out.
she texted you last week when you mentioned coming to the game does she know you're coming. you said yes maya sent back three emojis in a row and then nothing for six hours and then i'm wearing something neutral so you two can have the whole bit.
you love her you also, sometimes, want to close a door in her face she's waiting for you outside the arena in a cream blazer of her own — different, paler, clearly chosen to orbit your orbit — and when she sees you coming she puts a hand over her mouth and then takes it away and says "you actually did it."
"we're just wearing jackets."
"you're wearing the same jacket."
"it's a popular jacket."
"it came out three weeks ago." she falls into step beside you she's looking at you with an expression that you would describe as clinical admiration. "how long did she plan this."
"it was both of us."
maya stops walking for approximately one step and then resumes. "she planned it," she says, "and you went along with it immediately."
you don't answer maya takes this as confirmation, which it is.
"i want you to know," she says, as you push through the entrance, "that i have been waiting three years for you two to do literally anything publicly and this is exceeding my expectations. this is this is a statement. you understand that. without either of you saying one word this is a statement."
"we're just going to a basketball game."
"in matching designer jackets that are three weeks old—"
"complementary—"
"that you coordinated the night before—"
"we live close—"
"that are going to be photographed and posted within forty-five seconds of you sitting down." maya looks at you with the patience of someone who has known you long enough to wait for you out. "are you nervous?"
you think about lauren asking you the same thing in the hallway this morning, both of you standing in front of the mirror, jackets on you thinking about how you said no and she smiled like she didn't believe you.
you think about how she reached over and adjusted your collar, just barely, just with two fingers, fixed something you couldn't see was crooked, and then stepped back and looked at you the way she sometimes looks at you like she's confirming something she already knew.
"no," you tell maya maya says "you are such a liar," and links her arm through yours, and that's how you walk to your seats.
the arena fills around you and you learn something about yourself, which is that you are better at composure in the abstract than in practice in the abstract, standing in lauren's hallway last night saying yes, sure, we're going to look good, you were calm about this.
in practice, sitting courtside while the warmup music plays and the lights come up and someone three rows back says loudly to their friend wait hold on in practice you are exercising every social muscle you have.
maya is completely unhelpful she's on her phone already, watching something load, and she tips it toward you with a clip from the tunnel someone got a photo of you both coming in but the angle is not unflattering the jackets are extremely visible, it already has four hundred likes and it was posted eleven minutes ago. "put that away," you say.
"the comments," maya says reverently, scrolling, "are unwell."
"maya—"
"someone says and i quote: 'she has been wearing lauren's clothes on her body since at least 2022 but this is the first time they matched and i am going to need a minute.'"
you face forward with great dignity.
"another person says: 'the way they styled it differently so it's not costume-y but you can still absolutely tell they got dressed together. i'm not normal about this.'"
"i don't need a live update—"
"oh, this one—" maya presses her lips together. "this one says 'lauren betts has been looking at this girl from half court every home game for a season and a half and now they show up in coordinated fits and we're supposed to just watch basketball?'"
you open your mouth, you close it, you look at the court lauren is on the three-point line mid-stretch, one arm pulled across her chest, head tilted slightly she looks over finds you immediately she always finds you immediately, you stopped being surprised by this sometime in february and her expression does the thing where it shifts registers so fast that if you didn't know her you'd miss it.
something settles something confirms she raises her eyebrows well? you raise yours back they're losing it she already knows she lets her mouth curve just slightly, the version of her smile that belongs to a specific radius, the one that's been yours for three years, and turns back to the drill.
maya, who has witnessed this entire exchange in silence, says "i need you to understand that i saw that from two feet away."
"saw what."
"that whole — the eyebrows — the thing you just did."
"we were just—"
"that was a full conversation," maya says. "with your faces. you had a full conversation with your faces across a basketball court."
@bricksbylb — wait wait wait is she wearing the same jacket as the girl in the third row
@dcmysticstan — THEY ARE IN THE SAME COLORWAY. THE SAME. I AM GOING TO NEED EVERYONE TO LOOK AT THIS
@halfcourtshots — the girl who's always courtside for lauren's home games. been clocking her since the preseason. they did NOT do this by accident. that jacket is three weeks old.
@hoop.diaries — okay but they came in together through the tunnel. someone just sent me the photo. the way she's walking next to her like it's the most natural thing in the world.
@bricksbylb — WAIT THE JACKET. SAME JACKET. DIFFERENT STYLING. THEY LITERALLY PLANNED THIS AND THEN STYLED IT DIFFERENTLY SO IT WOULDN'T LOOK PLANNED BUT IT STILL LOOKS PLANNED I'M GOING TO LIE DOWN
@w.bballworld — can someone explain to me how lauren betts is out here doing a full pregame warmup and also somehow looking directly at the same courtside girl every thirty seconds. how is she doing both
@dcmysticstan — they've been doing this since ucla. i have receipts going back two years. this jacket is just the first time they stopped pretending we weren't all watching.
your phone has ninety-three notifications you turn it face-down on your knee and fold your hands on top of it and watch lauren catch a pass, pivot, go up for a mid-range that goes clean through maya, next to you, is vibrating with the contained energy of someone who is being very good by not saying anything you let her have it for about forty-five seconds. "fine," you say quietly. "i knew. i knew exactly what was going to happen and i did it anyway."
maya exhales like she's been holding it. "okay," she says carefully. "okay, and?" you watch lauren move through the lane, easy, like she takes up exactly as much space as she's supposed to and not one inch more. you watch her glance toward you again without meaning to, or maybe meaning to, you've never been entirely sure. "and nothing," you say. "that's it. i knew and i wanted to."
maya is quiet for a moment. then she says, very softly: "yeah. i know."
the buzzer sounds the warmup music shifts the lights come all the way up and the arena gets loud and you sit in it and feel, underneath the composed surface of yourself, something that has been building for three years and that has no particular name and that tonight, without a single word, you put on like a jacket deliberately, in the right color, styled to be unmistakably yours.
they win by nine you watch all of it every run, every adjustment, every timeout huddle where you can see her listening with her hands on her knees, head down, and then looking up like something clicked and maya is good company, the kind who knows when to be loud and when to let things breathe.
you feel, for most of the game, approximately normal you feel like yourself you feel like someone who has been doing this for long enough that the courtside part is ordinary, the watching-her-work part is ordinary, the fact of her in your life is ordinary, which is its own kind of extraordinary when you think about it too hard, which you mostly try not to.
your phone never stops buzzing, you leave it face-down the entire second half after, you wait in the corridor outside the locker room with maya, who has finally run out of tweet updates and is just standing quietly eating a pretzel and being decent about it.
other people filter through. some of them glance at your jacket, one of them is a beat reporter you've seen at maybe a dozen of these and she looks at you and looks at the jacket and looks at maya and then very professionally looks at her phone instead you appreciate that.
the door opens and lauren comes out still in warmup gear, hair re-done, face already clear of the game the way she gets after she processes fast, always has, moves on while you're still sitting in whatever just happened.
she spots you and maya immediately and the expression she lands on is the good one, the unguarded one, the one you got a long time ago in a parking lot at two in the morning and have been quietly carrying ever since.
she comes over, looks at you, looks at the jacket, then at her own jacket draped over her bag. "so," she says. "so," you say.
maya says "great game, lauren," and takes a large bite of pretzel and looks very pointedly at the middle distance lauren looks at you like she's asking a question you both already know the answer to.
you hold out approximately four more seconds of composure and then because she's looking at you like that, because maya is right there making no effort to leave, because ninety-three notifications became two hundred and you spent the whole second half not looking at your phone and feeling something warm and certain and entirely deliberate sitting in your chest like it had always been there, waiting you say "i loved it."
lauren tilts her head slightly waiting. "the whole thing," you say. "i loved it. i knew exactly what we were doing and i wanted to do it and i'd do it again."
she looks at you for a moment that sits long and quiet over the noise of the corridor then something in her face does what it does that particular settling, that confirmation of something she already knew and she says, soft enough that it's just for you."yeah. i know you did."
and she reaches over, just like this morning, just with two fingers, and fixes your collar again though you're pretty sure it wasn't crooked and then doesn't move her hand away immediately, leaves it there at the edge of your jaw for just a second, and you let yourself feel all of it.
the warmth of it, the length of it, three years of this building into an evening where you put on a jacket knowing full well and said yes anyway maya finishes her pretzel she doesn't say a single word.
she is, for once in her life, exactly the right amount of quiet you walk out of the arena together, all three of you, and somewhere behind you someone absolutely gets a photo, and tomorrow it will be everywhere, and you already know you won't mind.
you already know because you knew last night, in her hallway, when she held up two jackets and said what do you think and you said yes, obviously, before she finished the sentence on purpose both of you.
lauren pov:
she's already there when lauren comes out of the tunnel; this is not unusual; she is almost always already there early in the way that people are early when they care about something but don't want to make a thing of it, which is a quality lauren recognized immediately and has been quietly cataloguing ever since.
she sits in the same seat every home game, third row, slightly left of center, and she watches warmups with the focused stillness of someone who actually understands what she's watching, which is rarer than people think and which lauren noticed the first time and every time after.
tonight maya is with her lauren expected that what she didn't expect though she should have, because she knows her is the way she's sitting upright with a composed jacket on.
looking at the court with an expression that is doing a tremendous amount of work to appear casual, which means she's nervous, which means she's aware of exactly what tonight is, which means the yes from last night in the hallway was real and not just her being agreeable the way she sometimes is when she doesn't want to examine something too closely.
lauren goes to her spot on the three-point line and starts her stretch and finds her, the way she always finds her, the way that stopped being a conscious act sometime around november of last year she just looks over and there she is, it's that simple, it has always been that simple and something in lauren's chest settles into place like a mechanism clicking.
she raises her eyebrows: well?
she gets them back: they're losing it.
lauren lets herself smile, the real one, and turns back to the drill behind her she can hear, faintly, maya saying something emphatic she does not need to hear the words she has known maya long enough to know that whatever she is saying, it is accurate and slightly too loud and entirely deserved.
flashback westwood three years ago:
the party was at someone's apartment near campus, the kind where you know four people and spend most of the night finding corners maya had dragged you and then immediately disappeared with someone she'd been texting for a month, which was fine, which was genuinely fine, you were used to being left to navigate these things on your own and you were good at it in the specific way of someone who learned young how to seem comfortable in rooms where they don't entirely belong.
you were in the kitchen getting water when she walked in.
you noticed her the way you noticed weather not because you were looking for it but because the pressure in the room changed she was tall and she moved like she had decided exactly how much space she was going to occupy and had made her peace with that amount, which was more than most people and which she wore without apology.
she was with two other players you recognized from the women's basketball roster, and she was laughing at something one of them said, and then she stopped laughing because she looked up and saw you, you looked back this was probably your first mistake.
"excuse me," she said, navigating toward the counter. "sorry — is this—" and then she stopped she was close enough now that you could see her actually look at you, not the cursory social glance but the other kind, the one that takes inventory.
"never mind," she said, and leaned against the counter next to you instead of past you, and reached over your head for a cup you said."that was a committed redirect."
she looked down at you. "it was," she agreed, in a tone that offered no further explanation, and filled her cup, and didn't leave.
you talked for forty minutes in that kitchen you talked about nothing important the season, the campus, the specific social physics of parties where you only know four people and she was funny in a dry way that snuck up on you, and she listened the way very few people listened, like she was actually building a picture of you and not just waiting for her next sentence.
at some point her friends came through and she introduced you without breaking the conversation at some point your drink was empty and she handed you hers without being asked then someone needed her for something and she said hold on, two minutes, and was gone for fifteen, and when she came back you were gone.
you'd found maya and the night had moved and you'd told yourself it was fine, you were being practical, tall basketball players at late-night parties are exactly the kind of thing you don't follow up on if you're being sensible about your life.
three weeks later you were at a film screening for a class you hadn't expected to be in and she was there too, taking the seat next to you before she'd seen your face, and when she turned and realized she said. “you left.”
not an accusation just a fact just her, being precise you said. “you were gone for fifteen minutes.” but she said, “i came back.”
you didn't have an answer for when the lights went down you watched the film next to each other in the dark and afterward she said are you hungry and you said yes and that was the beginning of eight weeks of pretending you weren't both doing what you were clearly doing, which ended in the parking lot outside someone's end-of-semester party at two in the morning when you'd both run out of reasons to be anywhere else.
the parking lot was badly lit and the music from inside was still audible and she was leaning against a car that wasn't hers because the actual car she'd arrived in had left an hour ago with someone else and she'd stayed anyway, which you both understood the significance of and neither of you acknowledged directly.
you were sitting on the curb it was the kind of night that had already been long in the best way, the kind that sits loose and warm, and the conversation had gone somewhere real — families, what-you-want, the specific weight of being expected to already know the shape of your own future — and you were somewhere past the performance of it, both of you, which was new.
she said, at some point in the two-o'clock hour: "i kept looking for you. at things. after that party." you said. "you have my number."
"i know."
"you didn't use it."
"i know." a pause the music shifted inside. "i was being careful." you looked up at her from the curb you thought about the kitchen counter the film screening the fifteen minutes and the coming back.
you thought about eight weeks of careful and how it felt lately like something with too much pressure in it, something that was going to find its own release regardless of how sensible you tried to be. "about what," you said.
she looked at you for a long moment something in her face did the thing that settled, that confirmation of something she'd already worked out and she slid down the car until she was sitting on the curb next to you, shoulders touching, and said. "you."
that was all that was the whole sentence and you sat in it together until the sky started to go pale at the edges and eventually you went home and she texted you at eight a.m. the next morning like she'd been waiting for a reasonable hour, which she probably had, which was so entirely like her that you laughed out loud in your kitchen and maya came in and said what and you said nothing and you were smiling for the rest of the day.
that was three years ago that was before the draft, before dc, before courtside seats and pregame fits and ninety-three notifications and the jacket on the door before tonight
now:
the second half passes the way good games do fast, loud, with the particular momentum that makes the arena feel smaller and hotter, everyone leaning in maya has abandoned her phone this is how you know the game is good; maya has opinions about basketball that she normally drowns in running commentary but when it really gets going she goes quiet and just watches, and she's quiet now, both of you leaning forward in the third quarter when the mystics go on a seven-nothing run and the crowd gets loud enough to feel it in your sternum.
lauren gets six of those seven points when you watch her work and feel the thing you always feel watching her work, which is a kind of specific pride that you don't have a clean word for not possessive, not vicarious, just close like being near something that's operating at its full capacity and knowing you've seen it in every other mode too, have seen it tired and uncertain and funny at two in the morning, and understanding that those things are not separate from what you're watching now, they're part of the same whole.
she drives baseline in the fourth and you're on your feet before you've decided to be, and maya grabs your arm and you grab hers back and the shot goes in and the arena erupts and lauren jogs back up the court and doesn't look at you and you love her for that too, for the discipline of it, for the way she keeps those two things clean while she's working and then she does look, just for half a second, not the eyebrow thing, just a glance, just confirming, and you're already looking back.
maya makes a noise next to you that she would deny if asked.
@halfcourtshots — update: they have been making eye contact at regular intervals for two hours and the girl hasn't looked at her phone once. she is LOCKED IN. she is watching every single possession. i need to know who she is
@dcmysticstan — okay so her friend (brown blazer, has been on her phone all night) just grabbed her arm on that lauren betts baseline drive and she grabbed it back and i think i need to sit down
@bricksbylb — the way lauren betts has not once looked at the courtside girl during actual gameplay but the SECOND it goes dead ball she finds her in under a second. the SECOND.
@w.bballworld — someone in my mentions is trying to tell me the jackets are a coincidence and i just want to say: look at them. look at them and tell me that with your whole chest.
@hoop.diaries — it's the intentionality for me. it's not loud. it's not a show. it's just — they got dressed together and came here together and have been in each other's peripheral all night and none of it is for us. we're just allowed to see it.
lauren pov:
postgame is loud and fast and she moves through it on autopilot press availability, locker room, the particular comedown of a win which is different from a loss in that you have to perform being happy while also wanting very badly to be horizontal and quiet.
she answers three questions and thanks her teammates and changes and is out the door in twenty minutes because she has been doing this efficiently for long enough that it doesn't cost her much anymore.
the corridor outside is the corridor outside, same as every home game fluorescent and concrete and smelling like an arena, which is a smell she has known since she was twelve years old and that still, on good nights, feels like hers.
she sees the jacket before she sees the face of that particular ivory-cream against the gray concrete wall, and next to it maya's blazer, and between them the specific posture of someone who has been composed for several hours and is considering the cost of it.
she knows that posture she also knows has always known, since a parking lot at two in the morning that the composure is not dishonesty it's just the way she carries things she holds them close and steady and private until she decides to put them down, and when she puts them down she means it, and lauren has learned to wait for that because what's on the other side of it is worth whatever patience it takes.
she comes over she looks at her and at the jacket, at her own jacket draped over her bag she says."so."
she says. "so."maya is already looking at the middle distance, which lauren appreciates four seconds five and then something in her expression shifts releases and she says. "i loved it."
lauren waits. "the whole thing. i knew exactly what we were doing and i wanted to do it and i'd do it again."
lauren looks at her, she thinks of the parking lot, 2 a.m., the way the sky went pale she thinks of a film screening, the seat next to her in the dark she thinks eight weeks of being careful and then both of them giving it up at the same time she thinks about last night, standing in the hallway holding two jackets, watching her decide, and the yes that came before she'd even finished the sentence, which told lauren everything she already knew.
she says, soft: "yeah. i know you did."
she reaches over and fixes her collar, doesn't need fixing, she just needs to be touching her for a second, needs to close the distance by exactly that much and lets her fingers stay at the edge of her jaw a beat longer than necessary and watches her let it land.
both pov:
the beat reporter's name is diane chen she covers the mystics for a mid-size outlet, has done it for four seasons, and has seen approximately everything there is to see in a team corridor after a nine-point win.
she is a professional she has a professional relationship with the word no comment and uses it regularly she is standing fifteen feet down the corridor when lauren betts comes out and crosses to the two women waiting by the wall, and she watches the exchange with the practiced peripheral attention of someone who got into this job because she actually loved the sport and has spent several years learning to see the other things too the texture around the game, the things that don't end up in box scores.
she clocks the jackets she clocked them an hour ago, actually, when she was walking to her press seat and saw the third row, and made a small mental note that she filed under not my story, not tonight.
she watches lauren fix the collar she watches the way neither of them looks around to check who's watching.
she watches the friend who has been barely holding it together since at least the second quarter based on the body language finally exhale she makes another mental note and files it in the same place.
she has a player available to file in forty minutes she looks back at her recorder, clicks it on, and writes: betts: 24 pts, 8 reb, 6 ast. team-high in all three. said after: "just doing my job." she does not write anything else, some things are better witnessed than reported.
you walk out of the arena together, all three of you, and the night air hits you after hours inside and it's the good kind of cold, the kind that wakes you back up, and maya is on your left and lauren is on your right and somewhere behind you someone absolutely gets a photo you don't hear the shutter but you feel it, some sixth sense you've developed for being in lauren betts's peripheral, some calibration that comes from years of knowing what it means to be where she is — and you think okay. fine let them.
maya says. "i want it on record that i have been waiting for this specific evening for three years." lauren says."noted."
maya says. "i was there for the parking lot thing. i heard about it the next morning. i have been very patient."
"you have not been patient," you tell her. "you have been relentless."
"relentlessly patient." maya puts her hands in her pockets she is smiling the smile of someone who invested early and is finally watching the return. "i want it acknowledged."
"acknowledged," lauren says, and she sounds amused, genuinely, the low version of it that she saves for things she actually finds funny, and you feel it in the same place you felt the game, somewhere in the sternum, somewhere central.
you walk to the car the city is doing its late-night thing around you, traffic thinning, restaurants still lit, the specific urban quiet that isn't actually quiet, just a lower register of everything.
lauren's hand finds yours somewhere between the arena doors and the parking structure, easy, unhurried, not making a thing of it you don't make a thing of it either.
you just let your fingers close around hers and walk maya sees it she doesn't say anything she looks straight ahead and her jaw does a very small thing that means she is choosing silence as an act of tremendous willpower and you love her for it.
tomorrow it will be everywhere — the jacket photo, the corridor photo, probably the walking-out photo, all of it assembled into the narrative that people have been building in pieces for three years, finally given enough material to finish the picture.
there will be posts and reposts and the comments will be unwell and you'll probably read some of them in bed and feel the warmth of it, the particular warmth of something private going just barely public in exactly the amount you chose.
tonight, though tonight you're walking to a car in the cold and maya is on your left being very dignified about everything and lauren's hand is in yours and you're wearing the jacket, the one she held up in her hallway and said what do you think, and you said yes before she finished, and you meant it, and she knew you meant it, and you both knew exactly what you were doing and did it anyway.
on purpose both of you, three years in the making and absolutely worth every second of the wait.
