Inside the Kentucky locker room, the victory was being celebrated. It was not the first time that Aaron and the rest of the team had won a game on an away court and felt that the locker room afterward had a different energy than that of Rupp Arena. But this time it was different because the city outside was his city, and that added a layer of satisfaction that he would not have known how to explain well with words.
Julius had looked at him when he entered the locker room after the media with that look of his that was not a question but was not neutral either.
"How is the chest?" he asked.
"Good."
"I saw it when you took off your jersey at halftime."
"I already know. Simmons said it is nothing."
Julius nodded, but kept looking at him a second longer than necessary before returning to his locker. That was also part of what this team meant: that nobody said too much but things didn't happen either without someone noticing them.
Julius was arguing with Andrew about which of the two had had the better game while James ignored them both with his headphones on and a smile that had not left his face since the final whistle. Someone had connected a speaker and the music competed with the conversations in a general noise that Aaron processed from his locker without participating too much.
He had just returned from the interview with the media. The questions had been the usual ones: the game, the bruise, how he felt. He had responded briefly and had returned before the journalist could formulate a fifth question.
Now he dressed quickly, passing the jersey carefully over the left side of his chest.
"Hey, Aaron," Julius called. "Tomorrow we have the day off. What is there to see in this city?"
"Everything," Aaron responded without looking up.
"More specific?"
"Brooklyn Bridge. Times Square. Chelsea Market if you want to eat something good."
"And Central Park?" asked James Young, taking off one headphone.
"Also."
"Are you coming with us?" asked Andrew.
"Tomorrow I'll see you," Aaron said, picking up his bag.
James Young took off the other headphone.
"That means he has plans," he said to Julius.
"Important plans," Julius confirmed with theatrical gravity.
Aaron ignored them both. Julius threw him a complicit smile as he crossed the door.
Outside the locker room, before Aaron noticed it, a journalist appeared who was the same one from the game against Michigan State, Sarah Kessler. She recognized him from afar and smiled at him with that professionalism of hers that was not cold but was not warm either. It was just efficient.
"Aaron, great game tonight. How is the chest after the hit?" she asked, with the microphone held high.
"Good. I have a bruise but nothing serious."
"23 points, 14 rebounds, 7 assists in 26 minutes. Would you expect this type of performance on your first visit to the Barclays Center?"
"I expect to perform well in every game. The court doesn't matter."
"Anything special about playing here in the Big Apple, the city where you grew up?"
Aaron thought for a moment before responding.
"Yes. But the job is the same."
Kessler nodded, she already knew his style, and did not insist further. Three questions, three answers. That is how it ended.
The corridor smelled of cold concrete. The fluorescent lights buzzed above his head as he walked toward the exit, with the noise of the locker room dying out behind him.
He pushed the door that led to the tunnel.
He saw them before they saw him. Melissa, Paola, Hector with Mia asleep on his chest, and Vicky in the back with the phone in her hand. A bit apart, with her coat still on and her scarf wrapped, was Hannah.
The second their eyes met, she was already in motion.
She did not walk. She ran the four steps that separated them and threw herself toward him with her arms around his neck, and Aaron received her with both arms circling her waist, absorbing the momentum with the same naturalness with which he had done it several times.
The kiss lasted as long as it had to last.
When they separated, Paola was applauding. Melissa was smiling with her eyes a bit bright. Hector looked away with a smile that he tried to hide without too much success. Vicky observed with wide eyes and her phone lowered.
"Welcome home," Paola said, opening her arms.
Aaron embraced her. Then Melissa. Then he hit Hector on the shoulder, who returned it.
"Good game," Hector said.
"Thanks."
Mia remained asleep during the whole exchange, completely oblivious, with her cheek flattened against her father's shoulder.
Vicky approached with the expression of someone who has a lot to say and does not know where to begin.
"Hi," she said finally, extending her hand. "I'm Vicky. Hannah's friend."
Aaron shook her hand.
"Aaron."
"I already know who you are," she responded with a brief laugh. "The whole stadium knows who you are."
They were together for about twenty minutes in the outer hallway, with the December cold seeping in from the street. Paola asked again about the bruise, Aaron said it was nothing for the millionth time so far that night, she said it was something and that player should be ashamed, and Aaron let the topic exhaust itself.
Vicky finished letting loose in the last ten minutes. She asked about the skyhook, about whether the Barclays Center was different from playing in Rupp Arena, about whether Julius Randle was going to do what he did against Michigan State in every game. Aaron responded to everything calmly, which was exactly the way Vicky needed someone to talk to her about basketball to start truly understanding it.
Hannah listened to them from the side with a calm expression. When their eyes crossed with Aaron's, he held her gaze for a second before returning to the conversation.
Paola, who did not miss a single detail, leaned toward Melissa.
"The two of them are fine," she murmured.
Melissa nodded without saying anything.
"That elbow was on purpose and we both know it," Paola insisted.
"It already passed," Aaron said.
"That it already passed doesn't mean it's okay."
"Paola," Melissa said softly.
"I'm only saying what it is."
Hector looked at Aaron with that expression of his that did not need words but also knew when to let a topic rest.
Then Melissa looked at the clock.
"Mia has been asleep for two hours," she said.
It was enough as a signal. Paola picked up her bag. Hector repositioned Mia into a more comfortable position without waking her.
"We'll see you tomorrow," Melissa said, embracing Aaron once more before letting him go.
Vicky looked at Hannah. Hannah returned the look.
"I'm leaving too," Vicky announced, picking up her bag with a speed that would have been comical in any other context. "It has been a pleasure, Aaron. Seriously."
"Likewise."
Melissa was the last one. She said something in Aaron's ear before letting him go. He nodded. Then the taxis took everyone away and the hallway was left empty.
Aaron and Hannah were left alone in front of the Barclays Center with the December cold and the noise of Brooklyn around them.
She rested her forehead against his chest, careful of the left side. Aaron put his hand on the back of her neck.
"I'm glad you came," he said.
"Me too," Hannah responded.
Hotel Room
"Ungh" was the sound of moans that was heard inside the room where two bodies found themselves covered by the bed sheets and with their clothes scattered across the floor of the entire room.
"Ungh I'm close," Hannah moaned while she had her legs around Aaron's waist, letting herself be carried away by the pleasure she was feeling at that moment.
"Ihh," with a moan that resonated throughout the room, Hannah reached orgasm while Aaron paused his thrusts, seeking to prolong her pleasure until a few strikes later he also reached climax.
The room was in silence.
Hannah had her head resting on Aaron's chest and one arm crossed over his torso. The sheet covered them to the waist. Outside, the muffled noise of Brooklyn at midnight arrived filtered through the glass.
Aaron looked at the ceiling with open eyes.
Hannah shifted her hand slightly to the left, tracing the outline of his chest in a distracted manner, and Aaron made an involuntary grimace and caught his breath.
"Ouch," Aaron said, raising his head suddenly. "I'm sorry," Hannah told him.
"It's nothing."
"I touched your bruise."
"I already know."
She propped herself up on her elbow and looked at him. Then, carefully, she turned on the light of the nightstand lamp and observed the bruise in the dim light. In that light, it looked darker than under the fluorescent lights of the locker room.
"Aaron."
"The team doctor said it's not serious."
"The team doctor didn't see what I'm seeing now."
"Hannah."
"Does it hurt when you breathe?"
"A little. Not much."
She looked at him for one more second. Then she rested her head again, this time on the right side, carefully.
Silence.
"Why didn't you answer my messages?" Aaron asked.
Hannah took a moment.
"I was with exams."
"I know. But it wasn't just the exams."
Outside, a taxi honked its horn twice. Then silence.
"It's difficult," Hannah said finally. "You are there and I am here and both of us are busy all the time and sometimes days pass and when I want to talk to you it's already eleven at night and you have practice the next day."
"I know."
"An then I see you on television doing what you did tonight and I think that you are in another world completely different from mine."
"It's not another world."
"Sometimes it seems like it."
Aaron considered that.
"And tonight?" he asked.
Hannah took a moment to respond.
"Tonight it doesn't seem like it."
Aaron processed that.
"When summer arrives," he said, "I want us to come here together. No game, no family, no anything. Just us."
Hannah looked at him.
"Do you realize that in the summer you will probably be in the draft?" she said.
"I know. But before the draft there is time."
She did not respond immediately. Outside a bus passed and the noise filled the silence for a moment.
"Okay," Hannah said finally.
"Okay?"
"Okay."
It was not a big commitment. It was just a word. But in the vocabulary of both, that night, it was enough.
He searched for her hand under the sheet and found it. She intertwined her fingers with his.
They had been in silence for a while when Hannah spoke again.
"Your mother told me something before leaving," she said.
"What did she tell you?"
"That when you were little and something worried you, you never said it. That one had to guess by how you moved your eyes."
Aaron processed that.
"And?"
"That lately you move your eyes a lot when I ask you how you are."
Aaron did not respond immediately.
"I'm fine," he said finally.
"I know. But there is a difference between being fine and being truly fine."
Silence.
"It's a lot of pressure," Aaron said. "Not the kind that scares me. But it's there."
"I imagine."
"And sometimes when I call home and you don't answer, I think too much about it."
Hannah raised her head and looked at him.
"I'm going to answer more," she said.
"You don't have to promise it to me."
"I'm not promising it to you. I'm telling you."
There was a difference between the two things and both of them knew it. Aaron nodded.
"We have to talk about this seriously at some point," Hannah said.
"I know."
"Not now."
"No. Not now."
Another silence. More comfortable than the previous one.
"The physiology exam was remarkable, by the way," Hannah said.
"Yeah?"
"It could have been more."
"But it was remarkable."
"Yes."
Aaron squeezed her hand.
"That's good."
She drew a bit closer and he noticed the familiar weight of her head on his chest and thought that there were things that did not need more explanation than that.
"I came," Hannah said after a while, in a very low voice.
"I know," Aaron responded.
Tomorrow there was a day off and a flight back to Lexington at seven in the evening.
But that was tomorrow.
He thought about the season: 8 games, 8 victories. About the bruise that tomorrow would hurt more than today. About all the names he did not know were following his career from different cities. About the flight back to Lexington tomorrow at seven in the evening. About Monday's practice. About the game the following week.
He thought that four years ago he played on the courts in the park in front of his house with the sneakers that his mother had given him for his birthday and that now he was in a hotel room after having won his eighth college game with the number one team in the country.
And that outside it remained the same city.
And that the girl who had her hand intertwined with his had come from Columbia by subway to see him play, without telling him until the last moment, and that this also meant something that did not need to be named.
He thought about Hannah, who had been asleep for a while with her hand still intertwined with his.
Tomorrow they would fly to Lexington in the afternoon. The day after tomorrow he would have practice at six in the morning and Calipari would ask him how his chest was with a look that did not admit vague answers. After a few days another game, another city, another locker room.
That's how this was. And it was exactly what he had chosen.
And while he thought about it, without fully realizing it, he also fell asleep.
Aaron closed his eyes and listened to Hannah's breathing, which was slow and regular, and the noise of Brooklyn outside, and the almost imperceptible hum of the air conditioning, until all of that became a uniform background and he stopped thinking about anything
Authors thought
What did you think of today's chapter? Give me your opinions and thoughts.
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