A Very Large Expanse of Sea(47)

I just smiled at him.

“Uh-uh. No,” he said, and shook his head. “No smiling. I will be back here in exactly one hour, and no smiling. I want your happiness level to be, like, medium, when I come back here. If you have too much fun I’ll end up having to kick someone’s ass.” He looked at Ocean. “Listen,” he said, “you seem like a nice guy, but I just want to be clear: if you hurt her, I will fucking murder you. Okay?”

“Navid—”

“No, no, it’s okay.” Ocean laughed. “It’s fine. I get it.”

Navid studied him. “Good man.”

“Bye,” I said.

Navid raised an eyebrow at me. Finally, he left.

Ocean and I were suddenly alone in the parking lot, and though the moon was a mere crescent in the sky, it was beautiful and bright. The air smelled fresh and icy and like a particular type of vegetation I’d never learned the name of, but the scent of which seemed to come alive only in the late evenings.

The world felt suddenly full of promise.

Ocean walked me to his car and it was only after I was buckled in that I realized I’d never asked him where we were going. Part of me didn’t even care. I would’ve been happy to just sit in his car and listen to music.

He told me then, without my asking, that we were going to a park.

“Is that okay?” he said, and glanced at me. “It’s one of my favorite places. I wanted to show it to you.”

“That sounds great,” I said.

I rolled down the window when he started driving and leaned out, my arms resting on the open ledge, my face resting on my arms. I closed my eyes and felt the wind rush over me. I loved the wind. I loved the scent of the night air. It made me happy in a way I could never explain.

Ocean pulled into a parking lot.

There were gentle, grassy hills in the distance, their soft contours lit by dim uplights. The park seemed vast, like it went on and on, but it was clearly closed for the day. The thing that made the whole thing shine, however, were the bright lights from the adjacent basketball court.

It wasn’t impressive. The court looked weathered, and the hoops were missing nets. But there were a couple of tall streetlamps, which made the space seem imposing, especially this late at night. Ocean turned off his car. Everything was suddenly black and milky with distant, diffused light. We were silhouettes.

“This was where I first learned to play basketball,” he said quietly. “I come here when I feel like I’m losing my mind sometimes.” He paused. “I’ve been coming back here a lot, lately. I keep trying to remember that I didn’t always hate it.”

I studied his face in the darkness.

There was so much I wanted to say, but this seemed like such a sensitive topic for him that I also wanted to be careful. I didn’t know if what I wanted to say was the right thing to say.

Eventually, I said it anyway.

“I don’t get it,” I said, “why do you have to play basketball? If you hate it, can’t you just—I don’t know? Stop?”

Ocean smiled. He was looking straight out the windshield. “I love that you would even say that,” he said. “You make it sound so simple.” He sighed. “But people here are weird about basketball. It’s more than just a game. It’s, like, a lifestyle. If I walked away I’d be disappointing so many people. I’d piss off so many people. It would be . . . really bad.”

“Yeah, I get that,” I said. “But who cares?”

He looked at me. Raised his eyebrows.

“I’m serious,” I said. “I don’t know anything about basketball, that’s true, but it doesn’t take much to see that people are putting pressure on you to do something you don’t want to do. So why should you have to do this—put yourself through this—for someone else? What’s the payoff?”

“I don’t know,” he said, and frowned. “I just, I know these people. Basketball is, like, the only thing I even talk to my mom about anymore. And I’ve known my coach forever—I knew him even before I started playing in high school—and he spent so much time helping me, training me. I feel like I owe him. And now he’s relying on me to perform. Not just for him,” Ocean said, “but for the whole school. These last two years—my junior and senior year—I mean, this is what we’ve been working toward. My team is counting on me. It’s hard to walk away now. I can’t just tell everyone to go to hell.”

I was quiet a moment. It was becoming clear to me that Ocean’s feelings about this sport were far more complicated than even he let on. And there was so much about this town and its interests that I still didn’t understand. Maybe I was out of my depth.

Still, I trusted my gut.

“Listen,” I said gently, “I don’t think you should do anything that doesn’t feel right to you, okay? You don’t have to quit basketball. That doesn’t have to be the solution. But I want to point out one thing. Just one thing I hope you’ll think about the next time you’re feeling stressed about all this.”

“Yeah?”

I sighed. “You keep focusing on whether or not you’ll disappoint all these people,” I said. “Your mom. Your coach. Your teammates. Everyone else. But none of them seem to care that they’re disappointing you. They’re actively hurting you,” I said. “And it makes me hate them.”