A Very Large Expanse of Sea(57)

We were sitting in his car in the parking lot at IHOP.

Ocean rested his head against the window, his eyes squeezed shut, as he told me about the most recent development in this shitstorm. His coach had been begging him to make the whole thing go away, and he’d said it would be easy: the school would issue a statement saying it was a stupid hoax, that the whole thing was nonsense, no big deal. Done.

I frowned.

Ocean looked upset, but I couldn’t understand why. This didn’t seem like a terrible idea. “That actually sounds like a great solution,” I said. “It’s so simple.”

Ocean laughed then, but there was no life in it. And he finally met my eyes when he said, “In order for the statement to stick, I can’t be seen with you anymore.”

I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. “Oh,” I said.

In fact, it would be best, his coach had said, if Ocean were never publicly associated with me in any way, ever again. There was already school drama circling the two of us, and now this, the picture of us together, he said, was just too much. It was too political. All major news outlets seemed to indicate that we were about to go to war with Iraq, and the news cycle, though always insane, had been perhaps especially insane lately. Everyone was on edge. Everything was so sensitive. Ocean’s coach wanted to tell everyone that the photo of us together was just another part of the prank, that it had been photoshopped, but this explanation would only have been believable if Ocean also promised to stop spending time with me. There could be no more photos of the two of us together.

“Oh,” I said again.

“Yeah.” Ocean looked exhausted. He ran both hands through his hair.

“So, do you”—I took a quick, painful breath—“I mean—I’d understand if y—”

“No.” Ocean sat up, looked suddenly panicked. “No—no, hell no, fuck him, fuck all of them, I don’t care—”

“But—”

He was shaking his head, hard. “No,” he said again. He was staring at me in disbelief. “I can’t believe you’d even— No, it’s not even a discussion. I told him to go to hell.”

For a moment, I didn’t know what to say. I felt anger and heartbreak and even, suddenly, an immeasurable swell of joy, all in the same moment. It seemed impossible to know which emotion to follow, which one would lead me to the right decision. I knew that just because I wanted to be with Ocean didn’t mean it would—or should—work out that way.

And my thoughts must’ve been easy to read, because Ocean leaned in and took my hands. “Hey, this isn’t a big deal, okay? It seems like a big deal right now, but I swear this will blow over. None of this matters. They don’t matter. This doesn’t change anything for me.”

But I couldn’t meet his eyes anymore.

“Please,” he said. “I don’t care. I really don’t. I don’t care if they cut me from the team. I don’t care about any of it. I never have.”

“Yeah,” I said softly. But I’d have been lying if I said I didn’t think my presence in his life had only made things worse for him.

He didn’t care.

But I did.

I cared. Things had been snowballing, fast, and I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t scared anymore. I cared that Ocean was about to be blacklisted by everyone in this town. I cared about his prospects. I cared about his future. I told him that if they cut him from the team he’d lose his chance at getting a basketball scholarship, and he told me not to worry about it, that he didn’t even need the scholarship, that his mom had set aside some of her inheritance to pay for college.

Still, it bothered me.

I cared.

I was shaking my head, staring into my open hands when he touched my cheek. I looked up. His eyes were anguished.

“Hey,” he whispered. “Don’t do this, okay? Don’t give up on me. I’m not going anywhere.”

I felt paralyzed.

I didn’t know what to do. My gut said walk away. Let him live his life. Even Navid told me that things had gone too far, that I should break things off.

And then, the next day, Coach Hart cornered me.

I should’ve known better than to talk to him alone, but he caught me in a crowd and managed to bully me, loudly, into coming into his office. He swore he just wanted to have a friendly chat about the situation, but the minute I stepped inside he started shouting at me.

He told me I was ruining Ocean’s life. He said he wished I’d never moved to this town, that from the moment I’d shown up I’d been a distraction, that he’d known all along that it must’ve been me putting ideas in Ocean’s head about quitting the team, causing trouble. He said that I’d shown up and made a mess of everything, of the entire district, and couldn’t I see what I’d done? Parents and students across the county were in chaos, games had been postponed, and their reputation was on the line. They were a patriotic town, he said, with patriots among them, and my association with Ocean was destroying their image. This team mattered, he said to me, in ways that I could never understand, because he was sure that wherever I came from didn’t have basketball. I didn’t tell him that where I came from was California, but then, he never gave me a chance to speak. And then he said that I needed to leave Ocean the hell alone before I took away every good thing he had in his life.