Los Angeles | 2009
Bradley's POV
After what my father called a practice session, I dragged my jelly legs and burnt body back to the house and crashed on my bed. I had a little over two hours before I had to go meet Alex, and right now, a bath and some rest sounded like the best thing in the world. As I limped through the entryway, I saw Erin playing with her toys on the living room floor.
"Brad, look! Dad got me a new toy!" she chirped, jumping to her feet and holding out a small, spiky-haired figurine. "His name is Naruto, he is a fox! Look, look, he has whiskers, hehehe."
Man, Naruto. The name was a jolt, a fond echo from my past life. Anime, like for so many others, had been a source of comfort for me. I had plans to watch it all again, but for now, introducing Erin to anime would be an adventure of its own.
"Hey, Bug, you know there is a show about him too?" I asked.
Her eyes bulged. "Really?! Can I watch, Brad? Put on the TV, I'll watch it!"
"Woah, calm down, Bug. I'll put it on the computer for you," I said, ushering her toward my room.
Within a few minutes, Erin was deep into watching the very first episode of anime in her life, her face an inch from the screen, her expression one of rapt attention. It's going to be her cocaine; I chuckled to myself as I headed for the bathroom.
As the hot water began falling on my head and the heat evaporated from my body, my mind, now free from some of the physical exhaustion, immediately went back to work. I began a mental inventory, a long-term plan to improve my dribbling. My left hand was a liability. It needed to be as much of a threat as my right. I needed to build up my hand-to-hand skills and level up my dexterity.
I started breaking it down, visualizing the movements: the fundamental crossover, between-the-legs, and behind-the-back dribbles for changing hands; the more deceptive hesitation and in-and-out dribbles for creating space; the basic control and speed dribbles to move the ball with absolute efficiency. It was a new set of drills, a new mountain to climb.
The shower washed away the grime of the court but did nothing for the bone-deep exhaustion. I collapsed onto my bed, not even bothering to pull back the covers, and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep that lasted for what felt like ten minutes but was actually two hours.
When I woke, the evening sun was casting long, orange shadows across my room. The air was still, and the only sound was the tinny clash of kunai and shouted dialogues coming from my computer speakers. I sat up, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, and looked at the desk. Erin was still there, in the exact same position I'd left her in, her face illuminated by the screen, her eyes red-rimmed and glassy. My prediction had been lethally accurate.
I walked over and gently saved the video player's progress before closing the program. "Okay, Bug," I said softly. "That's enough for one day. Your eyes are going to turn into square-shaped ramen bowls."
"Nooo!" she whined, her head whipping around, her expression horrified. "Just one more episode! Please, Brad! Kakashi is about to fight Zabuza! It's important!"
"Your eyesight is more important," I said, my voice firm as I switched off the computer. "Go rest."
"But Braaad..." she protested, her lower lip starting to tremble.
I played my trump card. "I'll tell Mom you've been staring at a screen for the entire afternoon without a break."
That did it. The threat of parental intervention was the one jutsu she couldn't counter. She huffed, stomped her foot, and stormed out of the room. "Meanest. Brother. Ever," she badmouthed me, just loud enough for me to hear as she went.
I chuckled, shaking my head. With the house finally quiet again, I glanced at the clock. It was time to go. I pulled a clean shirt and a pair of jeans from my closet, the thought of seeing Alex was most certainly welcome presence after a day of physical exhaustion. I got dressed and headed for the Dunphy house.
The drive to the Dunphy house felt different this time. The purpose wasn't to work on a project or to deliver a confession; it was simpler, and infinitely more complicated. I was just going to see my girlfriend.
I rang the bell, and when Alex opened it, the awkwardness was immediate but sweet. We both just kind of smiled, a mutual acknowledgment that we didn't really know what the protocol was for this new phase of ours.
"Hey," she said, her cheeks a little pink.
"Hey," I replied, a grin spreading across my face.
Claire's voice broke the spell from the kitchen. "Alex, who is it? Oh, Bradley! Come in, come in!" She appeared in the hallway, wiping her hands on a towel. "Just in time. We're having a family Scrabble deathmatch in a little while. You're officially drafted to my team. You look like you know a lot of seven-letter words."
"I accept the draft," I said with a laugh. She smiled and retreated back toward the kitchen.
"My room's this way," Alex said, rolling her eyes at her mom's competitive nature. "Haley's out, so we have a non-idiot-contaminated zone."
Her room was exactly as I'd pictured it: shelves overflowing with books organized by subject, a cello case leaning in the corner like a silent, wooden roommate. It was the meticulously organized sanctuary of a brilliant mind. She sat on the edge of her bed, and I took the desk chair.
"So," I began, eager to hear about her life outside of our shared school projects. "Catch me up. What's been going on in the Dunphy-verse?"
Alex let out a long, dramatic sigh. "Where do I even begin?" she said, a wry smile on her face. "Well, the usual chaos. Dad shot Luke with the BB gun he wasn't supposed to have, and then, in a stunning display of inherited genius, Luke shot me. So that's been delightful."
I chuckled. "Sounds about right. Did it hurt you?"
"A little but I'm okay", she replied.
"But that," she said, her eyes widening, "is not even the really big news. We were all invited over to my Uncle Mitchell's house for a 'big announcement.' And it turns out he and his partner, Cam, adopted a baby. From Vietnam. Her name is Lily. So, I have a new cousin."
It was fascinating, hearing the pilot episode of her life recounted from her own perspective. Her dry, sarcastic delivery was infinitely more entertaining.
"Wow," I said, playing along. "That's huge."
"You have no idea," she said, leaning in conspiratorially. "Because my Uncle Cam can't just do anything normally, he decided to introduce her to the family by holding her up in the air while 'Circle of Life' from The Lion King blasted from the stereo. He presented her to us like she was Simba."
I lost it, a deep, genuine laugh escaping me. She tried to maintain her serious, deadpan expression, but then her face broke, and we were both laughing at the sheer, wonderful absurdity of it all. Sitting there, in her room, listening to her stories, it felt like the most natural, comfortable thing in the world.
When our shared laughter finally subsided, a comfortable, happy quiet settled between us. Alex leaned back against her headboard, her expression turning from amused to genuinely curious.
"So," she began, "you never really told me. How did the matches go yesterday? Your text was a little… brief."
Here it was. I took a breath, determined to project the calm, strategic leader and not the frustrated kid who had felt the full, bitter sting of defeat. I couldn't tell her how much it had bothered me, how David's apology and my dad's speech were the only things that had pulled me out of the spiral. She had just called me her best friend; I didn't want her to see me as incompetent or weak.
"It was a good test," I said, my tone even and analytical. "We won the first three games, so we qualified for the playoffs next weekend. The last one was against that team from Loyola—Caleb and Ricky."
"Oh," she said, her eyes widening slightly. "I bet that was intense."
"It was," I confirmed, sticking to the facts. "They're a physical team, and they came in with a smart defensive strategy to counter ours. We fought hard, but they outlasted us in the end. It was a good lesson in conditioning and showed us how much harder we need to work if we want to beat them next week."
I left out the part where I felt like a complete failure. I left out the part where my own hubris had been thrown back in my face. She was looking at me with such open admiration, and the last thing I wanted to do was diminish that.
She seemed to sense there was more to the story, but she didn't push. "Well," she said with a small, supportive smile, "it sounds like you guys played really well to make it to the playoffs."
Before I could reply, her mom's voice echoed up the stairs, sharp and full of competitive fire. "Alex! Bradley! Scrabble! Get down here before your father tries to claim 'q-z-w-y' is a real word!"
Alex rolled her eyes, but the smile on her lips was genuine. "Duty calls," she said, sliding off the bed. "You ready to be destroyed by a true wordsmith?"
I laughed, the tension I'd been holding in my chest finally releasing. "We'll see about that, Dunphy."
The Scrabble board, set up on the coffee table, was less a game and more a battlefield. Claire had a determined, almost feral look in her eyes as she organized the tile racks.
"Okay, Bradley," she said, her voice low and serious. "You and me. We're taking them down."
On the other side of the board, Phil puffed out his chest. "Oh, you're going down, Pritchett. Team Phalex-L.A.—that's Phil, Alex, and Luke, obviously—is an unstoppable force of vocabulary!"
The match was as intense as Claire had promised, and as funny as anything involving Phil and Luke was bound to be. Phil tried to play "Quizardry" on a triple-word score, confidently declaring it a real word used by "cool wizards." Claire challenged him instantly, producing a dictionary with the speed of a gunslinger. Luke, for his part, managed to spell "F-A-R-T," which he found so hilarious he almost fell off the couch laughing.
Alex was their team's silent killer. She played with a quiet, focused intensity, dropping words like "JUXTAPOSE" and "ACUITY" with a small, challenging smirk in my direction. I held my own, partnering with Claire to build off her words, our dynamic becoming surprisingly tactical. We were a good team.
The game came down to the wire. It was our final turn, and we were down by twelve points. I looked at the seven tiles on my rack: Z-E-A-L-O-T-R-Y. My eyes scanned the board, a frantic search for an opening. Then I saw it. A single 'L' hanging just above a double-word score.
I carefully placed my tiles, connecting them to the 'L' to spell out my word. "ZEALOTRY," I announced, placing the last tile with a satisfying click. "That uses all seven letters, so it's a fifty-point bingo."
Silence. Phil's jaw dropped. Alex just shook her head, a look of grudging respect in her eyes. And then, Claire exploded.
She leaped to her feet, her face alight with pure, unadulterated triumph. She began a bizarre, shimmying victory dance around the living room, pointing a finger at a defeated Phil.
"I win, you lose! I win, you lose!" she chanted, her voice a sing-song taunt. "I win, you lose!"
I just sat there, laughing, completely in awe of the chaos I had just helped unleash.
Claire was still reveling in her Scrabble victory, her eyes shining with competitive fire. "You're not going anywhere, Bradley," she declared, pointing a triumphant finger at me. "You are my championship partner. You're having dinner here, and only then will you leave. We need to celebrate this victory properly."
How could I say no to that? I agreed, and the evening unfolded into a loud, chaotic, and somehow incredibly warm Dunphy family dinner. Phil told three terrible-but-endearing jokes, Luke tried to balance a spoon on his nose, and Claire and Haley got into a minor debate about the definition of "a reasonable curfew." Through it all, Alex and I just shared small, knowing smiles across the table.
A few hours later, it was finally time for me to leave. Alex saw me out, walking me to the front door and stepping onto the cool, quiet porch with me. The sounds of her family faded behind us, leaving us in our own small bubble.
"You know," I said, leaning against the railing, "for a boyfriend and girlfriend, we seem to spend a lot more time surrounded by each other's families than we do alone."
I saw a flicker of worry in her eyes, and I quickly added, "But I love it the way it is. I wouldn't change it."
The relief that washed over her face was visible, and she gave me a soft, genuine smile. "Me neither."
"Well," I said, my voice a little thick. "Goodnight, Alex."
"Goodnight, Brad."
And then, I did something completely unplanned, something my strategic mind had no say in. On pure, unthinking impulse, I leaned in and quickly kissed her on the cheek. Her skin was soft, and for a split second, the world seemed to stop. Then my brain caught up, and a wave of panic and exhilaration hit me at the same time. Without another word, I turned and practically ran down the walkway.
I scrambled into the back of Harris's waiting SUV, my heart hammering against my ribs. As the car pulled away from the curb, I chanced a look back. She was still standing on the porch, one hand raised to her cheek, her face the color of a perfect peach in the warm glow of the porch light. She was completely dumbstruck.
And all the way home, I couldn't stop smiling.
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AN:
That's all for this week. See ya Monday. Next week we get back into basketball again. Loan me some powerstones I gotta build my own basketball court.