May 16, 2014
The court across from the apartment building had been there since before Aaron could remember—one of those spaces the neighborhood had absorbed into its natural geography over the years, until no one thought of it as something that had been built at a specific point in time, but simply as something that existed, like the subway entrance on the corner or the laundromat in the next block. Aaron had played on that court since he was five years old and knew every crack in the asphalt and every rebound angle off the left backboard, which differed from the right one because someone had repaired it poorly sometime in the previous decade.
He stepped out of the building with the ball tucked under his arm at ten in the morning on a Thursday in May, under a Queens sky displaying that specific shade of blue typical of spring days before the heat becomes heavy enough to weigh the city down.
And he noticed someone was already on the court.
The figure stood on the left side, at mid-range distance roughly fifteen feet from the rim, taking solo shots with the concentration of someone who had been there for a while and wasn't shooting to warm up, but to work something out. The rhythm was consistent, yet there was a tension in the shoulders and a way of retrieving the ball after each attempt that lacked the relaxed pace of a practice session, carrying instead the slightly forced tempo of someone trying to locate something that had slipped away.
Aaron paused at the entrance to the court and looked closer.
It was Drew, his best friend since age fourteen—who apparently hadn't been able to stay home doing nothing either.
Drew hadn't seen him arrive. His eyes were locked on the rim, ball in hand, preparing for another shot. Aaron waited. Drew released the ball. It struck the side of the rim with that specific angle of rebounds that are destined to miss before they even bounce off, ricocheting toward the baseline. Drew clicked his tongue—a brief sound of annoyance that Aaron recognized without needing context.
Aaron crossed the threshold of the court.
"I haven't seen you miss that many shots since we were fifteen," Aaron said.
Drew turned around. The expression that crossed his face during the second it took him to process who was speaking was that distinct blend of surprise and relief people show when the exact person they needed to see appears, without having realized they needed to see them.
"Bro," Drew said.
"How long have you been out here?" Aaron asked.
"A while." Drew walked over to pick up the ball that had bounced toward the baseline. "It's an off day."
"I can see that."
Drew returned to the mid-range spot, set his feet with his usual meticulousness, and shot again. The ball traveled toward the basket, hit the backboard with more force than necessary, and bounced outward once more. Drew stared at the rim for a second with the look of someone engaged in a conversation that was going nowhere.
Aaron thought back to the tournament. Villanova had made it to the third round of March Madness, which under any other circumstance would have been a respectable result for a freshman in his first college season. But Aaron knew, having known Drew for so long, that he hadn't gone to Villanova just to reach the third round. Drew had gone to Villanova to push further than that, and when the game against UConn closed off that possibility, something in him had shifted in a way only perceptible to someone who knew him well.
Aaron set his own ball on the ground, closed the distance between them in three strides, and stripped the ball from Drew's hands with the clean motion he had practiced on these courts for years—the exact same move with which he had picked Drew's pocket hundreds of times since they both began training seriously on this asphalt.
"Hey," Drew said.
Aaron didn't answer. He drove from where he stood with the ball in his right hand, took two steps toward the rim with an imaginary defender closing in from the left, executed the eurostep that shifted his momentum away from his initial path, and finished the play with a soft left-handed layup that kissed the glass before falling through the net.
Drew muttered something that sounded like showing off.
Aaron retrieved the ball as it bounced off the pavement and flipped it to Drew, who caught it against his chest.
"What's going on?" Aaron asked.
Drew bounced the ball twice. Then a third time. It was his subtle habit whenever he was organizing his thoughts before speaking—a different gesture from when he had nothing to say, because he rarely had nothing to say, and Aaron had learned to distinguish between the two since they were fifteen.
"I expected to go deeper," Drew said finally. "First season in the NCAA, you know how it is. I thought we could push past the Sweet Sixteen."
Aaron nodded without speaking. It was the right response.
"And on top of that, we lost to UConn," Drew said. "The team that almost won the whole championship. Which in theory means we weren't that far from where we needed to be. But that doesn't change the fact that we were knocked out."
"No," Aaron said. "It doesn't change it."
"It was easier with you," Drew said, and the way he delivered the line carried no tone of complaint, but rather something far more precise—the observation of someone comparing two realities with complete honesty. "At Christ the King. When we were both on the same team."
The air carried a scent Aaron couldn't find anywhere else. It was the combination of damp park soil, asphalt that had been absorbing heat for months, and fresh coffee from the corner bakery that opened early and sent its aroma across the sidewalk. It was the smell of having grown up in a specific place, distinct from the scent of any other location even if the individual elements were similar. Aaron had missed it in Lexington without realizing he missed it until he returned, and the first step out of the subway station had brought it all back.
Aaron reflected on that. On the Royals' gym with packed stands on Friday nights. On the bus rides to away games with headphones on, watching the city pass by through the windows in the opposite direction. On locker rooms smelling of liniment and the old wood of the benches. On coaches shouting instructions from the sideline that felt urgent in the moment, and in retrospect had been every bit as important as they seemed.
"We were good," Aaron said.
"We were really good," Drew said. "And above all, we had fun. That's the one thing you can't bring to college with you—the team you already had. The guys who already know you without needing explanations."
There was something in the silence that followed that Aaron couldn't have named with precision, but which he recognized because he had felt it before in other moments with Drew—on the buses back from away games, on summer afternoons when they trained until the daylight vanished, in the kind of conversation where both were talking about one thing while actually addressing something much larger. About how fast things move when you're caught in the middle of them, becoming clear only when you pause for a moment.
Aaron looked at the court. The same court where both had spent hundreds of afternoons after high school, refining skills they eventually brought to larger arenas. There was a crack in the pavement near the three-point line on the right side that Aaron recognized without looking—the same crack as always, slightly widened by the winter, yet remaining unchanged at its core.
"Do you remember the game against Cardozo in the semifinals?" Aaron asked.
"The one we won in overtime with your half-court buzzer-beater?"
"That one."
"How could I forget?" Drew said. "I still have the newspaper clipping of that game pinned to my bedroom wall."
Aaron smiled. It was the kind of game that exists only in high school basketball, where the bleachers are wooden, the gym ceiling feels too low, and everyone in the crowd knows someone on the floor—reasons that gave those games a specific weight that big-stadium matchups didn't always carry in quite the same way.
"What about the state championship game?" Drew asked. "First half, third minute—you ask for the ball and I don't give it to you."
"I didn't ask for it."
"You asked for it."
"I asked you to place it properly for me." Aaron tossed the ball to Drew. "There's a technical difference."
Drew caught it with one hand and laughed for the first time since Aaron had arrived on the court—also the first moment in a while where the frustration over missed shots vanished from his face, leaving behind the friend Aaron recognized without context, the exact same guy with four more years added on.
"You know what was the best part of those years?" Drew asked, dribbling the ball at a more relaxed pace now.
"What?" Aaron said.
"We never had to explain anything to each other on the court. I knew where you were heading before you got there. You knew I was setting the pick before I even called for it. That kind of chemistry isn't built quickly."
"No," Aaron said. "It isn't built quickly."
A quiet fell over them—not the silence of a finished conversation, but of one that had reached the exact point it needed to reach, leaving both of them to process it simultaneously.
Drew dribbled the ball once more, held it still in his hands, and looked at the rim for a moment.
"Listen," Drew said, deliberately shifting his tone. "I've made my decision."
Aaron waited.
"I'm playing another season at Villanova. I'm staying in the NCAA for one more year."
Aaron nodded. It came as no surprise. He had sensed it in the messages over recent weeks—in the specific tone Drew used when he was processing an option versus the tone he carried once a decision was finalized, and he clearly possessed the latter now.
"Are you sure?" Aaron asked.
"Yeah. I need another season. I need to push further. And when I enter the draft, I want to arrive with more games under my belt, not just a handful."
"Makes sense," Aaron said.
"You're entering the draft this year."
"Yeah."
Drew nodded. He dribbled the ball once, then again, maintaining that rhythm he defaulted to when weighing a thought he wanted to express, calibrating his words with care.
"So next year you'll be in the NBA," Drew said. "And I'll still be in the NCAA. Then the year after that, if things go well, I'll enter the draft too. And if things go well with that, we'll both be in the same league at the same time."
"That's the plan," Aaron said.
"That's the plan," Drew repeated in the same tone, devoid of irony.
Another silence followed, shorter than the last, carrying the weight typical of exchanges that have arrived precisely where they belong.
Drew dribbled the ball several times without speaking, digesting the thought. It was one of the qualities Aaron valued in Drew without ever having put it into words: Drew genuinely processed things instead of responding before finishing his thought, meaning whenever he spoke, it was because he had already made up his mind rather than deciding as he spoke. That was rarer than it seemed.
Drew launched the ball toward the rim one more time. This time it went through clean, touching nothing but the net, producing that soft swish of a perfectly executed shot.
Both watched it drop.
"There it was," Aaron said.
"About time," Drew said.
Aaron thought, as he watched Drew retrieve the rebound, that there was a unique quality in the way Queens kept people connected even after they left. Both had moved away to attend universities in other states, in cities where no one knew them, and both had returned to the exact same spot without coordinating it—to the same familiar court, as though a gravitational pull in the asphalt brought you back whenever you needed to think clearly.
Drew secured the rebound, dribbled twice, and then stood still, looking at Aaron with the expression of someone who had one final thing to say and knew he needed few words to deliver it.
He extended his fist toward Aaron.
Aaron looked at it for a second. It was the same gesture they had shared on the Royals' court, in high school hallways, in hundreds of goodbyes and reunions since age fourteen—a simple ritual that had built the architecture of their friendship in a way neither had planned, but which had simply taken shape because it was the only natural way it could.
Aaron smiled.
He extended his fist and bumped it against Drew's.
The sound was the same as always. The sound of Queens. The sound of two people who had known each other before things turned serious, and who knew they would meet on the other side.
Authors thought
Quick question: Should Drew make it to the NBA next season, or should he play a few years in Europe so that Aaron has a reason to travel there and maybe meet Alica Schmidt?
What did you think of today's chapter? Give me your opinions and thoughts.
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