Chapter 4: The Ride Home
1905 Words
***
The parking lot was half empty by the time Maya packed up her camera.
Bus ride home meant a 45-minute trip back to Lincoln with the whole team, Coach, and chaperones. Maya was supposed to ride back with Jess and the yearbook crew.
Then her phone buzzed a text from an unknown number. Text: Outside, passenger seat. -E
Maya looked up through the glass doors of Westwood’s gym, she could see the parking lot. A beat up black Honda Civic sat idling under a streetlight. Elias was leaning against the driver’s door, his hoodie on with keys in his hand. He wasn’t looking at her, he was looking at the ground, toeing a crack in the asphalt like he was 12 again.
Her heart did that stupid thing again.
Jess appeared beside her. “Who’s texting you? Ooh, is it a boy?”
“No,” Maya said too fast. “I mean… I think Elias is giving me a ride.”
Jess’ eyes went wide, “Since when do you get rides from Elias Torres? Since when does Elias Torres give rides?”
“Since tonight,” Maya said. She slung her camera bag over her shoulder. “Save me a seat on the bus for Monday?”
“You’re seriously leaving? Without me?” Jess grabbed her arm. “This is a moment, Maya, document it.”
Maya smiled. “I will.”
She pushed through the doors. The cold air hit her face. November in Ohio didn’t mess around.
Elias didn’t look up when she approached. “You came,” he said, not a question.
“Coach said it was okay,” Maya said. “He said captains can arrange rides if parents sign off. My mom signed the form in September, for emergencies.”
“This isn’t an emergency,” Elias said. He opened the passenger door for her. “But I said next away game, right?”
Maya slid in, the car smelled like leather, old gym bag, and something like cedar. There was a Lincoln High parking pass hanging from the rearview mirror and a basketball. Not a game ball, a worn practice ball, sitting on the floor behind the passenger seat.
He got in, closed the door, and didn’t start the engine right away. For a second they just sat there, engine idling, Westwood’s gym lights buzzing above them.
“You don’t have to talk,” he said finally. “If you’re tired.”
“I’m not,” Maya said. “Are you?”
He shook his head and started driving. The lot was empty now, the bus had already pulled out.
They drove in silence for the first 10 minutes. Not awkward silence but the kind where you’re both replaying the game in your head. Maya watched the streetlights pass. Elias kept both hands on the wheel at 10 and 2, like Driver’s Ed had burned it into him.
“You really think I made the right pass?” he asked finally, his eyes on the road.
“Yes,” Maya said. “Number 10 was open, he’ll make that shot next time because you trusted him now.”
Elias exhaled, like he’d been holding that in. “Coach said the same thing in the locker room, but he has to say that, he’s Coach.”
“I’m not Coach,” Maya said. “I’m just… someone who’s watched you play for four years.”
He glanced at her, quick then back at the road. “Four years is a long time to watch someone.”
Maya’s face went hot. “Yearbook, I told you.”
“Yeah,” he said. He reached over and turned the radio on low. Classic rock, his dad’s station, probably, “yearbook.”
Another stretch of quiet, then “You ever play?” Elias asked.
“What? Basketball?” Maya laughed. “I’m 5’4”. I trip over my own feet.”
“You have good eyes,” Elias said. “For the game, most people just watch the ball but you watch everything else screens, cuts, defense.”
Maya blinked, no one had ever said that to her. “My dad coached rec league when I was little. Before he… before he moved.” She didn’t finish, she didn’t need to. “I just paid attention.”
Elias nodded. “My uncle taught me, he said, basketball’s like chess, but you’re running the whole time.” He tapped the steering wheel to the beat of the song. “You play chess?”
“No, but I take photos, she answered. It’s kind of the same, you’re waiting for the right moment.”
He smiled at that. Small, but it reached his eyes this time. “Right moment.”
They hit a red light, Elias stopped, for the first time he really looked at her, not the quick glance from the driver’s seat, he looked.
“You always sit in the same spot,” he said. “Third row, baseline, left side.”
Maya nodded but couldn’t speak.
“You always wear that gray Lincoln hoodie on away games, for luck, probably,” He added.
She was wearing it now.
“You always take photos right after I miss a shot, not when I score but after I miss.”
Maya’s throat closed up, four years and he’d noticed all of it.
The light turned green and he drove again.
“I don’t talk to people much,” Elias said, voice quieter now. “After games and before games. It’s easier not to though cause people want stuff, autographs, pictures. They want the version of me that scores 25 points.” He paused, “You never asked me for that version.”
Maya swallowed, “I like the version that helps the freshman after we lose.”
That made him quiet again but it was a different quiet, it was softer.
They pulled into Lincoln’s parking lot 30 minutes later. The lot was empty except for a few cars and the security guard’s truck. Elias parked under a streetlight, same as at Westwood.
He cut the engine but didn’t move to get out.
“You live on Elm, right?” he asked.
“Yeah, two blocks past the library,” She answered.
“I can drop you there but…” He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “You wanna sit for a minute before you go home and do homework and pretend this was normal?”
Maya looked at him, tired eyes with messy hair from pulling his hoodie off and on all night. He looked 17, not like the captain everyone expected to be perfect.
“Yeah,” she said, “a minute.”
He reached behind his seat and grabbed the worn basketball, set it in his lap, spinning it slowly with one hand like he did when he was thinking.
“My mom works the night shift at the hospital,” he said suddenly, “starts at 11 so after games like this, I’m usually home alone. I sit in my driveway and shoot until I’m too tired to think about the game.”
Maya hugged her camera bag. “Do you win, in your driveway?”
He laughed, real laugh this time. “Always, no defense in my driveway.” He spun the ball again. “You ever have nights like that? Where you can’t stop thinking about something?”
“Every Friday after a game,” Maya admitted. “I go home and edit photos until 2 AM. I tell myself it’s for yearbook, but really I’m just… looking at them, at you.”
The word hung there, honest, too honest.
Elias stopped spinning the ball. “You say my name like it’s not weird.” He said.
“Is it weird?” She asked.
“No,” he said quickly, too quickly. “It’s not weird. It’s just… no one says it like that, like they know me.”
Maya picked at the strap of her camera bag. “I do know you, not everything but I know you hate losing more than you like winning. I know you always pass to the freshman on the team. I know you shoot with your left hand when you’re tired and no one’s watching.”
Elias stared at her, “you’ve been watching me shoot left handed?”
“After practice when you think everyone’s gone.” She answered
He ran a hand through his hair, looked out the windshield. “Maya, I’m not good at this, at… talking, at whatever this is.”
“Me neither,” she said. “I’m better with a camera between us.”
He turned back to her. “Maybe we don’t need a camera.”
The word “we” did something to her chest.
Elias leaned back in his seat. “Senior year’s almost over. I’ve got maybe 20 games left, then college, then… I don’t know but I know I don’t want to spend all 20 games pretending I don’t see you in the stands.”
Maya’s breath caught. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I notice patterns too,” Elias said. “And the pattern is, you’re always there, and I’m always looking for you, even when I pretend I’m not.”
Maya didn’t know what to do with her hands so she reached over and touched the basketball in his lap just her fingertips on the worn leather.
“Senior year,” she whispered. “Last dance.”
“Yeah,” Elias said. He covered her hand with his for half a second, warm, calloused from the ball then he pulled back, like he was scared he’d moved too fast.
“Come on,” he said, voice rough. “I’ll walk you to your door. Mom’s gonna be home soon and s definitely he’ll ask why I’m late and I’ll have to tell her I was talking to a girl in a parking lot for an hour.”
Maya laughed, shaky. “What will you say about the girl?”
He opened his door, cold air rushed in. “I’ll say she knows basketball and she’s not scared of losses.” He walked around and opened her door too, gentleman move, awkward and sweet.
They walked the two blocks to her house in silence, not the tense kind but the comfortable kind like they’d done this before, even though they hadn’t.
Her porch light was on, mom’s car in the driveway, safe and normal.
Elias stopped at the bottom step. “Friday’s home game, you’ll be there?”
“Third row, baseline,” Maya said.
“Right side this time,” he said. “Better angle for photos, trust me.”
She nodded, unable to form words.
Elias shoved his hands in his hoodie pockets. Looked at his shoes, then up at her. “Goodnight, Maya.”
“Goodnight, Elias.”
He walked back to his car, didn’t drive off until her porch light clicked off behind her and she waved from the window.
Maya leaned against her bedroom door after, heart still racing. She pulled out her camera and scrolled to the photo from the bus, him, looking tired with a small smile.
She whispered to the empty room: “He sees me.”
Senior year, last dance.
And for the first time, she wasn’t dancing alone.
***
- Writer
