“Yeah, it’s cool,” I say, and lay back on my bed. I want to tell her that it’s mostly a means to an end. That one day, after basketball takes me however far it will take me, I want to be a landscape architect. I want to design dope spaces that will bring people closer to trees. And my math needs to be on point for that. But just thinking about saying so many words right now is making my nerves act up again.

“What’s your favorite number?”

“I don’t know. I guess if I could name the largest number at any given moment, that would be my favorite.”

“Really? Why?”

“I don’t know. There’s something reassuring about the fact that numbers never run out . . . that they keep getting higher and higher, forever and ever. It’s like numbers never really die.”

“Oooo, I like that,” she says, in a voice that takes my mind back to kissing her. “But I thought you would’ve said twelve.”

Her shadowy lips pull away from mine, and I’m back to staring at my white ceiling. “Yeah, I guess twelve is my lucky number. It was on the very first practice jersey I wore. Picked it out of a bag at my first basketball camp when I was seven, and I’ve kept it ever since.”

“The number twelve is super connected to the cosmic bodies, you know.”

“Oooo, I like that,” I say, mimicking her again. Partly because it made her laugh when I did it earlier at the game, but mostly because it feels good having the sound of her in my mouth.

“Yeah? Well, I have more where that came from. Did you know that the moon moves twelve degrees around its orbit every day?”

“Nope.”

“Well, it does. And you know there’s twelve months in a year because they chopped up the number of days it takes the Earth to rotate around the sun by the number of days it takes the moon to rotate around the Earth, right?”

“Yeah, I think I knew that,” I answer, although I’m pretty sure I didn’t.

“And there are twelve zodiac signs.”

“You’re really into that kind of stuff, huh?

“Yeah, that kind of stuff is interesting to me,” she says defensively.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. It does sound interesting,” I try to assure her.

But she doesn’t respond.

I bring my hand up to my forehead, trying to think back to what I said and how I said it and how it might have hurt her, but I can’t find my crime. Doesn’t matter, I’m clearly guilty. I want to apologize and tell her I didn’t mean it, but I’ve already said that. Seconds of silence pass, and they feel like forever. “Sorry about earlier at the game. I would’ve stopped and said good-bye, but my coach.”