There were plenty of people outside the locker room. The team’s families and friends waiting for us to come out. People were hanging around to congratulate us on our nail-biting win. But today there were more there than usual, thanks to the media. Some knew what the news crews were waiting for, others were just curious. Human interest about today’s human interest story.

Leo’s was the lone brown face in the crowd. Katie was there, but she was already in the grip of Layton’s proprietary arm. My brother and some of his friends were there, too, and of course, Paul, who smiled and gave me a thumbs-up that was both hokey and endearing.

My parents were nowhere to be seen. I had told them not to wait for me, and that I’d get a ride home, but I thought they might be there anyway. Moral support and all. Maybe they didn’t know there were reporters waiting for me, or maybe my dad didn’t want to get pulled into an interview, him being a minor celebrity and all.

I didn’t see the Edwards there, either. No reason for them to linger—they knew nothing had happened, because there wasn’t a sixth one in their midst. Were they disappointed, confused, troubled by my dimensional fumble? I had no clue what their reaction would be.

The news crews were patient in their impatience. They didn’t crowd me; they waited for me to approach them. Layton met my eye just before I engaged with the reporters. Then he turned to leave with Katie in tow before I said a word—making sure that I saw him turn his back on the whole thing. I’ll admit I was pretty smug at having upstaged Layton and his game-saving play. No one wanted to talk to him. But I can’t forget that look on Katie’s face as she left, and that resigned slump of her shoulders beneath the yoke of his arm—as if she had no choice but to leave with him.

But you do have a choice, Katie. Why can’t you see that?

The reporters started asking the same questions they had when I first arrived. I told them to stop.

“Will you be willing to give us a full interview?” one of them asked.

“Depends on what you mean by interview,” I told them. “I’ll answer questions until I don’t feel like answering them anymore.”

In 2016, nearly fifty people were killed by a gunman armed with semiautomatic weapons at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando. In 1998, Matthew Shepard was tortured, beaten, then tied to a fence and left to die, just because he was gay.