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You already lost what mattered most.

I texted Bianca.

Cam

I'm doing it now. Tonight. I'm sorry.

The reply came in under a minute.

Bianca Bardot

Don't be sorry. I'm up. Go.

I picked up the phone again. I didn't let myself read it a fourth time.

I posted it. It was 10:51 PM.

The first post in twelve years that nobody had approved but me.

The next hour was unlike anything I'd ever lived through, and I've played in two championship runs and ten All-Star games.

My phone stopped feeling like a phone. Notifications arrived faster than I could read them, a nonstop stream of names and numbers and alerts that blurred together. My teammates. My family. Former teammates, coaches I hadn't heard from in years, people I'd only ever seen on television, journalists asking for comment. Bianca, calling twice in the first ten minutes, sounding more awake than I'd ever heard her.

Reebok texted. Then called.

I hadn't let myself imagine how big the support would be. I'd always kept hope in controlled doses. Now, it came at me all at once. Messages from people who said they'd been waiting years for this. Messages from teenage girls that I couldn't read all the way through yet, because my vision kept blurring. Messages from players across the league. From coaches. From other athletes, out and not, saying thank you and welcome and finally.

The other kind came too. I read a few before I stopped. They said what I'd always known some people would say. I felt them hit, and then I set the phone down and breathed, and found out the hit was survivable.

What I'd been most afraid of for twelve years had happened.

And I was still here.

My father called. He cried, which I'd heard him do maybe twice in my life: at my grandfather's funeral, and the night we won our first championship.

"Your mother and I are proud of you," he said, slowly, the way he said everything that mattered. "We've always been proud of you. But tonight, I'm not proud because of what you did. I'm proud because of who you are."

My mother took the phone from him. For a long moment, she didn't say anything at all.

Then, "My brave girl."

That was all.

It was enough.

Sometime after midnight, I was still at the counter, the house lit up against the dark hills, when a name I hadn't expected appeared in my messages.

Karlie.

Not a comment. A direct message, which meant she'd thought about it before she sent it.

Karlie

I saw it. I'm proud of you. Genuinely. I know what it cost you. Whoever she is, she's lucky. You finally found someone worth the sacrifice.

I looked at it for a long time.

Then I wrote back.