Yoongi was lying back on the bench in the empty gym. Practice had ended forty minutes ago, but he didn't really know what to do or where to go. He was still trying to make sense of all the noise in his brain.
First, hearing from his coach saying that he could go back to playing normal basketball.
Then hearing from his ex asking if they could talk.
Another ten minutes passed before Yoongi sat up and dialed a number on his phone.
"Yoongi, thanks for calling me," she said.
There was an awkward pause where both of them hesitated.
"I just-" she started just as Yoongi went to ask, "What did you-"
They both fell silent again. Yoongi decided that he would just wait for her to speak since she was the one who had pushed them to have the conversation in the first place.
"Hi," she said after a moment with a breathy chuckle. "It's been a while."
"Yeah." He hadn't talked to her since she'd broken up with him over text, and he didn't feel particularly inclined to make it easy for her now.
"Thanks for agreeing to talk," she said after realizing that he wasn't going to continue. "I know how I handled things back then was wrong, and I just...I don't know, I felt like we ended on the wrong foot and I wanted to revisit that."
"So...you want to break up with me again, but better this time?" Yoongi asked in a dry tone, raising an eyebrow.
"No! No, I just..." Another pause. Then, quietly, "I miss you."
"Well, that's what happens when you break up with someone," Yoongi said, crossing his arms even though he knew she couldn't see it. "You don't get to hang out with them as much."
"Yoongi, I'm sorry. I know I hurt you. But I want to try again. A relationship, I mean. With you."
"And this has nothing at all to do with me getting reinstated to the basketball team, right?" Yoongi asked with a roll of his eyes.
"What?"
"Be honest, for once," Yoongi said, clenching his jaw. He thought this would be easier, that he was completely over her, but he was surprised by how difficult it was for him to stay emotionally detached. "You broke up with me after I got suspended from the basketball team, and now you're only sniffing around again because the coach said I could play again."
There was a long pause. "Yoongi," she said, sounding incredulous. He could picture her eyes right now and how big they would be on her face. "Is that why you think I broke up with you? Because of basketball?"
"Yeah," Yoongi said. "The timing's more than a little coincidental, and when you told me literally nothing about why we were breaking up, that was the conclusion I came to. Are you trying to pretend that they're not related?"
"Yoongi, I broke up with you because you got more and more emotionally distant with me," she said. "The only thing basketball had to do with it is that you seemed to put more energy into your varsity sport than into our relationship."
Yoongi was quiet. "So why are you calling me now?"
"Because I heard you were helping out with the wheelchair basketball team," she admitted. "And it sounded, well, not very like you. So I was curious, and I wanted to see if you had changed, so I went to one of your games and I...you were smiling, Yoongi. Maybe you didn't even realize it, but you looked like you were having fun for the first time in a long time. And after the game, you were talking and laughing with your teammates, which I've never seen you do at a normal game."
