Foosball

Evan was clearly losing and had no desire to admit it.

"That doesn't count," he protested.

"It went in the goal," I replied.

"Your guy was out of position," he argued.

"That's not a rule," I countered.

"It should be," he insisted.

He twisted the rod and reset the ball, and I allowed it because the game was loud, the basement was cozy, and I was three days away from the second cycle's IE week. The nausea had finally eased enough for me to stand there without having to do math about it. That felt like something worth holding onto. So, I let him reset.

His basement was finished in a way that showed someone had put thought into it. There were built-in shelves, a TV that clearly wasn’t an afterthought, and recessed lighting on a dimmer that was set low. It was the kind of room that existed because someone had written a check, not just because things had piled up over time. The foosball table was in the center, looking like it had always been the main attraction, which made sense.

Evan stood at the foosball table like it was second nature to him, which it probably was, with his weight on one hip and fingers relaxed on the rods. He had that particular ease of someone who was really good at something and didn’t have to think about it anymore. I had noticed this when we started playing and filed it away with all the other things I had been noting about him for the past two months.

He wasn’t the most observant person I had ever met. But he was funny in a genuine way, the kind that came from actually paying attention rather than trying to get attention. Plus, he had texted me after cycle one to check in without making a big deal out of it. That meant something to me.

I had been observing him since September, trying to decide, without fully admitting it, if he was someone I could trust with my feelings. The answer kept coming back unclear. Not a definite no. Just not yet, not yet, not yet.

We had been playing for forty-five minutes. He grabbed a soda from the mini fridge and handed one to me without asking, which felt either bold or insightful, and I couldn't quite figure out which. He made a joke about my defensive strategy that was actually pretty clever. He paused twice to dramatically reenact a shot he had made, complete with commentary, and both times I laughed, surprising myself each time.

The thing about Evan was that when he wasn't putting on a show, he was genuinely good company. He had been performing less often lately. I had noticed that.

He reset again, and I let him, and somewhere along the way, we started keeping score on the honor system, which meant he was generous with his own tally while mine was not, and we both knew it but didn’t mention it.

Until just now, apparently.

The ball came my way, and I spun it back hard, and it bounced off his goalie. I said, without really intending to: "I have cancer."

The rod in his hand froze.

The ball rolled to a slow stop against the side wall.

I hadn’t meant to say that. I had actually planned to score and then comment on his goalie positioning, and the evening was supposed to keep going just like it had for the last forty-five minutes—easy, loud, and requiring nothing from either of us. That was the plan.

But instead.

"What?" he asked.

"Ewing sarcoma. It’s a bone cancer. Stage two. I’ve been in treatment since October."

He didn’t look at me. He was staring at the foosball table, at the little frozen players and the still ball, with an expression I couldn’t fully interpret from the side. Something was going on in his face that he was trying to hide, and he was mostly succeeding, which told me something.

I waited.

The mini fridge hummed. Somewhere upstairs, a door opened and closed.

Then he bent down, grabbed the ball, and put it back into play. He lined up for a shot with a focus that seemed unrelated to the actual shot. He took it.

Missed entirely. The ball veered off to the left, hit the wall, and bounced back to the center, going nowhere.

In the two months I had been observing him, I had never seen Evan miss a shot he was aiming for.

He was silent for a moment.

"Okay?" I asked.

"I don't know what else to say." He continued to stare at the table. His jaw was moving in a way that was unusual for him. "I don't know what you're supposed to say to that."

"That's actually fine," I replied.

He turned to look at me then. I noticed a change in his expression, the ease fading away, replaced by something more cautious. He was someone who was used to things going his way, and this was a situation he couldn't control, standing very still in the midst of it.

"How long have you known?"

"Since September. The ER. I've been going to Children's since then."

"And you've been attending school."

"Most days."

He took that in. Glanced back at the foosball table. Picked up the ball again and turned it over in his hand, not playing, just holding it.

"The game in September. You were already." He paused.

"Yeah."

He placed the ball back on the table but didn’t put it into play. His hand lingered on it for a moment. I observed the tension in his shoulders and considered what it cost him to simply stand there and do nothing with this information, and I thought about what it would have cost me, six weeks ago, if someone had dropped it on me unexpectedly.

A lot. It would have cost a lot.

"Are you..." He hesitated.

"The outlook is positive," I mentioned. "It's stage two. They caught it early. There's a lot of treatment ahead, but the outlook is positive."

He nodded, once, as if he was filing away the information.

"Does it..." There was a pause. He seemed to struggle with finishing his thoughts, which was unusual. Evan was never one to have trouble with words.

"It hurts at times. The treatment is often worse than the tumor itself. I feel tired a lot." I took a breath. "But tonight is actually a good night."

Something changed in his face at that moment. Not pity, which I had been ready for. It was more like he was recalibrating, adjusting his perception of me to include this new reality, and realizing it fit differently than he had anticipated.

"Alright," he replied, his tone softer this time.

The corner of his mouth twitched, just a little. Not a full smile, but more like a hint of one that came before you decided to fully embrace it.

He initiated the game.

I spun my rod and blocked his shot, and the game continued, louder than before because we were both putting in more effort than necessary, and we didn’t mention it.

He scored on me three times in the next ten minutes, which I chose to see as him processing rather than actually being better than me, even though he was indeed better than me. The mini fridge buzzed. Somewhere upstairs, another door opened and closed. We didn’t discuss it, nor did we pretend not to discuss it, which was a thing in itself. It just lingered in the room with us, a third presence, while we kept playing.

In the end, he lost by two. He argued about it all the way to the car.

We didn't say much on the way there. He had the radio turned down low, his window slightly open, and his hands were relaxed on the wheel like they usually were, but not quite, and I noticed because he switched the station twice without really finding anything to listen to. I gazed out the window and let him enjoy the silence.

He stopped in front of my house, shifted into park, and the radio was still playing while neither of us moved for a moment.

"So," he said.

"So."

"Next time, I'm going to help you score two goals."

"You lost fair and square."

"You had inside info on how I was feeling."

"That’s not how foosball works."

"I’m changing the rules." He paused, and the radio filled the silence. "There’s a place on Fifth that serves really good ramen. I was thinking maybe Saturday."

Not exactly a question. Not really a statement. It was the kind of tone someone uses when they want to keep a door open but pretend they’re not.

The back of my neck felt warm.

"Saturday could work," I replied.

He nodded, staring at the steering wheel. "Cool."

"Cool."

I got out of the car. He waited until I reached the end of the front walk before driving off, which I only knew because I heard the engine change, and I didn’t look back.

I reflected on the shot I had missed.

For two months of observing him, Evan had never shown any signs of being shaken. He moved through spaces as if everything would turn out alright, and for him, it usually did. He had a certain arrogance typical of someone who had been the most attractive person in most places since middle school and had simply come to terms with it. Not out of malice. Just used to it.

And he had missed a shot he didn’t intend to miss, which indicated that something had affected him.

He had remained. That was another point. He understood and stayed in the basement, continued playing, said okay, contested the final score, drove me home, and inquired about ramen, and all of that was significant.

I still wasn’t sure what it meant. I lacked the words to express it. I just knew I had confided in him, and he hadn’t run away, which felt sufficient.

For two months, I had been weighing whether to trust him with this.

It seemed the choice had been made for me.

The porch light was illuminated when I arrived at the house. Through the front window, I could see the blue glow of the TV, either Dad or Pops still awake, and Bernard’s shadow moving past the glass because he always sensed when someone was returning home before they arrived.

I paused on the front step for a moment.

Evan had missed that shot.

I stepped inside.