“Hey T.J., do you think she’s gonna finally notice me after I hit that game winner?” Robert Covington asked his teammate T.J. McConnell.
T.J. squinted his eyes in confusion. “Who’s ‘she’?”
“Ariana Grande, duh,” Robert answered, as if his secret undisclosed crush was widely-known public knowledge. “She probably saw my cool demeanor after it went in and was attracted by my lax, who-cares attitude. Or she thought that me being so clutch is such a regular occurrence that I didn’t even care that it happened again. She’s probably telling all her friends right now about how much of a stud I am.”
“Or she doesn’t know who Robert Covington is and she doesn’t care about the Sixers or even basketball in general,” T.J. rebutted. “At least Joel is, like, a superstar in the making, so his weird obsession with Rihanna kinda stands a chance. You’re just, you know, Robert Covington. And she’s Ariana Grande.”
Robert was offended. “You saying I don’t have a chance with Ariana? Because I totally do. She might be the hottest girl on the planet but I’m at least in the top quarter of all dudes. That’s not a huge difference.”
“Sure. If you say so,” T.J. said.
Suddenly remembering his teammate’s relationship status, Robert blurted, “Hey, you’ve got a girlfriend, right? How did you get her to like you? Did you make a bunch of game-winning three-pointers in front of crowds of thousands?”
T.J. furrowed his eyebrows. “I just used my personality and good looks. Since she wasn’t a celebrity I didn’t have to do much else.”
“Oh,” said Robert, disappointed that his teammate didn’t have any more advice than that. “I love Ariana Grande.”
T.J. stood up from his seat. “Cool. I gotta get going. Good luck with, uh, getting her to notice you.”
“I love her,” Robert repeated, pulling out his phone to navigate to her Twitter for the twentieth time that day. “I wonder if she tweeted about me yet.”