Anfernee Simons had arrived early at the arena to get some extra shots up. Coach Stotts had warned him that most of the regular lineup was resting, so Anfernee wanted to make sure he was loose and limber for what was sure to be more minutes than he had ever received before.
As he put up jumpshot after jumpshot, running after his own misses because he had beaten all the ballboys there, Anfernee got the sudden feeling that he was being watched. He looked over to the courtside seats and saw that one of them was occupied by a man with his feet up on the seatback in front of him.
“Dame! You’re here early,” Anfernee said, tucking the ball under his arm and walking over to his teammate.
“Not as early as you, rook,” Damian Lillard replied between bites of his microwaveable bean-and-cheese burrito, which was still emanating steam from being freshly cooked. “The three point stroke is looking nice.”
“Thanks,” Anfernee replied. For some reason, talking to Damian always made him feel like a hero-worshiping kid, even though their conversations were definitely of the player-to-player variety and not the fan-to-player kind. It was sometimes hard to believe that he was playing alongside one of the players he had looked up to as a high-schooler. “Gotta be ready for tonight. Stotts is gonna give me some big minutes.”
Damian smiled and laughed. “Yeah, and I get a mini-vacation. A bit of a break before the playoffs.” He went to take another bite of his burrito, then stopped as it was halfway to his mouth and looked at it. After contemplating it for a moment, he offered it to Anfernee. “You know what, I’m not hungry. You have this.”
“I couldn’t,” Anfernee refused, hoping he was being polite enough. No matter how much he admired Damian both as a player and a person, he wasn’t interested in sharing spit with him via a 75-cent burrito.
Damian jabbed the burrito towards Anfernee’s face. “No really, I don’t want it,” he said, sternly enough that Anfernee reached out and grabbed it.
Not wanting to damage their friendly relationship, Anfernee took a medium-sized bite of the burrito. He tried to focus on the taste of the tortilla, the beef, the cheese, not the fact that the end of the burrito was slightly warm and wet from where Damian had been biting off it. It was tasty enough, but he really couldn’t eat the whole thing: too many heavy foods before the game would slow him down.
Damian was smiling to himself as if thinking about something pleasant. Suddenly, he snapped back to reality. “You should do great tonight with that burrito in you. They always work for me.”
Anfernee couldn’t recall that Damian had ever made a habit of eating cheap gas-station burritos before games, but decided that he just hadn’t been very observant. “Yeah. For sure.”
Standing up from his seat, Damian clapped Anfernee on the shoulder. “I gotta go get taped up. You’re gonna kick ass tonight, man. I can feel it.”
“I hope so,” Anfernee said, feeling like he had less confidence in himself than Damian had in him. When Damian had left the arena floor, Anfernee took another look at the burrito. Parts of it were already being digested and having certain…side effects…on his digestive system. What was so special about the burrito anyway? It couldn’t have any special effects on him, could it?