A Ring for the Team Photo

My pretend fiancé could hold my hand for a photograph, but he wouldn't catch the basketball.

It bounced once between us and rolled beneath the registration table. Wes watched it go. I bent to retrieve it, my costume ring catching on the tablecloth.

"You're supposed to be the athletic one," I said.

"You coach."

"Eight-year-olds. Their main tactic is forgetting which basket belongs to us."

Usually that would have made him laugh. Today he pressed his left hand deeper into his jacket pocket.

We were raising money to keep the community center's evening gym open. I organized the junior league. Wes, once a promising college player, volunteered with the teenagers after a shoulder injury ended his competitive career.

The fake engagement began with a joke at a planning meeting. A committee member asked why two people who spent so much time arguing about gym schedules weren't married. Wes said he was waiting for me to propose. I slid a plastic whistle ring onto his finger.

Somebody took a photograph. The brochure designer wrote that our love had begun on the court. We caught it after printing. I wanted an immediate correction. The committee chair said the story was charming and nobody was deciding grant eligibility on our marital status.

That was true. It was also beside the point.

Wes said we could wear the joke through one event, then correct it online. I agreed because the program mattered, and because pretending to be wanted by him was easier than asking.

Now a banner displayed our names beside the words A PERFECT MATCH.

A donor arrived carrying a basketball. "A little exhibition after the auction? Show the kids what you can still do."

Wes smiled without answering.

"He coaches now," I said.

"Even better. Two minutes."

The donor, Mr. Ellis, owned the hardware store and had paid for our backboards. He wasn't cruel. He thought encouragement meant refusing to believe someone had limits.

Wes knew that kind of encouragement too well.

I had seen a brace in his bag last week. I'd also found pages of drills in the equipment cupboard, adapted so a coach could demonstrate without overhead movement. He snatched them away when I asked.

I assumed he was planning a comeback, perhaps a coaching job that would take him away. I told myself I was annoyed about losing a volunteer. It sounded more respectable than being afraid he would leave before I admitted what I wanted.

At six, the photographer positioned us under the banner. "Closer. You're engaged."

Wes put his arm around my waist. He smelled of laundry soap and the orange he'd eaten instead of dinner. I could feel him holding himself carefully.

"Does that hurt?" I whispered.

"Not much."

"That's not no."

He lowered his arm. The photographer sighed. I asked for a minute.

In the equipment room, Wes sat on a crate of cones. I closed the door halfway, leaving us private but not hidden.

"You don't have to play."

"I know."

"Then say it."

He looked at the ring on my hand. "You make that sound easy."

I wanted to tell him I understood. But I had spent the week smiling beside a lie because telling the truth might cost us money and me a fantasy.

"No," I said. "I don't get to say that."

Outside, the microphone squealed. The auction was about to start. Mr. Ellis had added an exhibition with Wes to the running order without asking either of us.

I opened the door and saw the printed program on a chair. Beneath his name, someone had written COMEBACK NIGHT in marker.

Wes stood behind me. "Before you fix this, I need you to know what you're fixing."

I turned back and waited.

His specialist had told him the week before that a return to competitive play wasn't a realistic goal. He'd suspected it for months. The brace wasn't temporary preparation. The drills were a new way to stay in the gym without performing the old version of himself.

"I thought you loved that guy," he said, nodding toward the banner photograph, where he held a ball above his head.

"I barely knew that guy. I know the one who waits with Mia until her dad gets off work."

He looked away. I let him.

"And the one who needs someone to argue with about schedules," I added. "I'm extremely qualified."

He laughed once, shakily.

We went to the committee chair together. I said the engagement copy needed correcting tonight. Wes said he would not play an exhibition. We offered a shooting game the children could run and a short explanation of what the evening gym actually provided.

The chair worried about embarrassing the donor. I said we'd speak to him ourselves.

Mr. Ellis listened badly at first. "You shouldn't give up."

"I'm not giving up the gym," Wes said. "I'm giving up being your demonstration."

That landed. Mr. Ellis looked at the program, folded it, and apologized. He didn't withdraw his donation. One auction bidder did leave when there was no celebrity-style exhibition. We lost the amount she had informally promised. I crossed the proposed new equipment off my shopping list and kept the evening staff hours. The children needed someone present more than matching balls. We recorded the actual total, not the total we wished we'd raised.

Before the auction, I corrected the banner story at the microphone. "We're two volunteers who let a joke become publicity. That was our mistake. The program is real. Let me tell you about it."

The teenagers ran the shooting game. Wes kept score with his left hand. Nobody asked why.

After cleanup, I returned the costume ring to the prop box. Wes leaned against the table.

"Would a real date be a terrible administrative complication?"

"Probably. We'd need a schedule."

"You'd hate mine."

"I already do."

He held out his hand, the one that didn't hurt. I took it. We walked out past the banner, which the committee had turned around so the blank side faced the room.