You didn’t come for him.

You tell yourself that as you find your seat, as the arena hums around you, as the lights cut low and the court gleams like something holy. You came because you needed noise. Motion. A place where your thoughts wouldn’t echo so loudly back at you.

Basketball has always been easy to love. Even now.

You don’t wear his jersey. Don’t wear any team colors at all. Just black, clean lines, hair pulled back—effortless in the way you learned to be when you stopped dressing for someone else’s gaze.

When he jogs out for warmups, you feel it anyway.

Not a gasp. Not a flinch.

Just a stillness that settles deep in your chest, like your body recognized something your mind had already moved on from.

Carmelo Anthony hasn’t changed much. Broader now. Heavier with years, legacy, money, mistakes. Still moves like the court belongs to him—like it always did. Prime Melo. The kind of man who made headlines just by existing.

He laughs at something a teammate says, shakes out his arms, takes a shot from the elbow.

It sinks.

Of course it does.

You look away first.

You don’t see it—the moment his eyes drift, scanning out of habit, boredom, superstition—and land on you.

Don’t see how his smile falters. How his body stills mid-bounce. How the ball drops from his hands like he’s forgotten what comes next.

Because he knows you.

Not just your face. Not just the shape of you.

You.

The woman he lost loudly. Publicly. The woman the blogs dragged through speculation and sympathy and “she deserved better” headlines. The woman who left and meant it.

You who rebuilt quietly.

His chest tightens in a way it hasn’t in years.

He tells himself it’s coincidence. NYC is big, but not infinite. Celebrities show up all the time. You could be anyone.

But then you tilt your head, laugh at something the couple beside you says, and it’s the same laugh he used to chase across penthouse rooms and five-star hotels and silence he didn’t know how to sit with.

Fate, he thinks stupidly.

Fate, after all this time.

He plays out of his mind.

Shots falling. Focus razor sharp. Commentators praising his rhythm, his presence, his hunger. They don’t know it’s you in the stands, not the game, that’s got his heart beating like this.

At halftime, he keeps glancing toward your section.

You don’t look back.

And somehow—that hurts worse than if you had.

You didn’t come for him.

But as the arena roars and the man you once loved plays like the past is knocking at his door, you can’t deny the truth settling between your ribs:

Some loves don’t fade.

They wait.