The usual loneliness of his second-floor studio apartment changed the moment the ball sailed into the basket at the final buzzer. Outside, street cheers shifted his solitary state into a sense of belonging to something significant beyond him. The Royals basketball team won it all. For miles, the crowd’s roar echoed beneath Jameson Rivers’ window. ...

We called them The Untouchables and had code names for each one. There was Herman, The Mountain, and Jeeves. Those were the names of our crushes, and our freshman intro classes were large enough that at least one of us had classes with them. The Mountain was my crush. He was tall, seemingly unapproachable, and ...