“Are you any good?”
“You kept it all this time?”
“Not really.”
“You had a glove.”
“Owning one and being good are different things.”
Lucas smiled.
They started throwing the ball, awkwardly at first.
One throw sailed too high.
“You had a glove.”
Lucas missed it and kicked the dirt.
“Sorry,” the man said. “That one was mine.”
“I should’ve caught it.”
“No. I threw it badly.”
I stood several yards away.
After a while, Lucas asked him something I couldn’t hear.
“I should’ve caught it.”
The man crouched beside him.
My body moved before I thought: one step forward.
Then I stopped.
Lucas looked at him.
The man answered.
I stayed where I was.
Lucas looked at him.
***
He didn’t suddenly become part of our lives because of one afternoon.
The first week, he called once.
The next week, twice.
He never appeared without asking.
He never tried to make Lucas call him anything.
He called once.
And when Lucas didn’t want to talk one evening, he accepted it.
I watched all of that.
Not because I trusted him yet.
Because trust wasn’t something I planned to hand over just because he’d finally decided to show up.
He was going to have to build it.
