Page 93 of Dropping the Ball

The doors open to Ty waiting for us. “Quitting time, boss. We good?”

Micah nods. “Go. See you Monday.”

“My mom said tell Tori she’s bringing pecan pie to Thanksgiving.”

“Best on the block,” Micah says.

“Best on the block,” Ty repeats, turning to signal the other guys to go.

I snatch off my hard hat, irritated I’ve been riding up and down in an elevator asking Micah to be my man while wearing it. Why does this man always see me at my worst?

I walk out to the warehouse and cut beneath the sculpture, wanting the fastest route to the exit. Micah calls my name, but I don’t look back. I leave the hard hat where I found it and head to my car, the other guys already pulling out onto the highway.

“Wait.” Micah’s hand closes around my wrist, the lightest hold.

I tug and he lets go.

He slides his hands into his pockets. His hair is a mess, sweaty and mashed. “Come for a ride around the block?”

“I need to get home.” To sulk.

“It’s my block. Five minutes. That’s it.”

“I’ve seen your block.”

“Please?”

Resisting will only make me look childish, so I walk to his truck. He opens the door for me, and a couple of minutes later, we’re pulling into his neighborhood. I stay quiet and study the houses in the dusk.

On his street, he slows below the residential speed limit and points to a small gray house. No fence, plain but neat. “That’s the Morrises. Their son joined the army when I was thirteen. They let me use their lawnmower to take over the yards he used to cut as long as I did theirs too. From that point on, no matter what,our power never got cut again if my mom forgot to pay because I always had enough saved to cover it.”

My jaw softens. But only a little.

He points to a yellow house on the other side of the street. “Mr. Martinez made sure I never had to bike to the bus stop in the rain. He’d wait in front of my house with his pickup truck for me to throw my bike in, and he’d drive me over.”

“At 6:30 in the morning?” I ask.

“Every single time it rained.”

He points out other houses to me as we roll slowly down the street. One who left new jeans and sneakers on his doorstep every Christmas Eve, but he only knew that because another neighbor told him. One who showed him how to pay the utility bill his mom had ignored and opened a bank account for him that his mom didn’t know about so she couldn’t clean it out on one of her shopping sprees.

There was the house where the dad had taught him to grill at the same time he taught his own kids.

Here was the house where a retired Sunday School teacher had lived. “At Easter, she’d gather all the kids on the street in her front yard and read them the Easter story from a children’s Bible. We all sat still for it too, because afterward, she turned us loose for an egg hunt in the back, and she made sure every egg had a dollar bill in it because Jesus paid for us.” He laughs. “That whole thing confused me for a long time.”

“She sounds sweet.” I can’t be sulky anymore.

“She was. When I got older, I’d bring her a potted lily every Easter Sunday until last year when she passed.”

We’re nearly to his house, when he stops at the red brick house before it. “That’s Jeremy’s house. His oldest just started community college. She wants to be a teacher. The younger one is a junior. I tutor him sometimes in trig.”

I’m struck again by how much was going on with him in high school. “I don’t know anyone like you. You go around giving and taking care of people like it’s second nature.”

“I was taught by the best.” He starts driving again, passing his house. “I’ll take you back now.”

“You’re blessed to have grown up on this street. It’s rare.”

He shakes his head as he turns onto the highway back to the warehouse. “It’s not. And you do know people like me. That’s what I wanted to show you.You’relike me, and you have people like me.”

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