Page 15 of Skin Deep

Go to school.

Get a job.

Live a respectable life, even if some would say I was a sellout for representing criminals. But my perspective was different. Not all criminals were created equal. Sometimes people lose their way and need a little help getting back on track. I wasn’t naive enough to believe all criminals could be helped, since I’d been around them, but I was determined to take the bad with the good.

Then Mariposa Flores turned eighteen, and I added another item to my list.

Marry the girl.

When she’d made me see the light that night, it took me time to realize that I’d secretly promised to take care of her.

Give her something she rarely had in her life.

Stability.

Even though our struggles were worlds apart, I understood what it felt like to have the ground beneath my feet constantly feel unsteady. I’d be there to catch her before she fell. The one person she could depend on no matter what.

Her one phone call.

There was only one thing I didn’t take into consideration when my plan went into action, and I signed on to become a lawyer.

The job market.

It was inflated, and I didn’t have the good sense to work in law, get my feet in the door, before I committed to a profession that took me seven years to finish.

Years were the least of it. I spent countless seconds, hours, days, months, studying my ass off and doing whatever needed to be done to finish at the top of my class. I had no idea what television shows were popular when I was done because I’d had no time for it.

Probably better anyway. I had to sell my TV for extra money at some point.

There was nothing left for me to sell that didn’t mean something to me, and that worried me. Even though I was making it, I was barely making it. “Barely” made a huge difference. It stood between me and having everything I wanted in life.

If I couldn’t have this—the field—why couldn’t I have her?

“No good comes from thinking that hard.”

A grin came to my face before I even turned toward the voice. “I tend to agree.”

Jackie Mays ambled over to me, a brown paper bag peeking out of his pocket. I walked over and shook his hand, squeezing his shoulder, and we took two seats in the stands.

Jackie Mays not only signed my ball that day, but he became my mentor. Even after the accident benched me, he believed that I could still make something of my life. My parents went to him when they were worried about me. He tried talking some sense in me, too, but at the time, he stood for all that I couldn’t have. It took me time to realize that, even though he’d accomplished what so many men would love to, his life wasn’t without its struggles, either.

“Struggles and hard times are what makes us human,” he’d once told me. “If no one had them, none of us could understand each other. Some people claim they don’t know the meaning of love. But it’d be hard to find someone who’s never had a struggle or a hurt.”

“You feeling better?” I asked as he opened the bag and offered me a mandarin.

It was something we did from time to time. We shot the shit, gazed at the field, and ate whatever fruit he brought. He’d been battling pneumonia for the last two weeks and hadn’t been out of the house. I wondered if his wife, Mrs. Pearl, knew he’d left.

The rattling cough from his chest made me turn and look at him.

He showed me his orange. “I’m getting my vitamin C.”

“Mrs. Pearl?”

He grinned at me. “Out shopping with her sister.”

I held my hands up. “I shouldn’t be sitting here. When she finds out you left the house, I’m probably going to be charged with harboring a wanted criminal. I couldn’t stand it if she never invited me over for dinner again.”

We met at least once a month for dinner.

---