“Nigel?”
“Yeah?”
“Tell me about the first time you saw me. After. At the practice.”
He was quiet for a long time.
“You were wearing a blue sweater,” he said. “You had your hair pulled back. You were tapping your foot. Fast, like you were nervous. And when I said my name, you tilted your head. Exactly the way you did when we were kids, when you were trying to figure out if I was lying.”
“Were you?”
“Yes,” he said. “That first day, I was.”
“And after that?”
He reached over in the dark and found my hand.
“After that,” he said, “everything I ever told you was true. Except the one thing.”
That fall, a year after the surgery, I asked him to take me back to the park.
Our old park. On our old street. Two hours away.
He didn’t want to. I could see it on his face. But he drove me.
