Page 194 of ClickBack

He points at me like I caused it.

Rae and Jeremy are closer to the dugout. Byron sits a few places down with Sutton, holding a small bag of sunflower seeds. He offers the bag to Zion when the boy comes over for something from Jeremy, then turns his backward cap around. Zion flips it back before he reaches the gate.

“Just like his mother,” Byron says.

Rae looks over. “I heard you.”

“You were supposed to.”

She rolls her eyes at him, smiling. He is good at being her father. I’ve seen enough of it to understand why that part of him still matters here.

Then he looks toward the kids waiting by the fence.

“Didn’t realize his last game came with a celebrity appearance.”

Giselle turns. “Jarrett came to see Zion.”

“I know what he came for.”

I hold Byron’s look until he goes back to his seeds.

The game gets my attention. Zion argues with himself after a bad throw, makes the next one clean, and looks toward Jeremy for the signal to settle down. In the fourth he drives a ball through the left side, gets to second ahead of the throw, and slides like the whole season depends on it.

I laugh loud enough for him to hear. He comes up dusting his pants and trying not to look pleased.

“Keep encouraging him,” Byron says, “and he’ll think he needs a personal trainer.”

Giselle turns fully this time. “He has coaches.”

“It was a joke.”

“Was it a good one?”

Sutton says something low to him. He stops talking for the rest of the inning.

During the changeover, Rae comes up the bleachers and squeezes onto the bench beside her mother.

“You really told all those kids you’d stay?” she asks me.

“Yeah.”

“Zion’s been telling everybody you were coming.”

“I told him I would.”

She watches him jog back onto the field. “He didn’t even ask me to check.”

I look at her. She smiles without turning away from her son, then gets up when Jeremy calls her down.

Cedar Mill wins. The boys come out of the dugout loud enough to make it sound like a championship. One hands Zion a ball covered in their signatures. Another immediately tells him Charlotte baseball is trash, and a hug turns into a headlock before anybody has to admit what this is.

Zion laughs. Then his eyes fill, and he wipes them with the bottom of his jersey, threatening the first boy who notices.

Giselle looks away just long enough to get herself together.

His parents reach him first. Byron follows, holding him close and saying something I can’t hear. Zion hands him the signed ball, and Byron turns it carefully, looking for a clean place to hold it.

“Keep this out of that bag,” he tells him.