LITMIR.BIZ

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said, heading to the hostess stand. He offered the hostess another smile. “You got a table for two, darlin’?”

      “I sure do.” She took two glossy, oversize menus from beneath the podium. “This way. Your server will be right with you.”

      Despite the undercurrent of flirting with the waitress, Bo was irritated. “You should’ve told me you were hungry,” he said. “I’m not a mind reader.”

      AJ regarded him solemnly across the table. “I don’t know what you are. I don’t know you at all.”

      “I’m your father, that’s what I am. And it’s not my fault you don’t know me. It’s not your fault, either.”

      “Sure, let’s blame Mom for everything,” AJ said.

      All right, so this was going to be an emotional minefield. Bo was bad at blindly feeling out someone’s vulnerable areas, particularly with a boy who was a stranger. An angry, resentful stranger.

      “I’m not looking to blame anybody,” he said, trying for a kindly, reasonable tone. Wasn’t that how you talked to a kid? With kindness? “Your mother isn’t to blame for anything, AJ. She made the best choices she knew how to make under the circumstances. I respect her for that.”

      The boy stared at the menu, his face expressionless.

      “Sorry I sounded pissed. I’m mad at myself, okay?” Bo continued. “Not at you. I’m new to this—to being in charge of a kid. I should have asked if you were hungry, or if you needed the restroom, but it didn’t occur to me. I’m not a subtle guy, AJ, and I’m not real smart about a lot of things. Sometimes you’re going to have to speak up, spell out for me what you need. Can you do that?”

      “I guess.”

      “Good.” He picked up the carafe the hostess had left at the table. “Coffee?”

      “I’m a kid. I don’t drink coffee.”

      What Bo knew about kids would not fill the stoneware mug in front of him. “Well, then, take a look at the menu and order anything you want.”

      The waitress came, and AJ asked for a blueberry muffin and a glass of milk.

      “Oh, you gotta do better than that,” Bo said. “I mean it, AJ. Anything.”

      The kid packed away food as if he was hollow inside. A stack of pancakes, steak and eggs, a ham sandwich, a vanilla milkshake. Watching him eat, Bo felt oddly gratified. He didn’t know why. There was something primal about feeding the boy, watching him fill himself up like a tanker taking on fuel. If he ate like this all the time, maybe he’d grow.

      Bo had a club sandwich and coffee, wishing it was a beer. As he paid the tab, he felt AJ’s eyes on him.

      “What? You need something else? Dessert?”

      “No, just … thanks.” The kid’s gaze shifted to an array of pies in a revolving lighted display case.

      “We’ll take that, too,” Bo told the waitress. “The apple pie.”

      “Two pieces?”

      “Nah. The whole pie, to go.”

      Once they were back on the road, Bo felt downright talkative, thanks to the coffee. “So what’d you think of your first airplane ride?” he asked AJ.

      “It was okay, I guess.”

      “You know, I was even older than you when I first took a plane flight. Summer before my senior year of high school. I made the same flight you just did—Houston to New York. It was for an all-star baseball team that brought together kids from all over the country. We got a chance to work with a coach named Carminucci. Dino Carminucci. He had a big career with the Yankees for a while. He’s retired now, but manages the Hornets these days, which is the reason I ended up in Avalon a few years back.” He paused, trying to figure out if AJ was interested in talking.

      The boy kept his eyes straight ahead on the gray horizon.

      “The Hornets,” Bo explained, “that’s my team in the Can-Am League. It’s Independent League Baseball. Totally separate from major league. I’ve spent my entire career in the Independent Leagues. Never thought that would change. It might, though. If everything goes the right way this winter, that’ll change.” He sneaked another look at the kid. AJ clearly didn’t give a hoot about any of this and, honestly, Bo didn’t blame him.

      “Sorry,” he muttered. “Just strumming my lips. You’re probably tired from your trip.”

      AJ nodded but didn’t say anything. However, Bo’s remark made the silence seem less awkward. He relaxed, resting his wrist at the top of the steering wheel, and watching the road. He remembered that first airplane flight as though it were yesterday. He’d been a boy on fire. Not literally, of course, although at seventeen, that was the way he felt, all the time, like a struck match. With no supervision at home and nothing to keep him from exploding, he was into anything that would give him an adrenaline rush—swimming in the long, deep rice wells west of town, skateboarding through parking garages, having bottle-rocket wars with his friends, racing hot rods along the spillways and bayous of Houston—an accident waiting to happen.

      He wasn’t looking for trouble. It was just that life excited him, though not always in a good way. That particular summer, he was on fire because he was pissed at his mom, who was broke again and had to give up her place in the Wagon Wheel Mobile Home Court. Sometimes when that happened—which it did on a regular basis—Bo went to stay with his big brother, Stoney. But that year, Stoney, just out of high school, was working on a rig offshore and couldn’t take him. Nor could he bail their mother out of debt. Generally speaking, Stoney was just as foolish as she was about money, and just as broke.

      With his mom drifting around the Gulf Coast and his brother out on a rig, Bo had been looking at yet another summer in foster care. However, it turned out his baseball coach, Mr. Landry Holmes, had other plans for him. Holmes had played college ball in Florida with a guy named Dino Carminucci. They’d stayed in touch ever since. Holmes ended up coaching in Texas, and Carminucci became a scout for the Yankees. Coach Holmes had made all the arrangements for Bo to take part in the all-star program, somehow coming up with airfare and pocket money. Coaches were like that, all hooked into some vast, invisible network. The scheme was supposed to keep Bo out of trouble, and to give his one-and-only talent a chance to do him some good, so maybe he wouldn’t end up like his mom and Stoney, drifting aimlessly.

      Bo had been on fire about girls that summer, too, an affliction that had first struck him in the eighth grade when he’d sat behind Martha Dolittle in social studies, watching her every fluttery, girly move. If there was a scale to measure craziness about girls, on a scale of one to ten, Bo would register about a ninety-nine. He’d been in love with Yolanda Martinez the summer before their senior year of high school, and they’d had a huge fight about him going north for baseball. She thought he was abandoning her, but he claimed that if he did well enough, he might get a scholarship to college, which would mean he actually had a shot at a future.

      He had been the best damn ballplayer ever to wear the uniform of the Texas City Stings, and that was no brag, just fact. And finally, thank you, Jesus, finally he’d been tagged for one of the most elite baseball programs in the country, where he’d be training with the top high-school players in the sport and, more importantly, in full view of talent scouts.

      He hadn’t slept a wink on the flight to New York City. Sure, he’d been tired, and the trip seemed endless, but he hadn’t wanted to miss a single second of the experience of flying in an airplane. All his life he used to watch planes flying overhead, silver flashes in the smoggy sky above Texas City, and he’d imagine being aboard, flying beyond the murky pollution to a place where the skies were clear and the air sweet. He didn’t much care where the plane was headed. Away was good enough for him, even if it meant leaving Yolanda, whom he hadn’t managed to sweet-talk into bed—yet.

      Flying was everything he wanted it to be. When the gate agent saw his height, she gave him an exit row seat

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