Page 4 of ClickBack

“Got it, Ma,” Rae says. “Please don’t get on the floor in that.”

I surrender the cloth. Across the walkway, someone calls for another group to line up beneath a Philly Youth Hoops Summer Showcase banner. Replay Social has given us a party room and the youth league three courts. Every few minutes a whistle competes with the arcade machines, and an adult mistakes one group of children for another.

Near the showcase entrance, a little girl in bright glasses is telling a very tall man something that requires both her hands. He bends to hear her. When she points at the court, he looks where she points instead of searching the room for somebody more important.

Then he looks at me.

I was doing a thorough inspection. There’s no dignified way to pretend otherwise. Warm brown skin, a shade lighter than mine. Hair cut in a close fade. A neat mustache and goatee, heavy brows, and a black knit shirt stretched across shoulders I would like a less public opportunity to examine. A thin gold chain rests at his throat. The little girl asks him something else, and he answers her, but the corner of his mouth has changed.

He caught me.

“GiGi.” Zion grips my arm. “Do you see who that is?”

“The gentleman with the little girl?”

My grandson stares at me. “Jarrett Simmons.”

“Okay.”

“Ma, please,” Rae says. “Not in this building. They’ll make us give back the room.”

Zion explains centers, blocked shots, and the importance of the paint in a rush that assumes I have retained everything he has ever told me about basketball. I look again. Jarrett is smiling at the girl now, dimples deep enough to create a separate problem.

Trina appears with her phone. “Twenty-nine. Georgetown. Six-nine.”

“You got all that already?” I ask.

“I haven’t even warmed up.”

Twenty-nine. Rae is twenty-eight. I turn toward the cake before my face can do anything else, annoyed that a number has managed to embarrass me when I haven’t so much as spoken to the man. I liked looking at him. I liked him catching me at it. Now I’m checking whether anyone saw how much, which is a disappointing way to spend an afternoon in shorts I was brave enough to buy.

“His brother is Javon,” Zion says. “GiGi, you know Javon.”

“I know you talk about Javon.”

“Same thing,” Trina says, still scrolling.

Zion begins wiping his basketball on his shirt. Rae catches his wrist before the frosting transfers. “If you want him to sign it, ask nicely. Wait until he’s done talking.”

“I know how to talk to people.”

She looks at him.

“I mostly know.”

He has barely finished when one of his friends bumps him while dodging a smaller child with another cup of soda. The ball drops, hits the floor, and rolls across the walkway. Zion lunges after it too late. It stops against Jarrett’s sneaker.

For all the noise in this place, I hear my grandson’s sharp little inhale.

Jarrett picks up the ball. One hand. I notice that before I can help it.

“This yours?” he asks.

Zion nods, then remembers his instructions. “Yes, sir. Sorry. Excuse me.”

“Which one you want me to answer first?”

The little girl laughs. Zion does, too, and Jarrett hands her back the ball she has been carrying before coming toward us with my grandson’s.