Page 60 of The Best Shot

The way he didn’t follow up after the dates. The way he let Ava rant and absorbed it and didn’t try harder. The way he always, somehow, ended up back at my door.

One night after, when CeeCee had already retreated to her room and left the couch to us, with his hand resting warm at the back of my neck, I asked, “You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you.”

“Maybe,” he said.

That felt more dangerous than if he’d laughed it off.

Outside, Whitlock Hills moved along like it always had. The shops closed at seven. The back roads went quiet by ten. People were born here and stayed here and died here and called it a life, and meant it, and weren’t wrong.

My brother left two messages in one night, slurred, angry, then weepy, and I deleted them without listening all the way through. My mother’s calls went to voicemail. CeeCee got rounder by the week, and somehow steadier. I thought often about what it cost her to choose herself.

And Hale kept showing up.

Week after week. Fix after fix. Lie after lie that we had both agreed to let stand.

Like this was the only date he actually intended to keep.

I noticed that too.

I was almost done pretending I didn’t.

17

“LET THE LORD WORK.”

HALE

Nico started the book club because the women wouldn’t let him join theirs.

There was a whole situation.

Nico asking, reasonably and politely, like he does everything. Some kind of deliberation on their end. Then Tabby suggesting, with suspicious innocence, that he start his own.

She offered to host it at the bookstore and even open it to the public. In the end, only four of us showed. Grant, because Ava had decided attendance was good for him. Carter, because somebody promised him first pick of the book and that was enough to lure him in. Nico, obviously, because it was his idea.

I’d been lukewarm about the whole thing until Nico sent me the title. Ten seconds with the synopsis, and suddenly book club had potential.

Me: You sure you sent the right book?

Nico: yea. Carter’s pick.

Me: and we’re just going with it?

Nico: He seemed confident.

I looked at the cover again. City skyline. Man in a suit. Jaw set like somebody was about to catch a bullet.

Then I texted Carter.

Me: That’s your pick? Kingdom Come

Carter: Yeah.

Me: You sure about that?

Carter: Yes Hale. I’m sure. You got a problem with Black fiction? You never seen New Jack City?

I was a Black man in America. Of course I’d seen New Jack City. And me having an issue with Black fiction was ridiculous.