Page 112 of Lease to Love

He gave me an offended look. "Yes, me."

"I don't know. I can't really picture you running around in a soccer uniform."

"Well, picture it. I was good."

"How good?"

"Professional."

I laughed. "Oh, really?"

"Future professional."

"Ah. Important distinction."

He smiled. "I wanted to be the next David Beckham when I grew up."

"What happened?"

He shrugged. "Life."

His answer was simple, but something about the way he said it made me stop smiling.

I turned toward him as he took a sip of what looked like bourbon.

"Fort Greene was everything," he said. "The park, especially. Festivals. Block parties. Soul Summit Sundays. Everybody was there."

I listened.

"My friends and I played soccer there almost every day. We'd stay until somebody's mother yelled their name from a window." His smile grew faintly. "There were always homeless people who hung around, but most of them were harmless. Some of them talked your ear off if you made eye contact."

I smiled.

"My mother used to tell me not to give anybody food without asking her first."

"She sounds like she was something."

"She was. Still is."

The words were quiet.

I took a sip of wine. "What else?"

Roman looked back at the photograph.

"Everybody knew everybody. You couldn't walk through the park without seeing somebody you knew. Somebody was always cooking. Somebody was always playing music. There'd be kids running around, people playing cards, old heads arguing about politics like they were solving world peace."

He smiled. "It was kind of like here. Loud. Messy. Alive."

I could hear the affection in every word.

I smiled at him. "You should take me sometime."

His smile disappeared.

Roman turned toward the kitchen and poured himself another drink with a sigh. "The neighborhood isn't really like that anymore."

I lowered my glass. "What happened?"