Page 189 of ClickBack

“There’s also been a lot of interest in the woman seen with you at Jawn. Does the age difference or the family situation make this move more complicated?”

My hand stops on the table.

Janelle from communications starts to speak. I lean toward the microphone first.

“Her name is Giselle Dawkins. She’s my girlfriend. We’re happy.”

He waits. I wait with him.

“But with the attention surrounding her...”

“You just asked me a basketball question and put her family in it.”

The room is quiet enough that I hear a camera shutter from the back.

“If you want to know whether I’m ready to play here, I am. Her family isn’t something for this room to debate.”

He lowers the microphone. Janelle calls on a woman who wants to talk about defensive assignments, and I answer her. I’m still pissed. I can do both.

Afterward, Graves meets me outside the room while Cam finishes with Devin.

“You about broke that man’s microphone from over there,” Graves says.

“He still got his question answered.”

“Several of them.”

My phone has been in my bag. I get it out and find Giselle’s message beneath the ones from Mom and Von.

I watched. Congratulations, J. I wish I’d been there. Come by when you get home.

I read it again while Graves tells me what’s left on the schedule.

“What time are we finished?”

“Depends whether you keep making me repeat myself.”

I put the phone away. “I’m listening.”

We finish early enough for Cam to move the flight. I have no interest in another night in a hotel when I can get home to her.

At the airport, Tori forwards a photograph from one of the rec centers we helped renovate. Three boys stand beneath the backboard holding up three fingers. One is wearing my old Philly jersey, so big on him that the shorts barely show.

I sit with that picture longer than I meant to.

There are nine years here. People I know by the sound of their voices from the stands. The woman who works the early shift at the facility and always knew whether I had slept. Coaches who asked me to come talk to a team and then apologized because they couldn’t get the kids to stop staring long enough to ask a question.

Wanting San Antonio hasn’t made any of that smaller.

Tori’s next message tells me Philly Youth Hoops is helping arrange a send-off, with the city involved. She wants me to keep a date open.

What kind of send-off? I ask.

The kind where you let people thank you. Details tomorrow.

I send the picture to Mom before the flight boards.

A little before ten, I park in the second bay of Giselle’s garage. I turn the engine off before closing the door, get my bag, and knock at the door into the kitchen.