Page 56 of Full Throttle

“Can I see the jokes?”

“Sure.”

He shut off his game and slid closer. He traced the words on my cast as he read them to himself, chuckling over a few of the silly jokes. He had long fingers, his nails ragged and uncared for. I had a feeling his mother probably nagged him about the condition a lot.

He laughed out loud at one joke, the sound so familiar, I startled. I stared at him, then swallowed. “My name is Cherry. What’s yours?”

He grinned. “Josh.”

I tried to hide my shock. I was staring at Dom’s son. That was the reason he looked so familiar.

This was the boy Dom was upstairs fighting for the right to get to know. To be a part of his life.

His mother had dropped him off beside me.

“How old are you, Josh?”

“Thirteen.”

“Do you like school?” I asked, desperate for any information I could get to share with Dom.

“It’s fine. I like science and art. Math, no.”

“I like numbers.”

“It’s so complicated.”

I pulled a pen from my purse and wrote some problems on a napkin. He frowned. “It makes no sense.”

“What if you broke it down this way?” I asked.

He furrowed his brow as he looked at the numbers, tracing them the way he did with the words earlier. “Thirty-two?” he asked.

“Yes!”

“Give me another one.”

Time flew by as I taught him the way my dad had taught me, breaking down the equations into parts he could understand. Replacing numbers with objects. He was smart. Funny. I asked him question after question. His favorite color. Movie. Time of day. Memory.

He paused when I asked that. He looked around as if making sure he wasn’t overheard.

“I don’t know if it’s a memory. I’m at a park, and there’s a guy. He’s pushing me on the swing, then catching me on the slide. We have ice cream. It was sunny.”

“Who’s the guy?” I asked, my heart in my throat.

“I think it’s my dad, but it’s fuzzy. He left us—didn’t want me or my mom. I always wondered, if he didn’t want us, why he’d be so nice. So sometimes, I think it’s just me thinking and wishing.”

I clasped his hand. “I’m sure it’s real. You know, sometimes you don’t know the whole story.”

He shrugged. “I guess I never will.”

“Josh!” a voice called.

I looked up to see his mother striding toward us. She looked furious. “We’re going. Now.”

She was tall with light golden hair. Icy blue eyes. Pretty, in a hard way. Anxious to leave. She barely glanced at me. “Let’s go.”

“Nice to meet you, Josh.”