Page 23 of Undisputed Player
His face lit up. It was in a better part of town and an hour bus ride away, but it was the least he deserved.
If the world didn’t end before dinner.
But for now, we had this—pancakes and the simple stubborn joy of survival. Of love. Of living one breakfast at a time in a world that wanted to devour us both.
The afternoon found me hollow-eyed and brain-dead after four hours of remote tutoring. My laptop was warm against my thighs, the screen full of red corrections and gentle suggestions that felt more like pleas.
Leo had been remarkably patient, sprawled on our living room floor with his dinosaur figures, occasionally bringing me artwork to critique.
"All done?" he asked, looking up from his meticulous coloring of a stegosaurus.
I nodded, stretching arms that felt like they belonged to someone else. "All done. Park time?"
The bus ride to Westside Park was a journey. From our neighborhood of broken windows to the land of functional streetlights and nannies.
Leo curled against my side, his small body warm and trusting, while I counted stops in my head. The playground was worth it, though, it was tucked behind a community center where people didn't look at us like future statistics, and the equipment wasn't tagged with gang symbols.
I could actually sit on a bench without constantly scanning for threats. One of the few places where Leo could just be a kid.
But even here, in this pocket of relative safety, the judgments followed us like shadows.
At the playground, I sat next to another mother as Leo ran off to play.
"How old is he?" the woman beside me asked, her toddler bouncing on her hip. She was older than me, maybe thirty, with the polished look of someone who had time for things like regular haircuts and clothes that matched.
Her diamond wedding ring caught the afternoon light, throwing rainbows across her manicured nails.
"Five," I said, pointing to Leo as he navigated the dinosaur climbing frame.
Her eyebrows rose slightly. "And you?"
Here we go.
"Twenty-four."
"Really?" She studied my face with the intensity of someone solving a particularly difficult math problem. "I would have guessed maybe twenty. You look so..." She gestured vaguely at my frame, my face, my general existence.
“Thin?” I supplied, knowing that wasn’t what she was going for. I could at least find fun in throwing these people off.
"Well—yes?—”
Her face turned red when she realized what I’d said and what she agreed with. I fought to hold back my laugh.
She seemed to be searching for a polite way to say what everyone was thinking. “Are you sure you're eating enough? It's important when you're nursing—oh, wait, he's too old for that.”
Not nursing. I wasn’t his biological mother, just the only thing standing between him and his father's world of violence and drugs.
"I eat plenty," I lied smoothly. "Good metabolism."
She nodded, but I could see the skepticism in her eyes, the calculation as she took in my cheekbones and the way my jeans hung loose around hips that had never carried a pregnancy.
"Is his father involved?" she asked, the question casual but loaded with judgment.
I nearly snorted. Involved in drug trafficking and murder, yes. Involved in Leo's daily life, thankfully, no.
"Not really," I said, the understatement of the century.
Her expression shifted to that particular blend of pity and disapproval that I'd learned to recognize from fifty yards away.
