The Only One in the Rain

The championship game got moved up an hour because of the storm warning, which meant most of the bleachers were still half empty when I jogged out for warmups, rain already coming down sideways hard enough to sting.

I scanned the stands out of habit, the same habit I'd had since I was seven years old, looking for exactly one face before I let myself care about anyone else's.

Everyone else's parents were huddled under the overhang by the concession stand, cups of coffee, umbrellas, sensible.

My dad was sitting in the open bleachers in a windbreaker that had stopped doing its job about ten minutes earlier, soaked through, not moving to the dry section even though there were open seats fifteen feet away, holding a hand-lettered sign that said GO MARCUS in ink that was actively running down the poster board in thin blue rivers.

He wasn't my father. Everyone in our small town knew that, the way small towns know everything, quietly and without ever quite saying it to my face.

He'd been at every single game like this one for eighteen years anyway.