Farrah Rochon - A Forever Kind of Love

“I know,” Mya answered. “I’ll go home once visiting hours are over.”

“What time do you want me to come back and pick you up?” Corey asked.

“I’ll call Phil,” Mya answered, knowing her best friend, Phylicia, would drop whatever she was doing to be at her side. “I don’t plan to leave the hospital anytime soon anyway,” Mya said. “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”

A smile, subtle though it was, inched up the corner of his mouth. “No one ever doubted you’d be fine, Peaches.” He kissed Aunt Mo on the cheek. “I’ll see you later. You tell Mrs. Eloise not to scare us like that anymore.”

Mya watched as Corey left the waiting room. She waited until she was sure he was out of earshot before turning to her aunt. “What’s going on here?”

“What?” Aunt Mo asked.

If Mya didn’t spend her life around the theater, she would have bought the innocent act. “Don’t even try it,” she said. “When did you, Corey and Grandma all become best friends? The two of you both hated him.”

“We did not hate him,” her aunt protested. “At least I didn’t. I was just concerned that he was a bit too fast for you. With good reason,” her aunt added with a pointed look. “But all of that is beside the point. Corey’s not the boy he was when you two were in high school.”

“How do you know that? He’s been gone from Gauthier nearly as long as I have.”

“That’s not entirely true,” her aunt said. “Corey visited several times a year when his daddy was still living. He moved back last year to coach the high school baseball team.”

“You still haven’t explained why he’s all of a sudden your new BFF,” Mya said.

“My what?”

“Forget it.” Mya sighed. “I just think it’s strange. Grandma thought those Anderson boys were nothing but trouble back when I was in high school, and now she’s got one cutting her grass? Why didn’t she ever mention him when I called home?”

Her aunt hunched her shoulders. “Maybe she didn’t think it was a big deal to you. As far as Mama is concerned, everything between you and Corey ended after you graduated from high school.”

“It did end after graduation,” Mya stated. “Still...”

Was there a “still”? Corey was nothing more than a guy she’d dated a long time ago. It had been years since she’d seen him, since she’d had anything to do with him. Why should it matter after all these years that he’d moved back to town and ingratiated himself to her family?

A nurse entered the waiting room. “Dubois family?”

“Right here,” Mya called. She and Aunt Mo sprung from their seats like coils in a new mattress. “How is she?” Mya asked the nurse.

“She’s doing well. She’s in room seventeen. Follow me—I’ll take you to her.”

Chapter 3

Corey pulled into an empty parking spot between two Gauthier P.D. cruisers. He noticed his friend Jamal’s shiny silver-and-black quad cab parked a couple of spaces down. He walked through the front doors of the brick building and was greeted by Manny Gilbert. Manny, who had spent his last two years of high school as shortstop for the Gauthier Fighting Lions baseball team, was now a cop.

“Where are they?” was Corey’s greeting.

“In the back. We left them in the cell.”

“Good,” Corey said. “Safer for them to have bars between us.”

“Don’t be too hard on them. We did much worse when we were on the team.”

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t coaching the team back then. Any stupid crap they get into reflects on me.”

By the time they reached the cell area, Corey could feel the vein in the middle of his forehead throbbing. The three knuckleheads sat shoulder to shoulder on a bench inside the cell. Jamal Johnson stood just outside the cell door.

He and Jamal had been friends for years, ever since they’d played collegiate ball together. Jamal had decided to make Gauthier his new home earlier this year, and he had offered to help Corey out with the baseball team since the school district had turned down Corey’s request to hire another assistant coach.

“So they called you first?” Corey asked Jamal.

His friend shrugged. “Guess they thought I’d go easier on them.”

He nodded toward Manny, then stood to the side as the man disengaged the lock. Corey stepped into the holding cell, bracing his feet apart and crossing his arms over his chest.

“You three really thought I wouldn’t hear about this?”

“Sorry, Coach,” they said in unison.

“What did they do to the house?” Corey directed his question to Jamal.

“Took the porch light out with a BB gun. Covered a few of the windows with black paint. Pissed on the back steps.”

“Junior high stuff,” Corey snorted, shaking his head. He turned to Manny, who had taken the spot next to Jamal outside of the cell. “How long are they in here for?”

“Coach!” Terrence Smith, his star outfielder, jumped up from the bench. “You can’t leave us here.”

“You did the crime, didn’t you?” Corey fired at him.

“And you were stupid enough to get caught,” Jamal added.

“We were just playing around,” Terrence maintained.

“By vandalizing the assistant principal’s house? You three couldn’t think of anything better to do?”

“They’re lucky Donaldson is out of town. He would demand you three be locked up,” Manny said.

“But, Coach, you can’t leave us in here. This’ll look bad to the scouts,” Pierre Jones, the centerfielder, said.

“Maybe you should have thought about that before you decided to act like a bunch of children instead of young men on their way to college next year.” Corey bore down on them, backing them to the bench. “You think you’ll be able to get away with stunts like this at LSU, or Tulane, or Alabama?” he roared at Andre Thomas, the pitcher and best player on the team. “They’ll kick you out of there so fast you won’t know what’s hit you.”

“I know, Coach,” Terrence said.

“We’re sorry,” Pierre added.

Corey knew he’d gotten his point across when they all crouched back. He noticed Andre Thomas’s chin remained defiantly stiff.

The boy’s recalcitrance incensed Corey even further. He had no doubt Andre had been the ringleader. The kid seemed hell-bent on causing as much trouble as he could around town. He had so much potential, but was flushing it down the toilet because he was more concerned with being a knucklehead. Corey refused to sit back and watch Andre ruin his future.

He cut another menacing glare at his players and stepped out of the holding cell. “It’s your call, Officer Gilbert.”

Manny glanced his way, and Corey knew they were on the same wavelength.

“Well, you know we don’t play favorites,” Manny said in his best take-no-crap police-officer voice. “Just because these guys are baseball players doesn’t mean they can get off scot-free.”

Despite the seriousness of the situation, Corey had to bite back a laugh. He and Manny had gotten away with more than they should have back in the day. Partly because Manny’s dad had been the police chief. The entire squad used to cut them slack, especially if they were playing Kentwood or Jesuit. Nothing got in the way of a big game against a known rival.

Jamal leaned to the side and whispered to Corey, “We’re not really leaving them in here, are we?”

“Hell no,” Corey whispered back. “We’re in the middle of the season.

“So, Officer Gilbert,” he called. “What’ll it be?”

The trio of hefty ballplayers looked as if they’d shrunk five inches over the past ten minutes. They sat hunched over. Corey was pretty sure Pierre Jones was trembling.

“They’re all still minors, right?” Manny asked.