Then he handed them to Caleb.
“Sounds like you did the same thing.”
“These are yours.”
Caleb stared.
“I can’t take those. They’re your last-game gloves.”
“I know. I want you to have them.”
For months, Caleb had been measuring his life by everything the accident had taken away.
Now the player he admired most was putting a piece of the game he loved back into his hands.
“These are yours.”
Caleb held them against his chest.
Hayes said quietly, “Keep going back for your people, okay?”
Caleb nodded.
***
That night, Caleb asked me to hang Hayes’s gloves beneath the old jersey beside his bed.
For months, that jersey had reminded me of everything he’d lost.
Now it reminded me of something else.
“Keep going back for your people, okay?”
Before Caleb ever wore Hayes’s jersey, before the stadium, before the wheelchair, he already understood the thing he admired most about the man.
When somebody needed him, Caleb went back for his guy.
