I remember the first grocery run after Marcus moved in properly, watching him do math in his head at the register, quietly putting a few things back without making it a whole production about it. Nobody said anything. It just became the rhythm we all learned, the way you learn any new language, by living inside it long enough.
Jonah and Lily’s weekends with us meant an extra two mouths at the table, extra shoes by the door, extra everything, and Marcus never once suggested those weekends should shrink to make room for anything easier.
He showed up to every game. That included the whole season I never left the bench.
Coach Whitfield actually pulled him aside once, midway through that season, half apologizing for how little playing time I was getting.
“Doesn’t matter to me,” Marcus told him, loud enough that I heard it from the water cooler. “I’m not here for playing time. I’m here because he’s here.”
I never forgot that, even years later, the specific weight of a grown man choosing bleachers over better things to do with his Saturday, over and over, for a kid who barely touched the court
