JALEN’S FATHER GLANCED OVER HIS shoulder toward the office. “That man in there, Jalen . . . he’s from the New York Times. He had the early dinner—I didn’t even know he was here—an’ he’s gonna do a restaurant review on Fabio’s Silver Liner.”
“Is it bad?” Jalen asked because of the look on his father’s face. “The review?”
His father’s eyebrows jumped over the rims of his small round glasses. “Bad? No, it’s not bad. It’s good! He loves my nonna’s food! That’s why I gotta finish talking to him, but I don’t wanna say no to Mr. JY an’ the TV, either.”
“Dad, just tell the New York Times guy. He’ll understand. He’ll wait. It’ll be a good part of the story that JY wants to help you and have you on TV.”
“But this is the thing,” Jalen’s dad whispered proudly. “This man, he’s not caring about JY and the Yankees players. He’s loving the food. It’s my dream come true, Jalen. The New York Times!”
“Well, let’s just ask him. Is he nice?”
“Yes!”
“Then he’ll be fine. Come on.”
Still, his dad was nervous, twisting his apron into a knot as he asked the reporter if he could wait just a few minutes while he did some TV with JY.
The reporter laughed easily. “Of course. I’ll wait right here, Fabio. Do the TV. They’re a lot less patient than us writers.”
Back in the restaurant, JY put an arm around Jalen and his dad as the cameramen began to record. Several reporters held out their microphones.
“This is the guy who does it all.” JY patted Fabio on the back. “Fabio makes the best Italian food I’ve ever had and—strange as it may sound—it’s this stuffed calamari he’s serving everyone tonight that’s responsible for getting me out of my slump.”
Jalen’s dad’s cheeks burned from the attention, but he cleared his throat and spoke in a strong voice. “I wanna welcome everyone to my place. This is my dream, to have the big restaurant that everybody wants to come and eat the food my nonna teach me how to cook back in Italy. Mr. JY, I thank you and all you teammates for coming tonight, and most of all I thank you for having the Silver Liner rebuilt in just a few days after the fire. You’re an angel to me an’ my boy.”
The two men shook hands, and JY took a selfie with Fabio on his phone before tweeting it out to his three-million-plus followers. Jalen’s dad returned to his office in the kitchen while the TV cameras shot some more video of JY and his teammates eating and joking with one another about the Cleveland pitching staff. In the midst of all the food and talking and laughter, Jalen found himself staring at the cameras and their small red lights.
He felt a jab in his ribs and realized that Cat had swapped seats with JY so he could sit next to her mom. “Ouch!”
“I asked you twice if you ever get tired of eating cephalopods.” Cat held up a white ring of squid on the end of her fork.
“You don’t like cephalopods?” Jalen joked, figuring her fancy word was what squids were called in science books. “You gotta get Dad’s stuffing with it and some sauce. I don’t eat just the fish part.”
“Well, I always like to take things down to their basic elements and see what’s going on beneath the surface, so . . .” She let the white ring drop into the sauce on her plate, mixed it around, and scooped it up with some stuffing before shoveling it into her mouth.
“I never get tired of it because we don’t eat it that much,” Jalen said. “That stuffing is filled with crabmeat. It’s expensive.”
“You won’t have to worry about that after tonight.” Cat looked around at the crowd. “This place is a gold mine.”
“Now it is, thanks to you.”
“I wasn’t fishing for compliments.” Cat took a sip of sparkling water. “Or cephalopods. Ha—get it, fishing?”
“I know, but the whole thing about JY tweeting and the lucky calamari,” Jalen said. “Even fixing up the diner after the fire . . . it was all you.”
“Only I can’t tell you what the next pitch is gonna be, so I guess we’re a good team.” Cat held out her fist, and Jalen bumped it.
Jalen leaned close so no one except Cat would hear. “I still feel bad about saying that stuff about JY and your mom being an item.”
“Well . . . ,” she said, angling her head over her shoulder to glance at her mom and JY laughing together, “Look, JY is awesome, and there’s really no love lost between me and my stepfather, but I hate to see her make things all complicated again.”
“You wouldn’t have to move very far,” Jalen said, kidding because JY’s mansion was just the other side of a big stone wall surrounding Cat’s stepfather’s estate.
“I don’t know if they’re going to end up together,” she said. “I don’t think anything’s going on, but I see the way she looks at him and him at her. And, if she does make a change, we have no idea how long JY will be in Rockton. That wasn’t a glowing reception he got from Foxx after the game. I’d say JY’s chances are fifty-fifty to stay with the Yankees, and I don’t know how he can do at the plate without you there calling the pitches.”
“Why wouldn’t I be there?”
“You’re not flying to Cleveland with the Yankees tomorrow, are you?”
Everything had been happening so fast and so intensely that Jalen hadn’t thought past the Silver Liner’s grand opening. “No, I guess not. We’ve got school Monday.”
“Right,” Cat said, “two more days of school. Then the Yankees are home against Houston. Then they go to Boston, then Baltimore. And what about the Rockets? You’ve got practices and games yourself. I don’t want to spoil the night for you, but the whole thing is a mess.”
“Then why did you?” Jalen asked.
“Why did I what?” Cat screwed up her face.
Jalen stared at her. “Spoil the night.”
“You can’t just bury your head in the sand, Jalen. This is real.”
“This is the biggest night of my father’s life.” Jalen waved his hand around at all the people.
“Which is why it’d be a shame to have the whole thing collapse after one big weekend,” Cat said.
“Why would it collapse?” Jalen snorted.
“People are fickle,” she said. “One minute you’re on top of the world, next minute you’re yesterday’s news. We need JY to keep batting a thousand—if not every game, at least on a regular basis—and we need him to keep tweeting about the diner. That’s how you create a franchise. It takes a lot more than a big opening night.”
Jalen realized she was right. He hadn’t wanted to think about the big picture. It was complicated. He couldn’t imagine how all the pieces could possibly fit together, and he hadn’t even told Cat his plan about finding his mother.
“So, I’m guessing you’ve got an idea?” Jalen said.
Cat raised an eyebrow. “Don’t I always?”