Brown Eyes in the Crowd
By: Gail Holmes

As “TJ” ran the length of the court along the sideline, sweat slowly drips down his neck onto the towel that hangs loosely down the front of his well tailored suit.

He gazed into the bleachers and there she is again, those beautiful brown eyes. Their eyes seem to meet for a split second. He wondered who belonged to those beautiful brown eyes that show up at the Cross-Town Boys basketball games. She’s always sitting under the visitor’s goal; she’s always about eight rows back toward the center and by the time the clock counts down to double zero she’s gone. TJ longed to meet the “love of his life”.

Terrance “TJ” Jones was not only a coach to the young men on the team of what some may call misfits, gangsters, and high school drop-outs. He was their friend, confidant, and a surrogate father.

“TJ” eventually meets and marries the keeper of his heart who reunited him with his mother (who walked out on him days after his birth) and his father (who was unaware that he had a son). The reunion was short-lived; on his parents return home to New York they were killed in a plane crash.