Page 18 of My Best Bet

“You’re lying,” she mumbled.

“I’m not!” I argued, then realized my tone really did sound mad. “I’m not, I swear,” I tried in a gentler voice.

But she wouldn’t talk after that. She just crossed her little arms over her chest and stared out the window all the way from the city to the suburbs.

I tried telling her about ten times that my frustration wasn’t about her, that I was upset because of someone else, but she refused to listen. What I really should’ve done was tell her about Meredith, tell her about my past, but I wasn’t sure where to even start with all that. I’d never talked with her about any women except her mom…

When we finally pulled up to our house, a modern farmhouse style build in a suburb right outside of the city, both of us sat there in silence for a minute.

I needed to rake the leaves and put out some Halloween decorations. While I could probably hire someone to do that, it’d be fun for me and Lu to do it together.

“Guess we should head in, eh?” I craned my neck to look back at her.

She threw the door open and didn’t wait for me. She jumped down from the truck by herself, then stumbled and fell onto the dead grass.

I was out of my seat and helping her in an instant, but she battled my hands away and brushed the dead leaves off her sweater and tights by herself before running up to the porch.

“Lu,” I said desperately, “I’m sorry, I–”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” She held her little hands up and glared at me. “I’m not done being mad at you.”

Blowing out a resigned sigh, I jogged to the porch to unlock the door for her.

Inside, JP and Kappy were waiting in the living room, eager to hear how the lesson went.

“There’s our little twirl girl!” Kappy announced proudly.

“How’d it go, Lu?” JP asked.

She dumped her skate bag on the floor then stomped up the stairs, ignoring both of them. The boys stared at me in question, then flinched when she slammed her bedroom door shut.

My hands went to my hips, and I hung my head.

“That bad?” JP asked.

I threw my hat at the wall.

Silence descended in my house– which was rare because the two of them were always around and they never shut up.

“I fucked up,” I muttered.

“We need pizza for this,” Kappy finally said, pulling out his phone to call the pizza place down the street.

“Meredith Bennett,” I said darkly.

The phone slid out of Kappy’s hand and clattered to the floor.

I ran my tongue over my teeth and nodded. “She was her coach today.”

“Holy shit,” Kappy breathed out, clasping his hands over his head, making his ‘90’s Shawn Hunter haircut stick up in all different directions. “Mer Bear is here? In Chicago?”

“Okay, yeah,” JP said, smoothing a hand over his buzzed hair. “Did not expect that.”

I just shook my head as I wandered into my kitchen for a drink.

An hour later, my head was still a mess.

Now that the shock of seeing her had worn off, I could admit that a small part of me was relieved. Mer was alive and well. That’s all I wanted for her at one time. But I needed her to be alive and wellsomewhere else. I was a man who loved winning. She was my biggest loss. And still to this day, I didn’t understand how it all went so wrong.

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