Page 34 of Ours to Lose
“What do you say, Aubrey?” my dad asked. “Been a while since you and I were partners. Will you do me the honor?”
She flashed him a warm smile. “Sure.”
“We’ll have our work cut out for us. Evan and Gabe were always a dangerous combination.”
I almost laughed. Right now, the only one in danger was me.
Evan threw his last card—athree of clubs—on the pile, which Aubrey quickly collected to her side of the table along with her other tricks.
“Dude, you’re not even trying,” I said. He’d bid four tricks and hadn’t gotten a single one. He had the cards for it too. Just played them in the worst possible combination like he had every other hand so far. Which he knew because he’d been a Spades shark since he was ten.
He shrugged. “Thought you had a higher card.”
“When I only bid one and already played an ace?”
He shrugged again and pushed from the table. “I’m getting a drink.”
I slid my own seat back and followed him to the kitchen. “I’m trying here.”
“No need,” he said, grabbing a seltzer from the fridge. “It’s just a card game.”
“You know that’s not what I’m talking about.”
He popped the lid of the can. “What I know is the only reason you’re here right now is because of a boxing tournament. It’s the only thing you’ve ever cared about. We may as well all stop pretending otherwise.”
“That’s not true.”
“It’s not? You mean you didn’t pick boxing over Mom when she got sick? I somehow missed you sitting next to me in the hospital room when she died?”
I clenched my teeth. It did nothing against the burn in my stomach.
“Yeah,” he said in response to my silence. “Then you picked it again the second the funeral was over. Screw what Dad needed. You couldn’t get out of here fast enough. Not when there was a fight to win.”
“I didn’t know about this tournament when I decided to come back,” I said. “It’s not why I’m here.”
Nothing I said could justify what happened with Mom. No words could get him to forgive me when I didn’t forgive myself. When I racked my brain every day about the different choices I could have made, asked “what if?” about a thousand variables, and wondered if any one of them would have gotten me back in time. When I still struggled to breathe through the guilt of knowing she’d died without her whole family around her—that having us all together meant more to her than anything in the world—and I’d robbed her of it in her last moments with my selfishness.
I hadn’t known how to face it after the funeral. I could hardly face it now. So I’d run. Retreated into boxing the way I knew how and let it take me as far away as it could.
But I was trying to be here now.
“So drop out,” he challenged.
“I can’t.”
He looked ready to punch me. I almost wished he would. Get it all out so maybe we’d both feel better.
“You can,” he insisted. “You choose not to. Even though it’s reckless and fucking stupid, and you’re going to put yourself in the hospital. But if it brings you glory, go for it, I guess.”
“It has nothing to do with glory. I’m trying to win the money to buy Coach Lou’s gym.”
He raised his hands in retreat. “Whatever, man. Do what you want. I’m done trying to keep up.”
Aubrey stepped into the kitchen. “We still playing?”
Evan set his mostly full seltzer on the counter. “I just remembered I have something I need to do for work. You want a ride back to the city?” he asked her.
Her shoulders sank. “Evan.”
