If I am—I must be doubly cursed or something.
She’s about to leave, but Nathan adds, “You want to play strip poker for the information?”
I glance back at the girl. Her lips part in hesitation, and she seems pallid and sweaty. I can barely make out the color of her hair. Light brown, I think, in a loose braid. These dorky black-rimmed glasses frame her small face, and she leans most of her weight on one foot—a nervous, slightly boyish posture that most cotillion, high society girls don’t grow up with around here. Their moms would shit a rock if they did.
And she keeps anxiously reaching for her shoulder, like she’s trying to grab a strap to a purse that’s not there. Jesus Christ, she looks really out of place.
The more she waits to speak, the more I think she’s considering playing strip poker with us.
And the joke would be on her. She’d get naked and Nathan would never give her the information. No one would, whether she won the right to it or not. They’d find that funny.
I collect the last of the cards and rise, my posture more assured than hers but I don’t look like I took years of ballet like Rachel or like I listened in cotillion. I’m definitely not what my parents wanted me to be.
And I say aloud, to Nathan, “I’m not dealing another fucking person in, man. I’ve already started.” And I start. Right now. Looking like a dick as I do so.
Before Nathan protests, the girl leaves, weaving between a sloppy drunken guy who spills beer on her shoulders. It’s like watching Bambi lose its mother or something. And I can’t help but feel like we were the ones that shot the deer.
What do I do about it? I finish dealing the cards and numbly begin the next hand.
Around 2:30 a.m., I finally leave Nathan’s. I grab my bike and slowly (so fucking slowly) ride down the dim street, lit only by lamps and the few houses that reside here. Instead of houses stacked closely together, each mansion has acres by itself, leaving the neighborhood mostly barren.
I bike past grass and a couple trees.
Not far down, I turn right onto Cider Creek Pass. I live in the same gated neighborhood as Nathan Patrick. As Loren Hale and the Calloway sisters. Ever since they moved in, paparazzi camp outside the gates, waiting for them to leave. It’s pitiful—on whose part, I don’t really know.
I take my palms off the handlebars and just peddle, trying not to think about those people.
There it is.
Floodlights illuminate my front yard, white rose bushes outlining a gray stone, out-of-place Victorian mansion. Like we’re some kind of English royalty.
The minute I see my three older brothers on the stone front stairs—unevenly lounged and leaning against the iron railing—I think about riding away. My problem: I have nowhere else to really go.
“There he is.” I hear the muffled voice of my oldest brother, Davis. He rises first, football in hand. “Where’ve you been?” he asks me straight. It’s not concern on his face as much as annoyance.
I peddle onto the yard and then slowly climb off my bike, knocking it down without care. “Out,” I say, wanting to climb the steps and bypass them into the house, but I gain five-feet before they all join me in the yard, silently saying you’re not going anywhere.
We’re all two years apart from the next. And somehow they all look the same: short haircut, collared shirts, khaki pants and Sperry boat shoes.
Davis is the twenty-three-year-old college graduate, striving for his MBA and a position at my father’s million-dollar tech company. He sucks at computers, by the way. Can’t even read code—but he’s charismatic and a real “guy’s guy” so whatever.
Hunter is the twenty-one-year-old athlete with anger issues that everyone blames on “pent-up testosterone” because he refuses to fuck or masturbate until lacrosse season ends. He’s a dick—and I say this with zero brotherly affection. He destroyed that when I was a kid.
Mitchell is the nineteen-year-old pretty boy with less charm than Davis but more brains, so he’s fucked. I’d like Mitchell more if he didn’t act like Davis and Hunter rode golden chariots.
And me, Garrison Abbey, I’m the seventeen-year-old degenerate who skips class more often than he goes, who’s yet to find a meaning in being here—in life. If I don’t follow their footsteps, then I see nothing else I could do right, but I can’t follow them and stomach it.
“Dude,” Mitchell starts in. “Mom wanted this to be a family dinner.” College summer break ended today, so they have to go back to the University of Pennsylvania.
“Sorry,” I say dryly, scratching the back of my head with mock regret. “I guess I missed the part where we break bread, hold hands and sing hallelujah—maybe next time.” I try to take a step forward, and Hunter puts his hand on my chest to stop me. I slap it off and back up immediately, my stomach knotting. “Don’t touch me, man.”
“Then don’t make Mom cry, dipshit.”
I stare at the night sky for a second and feel my eyes roll. I also feel Hunter let out an agitated breath and try to step closer to me, but I back up again, about to head for my bike.
“Hey.” Davis grabs my shoulder and spins me around, his fingers digging in. He raises the football near my head like he’s going to suggest a quick game. Instead he sniffs, and I turn and try to jerk away from him, my tousled hair falling in my eyes.
He grips harder.
“You smell like weed.” His annoyance only grows, probably thinking how badly I’m hassling our parents. I’m not easy like my brothers. I don’t know how to be and still retain a fucking soul.
“Really?” I feign surprise. My only real defense is dry sarcasm. “I thought I smelled like your girlfriend’s p—”
Davis slaps the back of my head, and I almost fall forward. And then he shoves the football in my chest. “Like you’d know what pussy smells like.” He messes my hair with a rough, irritated hand.
They treat me like a little kid. Like a little brother. I get that. I am one, but as I stand up and face Davis, Hunter, and Mitchell, I feel more like a toy they play with, one they’ve constantly broken.
I clutch the football. “You didn’t really stay up to play football with me.”
“Sure we did,” Mitchell says with a shrug and looks to Davis and Hunter for confirmation. Neither says a word in agreement. Their hard gazes just drill into me.
I don’t want to be here, so I drop the football and I turn around again and go grab my bike that lies sideways in the yard. Hunter chases after me, and I barely have my bike upright before he pushes me.
I drop the handlebars and stagger back. “What the fuck?” I sneer, my pulse quickening.
“We’re playing football. You couldn’t be here for dinner—you couldn’t do one thing for Mom, then you’re going to do this for us.” And he adds (like Hunter always does), “You motherfucking cocksucker.” It’s his go-to insult, one I know I might’ve picked up and used before—and I hate that I have. Because it’s lame as shit, among other things.
I grit my teeth and inhale once before I shrug stiffly.
Davis throws the football at my face. It hits my cheek before I can block it. The pain wells, but I stifle it by grabbing the football off the grass. The minute I straighten up, Hunter tackles me with his full weight. He’s two inches taller, fifty pounds heavier, and the wind immediately escapes my lungs.