After a long ride, we eventually pull up in front of my dumpy apartment building. There’s a check-cashing place on the ground floor. “Thanks for the ride,” I say, my hand on the door before the limo even comes to a complete stop.
“Let me walk you up,” he says, opening the other door.
“Not necessary.” I hurry out, hoping he’ll stay put.
No luck.
“But we’ve got to strategize.” He’s already lifting my hockey bag out of the trunk before I can get to it.
This is really not the time for chivalry, but I clamp my jaw shut as he follows me to the grimy door. I unlock it and start up the stairs. “What did you mean, strategize?”
“Well…” He steps over a dead bug on the stairway. This place smells of old kitchen grease, with top notes of urine. Neil is almost certainly disgusted. But his blue-blooded manners make him too polite to say so. “Are we going to tell management about this?” he asks. “They hate PR surprises.”
“No way,” I say quickly. “When I do stupid things, I like to keep it to myself. This is bad enough without telling Bess and Rebecca about it.”
“It’s not like I want to tell them,” he argues. “And forget management. My teammates would never let me forget this.”
I smile a little wickedly. “Is it terrible that I’m really curious which pranks they’d pull first?” I unlock my door, wondering if I can avoid letting Neil see the inside of my apartment.
Apparently not. He pushes open the door and then carries my hockey bag right into the cramped little space known as my living room.
And just when I thought this day couldn’t get any worse, it does. My mother’s cousin’s creepy son is sitting on my sofa in his underwear, smoking a bowl. He’s also pointing a remote control at a TV.
Except I don’t own a TV.
“Robert? What are you doing in my apartment?” I bark. “DENNIS!” I yell. Robert and my useless brother often lurk around together.
“Hello to you, too. I’m watching wrestling. Your brother found a poker game.”
My stomach drops for a whole bunch of reasons. “In Philly?”
“No. In the neighborhood somewhere. I don’t fucking know where.”
Oh no.
Oh, hell no.
Until this moment, I’ve held it together. But the minute Neil leaves, I’m going to lose my shit. I can already feel the scream building like a hurricane inside me.
Robert, that idiot, has no idea, either. He takes another puff and then passes his beady eyes over my breasts. “Have a seat, Charli.” He pats the couch cushion beside him.
My couch cushion.
I feel like grabbing that TV—and the cardboard box it came out of—and hurling them both out the window and onto the avenue below.
But I don’t do it. Not yet. Instead, I turn to Neil and thank him for bringing me home.
He shifts his weight, eyeing Robert. But he doesn’t set down my hockey bag. Neil, being ten times smarter than Robert, can probably sense the fury radiating off me. Lord knows he’s seen it before, occasionally directed at him.
“You know…” he says. “What if you got your stuff together and came home with me so we could do that thing?”
“What thing?” I’m not in the mood to play games.
“That thing we have to work on?” He gives a faint eye-roll at my refusal to get with the program. “We could have dinner together tonight, right? To discuss our project?”
He has a point. Why wait to discuss our problem? It’s not like I want to stay here alone with Robert, and Neil is giving me a reason to leave. I make it a point to stay as far away from Robert’s branch of the family as possible.
But this is my place, damn it. Am I really going to let him chase me out of it?
On the sofa, Robert lets out a tremendous belch.
Yup. I am. “All right,” I say through clenched teeth. “Let me grab a few things.”
I roll my suitcase into my bedroom where I realize the bed is unmade. It wasn’t me who left it like that. Either my brother or Robert has been sleeping in my bed?
Someone is going to die. I just haven’t decided who.
Hastily, I swap the dirty clothes in my bag for clean ones. I make sure I have everything I need for practice tonight. And I turn around and march right out of there again. Neil opens the door for me, and I leave without a backward glance.
Downstairs, Neil’s driver is so well trained that she doesn’t even blink when we return with the same number of passengers and the same amount of luggage as we left with a few minutes ago.
“Where to, sir?” she asks Neil.
“The practice rink, please. And then please drop Charli and all our luggage at my apartment building? Thank you.”
We get back into the car. I’m grinding my teeth as the worst streets in Brooklyn begin to slide past the window.
“All right—who’s that guy?” Neil asks.
I actually have to take a breath before answering, because nothing triggers me quite like Robert—or his evil father. “He’s my second cousin. He’s tight with my brother.”
“Looks like he made himself pretty comfortable in your apartment.”
“Yeah, I noticed that. We’re gonna have a talk later.”
Neil grins. “Can I watch?”
“No, you can’t. I don’t want any witnesses.”
He snickers. “How come I’ve never met your brother?”
“Because he lives in Philadelphia? Or he’s supposed to.”
Last year, during my first season, my brother said he wanted to come into town and watch me play.
I’m not stupid. I knew he’d have some ulterior motive. But I’m not like the other girls on my team. I don’t have a fan base of family members who use my comp seats every week to cheer me on. I spent my childhood getting passed around to various family members. Everybody’s burden, nobody’s joy.
I play hockey for myself. Just for myself. And it’s usually enough, but I’d said yes to my brother. He’d shown up alone that time, thank God. I’d spent money I didn’t have taking him out for Brooklyn pizza and beer.
That weekend, he’d made a copy of my key. “For emergencies,” he’d said.
Pretty shortly after that, he began using his key whenever I was at an away game. It happens all the time now. I stopped telling him my schedule, but apparently, he can Google as well as anyone.
And I guess Robert joined him this time. Maybe other times, too. The thought of him in my place makes me want to howl. My apartment is supposed to be a sanctuary, but now it’s a flophouse.
I’m so mad I could burn the place down.
But then I’d be in jail. And there’s no hockey in jail.
My family is the worst, and getting out of Philly was my life’s goal. But now Philly comes to me all the damn time, and I don’t know how to scrape them off.
“Look, I know you don’t like to accept help,” Neil says quietly. “But I could help you get him out of there if you need me to. Right now, if you want. Then we could change the locks.”
“I’ll change the locks later this week,” I say, because I don’t want Neil worrying about it. But a decent deadbolt on that door will cost me over two hundred dollars including the labor. I don’t have that kind of cash.