Wild Card by Ashley Munoz
Chapter Seven
“What the fuck happened?”Kyle yelled at me the second my truck pulled into my mom’s driveway. Three hours on the road and still it had done nothing to calm the storm raging inside my chest.
I had fucked up spectacularly.
“What do you mean?” I slammed the door of my truck harder than I needed to.
“Elias wasn’t supposed to come back, but he did. He showed up and…” My little brother faltered back a step, his face hidden under his hood.
I was on the bottom step when I noticed the shiner on his face.
“Fuck.” I stepped up and tilted his head back, letting the porch light reveal more of his face. Kyle tried to brush me off, but I held him firm. “What happened?”
“Elias tried to fucking kill me when he found out I was responsible for what happened to his precious little brother. Pathetic attempt if you ask me—he didn’t even manage to put me in the hospital, stupid fucking pussy, but…”
Stalking past him, I trudged up the steps toward the house. I didn’t want to hear my little brother trying to act tough in front of me. I had heard how his voice shuddered when he explained himself, and the fact that this was on me…it just dug at me in all the wrong ways. I’d known it was a dangerous idea to ask him to cause the car accident, knowing Elias’ little brother would be driving the other car. I hated myself for doing it, but I hadn’t been able to think of any other way to get Elias away from his room tonight. Kyle and Jason had grown up together, just like Elias and I had, and their relationship was just as tenuous.
“Mom!” I called, stopping briefly at the small entryway table where our bills usually gathered. There was a bundle of white envelopes that hadn’t been touched. I started shuffling them, knowing already they would each be at least a month past due. I tried to grab the bills whenever I dropped in to visit, but occasionally they’d slip through the cracks.
“Duggar, sweetie,” my mom responded from the living room.
I heaved a steadying breath, trying not to inhale the scent of my childhood—of my dad. Every single time I walked through the door, I still smelled that baseball glove he’d shoved on my tiny hand for the first time. That white and red striped leather he’d tossed in the air, smiling brightly as he ushered me outside to play catch. It still shredded me when I walked in this house, still ripped me open as raw as it had that first time after the funeral.
“Hey Mom.” I leaned against the wall, crossing my arms.
My mother sat on the fading blue couch, a photo album in her lap, an old comedy show playing on the small flat screen in front of her. She still had her scrubs on, her hair tied in a low bun at her neck, concealing her frizzy chestnut hair.
“Come sit with me.” She patted the space next to her.
She still didn’t understand that I couldn’t sit on that couch, or why I couldn’t stay in my old bedroom, or why, if I had to stay the night, I preferred to stay in my truck or on the other side of town under the stars.
“I’m good over here…can’t stay long.”
I never could. She was probably thinking the same thing. I never missed the way her smile fell, or how she cleared her throat and her voice came out strained after I informed her how short my visit would be.
“Kyle was hurt?” I asked, trying to gauge how much she knew. Or if she even cared.
My mother hummed in response, flipping the page in her photo album, retreating to that space in her mind that was surviving her grief by reliving memories as often as she could. She used to come home from a shift at the hospital and take a long bath. Dad would finish dinner and tell us baseball stories while she finished up. She’d come out in her fluffy robe, her hair in a tight braid, and then she’d spend the whole evening with us laughing and playing.
Now, she came home and just sat. No dinner, no bath…dark house, no life.
When Dad died, it was like she did too. Now it was just a phantom…a wraith who roamed these halls and sat on that old faded couch. No one to check my little brother for skipping classes, no one to ask how his day was or how his baseball game went. Had she even cared that Kyle dropped out of sports the year before? Did she even know he was currently failing two of his classes?
“Boys will be boys,” she said softly, flipping another page. “Remember when you two slid down that big hill over off Orchard Lane?” Her eyes lit up as she watched me.
I wanted to scream. I didn’t like remembering my life when my dad was alive. I didn’t want to think back on how happy my childhood was because it was fucking happy and good and full of smiles and laughter. So much so that now…now it was unbearable to go back, to remember it all.
“Have you been paying the bills online, like I showed you?” I rubbed the back of my neck. I needed her to start taking this over; I couldn’t keep doing it forever.
“Decker, you know what…” She clicked her tongue in that way she did when she tried to start a story. “I went to log in, and I did that thing you told me to do with my fingerprint.” She pointed at me as if I didn’t know what a fingerprint was. “But for the life of me I couldn’t get it to work.” She shrugged, snickering at her failed attempts.
“Did you ask Kyle for help?” I looked over my shoulder to see my younger brother trudge in, heading for the freezer. He pulled out a bag of frozen peas as his eyes slid toward me in that knowing way. It spoke volumes. No, she hadn’t asked for help.
I noticed when he opened the freezer that there were at least twenty frozen dinners piled inside. My gut twisted, that familiar wound of grief flaring to life, gaping open.
The walls were too close, the smells too intense. Suddenly I was seeing my dad on that couch with my mom, his arm wrapped around her, laughing at the television…his hands playing with her hair in that way he’d done my entire life.
I knew deep down that my mother was just heartbroken. She was hurt in a way I didn’t understand. She couldn’t function, and I needed to let her go through it, but I missed her. Kyle missed her. I needed her to come out of this pit of grief and be my mom again. I needed her to sell this house and let us start over. Together.
“Well, maybe we can go over it some other time,” I muttered, looking down at the worn carpet at my feet. Wrestling matches with my dad had taken place right where I was standing.
“You headed out?” Kyle asked.
I knew he needed me to stay, if not for mom…for him. But…I couldn’t.
“I’m headed over to Westfield, if you wanna come with?” I turned my neck toward the door. Kyle gave me a knowing look and dropped his head, letting the peas drop on the counter.
“Yeah, I’ll come.”
We both kissed our mom on the cheek then loaded up some blankets in the back of my truck. After stopping for a six-pack of beer and food from 7-11, we drove over to the opposite side of town.
Kyle carried the food and drinks while I carried the blankets. Then we set our things down around the moon-white headstone under the weeping willow.
“You seemed off tonight.” My younger brother looked over at me from his place beside Dad’s grave.
I put my arms behind my head and watched the stars, thinking of the incident…what I had said to that girl, what I had felt. I was more pissed about that than losing Taylor Beck. My entire plan had hinged on the information my little brother had delivered to me last week, after learning of the meeting Elias had called at that fucking restaurant. The Devils never met outside of our team house for upcoming games, yet the night I was actually free and available to attend, he’d changed the location, so I missed it. Fucker.
Regardless, I still learned that he had made plans to break his one rule by joining the game himself.
The Devils played this stupid-as-fuck game where four team members chose four women to hand out a card to. Your game stats and rankings allowed you to choose which base and which girl you picked. It was stupid, but it was also tradition. It was supposed to act as a carrot on a string, making each player do their best so they’d get the high card. Elias Matthews, team captain and motherfucker extraordinaire, had never played a card.
He helped keep track of the games, the players, the roster, and the ranks. He’d never played. Not even for a first or second base card.
Before the incident the previous year, he would joke about how he wouldn’t be risking a night of fun for a girl who’d poke a hole in the condom. So, when I learned that he’d not only chosen a girl but was playing the high card on her—I couldn’t help myself.
I wanted her, and I wanted him to walk in on me burying my dick inside her.
The only details I could gather before the game were that her name was Taylor Beck, she was shallow as fuck, and she drove a white Beemer.
I figured it would be fine, seeing as she had her card and would arrive in the room before me, but no. I had to fuck that up too.
I didn’t usually share things like that with my brother, but something had me spilling the entire story to him—about my pathetic attempt at revenge then seduction.
“What a shitshow.” Kyle laughed, popping a taquito in his mouth.
“Yeah…” The chill in the air was a stark reminder of how much time had gone by since our dad had passed. Time just kept going, regardless of how much we wanted it to stop or slow down, to just let us get used to life without him…but time just kept flipping us the bird.
“So, why are you just trying to bang her?” Kyle turned on his side, watching me.
Was it morbid that we came out here and spent time on our dad’s gravesite? Maybe…but the groundskeeper, Joe, was a good guy and had actually known our dad as he’d coached Joe’s son in little league. So, we were allowed to come here whenever we wanted, as long as we weren’t doing anything shitty.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s just…if Elias is really doing with this girl what we read in the report, you need to do more than just bang her…you need to completely fuck this up for him. Hit him where it counts,” he clarified, sounding much more mature than his sixteen years.
I considered it for a second. The report in question explained a plethora of deplorable things our Uncle Scotty had dug up for us. Ever since that night on the field, he’d gotten involved, and I was unsure why Elias wasn’t six feet underground right now. Scotty didn’t exactly deal in ethics or morals, but we didn’t ask or judge. He’d gotten enough dirt on the guy to build a fucking baseball field.
“You know I don’t really like her, right?”
Kyle laughed. “Duh, dumbfuck, but you’re playing her regardless—might as well play an ace, right?”
I thought it over again, considered what kind of damage that could do to E if I was actually dating Taylor.
“It would fuck with him…” I trailed off, watching the stars.
We both sat in silence, but my mind kept wandering back to the moment I opened that door and saw her standing in that room.
I hadn’t ever been in love, not that I knew of, but the punch to my chest when I saw her wasn’t something I’d ever forget. My eyes greedily drank in her luscious curves, her round ass, and those fucking breasts…full, real…perfect. She was all woman and entirely perfect.
I remembered, up close, I could see her eyes were forest green with tiny specks of gold from the reflection of the light in the room. She had a cluster of freckles across her nose, splattered along her cheeks, with just one above her left eyebrow. She was beautiful. The kind of beauty that would take years to fully appreciate, and even longer to fully discover. The kind you’d want to wake up to every day, the kind you’d want to see in your kids and their kids. The forever kind.
I couldn’t seem to forget the way her hands fit against my chest, the way their warmth seemed to spread into the icy cavern that existed under my skin…it was enough to make my breath hitch.
I tried not to kiss her bowlike lips, but the closer I got, the more entranced I became. The way her reddish brown hair glowed under the lights…
“Duggar, where’d you go?” Kyle asked, waving a hand in front of my face from where he laid beside me. The stars came in and out of focus as I laughed. I was being ridiculous. This wasn’t going to work out for me; it wasn’t like I could get the girl in the end. I was Frankenstein now. Rumors swirled about me around school, my hand was a jagged mess, and I had pennies to my name. I’d lost the scouts; no one wanted me. I wasn’t headed anywhere, and mostly everyone knew it.
“I’m here…just thinking about what I’m going to do,” I lied.
I was still completely consumed by a pair of green eyes and russet hair. If I ever did see her again, she’d likely kick me in the balls on sight. She was like one of the stars shooting overhead, beautiful but fleeting…not someone who would ever last or be a part of my life.