Score (Skin in the Game Book 1)

by Christine Bell

  Cal was silent, either still in shock, or embarrassed for me. And all I could think was that my mother and I were the morons who just let him act this way, never standing up and telling him what an asshole he was. Enough was enough.

  I tightened my fists in my lap and exploded.

  “Yeah, Cal,” I burst out, nudging him. “As you can tell, my dad never misses a game. He hasn’t been to a single one of my competitions, though. Maybe if we had hotter girls on the track team? Would that get you to come around, Dad?”

  My mother reached over and patted my hand. “Come on, dear,” she said in a low, urgent voice. “Don’t start.”

  I knew she didn’t want my dad getting riled up into angry drunk mode, but in spite of my obvious dig, he just laughed, which made me remember exactly why we never stood up for ourselves.

  Putting my dad in his place never worked. He had too much ego for that.

  The look in his eye, though, was mean as a snake. “The problem is, field chicks are built like grown men and the runner chicks are built like little boys. So you’re right. Nothing to look at there.”

  There was no question that, as part of the team, I was lumped in that mix too, and the insult hit home like an arrow to the chest.

  My face flamed as he chugged his entire beer and burped loudly. Then he stood up abruptly, making the whole table shake and the ice cubes clink in the water goblets.

  “Come on, Cal, let’s let these ladies talk lady stuff. The third quarter’s starting.”

  Cal stroked my knee, his brow knit with concern.

  “Maybe I could stay and help clean up?”

  “Nonsense,” my mother said with a wave of her hand. “You boys go ahead, Belinda and I have got this.”

  His gaze never left mine and although I appreciated his concern, I shook my head. “It’s better if you just go with him.”

  I looked at him and managed a smile to let him know I was fine. The smile lied, though, because my insides were twisting like a tornado. I could tell he hadn’t finished eating yet, but he stood up and followed my father back to the man cave, obviously not wanting to add to the family drama by refusing. Despite the fact that I was worried about what else my dad would say, I didn’t stop him. By that point, I wasn’t far from a total meltdown, and I really didn’t want Cal there to witness it.

  When my mom and I were alone, I started stacking plates silently and then brought them into the kitchen.

  She followed me in a second later. “You really shouldn’t test your father like that. It’ll upset him.”

  I dropped the dish in the sink so loudly that it clattered. My mom’s eyes widened as I wheeled around to face her.

  “Oh, god forbid dad gets upset. Maybe the whole world will go off kilter if it doesn’t have him to revolve around!”

  She stared hard at me. “What’s gotten into y—”

  “Why do you stay with him, Mom? He’s a total asshole. An asshole to me. And even a bigger asshole to you.” I shook my head, the anger spewing out of my mouth, unchecked. Like once I’d opened the box, I couldn’t close it again until I was purged of every drop of the poison inside me. “I’m grown now. You don’t need him. We don’t need him. You could leave any time and yet you just sit there, day after day, and take it. It’s pathetic.”

  She just stood there, letting my rancor soak into her skin. After I stopped, the word pathetic seemed to hang in the air for an eternity, until guilt started seeping in and I had to look away.

  Calmly, she reached for a towel and dried her hands. Then she opened the cabinet with the liquor, took out a bottle of bourbon, and poured a glass of it. I must’ve really shaken her, because she usually stopped at one alcoholic beverage and it was always something “proper” for a lady, like a martini or a glass of white wine.

  She motioned to a chair at the kitchen table. “Sit.”

  I sat.

  “You have your feelings on the subject. I understand that, Belinda. But the thing you need to understand is that I didn’t have the same lifestyle you’ve had. And—”

  “I know, I know,” I interrupted. “Gram said you used to live in a small house and you all had to chip in working at the ice cream place down the street. What does that have to do with anything?”

  She shook her head. “Don’t interrupt me again, Belinda. Because, you don’t know. You may think you know what poor is because you’ve seen stuff on TV or stayed over at one of your friends’ houses that wasn’t as nice as ours. But that’s not the kind of poor I’m talking about here.”

  The blood rushed to my head as I stared at her. “You weren’t poor, Mom. You went to a good college…you were a Kappa. That’s how I got in.”

  “No, Belinda. I didn’t. And I wasn’t. I told you that because I didn’t want you to know the truth. Your father made a large donation to the school to get you in Kappa. All this,” she gestured around the house and then toward her Breakfast at Tiffany’s outfit and her lips curved into a sad smile. “This was after I met your dad. I grew up dirt poor. And I mean poverty poor. There were days we went to bed hungry. Days we huddled around the stove because we had no heat. Days we thought we’d be living on the street.”

  Her voice was thick and her eyes seemed far away, like she was lost in a memory.

  “We didn’t have a house. We rented a one-bedroom trailer that was falling apart. Gram worked three jobs to get us even that much. I quit school at fifteen to work at the ice cream shop because we almost wound up homeless.”

  I swallowed hard, but stayed quiet, stuck somewhere in the limbo between shock, despair and anger.

  How could I not know all this? How could she have lied to me for all these years?

  “I had no education, no money, and no skills outside of scooping rocky road, and I was going to be stuck in that shit town, in that shit life, forever.” She let out a laugh that was tinged with sadness. “And then there was that one day your father came in for ice cream. He was in town to play against the Crimson Tide for the championship, and he was larger than life. Oh, Belinda. You should’ve seen him. I’d never seen anything before that took my breath away the way he did. He was charming and sweet, and he swept me off my feet. I know you find it hard to believe that your dad could be that way, but it’s true.”

  She was looking at that snifter of bourbon, not at me, and her eyes were glassy with the memory. Her voice was strange, hollow, not full of that false cheeriness she always wore like a blue ribbon she’d won at a local fair.

  “By the time he got drafted by the NFL and we moved to Philly, I knew my place in this world. The shine and novelty of that sweet-as-pie ‘Bama girl was off. I knew he loved me, but not enough to keep his dick in his pants.”

  I don’t know if it was that the crassness of her words was so out of character, or maybe it was just all the honesty, all at once, but I couldn’t stop myself from flinching.

  “But you know what he did do?” she asked, her eyes flashing to mine, and pinning me there with a steely, resolute gaze.

  I shook my head, almost wishing she wouldn’t tell me as something heavy started to root itself in my stomach. “What?” I heard myself ask in a hollow tone.

  “He bought Gram a house to grow old in so she didn’t have to take her last breath in some dump of a trailer. He made sure my daughter had a life I never had, and that she would never go to bed hungry at night.” Her voice grew stronger with every word. “I got to raise you and be on the PTA instead of working three jobs and worrying if you’d have a bedroom to sleep in at night. I got to go to lunches with my girlfriends and wear pretty clothes, take painting classes at the community center and do my garden. And instead of those red, calloused fingers with those knobby knuckles my mother had, I have these.”

  She held up her perfectly manicured hands that looked as soft and supple as a twenty year olds and wiggled them.

  “Now, that might not be enough for you, Bee. And I’m glad. I’m glad it’s not. I don’t want it to be. But it sure is enough for this poor girl fro
m Birmingham. And you have no right to judge me for it. I’m sorry I was too ashamed to tell you the truth before now, but my choices gave you the opportunity to get the education I never had and to join that sorority and find that nice boy out there.” She straightened and sucked in a steadying breath. “And I’m not sorry for that.”

  I just stared at her, whatever was in my stomach growing tendrils that reached up to my throat, choking me.

  My father’s call broke the silence. “Hey, Melanie, bring down two big slices of pie for us. A la mode, okay?”

  She stood up, tucked a stray hair back into her helmet-like coif. Then she went to the refrigerator and pulled out a giant, homemade apple pie, which she set on the counter. The ever-present, pleasant smile was back on her face and it was like the past five minutes had never even happened.

  I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding and looked at that untouched giant glass of bourbon. “Are you going to drink that?”

  She shook her head as she pulled a gallon of vanilla ice cream out of the freezer. “I poured it for you. Figured you might need it.”

  My mother went about her business, slicing the pie, warming it in the microwave, dolloping ice cream on top, flitting about like a happy little bird in her nest. And all the while, my mind reeled.

  I wrapped my hand around the glass of liquor and chugged the whole thing. I’d never drank bourbon before, but it didn’t burn going down. In fact, it was kind of soothing, compared to the bitter pill my mother had just forced down my throat.

  I’d never believed it was possible, but she’d come out and said it.

  She wasn’t biding her time, or pretending she was content with this life and her lot with my father. She was content.

  And I think I hated her for it.

  19

  Cal

  “This one here is a beauty. I was MVP during my rookie season. First player to do that.”

  Bee’s dad placed the silver-plated trophy in my grip. I’d seen the award a bunch of times on television but never thought I’d hold one in my hands. It was heavier than I’d imagined during all those times I pretended to be the recipient in my backyard.

  “It’s impressive,” I said with a nod. And it was, but something inside me felt decidedly less excited than I expected I would be. Maybe I should’ve been thrilled, but the only thing running through my head was that adage about how you should never meet your heroes.

  Because Evan Mitchell?

  Was nothing like the man I saw on TV.

  I’d worn his jersey when I was a kid. Forked over every penny I’d earned from what felt like a thousand hours of mowing lawns one summer to buy a football signed by him. Worshiped him in front of the television every Sunday. Wanted to be him.

  And now, come to find out, he was a douchebag, with a capital D.

  It wasn’t so much the constant bragging about his accomplishments. Those were pretty impressive. He had everything short of the Super Bowl ring, not that the room had any space left over for it.

  No, what I couldn’t deal with was the way he’d treated Bee. Like she wasn’t good enough for him. Every time he’d open his mouth, out would come something that would make her flush with humiliation. And I’d only been at the house for a few hours. I couldn’t imagine twenty years of that kind of treatment.

  No wonder Bee couldn’t stand him.

  He and I had finished our hand-delivered desserts and made it through the rest of the game while seated in leather recliners surrounded by literally thousands of pieces of nostalgia from Bee’s dad’s career. There wasn’t a bare spot on any of the walls. The trophies and awards were lined up to the ceiling, behind the fully-stocked bar, surrounding the giant television set. Not a single picture of Bee or her trophies. Every single thing in that room was there to affirm the Evan Mitchell legend.

  But this man was no legend. Now, he was balding, his skin was ruddy, and he had the definite makings of a beer belly. Standing there beside him, I had to fight to keep my temper in check. This was the guy giving me a bad name. This was the man that had wounded Bee so much that I wasn’t sure she’d ever learn to fully trust me.

  And this is her father, I reminded myself. It wasn’t my place to make waves day one. It was my place to support Bee and try to make the best of a bad situation.

  Her dad laughed, finished his beer, and ran his sleeve over his mouth. He’d polished off a six-pack of Yuengling. I’d had one and was still nursing the second. All the bottles were lined up on the coffee table. I knew Bee’s mom would have the duty of cleaning it up, later. Another victim of this assholes narcissism.

  He reached into a mini-fridge and pulled out another bottle as I inspected a newsprint photo of Evan Mitchell, back in the days when he had more hair, surrounded by three scantily-clad cheerleaders.

  “Those girls were wild,” he said behind me. He whistled. “Triplets. They liked to do everything together, if you know what I mean.”

  I nodded, took a swig of warm beer. The photo was from long ago, but not that long ago. The date on the top banner confirmed it; the picture was younger than Bee was.

  My gut lurched. I felt his gaze on me, waiting for some reaction, maybe a high-five, or a “you sly dog, you”. But nope. I had to go along to get along, but that was too far. I disrespect Bee or her mother by acting like it was cool or applause-worthy that he cheated on his wife and flaunted it in their home on top of it.

  I shifted my gaze over to another news article on the wall, one about a record-breaking season Evan Mitchell was an integral part of.

  It didn’t help.

  He went on. “You don’t have to hide it just because you’re dating Bee.” He grinned slyly and leaned in, so I could smell his sour, beer-soaked breath. “I want you to know, I get it. It goes with the territory in our line of work. All that adrenaline. We ain’t gonna be satisfied by just one woman. Am I right?”

  I swallowed more of the beer, and its bitterness burned the back of my throat.

  He clapped me on the shoulder with a laugh. “We’re only flesh and blood. The way I see it, as long as you come home at night, where’s the harm?”

  I wrapped my hand around the neck of my bottle and looked down at the ground, counting to ten in my mind.

  “I bet you have some nice pieces of ass on campus, huh?” he said in a conspiratorial whisper.

  I put the bottle down on the bar, too loudly, and stepped toward the door. “I’d better go see what Bee is up to.”

  I went upstairs, the anger building on disgust, wishing like hell I had a shower to rinse all the sleaze off me. I found Bee still sitting in the kitchen, an empty tumbler in front of her, looking a little glassy-eyed as her mother flitted around, putting leftovers into Tupperware containers.

  She looked up at me and her broken gaze said it all.

  “You ready?” We both said it at the same time.

  Then we both nodded at the same time, too.

  Her mom packed up some platters of turkey for her to take back to the sorority house. Bee kissed her mom, and called a curt goodbye to her dad down the stairs, and then we stepped outside.

  She walked ahead of me at a fast clip, like she needed to get as far away, as quick as possible. When we were back in the car, I glanced over at her. She was staring straight ahead, Tupperware on her lap, looking like she’d been through a war.

  “Well, that was an adventure,” I said, to break the awkward silence.

  She nodded absently. “Yeah.”

  I pulled away and navigated back to the main road, stopping to look at her every so often. She kept staring straight ahead, holding her stomach like it was hurting her. I could see she was trembling, so I cranked up the heat. It didn’t help. She just shivered harder.

  “You want to talk about it?” I asked softly. I wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t, but then again, when I felt like that, sometimes talking helped. I thought about how great the day had started for both of us—the awesome run at the track and then me and Bee in the woods, listenin
g to her sigh and moan…and now, everything had turned to shit. Made me want to keep driving until we were far away, just the two of us, where nothing bad could touch us.

  She took a long time to answer, and before she did, she took a deep breath and blew it out in a rush. “It’s nothing. Like, he acted exactly how I expected him to. Just that, all this time I thought my mom couldn’t possibly like being treated like a doormat by my dad.” She scrubbed her face with her hands. “But today she just told me that she’s totally okay with it. She was poor when she was young, and now she’s not, and she has my dad to thank for that. To her, it’s all a trade-off.”

  “Seriously?” I raised an eyebrow and thought it over for a long while before I continued. I recalled Christmases with no gifts, and free school lunches and my mom scrimping and saving to afford to buy me used football gear and I shrugged. “Well, I can tell you this: Being broke is shitty. And if she doesn’t let him get to her in her head and in her heart, and she’s been doing it long enough, maybe she’s used to it, Bee.”

  “Yeah, but how can anyone actually want to live like that?” she asked, shaking her head.

  “Who knows why people make the choices they do? To each their own, I guess. It’s not on you to fix their relationship,” I said, reaching over to give her shoulder a massage to ease the tension. “You can’t rescue her. She’s grown and has made her decision. Maybe you should focus more on your own relationship with your dad?”

  She flinched and pulled back. “Are you serious right now?”

  I slowed at a stop light and looked over at her.

  “Well, neither of them seem to think their relationship needs fixing. So why dwell on it? Focus on things you can control. Trying to doctor everyone around you is a recipe for heartache, Bee.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “The reason,” she said pointedly, as if I’d just given her the stupidest advice ever, “is because I’m a part of their family, of course. I can’t go into that house without wanting to punch one of them. You really think I’m supposed to smile and let them be like I’m not affected?”