Game On

by Victoria Denault

  She wrenches her arm free and for a split second I think she might bolt again, but instead she snatches the donut bag out of my hand. She pulls it out. Most of the chocolate frosting is gone, it must be stuck to the inside of the bag. I figure she’ll take a bite but she just holds it, still a skeptic. “You don’t look like a guy who eats donuts.”

  I laugh. “I’m not supposed to. You’re saving me from myself.”

  She still looks skeptical but she takes a giant bite anyway. “Thanks,” she manages through chewing. “It tastes much better than the stale ones they dump out back after close.”

  Oh God, this kid is killing me. “How long have you been on the street?”

  “Who said I was?” she challenges.

  “Everything about you says you are,” I reply bluntly. “I know because I’ve been there.”

  “Ha!” she blurts out without a drop of humor. “Bullshit.”

  “Swear to God,” I promise and something in that hard as nails face softens. I decide to push a little more. “How old are you?”

  “Eighteen.”

  She’s maybe five foot one or two. She’s got the frame of a twelve-year-old but that can happen even to an adult when you’re malnourished. However, her still chubby youthful cheeks tell me this isn’t just malnourishment. She’s a baby.

  “I’m guessing twelve?”

  “Fuck you! I’m sixteen.”

  “No you’re not,” I counter. “You’re young enough that your potty mouth is extra offensive.”

  She stops chewing at that. Frowns and swallows what’s in her mouth. “You’re not my boss.”

  “Nope. Just stating facts.”

  “Sorry.”

  Okay. She’s not lost yet. My heart feels less heavy. I pull out the remaining cash in my hoodie pocket. I carry cash at all times, even running at the crack of ass, for this exact reason. I hold up the three twenties. “I’ll give you this no matter what, but I’d like an honest answer about your age.”

  “What month is it?”

  “October. The twenty-first.”

  “I’ll be fifteen next month,” she admits. “But obviously I’m mature for my age. Now pay up.”

  “Yeah. This life will do that.” I hand her the cash. She takes it quickly but with less of a swipe than the donut.

  “I won’t use it for gross stuff like drugs or anything,” she promises.

  I look around the street. “Where you living? You got a camp somewhere? With others?”

  She shakes her head. “Nah. Not really. Sometimes this crazy lady Ethel lets me hang out with her under the bridge, when she’s not arguing with the voices in her head. She’s got a tarp and some blankets. But the cops like to raid camps and I don’t wanna get nabbed. I am not going back to the system.”

  She’s not good at this. She shouldn’t be telling me any details. It makes me think she hasn’t actually been on the street very long. I nod. I know that visceral fear and hearing it in her words floods me with unwanted memories. “I know a place. It’s like a boardinghouse. Just for kids.”

  “Good for you.”

  “Mac, it’s different.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I researched it. I volunteer there,” I explain and a guy in a business suit marches by, giving us a curious but disgusted glance. Man, I fucking hate people sometimes.

  “You researched it?” Her tone is dismissive. “Yeah, lots of crap looks good on paper. The whole system is great on paper. It’s a joke. I’m not going back to it.”

  “This is private. Not state run,” I explain. “It’s good.”

  “Have fun volunteering,” she says and turns to walk away again.

  I fall in step beside her. “You should check it out. It’s in Brooklyn.”

  “Uh-huh.” She is so not buying what I am selling.

  “You can’t keep living like you’re living,” I tell her and I know it’s going to annoy her, to say the least.

  She glares at me. “Fuck you. I can take care of myself.”

  “I’ll get a pamphlet on the place and give it to you. So you can read about it,” I offer, refusing to back down. “I’ll meet you tomorrow with the info. Sound good?”

  “Not interested,” she replies.

  “Okay, how about I make it interesting. Meet me tomorrow. Say right over there,” I point to the corner across from us in front of a bakery. “At nine in the morning and I’ll give you another sixty if you come and read the pamphlet.”

  “Are you for real?” she asks, coming to a stop.

  “Real,” I promise. “So? Deal?”

  She nods. “But I get the cash before you start yapping.”

  I smile. “Okay.”

  She looks stunned and still a little skeptical. “I won’t sleep with you like ever. No matter how much money you give me. If you try to make me I will bite your—”

  “Whoa now!” I do not want to hear the end of that sentence. “I swear to God I don’t want anything sexual from you. Or anything at all. I’ve just been in your shoes.”

  “I still don’t believe that by the way,” she replies firmly. “No one goes from this to that.”

  She points at me, her tiny finger sweeping up and down and then it does a flamboyant circle. I smile again. She’s something else. “Do you need a place to stay tonight?”

  “No,” she replies. “Look I will read whatever you want for money, but I ain’t your pet project. So don’t go all fucking social worker on me.”

  “Okay. Fine. I won’t.” I raise my hands as if surrendering. “Tomorrow. In front of the bakery. Nine.”

  She nods. “Don’t follow me.”

  I nod and watch her walk away. She keeps glancing over her shoulder until she crosses the street and disappears around a corner. I pull out my phone and take a picture of the storefront so I remember the name of it and then pull up Google maps to figure out where the fuck I am and how to get home.

  I walk toward the closest subway station. She’s exactly why I volunteer at charities that help kids. I don’t do it for praise. I do it because if people hadn’t done it for me, I wouldn’t be where I am. Mac is the first street kid I’ve engaged this much though. I’ve often given them money and food or stuff like toothbrushes and clothes, but I tend to keep the interactions impersonal because I can’t get attached to these kids and they can’t get attached to me. At any point I could be traded. The last thing either of us needs is to be ripped away from each other.

  But there was no way I was going to leave Mac there in that alley with that guy. It might be my downfall, if I get too involved and somehow let her down, but I have to try and help her.

  Chapter 6

  Alex

  I knock on the front door of Devin and Callie’s Park Slope brownstone, and Callie swings it open with a bright friendly smile. “Come in!”

  “Sorry I’m early,” I say. “But I brought wine.”

  She wipes her hands on her apron and grabs the bottle. “Thanks! Let’s get this puppy open.”

  I follow her through the house to the kitchen at the back. She puts the bottle on the counter and opens a drawer, digging around for a corkscrew. I sit at one of the bar stools on the other side of the peninsula. “I haven’t had a drink in weeks. Not since Conner brought the stomach flu home from school. He got over it in a couple days, but I struggled for weeks.”

  “Devin mentioned it. You’re better now?” I ask as she pulls out the corkscrew and reaches for the bottle again. I inhale deeply. Something smells delicious, like tomato and cheese.

  She nods, a piece of her long brown hair coming loose from the ponytail she’s wearing. She tucks it behind her ear and begins to open the bottle. “Mostly.”

  I take another long whiff of the delicious aroma filling the kitchen. “Dinner smells amazing.”

  She sniffs. Pauses and sniffs again. “Really?”

  I nod and her brow furrows for a second. How could she think it smells anything less than delicious? I look around the place, glancing into
the dining room to the left and the archway to the family room on the right. There’s a train track set up in there and a bunch of toys on the floor. “Where’s Devin and the rug rat?”

  “Dev is picking him up from hockey practice,” Callie explains. “They’ll be home soon.”

  “Hockey practice,” I repeat and smile. “Another Garrison getting ready to make the league his bitch, huh?”

  Callie laughs. “Devin sure hopes so. And Conner loves it. It’s all he talks about now.”

  I feel a weird little sting, like a paper cut inside my chest. I am kind of jealous of what it must feel like to have a family. I haven’t felt that sting since I was a teenager and couch surfing, bouncing around between the homes of other guys on my hockey team because I’d run away from my foster home. I must look like I feel because Callie’s expression softens and grows curious. “You want to add another Larue to the league one day?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t want kids. I would have no idea how to be a good parent.”

  She pulls the cork out of the bottle but pauses, her brown eyes curious. “Your parents suck, huh?”

  I shrug but for some reason, for the first time in a very, very long time, I don’t stop there. Maybe it’s because I know her childhood history is similar to mine since she and her sisters were orphaned at a young age or maybe it’s because running into that Mac kid this morning has made me think about it a lot more today, but I tell Callie something I haven’t told anyone since I was eighteen. “They didn’t get a chance to suck. They died.”

  She puts the wine bottle down on the counter with a thud. Her eyes are even wider now. “Both of them?”

  I nod. “Car accident.”

  “Holy shit. Recently?”

  “Before I made the league. I don’t really talk about it.” The dreaded prickly feeling of humiliation starts to set in. I shift in my seat and stand up. “Wineglasses?”

  She points to a cupboard next to the fridge so I walk over and open it.

  “I’m going to tell you what you’ve heard a million times: I’m so sorry you went through that,” she says and I glance at her over my shoulder. Her eyes aren’t filled with sympathy but more with understanding. “My mom died before I was even a teenager and I still get condolences when people find out. I try not to bring it up because of that. It’s hard.”

  I shake my head. “You guys avoided foster care though, right?” I take two wineglasses down, put them on the peninsula and reach for the wine.

  “Thankfully,” she says quietly, which is uncharacteristic for her. “Our dad’s mom took us in but as soon as Jessie turned sixteen, Grandma Lily moved to Florida for nine months of the year, leaving us on our own in Maine, and we had to lie to just about everyone so they didn’t put us in foster care.”

  “That’s horrible,” I tell her but still, part of me considers her lucky because she had Jessie and Rose and a house to live in, which is much more than I got once I left the foster care system. “You know things are changing now. There’s a lot of private facilities for orphaned or abandoned kids. There’s this one right here in Brooklyn that lets them live independently as long as they’re in some kind of schooling and helps teach them life basics like budgeting and cooking and nutrition. They offer the classes to kids who don’t live there too. And they have lawyers and stuff who help them for free.”

  She looks genuinely excited. “Oh my God, I wish there was a place like that in Silver Bay when we were growing up. I almost burned the house down like five times trying to cook that first year Grandma Lily left us.”

  I laugh and hand her a glass of wine, taking my own.

  “You should tell Rose about this place,” Callie informs me. “She’s got a teaching degree and she wants to tutor kids. And of course that type of place would mean a lot to her because of our past.”

  I nod and make a mental note. “Cheers,” I say to Callie and clink my glass against hers before taking a sip. She takes one too but instantly makes a face.

  She spits the wine back into the glass. “It tastes disgusting.”

  I cock my head. “Really. I like it.”

  “How can you like it? It’s like vinegar!” She sniffs her glass and I watch the color drain from her face. I’m about to ask her if she’s okay but she abruptly puts the glass down on the counter and charges from the room.

  Fuck! Where is Devin when you need him? This is husband territory. I set my glass down beside hers. Pause. Pick it back up and gulp down more wine. Nope. Definitely not vinegar. I put it down again and trace her steps. She went out into the main hallway and at first I’m not sure where she went from there but then I hear her groan from behind a door under the stairs. I knock on it tentatively. “Callie? Are you okay? Should I call Devin?”

  I hear a toilet flush and a moment later she opens the door. She’s leaning over the sink, the faucet is on and she’s scooping water into her mouth with her hand and then spitting it back out. The bathroom is tiny, with no windows so I stay firmly in the hallway.

  “Don’t call Devin,” she croaks. “He’ll be home shortly anyway. I can’t believe this flu is coming back. I think I really have to give in and get to the doctor.”

  “Callie…” I feel like I’m intruding by saying this but it seems so obvious to me. “Are you sure it’s the flu?”

  “You think it’s something worse?” she questions, panicked. “Like salmonella? Or Ebola?”

  “No.” I laugh as she steps out of the bathroom closing the light and then the door. “Any chance you’re pregnant?”

  She freezes. “What? No. I mean. Maybe. But no. I would know. Right?”

  “Umm…I think these symptoms might be your body’s way of telling you,” I reply and I’m more than a little stunned that she seems so confused.

  “We’re not trying,” she confesses. “I mean…we’re not using anything but we’re not trying. You know what I mean?”

  “No. Honestly, I don’t really have a clue.” The idea of being lackadaisical about birth control is terrifying to me. “But you should probably take a test.”

  “I did a couple months ago when I was late, and it came out negative,” she replies.

  “Too much information,” I blurt out and cover my ears.

  “I can’t be.”

  “You can be,” I argue. There’s a storm brewing in her big brown eyes as hope and fear swirl behind them.

  “I have a test upstairs,” she explains. “I bought a bunch.”

  “Okay then.”

  The front door opens suddenly and Devin walks in with a pint-sized version of himself. “Hey Rue,” he says, sniffing deeply. “Something smells incredible.”

  “I…” Callie’s face is still a swirl of emotions and Devin takes it in and looks instantly concerned. She tries to smile down at Conner. “Hey, Con! How was hockey?”

  “It was awesome. I scored,” he announces and then turns his attention to me. “Do you play?”

  “Yep. With your dad. I’m Alex,” I say and he extends his little hand. I want to laugh but I don’t want to offend him so I extend mine and we shake.

  “Nice to meet ya. I’m gonna play with my iPad now.”

  He marches to the back of the house and I watch him go in amusement. Devin is looking at Callie. “You okay? You don’t look it.”

  Callie smiles. “Fine. I’m just going to run upstairs for a second. If the oven dings take out the lasagna okay?”

  She charges up the stairs. I follow Devin into the kitchen again. He sees the wine and heads to the cupboard to grab another glass. “Should I be worried about her?”

  “I think she’s just trying to figure out if she has the flu,” I explain as he pours himself a glass.

  “That bug is back? Damn.” He shakes his head. “I’m going to make her go to the doctor this time. She hates doctors but I’ll carry her there if I have to.”

  “Devin,” I say his name and he looks up at me. “You’ve been through this before. How are you not getting it?”

  And then
he gets it. Instantly. “No. She’s…?”

  I shrug but nod because if I had to bet I’d bet yes. He puts his glass down on the counter again and his eyes shift toward the family room, where Conner is and back. “With Ashleigh we had to try forever. But Callie and I…we were just going to see what happens.”

  “Babies.” I grin at him because he’s a doofus right now. “Babies are what happens, Captain.”

  “I have to go check on her,” he whispers, his voice excited and a giant smile spread across his face. “We were going to start trying the minute we got married but decided to wait to make sure Conner was settling into the stepmom thing and then she didn’t want to be pregnant for Jessie’s wedding and well, now I guess maybe she’ll be pregnant for Rose’s.”

  He moves toward the hall, but the oven beeps so first he pulls a bubbling, hot, gooey, delicious-looking lasagna out and places it on top of the stove. It smells so freaking good I already regret the next words that are about to come out of my mouth. “Is it okay if I bail on dinner?”

  He’s making his way toward the hallway again, to head upstairs and check on Callie, but he stops and gives me a remorseful smile. “You don’t have to.”

  “Dude, this is a family moment.” I tell him what I know he already knows. “It’s fine. Tell Callie I’ll take a rain check on that lasagna.”

  I walk to the family room archway, lean in and ruffle Conner’s wheat-colored hair. “Nice meeting you, hockey star. See you soon.”

  “Bye, Alex who plays with my dad,” he says, eyes never leaving the iPad in front of him. He’s got some game going with loud, annoying music.

  I walk to the front hall with Devin and grab my coat off the banister. Devin still looks remorseful. “Call Luc and Rosie. They’re just down the street and they’re always up for guests.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Devin!” Callie’s voice sounds urgent as she calls his name from somewhere upstairs.

  I smile as the excitement in his eyes grows. I remember Jordan telling me years ago how badly Devin wanted to be a dad. How excited he was when Conner was born. “Go. And Devin,” I pause as he stops two stairs up and looks back at me. “I hope you knocked her up.”