Opposite of Always

by Justin A. Reynolds

  “Good game, man,” I offer.

  He shakes his head. “Good?”

  “Great game,” I correct myself.

  “My baby is unstoppable, right,” Rita coos. She cups his face and they kiss, and I wonder if this is the cue for Jillian and me to leave.

  But then Franny says, “You guys are coming to the celebration, right?”

  “I hope it’s cool. I mean, it’s in the bougie part of town, so you never know,” Rita says. “Oh, wait, don’t you live over there, Jack?”

  I’m not quite sure how to take her question. “A few blocks over actually,” I reply.

  Jillian smiles. “I’m sure you’d have more fun, you know, without us around. But thanks, Franny. That’s really sweet of you.”

  Franny leers at me. “Time heals all wounds. Isn’t that what they say, Jack?”

  “Right,” I say.

  Although I know Time is as likely to inflict wounds.

  Jillian decides that Franny’s invitation is a peace offering.

  “After everything, how can we not go,” she reasons.

  So I hop into my dad’s car, surprised when Franny slides into the passenger seat, fastens his seat belt.

  “Rita drove here, too. So I asked Jill if she’d mind riding over with her. Figured the girls ride with the girls and the guys with the guys.”

  “Uh, okay,” I say.

  “Besides, figured we should probably talk.”

  “Yeah. Okay. Talking is good.”

  We drive the first minutes in silence. Then Franny raps his knuckles against the window, tapping a made-up beat.

  “How’s the band?” he asks finally.

  I fiddle with the radio buttons but I don’t turn it on. I try to think of the right words. “Not the same without you.”

  “Hmm,” he says.

  “Listen, Franny . . . you . . . I—I’m sure this doesn’t come as a surprise, but I’ve always been jealous of you.”

  “Say what?” Franny laughs.

  “I’m serious. Before you and Jillian got together, I spent a month working up the courage to ask her out.”

  “You never said anything.”

  “What was I supposed to say? ‘Hey, Franny, you stole my girlfriend’?”

  “You should’ve said something. You know, before I got super into her.”

  “Maybe,” I admit. “I guess I was hoping I’d just get over it.”

  “But then you didn’t. Instead you pull a punk-ass move and betray your supposed best friend.”

  “I couldn’t even figure out why you wanted Jillian. You could have anyone.”

  “If you couldn’t figure that out, then maybe you’re the one who doesn’t deserve her.”

  He’s right. Here I am pretending as though I’m the only one in the world who can see how awesome of a person Jillian is, as if I have the Jillian Is a Spectacular Human Being patent, never once considering that Franny sees it just as clearly. The whole time I’ve told myself no one understands the connection that Jillian and I have, how we click. But maybe Franny felt the same.

  “And as if the Jillian thing isn’t bad enough, then you start hanging out with The Coupon behind my back. What’s that about, man? Other than using him to make you money?”

  “Uh, just, you know, I heard he’d gotten released and, uh, I don’t know, I guess I was hoping to help you—”

  “You mean help yourself. Everything you do is for you, man. Stop lying to yourself.”

  “I wanted him to know how awesome you are, in spite of him. That he was crazy to waste time away from you all these years. That you deserve so much better, Franny.”

  “Just stay away from my family.”

  “Franny, I wasn’t trying to . . .” And I don’t know how to finish that sentence. What is it that I wasn’t trying to do? Ruin our friendship? Make him miserable? Because I probably could have done a lot better job of not doing that stuff.

  “And you can kill all the Franny talk, okay. It’s Francisco to you, man.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I could’ve killed you, after the stunt you pulled, man. But I didn’t. I should’ve at least messed you up a bit. But . . . I don’t know . . . I guess I’m a sucker for loyalty. So I gave you a pass on that. But you’re out of passes, kid. You keep screwing with business that doesn’t have anything to do with you and I’m going to have to do what I have to do, you get me?”

  I nod. “I understand.”

  “You better.”

  “I’m sorry, Frann . . . Francisco. I’m really sorry.”

  “No, you’re not. You feel guilty. Learn the difference.”

  “I am sorry. Guilty, too, I guess.”

  “The whole basketball team wanted to jump your punk ass, but I put a stop to that.”

  “I don’t know what you want me to say.” I pause longer than normal at a stop sign, so I can face him. So I can really hear him.

  “Nothing you can say.” He unlocks his door, slides out into the cool night.

  “Where are you going, man? We still have another five or six blocks.”

  Franny shrugs. “Feel like walking. Only so much bullshit I can stomach in one night.”

  “Franny, why did you even get in the car if you hate me so much?”

  Franny shrugs. “I thought maybe we had something worth salvaging, you know, after a lifetime of friendship, but I was wrong, clearly.”

  “Come on. I get it. And everything you’ve said is true. Just let me drive you to this party and then . . . if you never want to talk to me again . . . okay . . . I wish . . . I just have to accept that.”

  Franny leans into the open passenger door and makes a face that I’ve seen before, usually right before he punches someone into the next galaxy. “You say you were jealous of me, Jack. You jealous of me? When you have, like, literally everything. Parents who actually care about you, and who have been around your whole life, a nice house in a safe neighborhood, food on the table that you didn’t have to figure out how to scrape together, more clothes than you can count. Literally, a bag full of money. And I have, what? Man, I don’t even know. But at least I had you. A best friend who made the world a little less cold, you know. And then I get lucky, and I get someone else good in my life . . . Jillian . . . and she makes everything bearable, everything better . . . and you took her from me the same way everyone has taken every good thing away from me . . . and the worst part is . . . I never would’ve done that to you. Never. Far as I was concerned, you and me were brothers, man. But I guess that was a lie, because brothers wouldn’t do that to each other.”

  And I sit there at the stop sign, waiting for him to turn around, waiting for him to reconsider, but he’s not coming back. He pulls his hoodie over his head and keeps walking.

  I take my time getting to the party. Figure it’s best to give Franny time to cool off. Figure if I drive around long enough maybe I’ll come up with a way to make him not hate me so much. Only when I get there, he hasn’t made it yet.

  “Where’s Franny?” I ask Rita.

  “I was going to ask you the same thing,” she says. “He’s not answering his phone.” I can see the worry in her face. Jillian’s, too.

  I want to say something comforting, but in the end I don’t remember if I even say anything at all. Which is just as well, because I probably would’ve said something stupid like, I’m sure he’s okay.

  Which isn’t true.

  Franny never shows up to the party.

  Turns out he took a shortcut that, in the end, wasn’t so short.

  Worst Thing Ever

  We get the news as the party is fading.

  This kid Mike Whitney turns down the music, stands on a couch, and tells everyone to shut the hell up, before he makes the announcement.

  “Francisco’s been shot!”

  The emergency room waiting area is full of sad people, but it feels like we’re the saddest. Abuela comes bounding through the sliding doors, out of breath and hysterical, and the three of us do our best to set
tle her down. My parents show up a little later and talk to the police about what happened.

  Apparently, some suspicious neighborhood-watcher spotted Franny cutting through her gated community and called the police. She decided to follow him in her slippers and housecoat.

  “I called the police,” she called out to Franny. (And this is according to what she told the police, so, of course, it may or may not reflect what actually happened.)

  Franny shrugged, or shook his head, or something else that rubbed her the wrong way. “Whatever, lady. Let them come,” he’d said.

  “Take your hands out of your pockets, and sit on the curb.”

  “Fuck you. I’m going home.”

  “Put your hands up where I can see them.”

  “You’re not the police. Give it a break.”

  And then he made a sudden move for his pocket and removed something shiny. I was afraid for my life. I just reacted. I didn’t have time to think, she’d said. So, she shot him. Bang. Square in his chest. Watched him crumple to the ground, a weird smile on his face, she’d said. She said it was only afterward that she heard the music playing, that she thinks maybe she’d heard it before, but it was only after she’d fired that she registered the sound. It was the Bee Gees that she was hearing, a twenty-second ringtone coming from the shiny phone Franny held in his hand.

  “The Bee Gees,” I ask the officer. “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah,” the officer said, referring to his notes. “That’s what she said, anyway.”

  I nod because I know why Franny was so anxious to answer that call. “That’s his dad’s ringtone.”

  We’re not allowed to see him.

  But we’re told he’s out of surgery and resting in the recovery room. If everything goes okay, they’ll move him to critical care.

  Abuela hasn’t stopped sobbing.

  Franny’s dad finally shows up and his eyes are a deep pink, like he’s been drinking, or maybe crying. Or both.

  “How’s my boy?” he says from across the waiting room.

  I stand. “He’s in recovery. We’re waiting to see him.”

  The Coupon nods, hugs his mom, then steps away. “I need coffee.”

  “I’ll walk with you,” I volunteer.

  It’s a short walk to the vending machine, but I’m not interested in the eighty-five-cent lattes.

  “Where were you tonight?” I ask him when we’re out of earshot from the others.

  “Excuse me,” he says.

  “You missed his game.”

  “I called him.”

  “Yeah, afterward,” I say, when what I want to say is yeah you did, which is partly why he’s in the hospital recovering from a gunshot wound, but the other responsible party stares back at me from the shiny vending machine glass, so.

  “Easy, Oprah,” The Coupon says. “What I do with my son isn’t your concern.”

  My voice leaps out of my body, even surprising me. “What happens to the people I love is my concern. And this is the worst. You popping in and out of his life like a jack-in-the-box, it’s tired, man. It’s selfish and it’s old and it’s hurtful. You don’t even realize how awesome your son is. But you don’t want to know, do you? Because then you might have to be a real dad for the first time in seventeen years.”

  The Coupon shoves me hard against the vending machine. I wait for someone to intervene, except the hallway’s clear.

  “I suck as a father, that what you wanna hear? Huh? There, I said it. Now we can all go back to the business of living, right? Secret’s out.” The Coupon relaxes his grip on my chest, lets my shirt go. Starts to walk away but stops. “Do you have any idea how it feels to walk around the world knowing you ain’t shit? That nothing you’ve done means anything? When you look out at the sky and you don’t see a limitless horizon, when the sky doesn’t shine for you how it does for everyone else, when you know . . . when you KNOW that there’s nothing to look forward to because you’ve already lost all the good things that you were supposed to take care of? I haven’t woken up happy in forever, Jack. I don’t even know if happy is a real thing anymore. You think I’m cold? Hard? You goddamn right I am! That’s the only way I can go about my day. That’s how I got through prison, how I got through being a shitty dad, a shitty son, once upon a time a shitty husband. That’s how I get through.”

  I swallow hard. “Maybe if you told Franny all of that. Maybe if you . . .”

  He jumps toward me, a red cyclone of anger and hurt in his eyes. “Tell him what? You don’t think he knows his pop is a failure? That that’s some kinda news flash for him. He been knowing that about me. All his damn life.”

  “It’s not too late.”

  “It’s been too late. It’s the bottom of the ninth, two outs, two strikes, and I’m in that batter box, man. And that pitcher on the mound, I ain’t never got a hit off him, I’m zero for a million against him, and he’s throwing heat that I can’t even see, let alone catch up to. And I know what you thinking, ’cause I’ve thought the same. Maybe if you just swing one more time, maybe you finally get that hit that’s long overdue. But I don’t ever get on base, Jack. You looking at the strikeout king, my friend.”

  He laughs. Slaps me on my shoulder like he’s just delivered a punch line, except his eyes are wet. “Hell, that’s not even true. In reality, you gotta be in the game to strike out. When it comes to that boy, I’ve never even been in the stadium. I was never there. So, you don’t have to tell me how much it would mean to my son. I lived with that disappointment every day of my life. And the sun ain’t never gonna set on that. Never.”

  Before I can get a word out, Franny’s dad walks away, thumping his shoulder into the automatic door before it can fully open, turning the next corner.

  I walk back to the waiting room, my face buzzing with anger and sadness. I think of my friend lying there, hurting, just hurting, with no one in the room that loves him.

  I want to be in the stadium.

  I want back in the box.

  Hit or miss, I need to swing.

  The cafeteria is closed, so Mom hands out snacks from the vending machine.

  Every half hour Dad checks in with the front desk for updates, but they keep telling him there’s nothing new to report.

  “No news is good news,” Franny’s dad says. Which somehow seems typical of him, that he’d equate nothing with something good.

  Jillian sips on a coffee. Her hands are shaky and she keeps spilling it down her arm and on her chair.

  Rita’s on her phone, talking to her parents, and then her sister.

  You can’t save everyone. I know that. Believe me, I get that. But forget about everyone, I can’t save anyone.

  They finally let us in to see him. Only one at a time, though, the nurse tells us. And ten minutes at the most. He needs rest.

  I stand in the doorway, just watching his eyes flutter in his sleep. I probably waste two or three of my minutes just watching.

  “Go play,” he says, softly.

  I step into the room, walk beside his bed. His legs are nearly too long, his feet glancing the footboard.

  “Play what,” I say. “What do you want me to play?”

  Franny’s chest is wrapped tightly in gauze, and there’s a long skinny tube snaking out from the dressing, feeding what looks like blood down into a clear, fist-size bulb; must be the collection drain the surgeon mentioned. Franny shakes his head, groans like it hurts.

  “Not play,” he says. “Go away.”

  He doesn’t open his eyes.

  Of course he doesn’t want me here. He wouldn’t be here if not for me. I stand there, my brain scrolling for the right words to say, but no search results found.

  “I’ll leave, Franny,” I say. “But I promise you, I’m not going away.”

  Break It Up, Everybody. Party’s Over.

  Mom and Dad decide to reschedule their anniversary party, because how can you celebrate when you don’t have all your family there, Mom reasons.

  I don’t mention that
Franny might not have come, anyway.

  I decide not to remind everyone that he hates my guts. Because that’s inconsequential. I just want him to be okay, whether he hates me forever or not.

  We still open our bottle of wine.

  And it’s easy to tell that we’re all distracted. But we push through. We put on semibrave faces. “It’s just not the same, you know,” Dad says, pouring another glass.

  And he’s right.

  We all know.

  And more than anything, I want another chance.

  One more reset to undo this tragedy.

  Only I can’t count on some magic that I don’t even understand.

  Not this time.

  Not when this could be the last time.

  And what if this is what I have to live with, for the rest of my life?

  Knowing that because of me, maybe Kate lives, but Franny dies?

  What if I traded Franny for Kate, without even knowing?

  How could I live with that?

  So I excuse myself, head up to my room, and close the door. I bring the alarm clock that’s on my desk and set it on the foot of my bed and I stare and I stare and I stare.

  And I wait.

  Just before one o’clock in the morning I dial into my phone.

  The operator tells me that Kate is indeed in the hospital, only it’s after-hours and she cannot transfer me to her room.

  “It’s okay,” I assure her. “I’ll try her again later.”

  I slip out the back stairs, around the house, and into my dad’s car.

  The highway’s deserted. It feels like I’m the only one awake tonight. I pull into the parking lot and try the front door. Locked, of course. But it doesn’t matter. Not tonight. I walk around to the side of the building where the office is. I toss a rock through the window. Alarms sound like crazy, but I ignore them. I climb into the window and walk into the cooler. There are boxes upon boxes, and I’m not sure which one to grab, so I take them all, setting them one by one out the broken window. I pull Dad’s car closer and load them into the trunk.

  Two minutes later I’m turning onto the highway as three police cars, sirens screaming, lights pounding against the foggy night, zoom past me.