Varsity Tiebreaker

by Ginger Scott

  “You haven’t packed?” She’s shocked. I actually have, but there are still a few things I could work on before leaving. I won’t be at school tomorrow or Wednesday either, so in many ways, this really is good-bye.

  “I know, and you know how I am with shoes,” I joke, reaching around her shoulders to hug her tight. She squeezes me.

  “They have a weight limit for the plane, you know.”

  “Good thing we’re driving.”

  “Ha, well . . . tires can only hold so much, too.”

  My lips pucker a smile that turns into laughter, the kind that settles between two friends who would rather part like this than through tears.

  I back away, wanting to run before the boys come out.

  “I’ll call you before we go. We’ll talk. And we’ll talk every day, okay?” She’s the one promise I know I can keep. I need her too much.

  “You better. And I want coordinated video chats that just happen to have Jordan in the background,” she says.

  I pull my phone from my pocket to wave it, catching her in one last photo before I go.

  “Unbelievable,” she retorts.

  I grin, turning to walk the rest of the way to my car, and I cradle the phone in my lap once inside and look at the cross-eyed, open-mouthed face my friend is making. I save this one as my backdrop, and pledge to let it help me get through four months apart.

  As I pull out, the team files out through the locker room doors, a certain two walking out last. I pause at the parking lot exit, my blinker on, ready to turn. It would be so easy to turn around, and I almost do.

  But I don’t.

  21

  Tory

  I should have gone to say good-bye. Hayden did. He even bought Abby a gift—a keychain with one of those little director’s clapper boards on the end. He wrote her name on it. It was thoughtful. I’m not very good at thoughtful right now. I’m nice and settled in on pathetic.

  It just seemed better to let things end where we left them. Nothing definitive, just an air of possibility. No painful tears. No explanations to Hayden or our friends—ourselves.

  She hit the road yesterday. Hayden called out of school to see her off. I went to class, and not because I love being one of the handful who shows up on half days before holiday break to watch various versions of The Grinch, but because school was a damn good place to hide for the day.

  There’s no hiding from Thursdays, though. It seems a month since I stormed out of Dr. Majestic’s office. In one week, I’ve managed to unearth four years of secrets my brother has been keeping, bought a car, moved some of my shit to my dad’s place, and fallen in love. Oh, and I hit rock bottom in terms of ever wanting to fall in love again.

  All in all, a pretty well-rounded week leading up to therapy.

  In a show of faith, or maybe in an act of naiveté, I drove Hayden to therapy tonight. He wanted to have the full cop experience. I think he was a little disappointed when I didn’t actually have a siren and the flashy lights. They rip that shit out before auction. I do have a spotlight, though. That’ll come in handy the next time I take this thing off-road out on McCaffey’s land.

  The drive in was good. I only hope we survive the drive home, because the longer the four of us sit in this waiting room just . . . waiting, the more palpable the tension becomes. Right now, it’s thick enough to melt the paint off the walls.

  “D’Angelos. Welcome,” Dr. Majestic says.

  “Wouldn’t it be great if she wore a wizard hat for one of these?” Hayden whispers behind my back. Dad and I both snicker.

  “Tory!” My mom hushes me with her finger to her lips, and in a sign of normality, my father and brother straighten their posture and pretend they don’t know me.

  “Unbelievable,” I mumble, elbowing my brother in the ribs. He grunts but laughs through it, proud he can still say things and blame them on me. This has been happening since we learned to talk.

  We take the same seats as last time, only the doctor planned ahead and pre-moved the recliner for me. I give her a nod and flop into my seat, toying with the handle on the side to kick my feet up. My brother and dad chuckle but I stop when my mom gives me side eyes.

  “Fine,” I grumble. I’m trying to keep it light on purpose—because I still don’t want to be here. Maybe I can will this time to fly by and be painless.

  “Let’s pick up where we left off,” Dr. Majestic begins, and there goes any hope that this will go easy.

  “Tory, we didn’t get to work through some of your speed bumps before you left.”

  “Speed bumps?” I question.

  “She calls our conflicts speed bumps. She says it makes them easier to acknowledge,” Hayden says, one brow raised.

  I lock eyes with him.

  “Ah. Speed bumps. Okay, well, no speed bumps for me. Smooth sailing, or driving rather. I’m a racetrack.” I show my hands and lift my shoulders, playing the part of an easy-going man, though I really have no idea what one of those looks like.

  “I see,” she says, crossing her legs, clicking her pen open, and leaning forward, wrists crossed atop her knees. She has this way of drawing her breath in through her nose that makes her mouth look like it’s about to unleash a barrage of new questions. But all that happens is more silence, and more studying of my silence.

  “Yep,” I finally say.

  She nods, but still no words.

  My head swivels to face my brother, who simply blinks back at me. No help at all. My dad is growing uncomfortable watching me under scrutiny and shifts his posture on his end of the couch.

  “Honey, it’s fine. This is a safe space.” My mom finally gives.

  The match to my lighter fluid.

  “Safe space?” My voice is loud. I have no in-between.

  “Yes, you are safe to be honest here,” she says, which sets off a fit of laughter in my brother’s belly. It brews slowly. Coming out through his tight lips, it spits until he finally has to cough it out.

  “Are you all right?” My mom turns to him, coddling like she normally does, only this time my brother shirks off her attention.

  “Oh, I’m totally fine. Race car ready just like Tory,” he says, and I smirk at his quick response and comradery.

  “Me, too. More of a pace car, but smooth ride,” my dad adds in.

  Unable to handle being ganged up on, my mom throws up her hands and covers her face. It’s a move we’ve seen her do often, crumbling in the face of confrontation to get everyone to stop. Thing is, that visual got my brother to tuck away the things he saw and knew. It forced him to be afraid of setting off a massive landslide of dominoes. And that . . . that is one hell of a speed bump.

  “Natalia, do you want to share how this is making you feel?”

  My mom milks the moment, her breath quivering with overdone emotion, until she waits too long and my brother takes over for her.

  “It makes her nervous because she can’t control any of it. She can’t mess up and just make things go away,” he says.

  “That’s not it at all, Hayden.”

  “Oh, it is. And it’s more than that,” my brother unleashes. “Mom, I knew. I saw you and Mr. Fuller. I saw you at camp, and I saw the signs that it was still happening when we got home, and I saw the signs again months ago when I figured surely, they’ve ended things by now. But no, you just kept living double lives, throwing everything we are in the garbage because it wasn’t enough, and I spent four years pretending it was normal because I didn’t want our little bubble to burst.”

  “Unbelievable,” my dad says under his breath, closing himself off more. He’s flawed too, just differently.

  “Are you saying you didn’t know?” My brother lashes into him now, and while my instinct is to defend my dad, I think maybe that is my flaw. I pick sides without hearing the full story.

  “Yes, Hayden. I just wrote it all off, figured she could go have her fun and I’d do all the work.” My dad waves his hand dismissively. He’s making a bad joke of all of this, out of us in a wa
y, and his words only make my brother grow bolder.

  “First of all, you’re lying. She didn’t hide it well, and there’s no way you weren’t suspicious. Hell, Dad, I had a girlfriend for like, six weeks, and I knew Tory was with her behind my back.”

  My mouth widens and my lungs deflate with the sucker punch. It’s fair, but it’s also not the topic. And it’s over with Abby, because I chose Hayden.

  “Tory,” my mom comes to life again in time to scold me.

  I stand up and cup my ears as I glare at her.

  “Oh, no. You do not get to judge me,” I say, only to have Hayden take over my point.

  “Handle your own problems, Mom. Handle this—us! This is your mess. You and Dad, you’re in a marriage. Tory and I are fucking eighteen and dating and figuring out who we are. You should have gotten all of your mistakes out of your system by now.”

  “Yeah,” I agree, pausing at the word mistake. I lower myself to my seat and fade into the background, letting the chaos move forward without me. I glance over to the doctor while my family’s shouting silences in my own head. She’s listening, but she isn’t writing down a damn word. It’s the expression buried underneath the professional façade that really piques my interest. She’s getting us to do just what she wants, what we need to do more of. She’s getting us to talk. To listen.

  For an hour, we yell over one another, Hayden doing most of the talking to the point that his voice is ragged by the time our session is done. My parents leave in their separate cars, my dad driving back to the city and my mom to our home. I still feel confident my dad’s albums will leave the house soon. I’m pretty sure there isn’t a resolution to their marriage in any of this, but maybe there’s one for us as a family. Maybe there will be a way for things to be civil, and for Hayden and I to quit carrying the weight.

  Hayden and I leave the office after my parents are gone, walking quietly to my car. I turn it on and maneuver the aux cord while my brother buckles up so I can shuffle to his personal playlist for the ride back. One of his favorite Motown songs comes on and he turns to face me with a suspicious line on his mouth.

  “You pick this on purpose?” he asks.

  I hold up my phone and show him the playlist labeled HAYDEN’S SHIT. He laughs, taking my phone and scrolling through the songs.

  “You’re missing some good ones,” he says.

  I grab my phone back and smirk.

  “I’ve got like fifty. Let me learn to like all of these first and then we’ll talk about you adding some.”

  I shift into reverse and check my mirrors.

  “Maybe you make me a playlist of your shit,” he says.

  “Can do, only my stuff isn’t shit. Just your stuff,” I tease.

  “Ahhh, you like my shit and you know it. I’ve seen you singing Wilson Pickett.” He crosses his arms, confident that he’s right.

  “June likes Wilson Pickett, and she made me listen to it,” I reply.

  I pull us out onto the main road and we get a mile or so down the road before I finally throw him a bone.

  “All right, fine. The Wilson Pickett stuff is pretty good.”

  “See? I knew it!” He rocks in his seat, mouthing the words to whatever song this is now. Something about loving somebody’s baby. I’m sure after a month of driving back and forth from Dad’s with this playlist, I’ll know the words, too.

  “You know, Dad’s cool with you coming out, too. We could go the same weekend sometimes, or . . . separate. If you want some one-on-one time, I get it.” I glance at him while I drive, gauging his reaction. The best I can gather is that it’s thoughtful, his tight lips not frowning but not quite smiling, either.

  “Maybe,” he finally answers.

  “I hope so,” I say, and I mean it.

  We make it the rest of the way with nothing but HAYDEN’S SHIT serenading us, and the more songs that play, the more I soften to his favorite sounds. We pull in the driveway and sit with my car running just so the current song can finish out. I kill the engine just as it ends, and we let the mood we’ve built embrace us for a little while longer.

  “Why her?” I finally ask. I think that’s my speed bump. It’s definitely the question I’ve been asking myself when I can’t sleep at night, when I shower, when I drive, when I should be learning in class. I think, given Dr. Majestic’s definition, that equates to an emotional speed bump. It’s too high for me to get over on my own.

  Hayden’s silence makes my chest tighten.

  “She just . . . listened,” he finally says.

  My eyes drop, along with my heart. I can’t fault him for falling for her for that. Abby does listen. It might be what forced me to finally see her through different eyes. Through possible eyes. While Hayden was opening up to her about the things happening in our family, I was shutting down, but it doesn’t mean I wasn’t talking to her. I talked, just in my own way. While we bonded over Lucas and June, I made snide jokes about love being a farce and she made them right along with me. But she was always sure to leave me with a glimmer of hope before we parted. Like when Lucas and June finally got together and she leaned into me and said, “See, some people get their happy endings.” She’s not as cynical as she pretends.

  “Did you love her, at least?” I wasn’t sure about asking this question tonight. It feels like an overreach, a step maybe neither of us is ready for. But now that I’m in the moment, my belly hungry to be settled, my heart anxious to be soothed, I have to ask.

  “I thought I did,” Hayden admits, sinking down in his seat and leaning his head against the window to look up at the stars. I do the same. The sky’s lit up again, like it was the night Abby came over.

  “You still think so?” I ask.

  “Nah,” he responds quickly. I’m a little surprised to hear his answer, and I roll my head against the glass to look at him through the corner of my eyes.

  “No?” I echo.

  He shakes his head.

  “I think I needed her, and that’s not quite the same,” he says, rolling his head to look at me.

  “How about you?” I figured this question would come. I’ve been ready to answer it for a while.

  “Yeah. I did. I do.” I shift to look at him more head on. I can tell my admission catches him off guard as he sits up and pulls in his brow.

  “You love her?” He makes it sound so impossible.

  “I love her. I was about to ask her out the day you showed up holding hands,” I confess.

  “Fuuu—” His mouth hangs open as it hits him. “The flowers.”

  “The flowers.” I nod. “The motherfucking flowers.”

  We both lean back into our windows and stare up at the stars. My window is fogged from my breath, so I pull my sleeve down over my wrist and rub it clear.

  “I’m really sorry, Tor. If I had known—”

  “It’s all right. I never said,” I cut in. I hold my fist out in the space between us without looking to him, and he reaches over to pound mine just by feel. We’re back in step. I don’t know how long we were out of it, but in a strange way, it was Abby who put us back together.

  22

  Abby

  Christmas in Toronto is unreal. I’ve seen snow lots but never like this. It’s more like someone came through at night and replaced everything in the city with frozen blocks of ice. It’s beautiful, but it’s painful.

  I’ve slipped twice so far. Not bad falls, but enough to leave a bruise on my hip. Mom wasn’t so lucky. She fell and cracked her wrist on a curb. I guess if you’re going to be stuck in a cast for four to six weeks, it might as well be in the cold.

  Mom and I promised each other no holiday gifts, but I did get her this pack of cast wraps so she could bling out her plaster arm. She seems to have taken to the rainbow peace symbols for her first week of wear.

  She broke the rules and got me a gift, too. Hers was a package too, but a major step above some pack of fun acrylic sticker. She gave me a settlement package. In my favor. She’d hired a private investigator the
moment I confessed about the nude photo bribe. It took the guy a while to earn his fee, but he finally came through in spades. Seems Jake from the party got a payday a week or two before he met me—a wired deposit from my dad. The chips fall into place easily when you’re willing to really look at them, but even as my mom was telling me, I didn’t want to see things clearly. It was too ugly. Regardless, it was true.

  My dad paid Jake to dupe me into those pics—to the tune of twenty grand. The hundred grand never went anywhere; it was all for show. Oh, and since I was seventeen at the time, and Jake was nineteen? Well, leverage. Zero prison time traded for never, ever seeing us again. It’s going to take me a while to be able to open up about all of the betrayal. I’ve been able to tell June, but even with her, I can’t get through the details without shutting down.

  On a positive note, though, my company is now mine, and mine alone. My mom is setting up the structure, but she insists on being listed as an employee. She keeps saying being fireable is the one thing that ensures good parents don’t go bad, but I’m pretty sure that’s more of a soul-and-ethics sorta thing. If I ever make it truly big, the first thing I’m going to do is pay off the debt on her house. She’ll sleep easy knowing that the walls my abuelo put up are hers forever. I want to secure that legacy for her.

  With the break in shoots, Mom and I decide to make a short trip home for New Year’s. June’s mom is throwing a party, and apparently June went and invited a lot of people. I’m gone a week and a half and my friend becomes a party animal. Hayden says it’s because she liked throwing my birthday party so much. She and her mom are good at catering and planning and decorating and, well, all of the things I’m not good at.

  My mom’s been sleeping so little that she finally conks out on the couch. I don’t dare move her. She’s getting too skinny, a thought that makes me sound like my abuela in my head. I drag the comforter from her bed over her and hit the mute button on the TV. The light will comfort her if she wakes in a strange location. With my phone, wallet, and key from the nearby table, I tiptoe out of the apartment. The busy sidewalk is freshly covered with a sparkling dusting of snow. It’s nice to see before the morning traffic makes things so dirty.