Spite Club

by Julie Kriss

  Mom pressed her lips together. “That’s your idea of dinner table language?”

  “It doesn’t matter, since I’m not coming to dinner again,” Nick said. “I’m one of Evie’s bad decisions. We made a bunch of bad decisions last night. We’ll make a lot more. And she’s twenty-five, so it’s none of your business.”

  “Oh, my God,” Trish said. “Awesome.”

  “You,” Nick said, turning to my little sister. “Stop being snotty. Don’t try out for the volleyball team if you don’t like it. And don’t buy Peter Hadigan’s dirt weed.”

  “I’m not snotty,” Trish protested. “And how do you know it’s dirt weed?”

  “Because any guy who sells in a high school is a shitbag with dirt weed. Got it?”

  “Can we please not discuss marijuana at the dinner table?” Mom said. She turned her glare on my so-called boyfriend. “You’re right, Nick. You’re not invited to dinner anymore. In fact, I think dinner is over. I’d like you to leave.”

  There was a second—just a split second—when I saw that she’d hurt him. But if you didn’t know him as well as I did, you’d never see it. In a blink, it was gone.

  “Got it,” he said. He pushed his chair back politely and stood.

  “Mom!” I said.

  “He insulted me,” Mom replied, “and he’s giving your little sister advice about drugs. And he’s swearing!”

  Nick put a hand on my shoulder. “It’s cool,” he said. His don’t-give-a-fuck tone was back. He didn’t even seem angry. “You stay,” he said. “Have a nice dinner.” He left the room.

  I stared at my mother. At Trish. At the empty doorway. Should I go storming out after him? Should I stay and let him go, let the situation defuse? I’d never been in this situation before, because this was the situation I’d always dreaded—bringing home a boyfriend who would upset Mom. My nightmare come to life.

  And suddenly I realized I was twenty-five, and that was pathetic.

  I turned to my mother. “I’ll get him to apologize,” I said, “but he’s not wrong. You do make me feel bad.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Mom said.

  “When you talk about what a failure I am,” I said. “How impulsive I am. All of my bad decisions. That was a long time ago, and I’ve tried to do better, but it’s never enough. I know you don’t mean it, but it comes out like you’re disappointed. Like you know that no matter what I do, deep down I’m still going to let you down.” My throat choked closed, but I said the hardest part. “Like no matter what I do, I’m going to let Dad down.”

  Mom stared at me. Then she slumped a little in her chair. “Evie,” she said.

  “Because that’s what it is, isn’t it?” I said. “The reason I have to get a good job—the right job. The reason I have to date the right guy, and marry him, and have the right kids. None of it is to please you, not really. I don’t measure up because I’m supposed to do all of it to please Dad.”

  “I don’t—” Mom’s breath hitched. “I don’t mean it like that. It’s just that if he were here… Evie, I’ve had to do all of it alone.”

  There were tears stinging my eyes. I looked at Trish and saw tears in hers, too. Well, this was the family dinner to end all family dinners. Welcome to my dysfunctional family. “You’re not alone,” I told Mom. “You have me. And Trish. And we both turned out pretty good. Dad is gone, Mom. We lost him.”

  Mom sniffed and wiped tears from her cheeks with her napkin. “You know I don’t mean it,” she said. “I don’t mean—I love you both. He would love you both.” She sighed. “Oh, my gosh, what a dinner this is. It’s a disaster.” She was right. The Nick effect, I thought. But Mom was a good person—the best person, really, deep down—and she straightened her spine and lifted her chin. “Okay,” she said. “Go get Nick. I want to talk to him. We’ll start over.”

  That was when I remembered that we’d come here in my car. Had he left? He didn’t have a ride. I pushed my chair back and stood. “Shit,” I said, swearing in front of my mother for the first time in my life. “I have to find him.”

  “Yeah, go find him,” Trish said. “I like him.”

  I was already out the dining room door. He wasn’t anywhere else in the house, so he must have left. I walked down the driveway, looked up and down the road. Nothing. My car was still there, the keys in my pocket.

  Damn it, where did he go? Did he walk? Which way? Was he going to walk all the way home? I pictured him walking out the door and away, all alone. Kicked out of family dinner. He’d kind of deserved it, but that didn’t make me like the picture any more.

  I pulled out my phone and texted him. Where are you?

  But half an hour later, when I got in my car and left after hugging my mother and my sister, he still hadn’t answered.

  Twenty-One

  Nick

  I spent two days at the boxing gym, punching things.

  That was the beauty of the boxing gym: you didn’t have to be mad to punch things. You didn’t have to have a cheating girlfriend or a shitty set of parents or a brother who got something he didn’t deserve. You could be mad at those things, but you didn’t have to. While you were punching the bag, you could only be mad at yourself. And the more you did it, the more numb you became.

  So I went to the gym, and I punched things. The bag. Other guys, in the sparring ring. That had the benefit of me getting punched back, which suited my mood pretty well. Even with the safety guards and the gloves, it felt good to have someone hit me.

  Evie texted me. I didn’t answer her. I just went back to my life. I looked after Andrew, I looked after Scout, and I boxed. I got invited to parties like always, but I didn’t go. I wasn’t in the fucking mood.

  It should have been fine. It was over anyway, me and Evie. There was nothing to begin with. There never had been. It had always been just for show.

  I had just finished my last punishing workout—the gym was closing, and they were kicking me out. I showered, changed, and had grabbed my bag when my phone rang. It was Andrew.

  Andrew never called. When he communicated at all, he preferred texts—usually sentiments like Pick up some coffee on your way over, dipshit or Where the fuck is the number for what’s her face that comes on Wednesdays? So when he called, I picked up right away. “What is it?” I said.

  “Are you still in that shit mood?” my brother asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “That means yes. Just call her, man.”

  I did not want to talk about Evie, and how I’d massively fucked everything up, so I said, “Did you just call to give me advice on my love life?”

  “Aw, you have a love life,” Andrew said. “How sweet. And no.”

  I hefted my bag on my shoulder and walked through the gym toward the door, which they were waiting to lock. Outside, the sun was setting. “So what is it?”

  “I had a visitor today.”

  “Yeah? Who?”

  “Mom.”

  I was dead silent. I let the gym door swing shut behind me.

  “I know,” Andrew said, as if I’d spoken.

  I couldn’t remember the last time our mother had visited either of us. When had she last been at Andrew’s house? A year? More? “What the hell did she want?” I said, the words coming out harsh.

  But Andrew didn’t sound pissed. He sounded calm. “She came to tell me that Mom and Dad are getting a divorce.”

  I stood on the sidewalk on Norton Street, taking this in as the after-work crowd streamed past me. “What?”

  “I know,” Andrew said again, and fuck, it was good to have a brother in that moment, someone who understood. “I don’t get it either. But she showed up on my doorstep today and said she wanted to talk. She said it’s been coming for years, that she’s been unhappy for a long time. She said she regrets how things have been, and she wants to change it from now on, now that they’re split.”

  I started walking again. This was nuts. The thing was, our mother had always been useless, but she’d never been a l
iar that I knew of. Still, I couldn’t help but be wary after all this time. “So it’s all Dad’s fault?” I said. “The fact that they haven’t been around in years? Is that her story?”

  “Not really. I mean, Dad is still checked out—he wants no part of this. But she didn’t lay a big Dad rant on me, if that’s what you’re wondering. This was more about her and me. About us. I think she’s been in therapy or something.”

  Andrew would know. He’d seen his share of therapists after the accident. He claimed it hadn’t helped him, but he was blind to it. Or maybe he’d blocked it out. Because I remembered how bad it had been before he got help. I remembered perfectly clearly.

  I had reached my car, and I opened the door and tossed my gym bag in. I found a baseball cap on the back seat, so I picked it up and put it on. “Fine,” I said to Andrew. “So they split up. It was nice of her to drop by. But don’t set your timer on seeing her again. She’ll probably chicken out after this, just like she always does.”

  “She was sincere.” Andrew’s voice had softened in a way I had almost never heard it, and for some reason it made my heart twist painfully in my chest. Our parents’ abandonment had hit him harder than he let on, and the tone I heard buried deep in his words had only one name: hope. After all this time, he was hoping Mom had changed, hoping she meant it, hoping this was going to work. After all this fucking time.

  And that was good, right? That was supposed to be good? Why the hell did I feel like a black hole had opened up in the pavement below me and sucked me in?

  Because it’s supposed to be you he counts on. Only you, and no one else.

  “Okay then,” I said. I had to tread carefully with Andrew. I’d seen his mood tip in ways that terrified me, and I didn’t want to set him off. Besides, he had enough shit in his life, and he didn’t need an extra helping. If Mom bailed on him again, he’d still have me. “I hope it works out. I hope that now that she’s dumped Dad, she can at least visit you every once in a while.”

  “And you,” Andrew said.

  I glossed over the fact that Mom’s visit had left out her other son. I told myself it didn’t matter. “Not likely,” I said.

  “It’s likely. She wants to mend fences with you, too.”

  “Funny, I didn’t hear my phone ring.”

  “Be serious, Nick.”

  “I am very fucking serious.”

  “Just do me one favor.” Andrew’s voice was on edge now, and I shut up. “If she wants to talk, just talk to her, okay? Listen to what she has to say. That’s all I ask.”

  I can’t, she’d said to me at the hospital that last time. I can’t, Nick. I just can’t.

  I swallowed down my resentment and my hurt pride and all the other shit. “Okay,” I managed. For Andrew. “If she shows up or she calls, then I promise.”

  “Good. You coming over later?”

  Someone was coming around the corner of the gym to the parking lot. Someone with familiar red hair. I stood frozen in place. “What?” I said.

  “Earth to Mason. You coming over later?”

  She was coming closer. Her gaze was fixed on me, and she was walking fast. It looked like I was in big fucking trouble. “I gotta go.”

  “Oh, shit. Redhead alert?”

  How did he know? “Something like that. See you later.” I hung up and stood next to my car, waiting as she crossed the parking lot toward me. Her hair was down, blowing in the breeze. She was wearing jeans and a button-down shirt tied at the waist, over a white t-shirt. She looked ridiculously fucking sexy. I remembered what every curve felt like, exactly how she’d moved beneath me when I fucked her. Only this woman. Only Evie. I remembered every single fucking thing.

  In boxing, it isn’t always about hitting, it’s about taking the hits, too. There’s a certain way to take a hit so it minimizes damage. Your stance, the way you angle yourself so you’re not unbalanced. So you can keep moving, take the hit, and hit back.

  I just stood and faced her straight on. Sometimes you don’t dodge, you take it. Even when it hurts.

  “Hey,” she said when she got close enough. “You haven’t answered my texts.”

  “Evie,” I said.

  “Don’t Evie me. I have been texting you. I texted”—she shoved me in the chest, hard—“you.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “You did.”

  “See, Nick, this is how civilized people behave. Civilized people who are not assholes”—she shoved me again—“and who feel bad about wrecking someone’s family dinner, then taking off without a word. Civilized people, when they get a text after that, they answer it. Preferably with the word Sorry.”

  I lifted my ball cap, scratched my forehead, then put the cap on again. “I got kicked out of dinner. I didn’t take off.”

  “You did!” She was mad. Really mad. Why was it that Evie Bates was only really mad around me? “Where the hell did you go, anyway? I looked for you. Do you have some secret transporter or something?”

  “I walked,” I said. “Part of the way, anyway. When I got tired, I called a cab. With my cell phone. No transporter.”

  “It was a figure of speech! I couldn’t find you. You just left!”

  “Because I was told to leave, remember?”

  “Damn it, Nick. You couldn’t just be nice!” She raised her hands to shove me again, but I was quicker this time. I grabbed one of her hands and pinned it behind her back, firmly but gently.

  “I’m not nice,” I said, leaning in close to her ear, smelling her hair and her skin and all the other things I remembered. “I’ve never been nice. I will never be nice. You knew that from the beginning. In fact, that’s why I was useful to you in the first place.”

  She went still in my grip. From my position, my mouth just below her ear, I could see straight down into the cleavage of her t-shirt. She was mostly covered, but my imagination didn’t need much to go on. I could see the beginning of the shadow between her breasts, and it made me want to pull every stitch of clothing off her. That was how not nice I was.

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” she said.

  “You meant it exactly like that.” I had my arm around her waist, pinning her hand up against her back, and now I pulled her forward, pressed her slowly to me. I raised my head so my lips were an inch from her jawline, her cheek, the corner of her mouth. “You wanted a guy who isn’t nice, well, you got him. That’s me. I did you a favor, not answering you. You don’t like it, go find Bank Boy’s fucking twin.”

  Evie inhaled a breath. She was relaxing a little against me, some of the fury leaving her expression. She didn’t try to get out of my grip. “So that’s it?” she said, her voice not quite as harsh. “You just get to act like an ass whenever you want?”

  “No,” I said, meaning it. “I’ll apologize to your mother. I disrespected her. Your sister too. But I don’t promise I’m going to be nicer to them than I was at dinner. I don’t promise to be fake and friendly. I don’t promise to be tame.”

  “Damn it,” she said under her breath, almost to herself. Her breath was mixing with mine, her mouth was so close to me. “Why are you like this?”

  “What can I say? I’m complicated.”

  “You’re a disaster,” she said. She briefly bit her lip. “And you never taught me how to get out of this hold.”

  “We’re face to face, Evie,” I said. “Easiest way is to knee me in the balls.”

  Her eyes flashed like I’d given her an idea, but I let her go before she could act on it. I dropped her wrist, raised my hands, cupped her jaw, and kissed her.

  She kissed me back. Slowly at first. Then she fell into it, just like I did, her mouth opening under mine, her body leaning in, her tongue tasting me. And it was all there. Her and me, everything there was, everything we’d done, it was right there between us. That kiss was the way we talked and the way we fought and the way we fucked. I kissed her and I could taste the way she came, on my cock or my hands or my tongue. I could taste the way she’d gone on her knees and sucked me off. I could
feel everything. It was the only fucking thing I wanted anymore. And there was nothing I could do.

  We broke the kiss, and she pressed her hands against my shoulders, curling them into fists. “Shit,” she said. She punched my shoulder softly, with no bite to it. “Shit.”

  “Come back to my place and fuck me,” I said, because that was what I wanted. And a man’s gotta try.

  She looked tempted, and she licked her lip quickly like she could still taste me, but her spine straightened under my hands. “No,” she said. “We’re not doing that right now. I’m still mad.”

  “Angry fucking is the best fucking,” I said. At least, it would be with her. An angry fuck with Evie would be like a volcano going off. But she backed out of my grip—reluctantly, I thought—and I let her go.

  I watched her straighten up, focus. She crossed her arms over her chest and looked at me. “There’s something I want from you first,” she said.

  I racked my lust-addled brain for a second. What could she want? She’d turned down sex. She wasn’t the kind to ask for money. Aside from those two things, no one ever wanted anything from me. “What is it?” I said.

  She reached into the back pocket of her sexy jeans and pulled something out. A small white square. A business card. “I want to know all about Andrew Mason, PHP programmer.”

  Shit. The business card she’d found in Andrew’s jacket. “No,” I said, the word automatic.

  “Yes,” Evie shot back. “You fucked up my family dinner. You practically just admitted it.”

  “I do admit it,” I said.

  “So we agree. And you saw my screwed-up family, warts and all. What I want in return is the same thing from you.”

  I shook my head. Andrew was off limits; Andrew was always off limits. “No way,” I said. “No deal. My brother is nobody’s business.”

  “Why? I assume he’s a grown man who doesn’t let you make all his decisions.”