“You know what, Evan?”
“What?”
“Fuck you.”
He scoffed, but I wasn’t done.
“Seriously, fuck you. I’ve tried to be patient these past few months. I’ve given you space. I’ve let you shit on me without fucking complaint. But you act like I’m the worst thing that’s ever happened to you. Like I beat you when we were kids or made it my mission to make your life miserable, and I’m sick of it. I’m sorry I left Dad after the funeral?—”
“You leftme!” The words tore from him as if they’d been ripped from his skin. As bloody and raw as the strain in his voice. “You left me when I needed you most. Mom died, and Dad was falling apart, and I needed someone to fall apart with too, only I couldn’t because you weregone, and I had to be the one to hold everything together.” He stabbed at his chest. “Iwas the one to go through Mom’s things because Dad couldn’t bear to step foot in their room for six months.Iwas the one to make sure Dad ate when he wouldn’t cook anymore.Iwas the one who read Mom’s mail and replied to the letters from her friends sending their condolences to Dad, who couldn’t do more than sit in his chair with a photo of Mom in his lap.
“Mom left me, and Dad did too, and you were supposed to be my big brother who I could count on to have my back, and you didn’t even ask me how I was doing at the funeralIplanned. You didn’t call afterward like you used to. You ghosted me like I was some girl from a fucking dating app who meant nothing to you, and now you’re back, making more reckless fucking decisions without thinking about how they’ll impact the people around you.”
Hurt poured from him like a dam that had broken, each word threatening to drown me. The weight settled onto my chest like a concrete block, pushing me below the surface one heavy truth at a time as I fought to keep my head above water.
He was right. I knew he was right. My baby brother was alone and in pain, and I’d helped put him there. I’d fucked up in more ways than I could count, and I hated myself for it to a degree I might never be able to recover from.
But I couldn’t deal with it now. Not until after.
“This doesn’t impact you,” I gritted, my chest tight.
“Itdoesimpact me,” he insisted, anger and heartbreak and fear tearing his voice apart. “You getting hurt impacts me. It impacts Dad. It impacts the people who care about you, you fucking asshole. You think Aubrey is okay right now?” He pointed at the wall to the arena. “You think she’ll be okay watching you fight tomorrow, watching you get your face beat in while your shoulder is fucked? You think that won’t affect her? That it won’t crush her?”
“It shouldn’t.” My heart thrashed against my ribs at her name. “This has nothing to do with her.”
“Really? Because I thought you were friends. Or was that nothing but a ruse to get her to sleep with you?”
Fresh anger flared in my chest, burning my throat. “Leave it alone, Evan.”
“Why should I? She’s my best friend, and she deserves better if this is the kind of shit you’re going to put her through.”
There, we agreed. They both deserved better than me. But I couldn’t deal with that now either. My mind felt like it was slipping across an oiled surface toward an edge there was no coming back from, and all I could focus on was trying to claw my way to stable ground.
“You make it sound like I’m going to die,” I said, grasping for any sort of ledge to hold on to. “It’s just a boxing match.”
“Exactly! It’s just a fucking boxing match! So let it go?—”
“I can’t!” I shouted, not realizing I was on my feet until an agonizing heat exploded in my shoulder and wrenched me into a free fall of memories I’d tried like hell to suppress.
Every step and jab of the championship fight in Japan two years ago that injured my shoulder the first time.
Leaving the hospital after a full day of tests to a voicemail from Dad about Mom taking a turn for the worse.
Coach Peters helping me find the flight that would get me home the quickest.
Thirteen hours on a plane, my mind spinning the whole time with the urgency togo faster, toget home, tomake it to herbefore it was too late.
Landing for my layover in Chicago to another voicemail that she was gone.
The blur of time that came after.
I’d sat in the terminal at my arrival gate for four hours, my phone in my hand, tears streaking my face as I missed my connecting flight. Then I missed the one I’d been rebooked on two days later because I couldn’t shake the fact that going home would make it real. I’d be there, and she’d be gone, and nothing would make sense anymore, but at the airport, it was like time was suspended. I was in the moment of falling before everything hit the floor and shattered, and if I could just stay there a little longer, I wouldn’t have to hear the jarring crash of the glass breaking or deal with picking up the jagged pieces.
Her funeral was the reason I got on a plane. Knowing it would matter to her I was there. That I owed it to her to honor her in at least that way.
But facing it was the hardest thing I’d ever done.
Surviving that week. Seeing her open casket. Not recognizing the face lying there, her skin too flat, her lips somehow wrong.
