Score (Skin in the Game Book 1) (14 page)

The blood rushed to my head as I stared at her. “You weren’t poor, Mom. You went to a good college…you were a Kappa. That’s how I got in.”

“No, Belinda. I didn’t. And I wasn’t. I told you that because I didn’t want you to know the truth. Your father made a large donation to the school to get you in Kappa. All this,” she gestured around the house and then toward her Breakfast at Tiffany’s outfit and her lips curved into a sad smile. “This was after I met your dad. I grew up dirt poor. And I mean poverty poor. There were days we went to bed hungry. Days we huddled around the stove because we had no heat. Days we thought we’d be living on the street.”

Her voice was thick and her eyes seemed far away, like she was lost in a memory.

“We didn’t have a house. We rented a one-bedroom trailer that was falling apart. Gram worked three jobs to get us even that much. I quit school at fifteen to work at the ice cream shop because we almost wound up homeless.”

I swallowed hard, but stayed quiet, stuck somewhere in the limbo between shock, despair and anger.

How could I not know all this? How could she have lied to me for all these years?

“I had no education, no money, and no skills outside of scooping rocky road, and I was going to be stuck in that shit town, in that shit life, forever.” She let out a laugh that was tinged with sadness. “And then there was that one day your father came in for ice cream. He was in town to play against the Crimson Tide for the championship, and he was larger than life. Oh, Belinda. You should’ve seen him. I’d never seen anything before that took my breath away the way he did. He was charming and sweet, and he swept me off my feet. I know you find it hard to believe that your dad could be that way, but it’s true.”

She was looking at that snifter of bourbon, not at me, and her eyes were glassy with the memory. Her voice was strange, hollow, not full of that false cheeriness she always wore like a blue ribbon she’d won at a local fair.

“By the time he got drafted by the NFL and we moved to Philly, I knew my place in this world. The shine and novelty of that sweet-as-pie ‘Bama girl was off. I knew he loved me, but not enough to keep his dick in his pants.”

I don’t know if it was that the crassness of her words was so out of character, or maybe it was just all the honesty, all at once, but I couldn’t stop myself from flinching.

“But you know what he did do?” she asked, her eyes flashing to mine, and pinning me there with a steely, resolute gaze.

I shook my head, almost wishing she wouldn’t tell me as something heavy started to root itself in my stomach. “What?” I heard myself ask in a hollow tone.

“He bought Gram a house to grow old in so she didn’t have to take her last breath in some dump of a trailer. He made sure my daughter had a life I never had, and that she would never go to bed hungry at night.” Her voice grew stronger with every word. “I got to raise you and be on the PTA instead of working three jobs and worrying if you’d have a bedroom to sleep in at night. I got to go to lunches with my girlfriends and wear pretty clothes, take painting classes at the community center and do my garden. And instead of those red, calloused fingers with those knobby knuckles my mother had, I have these.”

She held up her perfectly manicured hands that looked as soft and supple as a twenty year olds and wiggled them.

“Now, that might not be enough for you, Bee. And I’m glad. I’m glad it’s not. I don’t want it to be. But it sure is enough for this poor girl from Birmingham. And you have no right to judge me for it. I’m sorry I was too ashamed to tell you the truth before now, but my choices gave you the opportunity to get the education I never had and to join that sorority and find that nice boy out there.” She straightened and sucked in a steadying breath. “And I’m not sorry for that.”

I just stared at her, whatever was in my stomach growing tendrils that reached up to my throat, choking me.

My father’s call broke the silence. “Hey, Melanie, bring down two big slices of pie for us. A la mode, okay?”

She stood up, tucked a stray hair back into her helmet-like coif. Then she went to the refrigerator and pulled out a giant, homemade apple pie, which she set on the counter. The ever-present, pleasant smile was back on her face and it was like the past five minutes had never even happened.

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding and looked at that untouched giant glass of bourbon. “Are you going to drink that?”

She shook her head as she pulled a gallon of vanilla ice cream out of the freezer. “I poured it for you. Figured you might need it.”

My mother went about her business, slicing the pie, warming it in the microwave, dolloping ice cream on top, flitting about like a happy little bird in her nest. And all the while, my mind reeled.

I wrapped my hand around the glass of liquor and chugged the whole thing. I’d never drank bourbon before, but it didn’t burn going down. In fact, it was kind of soothing, compared to the bitter pill my mother had just forced down my throat.

I’d never believed it was possible, but she’d come out and said it.

She wasn’t biding her time, or pretending she was content with this life and her lot with my father. She
was
content.

And I think I hated her for it.

“
T
his one here is a beauty
. I was MVP during my rookie season. First player to do that.”

Bee’s dad placed the silver-plated trophy in my grip. I’d seen the award a bunch of times on television but never thought I’d hold one in my hands. It was heavier than I’d imagined during all those times I pretended to be the recipient in my backyard.

“It’s impressive,” I said with a nod. And it was, but something inside me felt decidedly less excited than I expected I would be. Maybe I should’ve been thrilled, but the only thing running through my head was that adage about how you should never meet your heroes.

Because Evan Mitchell?

Was nothing like the man I saw on TV.

I’d worn his jersey when I was a kid. Forked over every penny I’d earned from what felt like a thousand hours of mowing lawns one summer to buy a football signed by him. Worshiped him in front of the television every Sunday. Wanted to
be
him.

And now, come to find out, he was a douchebag, with a capital D.

It wasn’t so much the constant bragging about his accomplishments. Those
were
pretty impressive. He had everything short of the Super Bowl ring, not that the room had any space left over for it.

No, what I couldn’t deal with was the way he’d treated Bee. Like she wasn’t good enough for him. Every time he’d open his mouth, out would come something that would make her flush with humiliation. And I’d only been at the house for a few hours. I couldn’t imagine twenty years of that kind of treatment.

No wonder Bee couldn’t stand him.

He and I had finished our hand-delivered desserts and made it through the rest of the game while seated in leather recliners surrounded by literally thousands of pieces of nostalgia from Bee’s dad’s career. There wasn’t a bare spot on any of the walls. The trophies and awards were lined up to the ceiling, behind the fully-stocked bar, surrounding the giant television set. Not a single picture of Bee or her trophies. Every single thing in that room was there to affirm the Evan Mitchell legend.

But this man was no legend. Now, he was balding, his skin was ruddy, and he had the definite makings of a beer belly. Standing there beside him, I had to fight to keep my temper in check. This was the guy giving me a bad name. This was the man that had wounded Bee so much that I wasn’t sure she’d ever learn to fully trust me.

And this is her father
, I reminded myself. It wasn’t my place to make waves day one. It was my place to support Bee and try to make the best of a bad situation.

Her dad laughed, finished his beer, and ran his sleeve over his mouth. He’d polished off a six-pack of Yuengling. I’d had one and was still nursing the second. All the bottles were lined up on the coffee table. I knew Bee’s mom would have the duty of cleaning it up, later. Another victim of this assholes narcissism.

He reached into a mini-fridge and pulled out another bottle as I inspected a newsprint photo of Evan Mitchell, back in the days when he had more hair, surrounded by three scantily-clad cheerleaders.

“Those girls were wild,” he said behind me. He whistled. “Triplets. They liked to do
everything
together, if you know what I mean.”

I nodded, took a swig of warm beer. The photo was from long ago, but not
that
long ago. The date on the top banner confirmed it; the picture was younger than Bee was.

My gut lurched. I felt his gaze on me, waiting for some reaction, maybe a high-five, or a “you sly dog, you”. But nope. I had to go along to get along, but that was too far. I disrespect Bee or her mother by acting like it was cool or applause-worthy that he cheated on his wife and flaunted it in their home on top of it.

I shifted my gaze over to another news article on the wall, one about a record-breaking season Evan Mitchell was an integral part of.

It didn’t help.

He went on. “You don’t have to hide it just because you’re dating Bee.” He grinned slyly and leaned in, so I could smell his sour, beer-soaked breath. “I want you to know, I get it. It goes with the territory in our line of work. All that adrenaline. We ain’t gonna be satisfied by just one woman. Am I right?”

I swallowed more of the beer, and its bitterness burned the back of my throat.

He clapped me on the shoulder with a laugh. “We’re only flesh and blood. The way I see it, as long as you come home at night, where’s the harm?”

I wrapped my hand around the neck of my bottle and looked down at the ground, counting to ten in my mind.

“I bet you have some nice pieces of ass on campus, huh?” he said in a conspiratorial whisper.

I put the bottle down on the bar, too loudly, and stepped toward the door. “I’d better go see what Bee is up to.”

I went upstairs, the anger building on disgust, wishing like hell I had a shower to rinse all the sleaze off me. I found Bee still sitting in the kitchen, an empty tumbler in front of her, looking a little glassy-eyed as her mother flitted around, putting leftovers into Tupperware containers.

She looked up at me and her broken gaze said it all.

“You ready?” We both said it at the same time.

Then we both nodded at the same time, too.

Her mom packed up some platters of turkey for her to take back to the sorority house. Bee kissed her mom, and called a curt goodbye to her dad down the stairs, and then we stepped outside.

She walked ahead of me at a fast clip, like she needed to get as far away, as quick as possible. When we were back in the car, I glanced over at her. She was staring straight ahead, Tupperware on her lap, looking like she’d been through a war.

“Well, that was an adventure,” I said, to break the awkward silence.

She nodded absently. “Yeah.”

I pulled away and navigated back to the main road, stopping to look at her every so often. She kept staring straight ahead, holding her stomach like it was hurting her. I could see she was trembling, so I cranked up the heat. It didn’t help. She just shivered harder.

“You want to talk about it?” I asked softly. I wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t, but then again, when I felt like that, sometimes talking helped. I thought about how great the day had started for both of us—the awesome run at the track and then me and Bee in the woods, listening to her sigh and moan…and now, everything had turned to shit. Made me want to keep driving until we were far away, just the two of us, where nothing bad could touch us.

She took a long time to answer, and before she did, she took a deep breath and blew it out in a rush. “It’s nothing. Like, he acted exactly how I expected him to. Just that, all this time I thought my mom couldn’t possibly like being treated like a doormat by my dad.” She scrubbed her face with her hands. “But today she just told me that she’s totally okay with it. She was poor when she was young, and now she’s not, and she has my dad to thank for that. To her, it’s all a trade-off.”

“Seriously?” I raised an eyebrow and thought it over for a long while before I continued. I recalled Christmases with no gifts, and free school lunches and my mom scrimping and saving to afford to buy me used football gear and I shrugged. “Well, I can tell you this: Being broke is shitty. And if she doesn’t let him get to her in her head and in her heart, and she’s been doing it long enough, maybe she’s used to it, Bee.”

“Yeah, but how can anyone actually want to live like that?” she asked, shaking her head.

“Who knows why people make the choices they do? To each their own, I guess. It’s not on you to fix their relationship,” I said, reaching over to give her shoulder a massage to ease the tension. “You can’t rescue her. She’s grown and has made her decision. Maybe you should focus more on your own relationship with your dad?”

She flinched and pulled back. “Are you serious right now?”

I slowed at a stop light and looked over at her.

“Well, neither of them seem to think their relationship needs fixing. So why dwell on it? Focus on things you
can
control. Trying to doctor everyone around you is a recipe for heartache, Bee.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “
The reason,”
she said pointedly, as if I’d just given her the stupidest advice ever, “is because I’m a part of their family, of course. I can’t go into that house without wanting to punch one of them. You really think I’m supposed to smile and let them be like I’m not affected?”

Her voice had been steadily rising. The light turned green and I started forward. She was right. It was her family. Clearly, I was only making things worse, and that was the furthest thing from my mind. All I wanted was for Bee to be happy, and if that meant cutting them off for a while, or her pushing her mom however she wanted to, I was behind her one hundred percent. I was about to tell her exactly that when she opened her mouth again.

“And it makes me sick. The guy gets to be the caveman and get waited on hand and foot by his woman, without giving her even an ounce of respect? It’s disgusting, Cal. Disgusting. I know, I know. He’s a great man, a fucking all-star,” she said, busting out the air quotes with a harsh laugh. “I suppose you thought everything in that house was just hunky-dory, too, right?”

I shook my head. “No, not at all.”

Her lips were twisted in a snarl now, her eyes blazing. “Just FYI? Not that you asked me, but I would never be okay with a relationship like that.”

Fuck it.

I had it up to my eyeballs with the bullshit. I’d had it unloaded on me by her dad, and now Bee was piling it on top.

I jammed the heels of my hands on the steering wheel. “Frankly, I think your dad is an asshole, all right? I think he treats you and your mother like garbage. I’ve never given you a single reason to make you think I’m anything like him, but all you ever do is lump us together. We’re football players. That’s
it
. That’s where the similarities end. If you can’t get that through your head by now, I don’t know what to tell you.”

She blinked at me, taken aback for a second, but then she dug in her heels, her jaw tensing. “Really? I don’t know. Seems like you’re both really good at using people.”

The venom in her tone and those words sent me reeling. I broke my gaze away from the road ahead and stared at her in disbelief. What the fuck was she talking about?

“Come again?”

“I thought about it over and over again, why you’d want to come to this train-wreck with me so bad, and the only thing that makes sense is that you wanted to meet your football hero, Cal. Maybe that’s the reason you even started sleeping with me in the first place.”

The silence that settled over the cab of the truck was deafening. I clenched my jaw to keep from responding because I knew she couldn’t possibly mean that. She was mad. She was hurt. Hell, I’d been there before. But damn, that stung. And I just didn’t have it in me to comfort her right then.

Not when it clearly didn’t matter what I said. She had it in her head that I was an asshole like her dad, and that was all I’d ever be.

Were we doomed from the start?

“Look, I don’t want to talk about it anymore right now.” She shook her head, annoyed. “You don’t understand anything about what happened back there.”

We rode the rest of the way in silence. All that time, I kept thinking,
is this the same girl I’d been with on the drive over
? I’d done this for
her
. To be her support system. Because I liked her. Hell, I was pretty sure I even loved her. But somehow, we’d ended up here, further apart than we’d ever been, and it was killing me.

We pulled up to Sorority Row and she practically jumped out of the car before I came to a complete stop at the curb.

“Don’t come in,” she murmured. “I have a lot of studying to do.”

Sure she did. It was Thanksgiving night, the first day of our four-day break. But she didn’t have to tell me twice. I couldn’t be near her right now, anyway. We both needed to calm down. She needed to put some distance between her and that disastrous parental visit and I needed to put some distance between me and her.

I leaned over the passenger side so I could get a look at her face, hating myself for even asking. “You’re coming to the game, tomorrow, right?”

She shrugged, her expression like ice. “Not sure. At least you know my dad’ll be there, though.”

She slammed the door, and the hollow noise echoed in my ears with finality.

I sat there for a long moment, in shock. Then, I threw the car in drive and peeled away, tires squealing.

It was early. Not even six o’clock yet. I could drink until nine and still have loads of time to sleep it off before the game. Because god knew, I needed another beer.

S
everal
more beers so I could forget about Belinda Mitchell for a while.

Good luck with that.