The Best I Could (30 page)

I wasn’t sure I heard him correctly.
“What?”

“Hit me,” he repeated. “Anytime you hear or
feel something you can’t handle, hit me and give it everything
you’ve got.”

My lips parted. “You’re joking. What about
you?”

He grinned. “I can take it. I’ve been taken
down by some mean bastards over the years. I think I can handle
this.”

“You’re nuts,” I breathed.

“Wait a minute,” Deena called from the ropes,
shocked. “You’re saying that she can hit you as much as she wants
whenever she just feels bad?”

Eli stared at me. “That’s the plan.

Deena snorted. “I don’t know about you, but I
like this.”

“For now you do.” Eli glanced at her. “That
may change.” Standing in front of me, legs apart, he said, “Give me
something else, Deena. Something about your sister. Anything.”

“She’s too quiet.”

I glanced at her. “And that’s a bad
thing?”

She gave me a haughty look. “Sometimes I want
to hear you scream. Anything to show me you can lose your calm like
the rest of us. I don’t know. Be angry.”

My brows furrowed. “I don’t want to be
angry.”

Annoyance crossed her features. “If you got
angry, I wouldn’t feel so bad about being angry at you,” she
revealed, eyes swirling with shadows. “Instead I feel guilty
because I am.”

I caught a glimpse of Jonathan in my
peripheral vision, his demeanor stiff and uncomfortable, and I just
couldn’t go any further. “I can’t do this.”

I wasn’t a scene stealer or hungry for
attention.

“I’m going to go outside,” Jonathan murmured,
leaving.

Deena was on a roll. “We should do this.
Don’t quit on me now, sis. Quitting has been done. It’s so three
years ago, wouldn’t you agree?” Glaring, she gripped the ropes.
“You changed yourself, Tansy. After everything that happened with
Mom, you just changed without even thinking about what it would do
to me!”

This wasn’t some game Eli had devised. This
was getting serious. By the fire in Deena’s eyes, she realized it,
too. This was the confrontation our family had been avoiding since
we’d stood next to Dad’s hospital bed.

My blood ran cold. “I was protecting
myself.”

Deena laughed cruelly. “What about protecting
me? From the rumors, the hateful stares, comments, and
speculation.”

“Deena—”

Her hand came up, stopping me. “Then you just
left school. You fucking left! You abandoned me to all of it! Mom
abandoned me. Dad abandoned me. Jet abandoned me. You … you were
supposed to be the one who didn’t leave me hanging, but you did! It
doesn’t matter that you were in the same house. It doesn’t matter
that you stayed here. What matters is that I needed you at school
with me, and you left.”

My fists tightened inside
the gloves; my lips pinched together.
She’s
only fourteen
. I had to keep reminding
myself of that. I had to keep telling myself that, for her, it
would have seemed like I left her when I never did.

“You could have tried harder, Tansy,” Deena
added.

Could I?

“Hit me,” Eli hissed.

“No.”

Reaching out, he touched me, his fingers
grazing my outer left thigh. On purpose. Pain radiated up my leg,
and I winced, filling me with euphoria and regret. Suddenly it was
there … anger. Shitloads of anger.

Years of resentment bubbled up inside of me.
Why now? Why did people want to know so damn much about me now?

My right glove shot out, catching Eli
squarely in the gut. He took it, caught off guard a second, before
he regained his balance, never flinching.

“That’s it,” he murmured. “That’s my
girl.”

His girl?

His words should have registered in my brain,
but they didn’t. All I saw was red.

Deena froze, perhaps surprised I had this
kind of violent energy inside of me.

An avalanche of things I’d worked so hard to
hide spilled forth, choking me, and there was nothing I could do
except lash out. After the first hit, there was no stopping it, as
if that punch was the permission my body needed to keep doing it.
Over and over again.

My boxing gloves pummeled Eli. I’d forgotten
it was him. There were too many memories clouding my vision.

I wasn’t punching Eli. I was striking my
father, my mother, my siblings, and even myself.

With the punches, came the words. Words I
didn’t want to say. Words I knew would hurt, words I knew I
couldn’t take back. I heard myself talking, but I couldn’t
stop.

Shut up,
Tansy
, I told myself.

“I keep trying to forget about all of it,” I
shouted instead, gasping. “About Mom dying, Dad disappearing into
his own world, and the three of us trying to exist. Abandoned. I
keep trying to forget, but everyone keeps dragging it out into the
light. There’s so much blame.”

Hit, hit, hit. Over and over again.

“I didn’t want to change,” I
confessed. “I didn’t want to be different, but Dad went to such a
dark place, Deena. It got so bad that he didn’t see me anymore. He
saw Mom when he looked at me. He saw Mom, and there were things in
his eyes that scared me. Desire, need, and hope. Things he wanted
his wife for, not the daughter who looked like her. I couldn’t be
Mom. I couldn’t lay in bed every night wondering if he would wander
into my room and mistake me for her. There were times before I
changed my appearance that he looked at me like he wanted me.
In
that
way. I felt
dirty and scared. And so very alone.”

Hit, hit, hit. Over and over again.

“There were so many new things coming at me.
New fears. Confusing new worries. Could we pay the bills on time
when Dad was using all of his vacation and sick days and then
refusing to go in once those were up? Could we get away with taking
over for him without getting the state involved? Without you
getting taken away, Deena!”

Hit, hit, hit. Over and over again.

“When Dad finally quit work altogether, Jet
took a job that paid shit. It just wasn’t enough. I couldn’t afford
to stay on the squad at school. I couldn’t afford to stay in all of
the clubs. There was so much we had to let go of to keep things
moving until I could work, too. Bills piled up, taxes had to be
filed, and we had to attend school. Dad needed so much help. There
was so much piss, vomit, and tears.”

Hit, hit, hit. Over and over again.

“And school … God, it was the worst. You
don’t think I didn’t hear the whispers, the things people said
about me when I dropped out of everything? The things they said
when I changed the way I looked? I heard them. Sometimes I heard
them so much that I hid from them because knowing you’ve changed is
one thing, but having people speculate about the why … some of the
things they came up with. What was worse is that none of their
assumptions were as bad as the truth.”

Hit, hit, hit. Over and over again.

“I know you hate me, and I don’t blame you
for it because I did quit. Because I didn’t make Dad stop what he
was doing. I didn’t do anything, and I blame myself every damn day
for it. I keep asking myself what I could have done different.
Should I have begged Jet to stay home? Should I have called Nana
and asked her to come get us? Should we have let the state get
involved? Should I have taken away his medicines and alcohol?”

Hit, hit, hit. Over and over again.

“And then I ask myself what would have
happened if I’d done those things. He wanted to die, Deena. Nothing
was going to stop that. The medicine and the alcohol was the slow
way to go. Without it, I think he would have just found another
way. A gun … a roof, and I just don’t know what I could have done
different. Except maybe talk to you more. Open up better.”

I couldn’t hit Eli anymore. Every bit of
adrenaline I’d had going into the fight vanished, leaving me
drained, my face burning.

Suddenly, I just wanted to fall to my knees
and sink into the floor.

“I don’t want to die like he did,” I
whispered.

“Then why are you doing this?” Eli’s voice
breathed near my ear, his hand hovering over my thigh, his winded
breath coming in spurts.

“I don’t know.”

“Cry, Tansy,” Eli begged. “Goddamn it, just
cry.”

“No.”

Eli lifted my chin. “I used to think I knew
all about tears. Happy tears, sad ones, and heartbreaking ones. All
of them. Until you.” He leaned toward me. “I met you, and I’ve come
to realize that the worst kind of tears are the ones which never
come, the trapped ones. Those tears need a way out, and when you
don’t give them that, they find a way to destroy you from the
inside out.” His grip on my chin tightened. “Cry, Tansy. Just
fucking cry. No one is going to judge you for your tears.”

Looking up, Eli glanced at Deena and then let
his gaze hover over the ring. “This is my house. This ring, and I
brought you into it. This kind of house was meant for leaving stuff
behind. Leave behind the stuff that scares you. Give me that. Your
scars, your demons, your silence, your shame, and your strength.
Let your deepest regrets disappear here. Let me share them. Demons
are a pain in the ass, roof girl. You get so used to them that you
don’t realize until it’s too late that they’ve possessed you, and
by then, they’ve become the only friends you’ve got. Cry! Just
cry!”

And then I was. Just like that. I was
sobbing, ugly crying all over the place, tears scouring my cheeks.
His words dragged the worst and the best out of me. I’d spilled
secrets about myself with him that I hadn’t shared with anyone, and
he’d stayed. That was reason enough to cry. My body sagged.

Eli caught me, which made me cry harder
because I realized something after hitting Eli over and over again.
I didn’t know myself. At all. I was two people. On the one hand, I
was this girl hiding behind a sweet personality who wanted people
to think she was capable and strong. On the other hand, I was
resentful and scared. Of life and love and people. Scared of giving
in and giving up. With Dad’s death, the need to stay strong
vanished, and I just fell apart.

“I’m weak,” I whispered, laughing
bitterly.

“That’s a load of bullshit.” Eli scowled, his
eyes locked on my face, his body completely unscathed from my
attack. He’d blocked most of my blows.

Outside the ring, my sister clung to the
ropes, her eyes wide.

“Tansy—” she began, but I was focused on Eli,
on the way he looked at me, on the things I’d revealed about
myself. Shameful things.

“What about you?” I asked him.

He seemed to know what I was saying without
me having to finish.

“I hate other people, Tansy. You hate
yourself. That’s an awful damn big difference.”

My heart felt like a dishrag that had been
dunked in dirty dishwater and wrung out repeatedly.

His grip on me tightened. “But you aren’t
weak. You were never weak. You just lost who you were and replaced
it with someone who needed to make it through something bigger than
what she was. That kind of strength astounds me. I couldn’t have
done it. I would have folded. I would have walked away angry. You
stayed. You fought through, and damn if you’re not allowed a weak
moment.”

“There are people out there who have it
worse—”

“And?” Eli asked. “Does that mean you aren’t
allowed to be not okay for a moment? I’m the king of self-pity. I
could stand to pity myself less. You? You could stand to pity
yourself more.”

“Tansy,” my sister said, her voice small. She
was in the ring with us now, standing beside me. Kneeling, she
reached for me, but then let her hand drop. “I don’t hate you. I
just don’t understand where everything went wrong. I’m so angry and
I don’t understand that either.”

My wet eyes met hers. “It’s okay, Deena. You
had every right to be angry.”

She sniffled. “But I don’t want to keep being
angry.”

“Maybe,” I said, hiccupping on a sob, “we can
find a way to not be angry together.”

She gave me a watery smile.

Eli glanced at her. “Give me a few minutes
with Tansy?”

A flash of resentment permeated her gaze.
Despite the breakthroughs, despite everything we’d learned about
each other, Deena still held on to her anger. It was a crutch I
understood. My fear was love. Hers was abandonment. Things between
us wouldn’t change overnight.

After a moment, Deena stood, glanced between
us, and walked across the gym to head outside.

“Lock the door,” Eli called.

Deena twisted something on the entrance, and
then left, the sound of the door slamming shut echoing throughout
the building.

Suddenly, Eli’s lips were on mine, his hands
pulling at the gloves on my fists, tugging them off one by one
without breaking the kiss.

Not expecting it, I stiffened.

His lips were tender, his insistent tongue
begging for entry, the movements melting me. Warmth spread through
my middle, searing my veins.

My lips parted, allowing him in.

His hands were everywhere, but it wasn’t
awkward or off putting. His touch was practiced and efficient.

His touch devastated me,
drowning me in sensation, but it was
where
he touched that destroyed
me.

Taking my hand in his, he smoothed out my
fingers, gently touching my injured palm.

“Where else?” he asked against my lips.

Our hands entwined, I guided him to my leg,
and he helped me push up the hem of my shorts, revealing two cuts,
one on my inner thigh, the other on my outer thigh.

“Wars fought alone are lost a lot quicker
than those fought with someone else,” Eli told me, lips brushing my
forehead.

Leaning away from him, I studied his face.
“Why are you doing this?”

He froze. “Tansy—”

My heart thudded, beating so fast it was
painful. “You know what? I’m not sure I want to know.”