Our fight rages on and both of us are too determined to back down. Kyle is fueled by anger and I’m fueled by a misguided sense of defending Kaya’s honor and desperation.
“Stop it, you two!” Dee Dee and several guests of the wedding have arrived from the buffet room, begging us to stop, but there’s no one physically capable of stopping either of us. All they can do is watch in horror as the two of us admittedly make fools of ourselves, pounding away at each other’s faces.
I finally have Kyle pinned to the ground, my face dripping with sweat, his in blood, and I ask him to submit.
“Are you going to stop?”
“Fuck no,” he spits back.
“Kyle, please,” Dee Dee begs and now Kaya is hunched over on the ground in tears. “You’re going to kill each other.”
Both Tre and a security guard run into the lobby and quickly intervene. The burly security guard pulls me off of Kyle and Tre stops a raging Kyle from charging me again.
“Come on, man,” Tre tells Kyle. “This isn’t worth upsetting your bride. He ain’t worth it.”
As the two of us are being separated, Kyle shouts through heavy labored breaths, “I trusted you and this is how you repay me? By sleeping with my sister?”
“I love her,” I say emphatically.
“You don’t know what love is,” Dee Dee responds venomously. “This is our wedding weekend and you’ve ruined it with your selfishness, just like you always have. I told Kaya to leave it alone but you just wouldn’t. Now look. You’re having a fistfight with your best friend and it’s going to be televised on Sports Center by the end of the night. It’s no wonder that Lisa woman left you. You’re toxic and I want you to leave. You’re not welcome here.”
“Wait, Dena, you knew about this?” Kyle asks her.
“I suspected.”
I tune out their further exchange as I notice a few people still recording us, and I react.
“Turn those fucking cameras off!” I point to them all. “This is a private matter.”
By this time, a woman I recognize as an assistant manager of the resort comes over and begins clearing the small crowd.
Now that’s dealt with, I crouch down next to Kaya because she’s all I care about.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper close to her ear. “I’m sorry for all of this. I handled this so badly.”
“We knew it was going to end sometime.”
“No, that’s not how I feel. That’s not what I want. It doesn’t have to end like this.”
“Are you fucking serious right now?” Kyle shouts, still furious with me. “Walk away from my sister right now.”
Kaya stands and looks between both Kyle and I. Our faces are both bruised but his is bloody, which only makes her have a stronger reaction. In her mind, I bet she thinks she is the cause of all of this, but she isn’t. She doesn’t understand that this fight was a long time coming. It’s why I’ve kept Kyle at a distance for all these years.
I’ve always known that a part of him resents my success and why wouldn’t he? Because everyone knows that if he hadn’t blown out his knee in high school, he’d have been the hometown success story and drafted to the NFL instead of me.
If I had done my job and blocked better for him on the football field, maybe his knee wouldn’t have been run over like a freight train during our last game of the season.
Perhaps in his mind, I’ve gotten everything he ever dreamed of at his expense, so he isn’t going to let me have his sister, too.
I understand that.
But it doesn’t mean that I agree.
I’m allowed to have dreams too.
“Let me go, Brick,” Kaya says and I know exactly what she means.
My eyes harden.
