“Anyway,” I say and take a breath. There’s no going back now. “As I was saying, she drank herself to death while my dad was on a stretch on a fishing boat. The details are a little fuzzy asI was five.”
His jaw drops open, and I fight the urge to laugh. He looks ridiculous. But at least he isn’t reaching across the table to tell me how sorry he is.
I point at his beer, encouraging him to take a sip. Lord knows he’s going to need it if we’re going to get through this next part.
Once he’s swallowed, I continue. “My dad returned home and found me alone in the living room of our apartment surrounded by empty cereal boxes and my mother unresponsive in their bedroom. No one knew how long she’d been dead for, but they guessed three days.”
He begins to open his mouth to speak.
I hold my finger up at him. “Don’t,” I say in a warning tone. “I’m fine and I don’t want your pity. It was a long time ago and things worked out. My dad moved us out of that apartment and into his great-aunt’s house where she could watch me when he was out on the boat, which was less often and for shorter stretches than when my mother was alive. It meant less money, but we had each other. That’s when he started taking me to the local rink and he and his great-aunt taught me how to skate. They thought it would be good for me, and they were right. The rest is history.”
I slump against the back of my chair and chug the rest of my root beer.
He looks at me like he’s trying to figure out what to say. There’s a lot of options and they’re all shit I don’t want to hear. But he’s obviously settled on something, as his lips quirk up into a playful—but if I’m being honest, slightly still sad—smile.
“So was it multiple different kinds of cereal, or did you just eat seven boxes of Cheerios?”
I choke, then cough through my laughter. That is not what I was expecting, and I’ll never tell this story again as no one will ever have a better response.
He laughs with me, and the way he lights up is quite the sight. It’s like his question lifted some of the residual tension that’s been hanging in this room, maybe throughout all of Las Vegas since we’ve been here.
I pop a fry into my mouth and look at him. “It was Froot Loops,” I say. “And the smell of it makes me want to puke to this day.”
He nods. “Noted.”
“Thanks. I appreciate that,” I say, then go back to eating my food. Between bites, I look at him, raising one eyebrow. “Your turn.”
He wipes his mouth with his napkin. “My turn, what?”
“You know some of my shit. Tell me some of yours.”
“Oh.” He leans towards me. “Do you have more cereal trauma you need to dump on me?”
“Not today.” I laugh, but truthfully, after all of that, I feel pretty raw. “Remind me at some point to tell you why I hate Rice Krispies Treats. Now, for fuck’s sake, tell me something about you.”
He looks out the window as he ponders this. I get a moment to enjoy the way his nose wrinkles while he thinks. He’s got a good nose, perfectly centered on his face. It’s either never been broken or he has one hell of a plastic surgeon. I’ve seen his mom. It could be the second option, but she is starting to look like a lizard.
He turns to look back at me. “This is a lot of pressure.”
I smile at him as I eat more of my fries. “How so?”
He leans towards me again. “Did you ever have to try out for a team and the kid who went before you completely knocked it out of the park? You just knew at that moment that no matter how well you performed it would never compare to the kid who slapped the perfect one-timer into the net from the top of the circle.”
“Are you telling me my childhood trauma is comparable to one of your miracle goals?”
“Shut up,” he says, laughing. “You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, that we’re competing over whose life is more fucked up.”
He narrows his eyes at me. “We’re always competing. Don’t act so surprised.”
Connor
Now it’s his turn to narrow his eyes at me. “We don’t need to compete over this,” he says, then with a wink, adds, “You don’t stand a chance, anyway.”
I sit back in my seat and laugh some more. I’m slightly unnerved by how we both keep ending up in stitches, even after he shared what he shared. I guess it’s true what they say, laughter is the best medicine. But deep down, underneath the laughter, I know there’s more. I want to know it all. And I hate that I want that. I hate that he’s tapped into this thing about me that I keep hidden. My attraction to him was so much easier to ignore when we were rivals. When I didn’t get glimpses of who he is as a person and what makes those deep-brown eyes of his look so filled with the darkest depths of his soul.
Finally, once our laughter dies down and I can take a breath, I tilt my head and look at him.
