The Hard Count(46)

“One second,” he says, and I hear a shuffling sound on the other side of the door.

“Don’t bother. It’s just me,” I say.

A few seconds pass before my brother opens his door, balanced on one leg in the small space between the frame to block me from seeing more in his room. I don’t need to see more, and I don’t know why he thinks he’ll get away with this.

“What are you thinking?” I lean my head to the side, my eyes meeting his glazed and red ones.

Noah’s lids flutter, and he laughs once.

“Why don’t you go back to your books and movies and computers and whatever other shit you do,” he says in a tone that I’m sure is meant to intimidate me. All it does is incite.

“How many times do you think you can f*ck up and dad will make it go away, Noah? Jesus…Mom is totally going to know you’re smoking that shit in here,” I say, pushing his door open from his loose grip. When I do, I see Travis sitting on my brother’s bed, his eyes just as puffy and red. “Oh, and you’re going to f*ck his life up, too?”

“Get out of my room, Reagan. And don’t tell Dad,” my brother says, gripping my arm tightly and pushing me backward the few steps I took into his room. I try to fight back, jerking free and forcing my arm against my brother’s chest, but high or not, he’s still a lot stronger than me. Even in a cast, balanced on a crutch. In a blink, my feet are back out in the hallway, and my brother is pushing his door closed in my face.

“Dad’s going to cut you from the team if he finds out, Travis. You’ll lose scholarships,” I argue, trying to reason with my brother’s friend.

I can’t see his face to read his reaction, and he doesn’t speak. My brother’s pushing the door harder, and my window inside is shrinking.

“You’re going to play ball again, Noah. Think about next year…think about college,” I say, working myself up to continue to argue and give him reasons not to turn himself into a stoned loser, when his pushback stops, and my hand falls forward as the door slings open again. I stumble on my feet a bit, but right myself quickly. When I look up, my brother’s standing with his arms crossed, and as red as his eyes are from smoking, they’re also lit with something else…something angry.

“I’m not going to Cal,” he says.

I shake my head and scrunch my eyes, not understanding.

“Okay, so…you didn’t even really want to go to Cal. You were looking at Florida, and Texas, and…”

“Dad took a call from Cal,” he interrupts me.

My mouth hangs open mid-sentence, and I tilt my head, still not following his train of thought. He chuckles, and the sound stays in his chest while his eyes haze with the effects from his joint.

“He took the call and told them about Nico,” Noah says, emphasizing the name, the word crossing his lips with spite and vile, his mouth sneered with bitterness.

“Maybe he’s just trying to help. I know Nico has a lot of academic options, so…”

Noah cuts me off with more laughter, falling a few steps back and then leveling me again with his gaze.

“He’s played one f*cking game, Reagan. One game, and Dad’s feeding him to Cal,” Noah says, his brow pulled in.

One game is a bit of a gamble; I agree. And I can tell by my brother’s expression that he doesn’t think Nico deserves my father taking a risk like that. But I’ve also seen the potential that I know my father sees, too.

“Maybe there’s more to the story, Noah. You don’t know; maybe Dad promised him he’d make some connections…or give him an opening. They do things like that all the time to get players into Cornwall. They lure them,” I begin to explain.

“They had a quarterback, Reagan. They didn’t need to go reward some scholarship kid with my position. We had Brandon,” Noah says.

“Noah, don’t pretend you don’t understand what putting Brandon at QB would mean. You know he’s Jimmy’s nephew, you know what Dad’s up against. You know they would have had Dad replaced by midseason,” I say.

My brother exhales heavily, and his eyes fade off into something beyond me, a nothingness that has his attention. I wave my hand in his sightline, but it doesn’t make a difference, so after a few seconds, I turn to walk back to my room.

“I would have always been better, though,” he says, and I stop in my tracks. When I turn, Noah’s eyes meet mine. “I will always be a better quarterback than Brandon Skaggs.”

My mind works to make sense of his words. I don’t want to think them, but no matter how I take what he just said, it always comes out the same. My brother is jealous of Nico’s talent, and he’d rather my dad lose his job than not go out as the best.

“What about Dad?” I whisper, not wanting this to continue to play out in front of Travis.

Noah doesn’t respond, though. He doesn’t blink, and his mouth falls into a hard line, his eyes holding mine hostage while his own ego takes over his heart and mind. I fight against accepting it, but eventually I don’t have a choice. I sigh, letting my eyes sag with hurt, letting my brother see my disappointment, hoping he feels how sad his choices are making me.

“What’s your deal with that guy, anyway?” he says, choking my emotions and putting the rest of my thoughts on hold, my muscles tensing. “You know there’s no way in hell Dad is going to let you go out with a guy from West End, right? And Mom would flip her shit if you brought home a Mexican.”