Page 40 of The Handoff

Every word he said was louder and more pronounced. He was angry, infuriated, and he had every right to be.

“This was all your fault. You never should have asked her out or had a girlfriend—”

I sounded weak and the coward in which I’d self-confessed I’d become a few moments ago. It was the only strategy for me, not to feel bad. I didn’t know who I’d betrayed more, my brother or Lisa? The answer was clear. Lisa.

“You’ve known about this for weeks. We’d been dating and now you want to come up with this shitty excuse. Too late. Look, I don’t know if you did it to get back at me…” He shook his head, resting his hands on the kitchen counter.

“Back at you?”

“Yeah. ‘Cause I’m going to play professional football. You study like crazy and it’s for the road to nowhere. Now I have a girlfriend and until today, I’m pretty sure you were a virgin. You’re fucking jealous and you know it.”

“Jealous?” I spat out and moved closer to him so he wouldn’t intimidate me. “Jealous that you’re so thick, you wouldn’t know what one plus one was if you didn’t use a calculator. Jealous that your friends are nothing but jocks. Jealous that our dad had run off, and the only sick thing you could say was you want to know when he’s dead, so you could dance on his grave. Oh yeah, you’re so fucking special, Dane. I’m so fucking jealous!”

He moved away from me, grabbed a hand towel, and then wiped his hands while going to the bedroom.

“Where the fuck are you going?”

He shook his head as he turned on the light in our room. I noticed Daxon’s bed was empty, so he was out—no doubt playing in the jazz club.

“I’m getting as far away from you as possible before I do something and you say something that we’ll both regret.”

He darted across the room, tossing things into a duffel. I left and went to the living room. I grabbed my bag and hugged it. I hated every fucking word that came out of my mouth. I shouldn’t have said those things to him, and even worse, I shouldn’t have fucked Lisa. Stubbornness and pride had me sitting on the couch, not saying a word to him. The next thing I heard was the front door slam.

When did one of the most important people in my life become my enemy?

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