Score (Skin in the Game Book 1) (13 page)

I
n spite
of my terrifying revelation that gave me a moment of panic, I had to admit, Cal’s brand of PT had done me some definite good. For the remainder of the ride, I felt so relaxed that he might as well have given me a handful of Valium. Who cared if my dad was an asshole and my mom was difficult? Cal Samskevitch had called me “his girl”. So maybe I wasn’t ready to say I love you to him yet. We’d get there. Every day, I felt a little more trusting and little more sure that Cal was everything he seemed to be and more.

But by the time we pulled up to my childhood home in beautiful suburbia, I could feel the tension creeping up the back of my neck again as the sense of well-being slowly drained away. Cal must’ve felt it too because as we walked up the driveway hand in hand he gave mine a squeeze.

“It’s all good. Will be over before you know it.”

Before we reached the door, my mother swung it open, martini glass in hand, smiling like a game show hostess.

“Hi, dear. I was wondering if maybe I’d given you the wrong time” she said, her eyes shifting to Cal. “And you must be Belinda’s friend, Cal.”

I opened my mouth to make an excuse for being five minutes late, but Cal lunged forward and shook her hand. “Pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Mitchell. Sorry about the delay, it was all my fault. I had forgotten my wallet at my apartment.”

Always the perfect hostess, she led us inside to the foyer and immediately asked us what we’d like to drink. The table was set with the good china, and the house smelled of a turkey she’d probably had to wake up in the pre-dawn hours to get into the oven.

“Hey, hey, hey, is that my little girl I hear?” a voice called from the depths of the man cave. My dad appeared, holding a whiskey tumbler, nearly drained. He beamed at me. “Baby.”

I forced a tight smile as he wrapped his arms around me. Cal smiled too. Of course he would. Everything appeared normal. Dad always did that; acted like the doting, loving parent at first. But he could only keep it up for so long. Ten minutes, tops, before he gave up the pretense and reverted back to treating me like I was invisible at best and a mistake at worst.

He turned to Cal. “Hey. How you doing…?”

Cal shook my dad’s outstretched hand and filled in the blank. “Cal. It’s a pleasure meeting you, Mr. Mitchell. I’m a big fan.”

My father had heard that a billion times, but it never ceased to buoy his mood and he smiled in that smug way that seemed to say,
Of course you are. You should be.

“Cal plays football, too,” I interjected. “At my school.”

“Oh yeah, buddy?” my dad asked over the blare of the sportscasters announcing the starting line-up. “What position?”

“Wide receiver.”

My dad grinned wider. “Samskevitch? Yeah? I’ve been watching your progress. Shitty about the knee. How’s it doing?”

“Good. I think I’ll be cleared for the playoffs. Your daughter is my PT. That’s how we met.” He grinned at me and nudged my arm.

“Fantastic!”

Knowing my dad, my being Cal’s PT wasn’t the fantastic part. He never cared about my career choice. What my dad found fantastic was him being cleared to play. I shifted uncomfortably, ready to change the subject.

“Come on, let’s check out the game.” My dad threw an arm around him and started to guide him toward the man cave. “So, you used to watch me play, huh?”

Cal nodded, looking back at me to see if I was okay. I waved him on, because my mom was already pulling me toward the kitchen. I could tell she was just dying to press me for information about Cal. I’d never brought a guy home before, so this was a big deal.

For a second, I felt the walls closing in on me, thinking about Cal alone with my dad and the upcoming interrogation session with my mom. But then I forced myself to focus on my happy place. Me and Cal, in the car…

I took a few long, slow breaths, and forced myself to chill. I was looking for problems where there were none. Who knew? Maybe this would be the one pleasant, event-free holiday at the Mitchell house.

A Thanksgiving miracle.

My mother had soft piano music playing upstairs in the kitchen, but I could still hear the cheers from the game downstairs. She turned it up and opened the oven door, pulling a picture-perfect roasted turkey out. She turned to me as she basted it and smiled.

“So? That’s your friend or?”

I didn’t know how to answer that. We hadn’t defined things. What I did know was that I’d never felt happier. These past two weeks had flown by in a blur. I felt like Cal’s, and he felt like mine, so part of me hadn’t wanted to jinx anything by broaching the subject. The other part of me didn’t know
how
to do it.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. We’re just dating, I guess.”

“Well, he’s very handsome. Are you sure you’re dating and not just friends?”

I stared at her, at a loss for words as the doubts and questions flooded my brain. Was it so hard to believe, even to my own mother who should think I was a special, beautiful snowflake, that Cal was my…whatever he was? Maybe my little Quasimodo joke hadn’t been so far off the mark after all.

My irritation bubbled over and I found myself snapping back at her. “Yeah Mom, considering I spent half the past two weeks sleeping at his apartment, I’m pretty sure.”

“Oh. Oh, my.” She pressed a hand to her cheek and then nodded, as if coming to a decision on the fly. “Well, all right, then. You’re having safe sex, right?” I started to blush as she put the baster down, her eye zeroed in on my forehead. “You’re getting a little bit of acne on your hairline. Are you using that cleanser I bought you?”

I don’t know what made me think that the first and only acknowledgment of the fact that her daughter was no longer a virgin would make her slow her roll, but I’d clearly been mistaken. I resisted the urge to rub at my forehead to check for bumps.

“Well, are you?” she asked again.

“Uh…yes?” I wasn’t sure which of those forty questions I was supposed to answer first.

“I hope so,” she said, still studying my forehead. “I’m too young to be a grandmother, Belinda. And that cleanser is expensive. You have to use it twice a day.”

The last of the warmth left inside me from my little detour with Cal faded and I felt a cold lump forming in my stomach.

I didn’t bother to reply, instead joining her at the counter to carry plate after plate heaping with food to the dining room. Once the dining table was practically groaning from the weight of it all, we called for my dad and Cal.

They came twenty minutes later, at what must’ve been halftime, after most of the food was already cold and the turkey, dry. My mom didn’t say a word about it. She just smiled and gestured for everyone to dig in while my dad rambled on about some bullshit play that shouldn’t have been called the way it was, not bothering to acknowledge her or the feast she’d prepared.

“This looks delicious,” Cal said, interrupting my father mid-sentence as he slid into the seat next to me. He brought his knee up against mine under the starched white tablecloth, and his hand sought out mine and gave it a squeeze. “Thank you, Mrs. Mitchell.”

My father grunted. “As I was saying,” he went on, reaching over and grabbing food for his plate, “if you’re gonna make that call you need to have the balls to stand behind it, and Michaelson doesn’t have them.”

“I agree,” Cal murmured, picking up a server of mashed potatoes and holding it between us.

“Don’t you want any?” I asked, noticing he didn’t have them on his plate.

“Yeah,” he murmured. “But help yourself first.”

I blinked. My father was a pro at completing passes on the field, but not at the dinner table. All the serving platters usually ended up crowded around him and we all usually had to stand up or lean halfway across the table to get to anything. I thought for sure the room would explode or something, because it hadn’t seen male manners like the ones Cal was displaying, well, ever.

My father somehow managed to clean his plate in record time
and
talk Cal’s ear off about every one of his football accomplishments. My mom tried to involve herself, peppering Cal with questions about the rest of his life that didn’t involve football, like what he was studying and where his family was from. Cal answered in his usual polite-but-animated way, but still my father rattled on, oblivious, always swerving things back to himself and football, football, football.

I tried to venture back to my happy place at least a hundred times in that half hour. Each time, it got harder and harder to find. I kept looking at Cal, desperately wanting to escape, but watching him nod politely at each of my father’s stupid remarks made me ache for him. By mid-meal, I wanted to retch.

My dad finally took a breath and then brought up something that didn’t have to do with him. “So, the Panthers are having a good season, eh?”

Cal nodded, mouth full of food.

“Those cheerleaders you guys got are something,” my dad said, whistling. “Those nice, tight asses in those little shorts? Enough to make a grown man weep.”

Cal pulled his napkin off his lap and coughed into it. My dad had finally said something to throw him off his game, and for a second I was worried something’d gone down the wrong pipe and he was choking.

My father was oblivious and continued on, waggling his thick, dark eyebrows. “It’s worth Bee’s tuition just so I can have a front seat for that. I’m sure a good-looking fellow like you has hit plenty of that, am I right?”

I swallowed hard to dislodge the lump building in my throat. Okay, so we hadn’t defined anything, but what kind of asshole asked his daughter’s date that question? Right in front of her, no less?

Even though Cal was right next to me, my happy place felt like a foreign country. Rage bubbled inside me, ready to boil over.

Cal was silent, either still in shock, or embarrassed for me. And all I could think was that my mother and I were the morons who just let him act this way, never standing up and telling him what an asshole he was. Enough was enough.

I tightened my fists in my lap and exploded.

“Yeah, Cal,” I burst out, nudging him. “As you can tell, my dad never misses a game. He hasn’t been to a single one of my competitions, though. Maybe if we had hotter girls on the track team? Would that get you to come around, Dad?”

My mother reached over and patted my hand. “Come on, dear,” she said in a low, urgent voice. “Don’t start.”

I knew she didn’t want my dad getting riled up into angry drunk mode, but in spite of my obvious dig, he just laughed, which made me remember exactly
why
we never stood up for ourselves.

Putting my dad in his place never worked. He had too much ego for that.

The look in his eye, though, was mean as a snake. “The problem is, field chicks are built like grown men and the runner chicks are built like little boys. So you’re right. Nothing to look at there.”

There was no question that, as part of the team, I was lumped in that mix too, and the insult hit home like an arrow to the chest.

My face flamed as he chugged his entire beer and burped loudly. Then he stood up abruptly, making the whole table shake and the ice cubes clink in the water goblets.

“Come on, Cal, let’s let these ladies talk lady stuff. The third quarter’s starting.”

Cal stroked my knee, his brow knit with concern.

“Maybe I could stay and help clean up?”

“Nonsense,” my mother said with a wave of her hand. “You boys go ahead, Belinda and I have got this.”

His gaze never left mine and although I appreciated his concern, I shook my head. “It’s better if you just go with him.”

I looked at him and managed a smile to let him know I was fine. The smile lied, though, because my insides were twisting like a tornado. I could tell he hadn’t finished eating yet, but he stood up and followed my father back to the man cave, obviously not wanting to add to the family drama by refusing. Despite the fact that I was worried about what else my dad would say, I didn’t stop him. By that point, I wasn’t far from a total meltdown, and I really didn’t want Cal there to witness it.

When my mom and I were alone, I started stacking plates silently and then brought them into the kitchen.

She followed me in a second later. “You really shouldn’t test your father like that. It’ll upset him.”

I dropped the dish in the sink so loudly that it clattered. My mom’s eyes widened as I wheeled around to face her.

“Oh, god forbid dad gets upset. Maybe the whole world will go off kilter if it doesn’t have him to revolve around!”

She stared hard at me. “What’s gotten into y—”

“Why do you stay with him, Mom? He’s a total asshole. An asshole to me. And even a bigger asshole to you.” I shook my head, the anger spewing out of my mouth, unchecked. Like once I’d opened the box, I couldn’t close it again until I was purged of every drop of the poison inside me. “I’m grown now. You don’t need him.
We
don’t need him. You could leave any time and yet you just sit there, day after day, and take it. It’s pathetic.”

She just stood there, letting my rancor soak into her skin. After I stopped, the word
pathetic
seemed to hang in the air for an eternity, until guilt started seeping in and I had to look away.

Calmly, she reached for a towel and dried her hands. Then she opened the cabinet with the liquor, took out a bottle of bourbon, and poured a glass of it. I must’ve really shaken her, because she usually stopped at one alcoholic beverage and it was always something “proper” for a lady, like a martini or a glass of white wine.

She motioned to a chair at the kitchen table. “Sit.”

I sat.

“You have your feelings on the subject. I understand that, Belinda. But the thing you need to understand is that I didn’t have the same lifestyle you’ve had. And—”

“I know, I know,” I interrupted. “Gram said you used to live in a small house and you all had to chip in working at the ice cream place down the street. What does that have to do with anything?”

She shook her head. “Don’t interrupt me again, Belinda. Because, you
don’t
know. You may
think
you know what poor is because you’ve seen stuff on TV or stayed over at one of your friends’ houses that wasn’t as nice as ours. But that’s not the kind of poor I’m talking about here.”