Page 103 of Keeping Score

“Screw you,” I told him. “And you know who else stayed? My brother. And after years of him being distant and all screwed up over you, we finally broke down all these walls that had always been between us. And for the last few years, we’ve had a good relationship. He wasn’t just my brother, but my friend. And I screwed that up too! For you! I hurt Liam because I wanted you to be happy. And proud of me. And finally see me for once in my life.”

I think I ended on a whimper, but it felt good to get it all out there, the ugly truth swirling in the frigid air like bombs that had lived precariously inside of me for years.

“Stop it, Margaret,” he said with a look of disgust. “You’re being too emotional. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

“For the last time, it’s Maggie, you absolute sociopath!” I yelled, his words blowing the lid off my carefully contained temper. “And there’s nothing wrong with having emotions! Maybe if you had a few of them yourself, you wouldn’t have abandoned your family and I wouldn’t be so screwed up!”

Instead of sympathy, or guilt, or any of the myriad of human emotions I expected to see cross his face when I finally confronted him with all the pain he’d left me with, I only found irritation.

Not even anger. No, that was too strong a feeling for someone like him to have. I wasn’t even worth his rage. Before, it might’ve made me feel pathetic and small and inconsequential, but now it just solidified my belief that he was nothing but a monumental waste of my time.

“And maybe if I didn’t let myself get screwed up by you, I wouldn’t have pushed away the only man I’ve ever loved. And now, it’s too late.”

He snorted.

“And you wonder why,” he stared down at me disapprovingly. “You think any man wants to deal with such a basket case for a partner?”

His words coiled inside of me, filling me with dread. Filling me with anger.

He should’ve stopped. He should’ve shut his mouth. If he’d stuck around, he would’ve known that I had a temper on me I couldn’t contain even if I tried.

But he didn’t know me, so he kept going anyway, throwing one final blow at me that might’ve knocked me clear off my feet any other day, but tonight only fueled the storm that was already inside of me.

“If you didn’t push him away,” my father said as he looked me in the eye, “he would’ve left on his own.”

And then I lunged at him.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Brody

“What about that time when Brody unleashed like a thousand crickets into the school for senior prank?”

“That was good, but it wasn’t better than the time he prank-called Mrs. Thornton and convinced her that her husband was lost in Walmart.”

“He made the call from the back of the classroom! While she was in the room! How did she not figure it out?”

My friends’ voices were the loudest in the entire restaurant, and I couldn’t be sure if all the attention we were getting was because more than a few customers had recognized me (which they had), or if my friends were just that obnoxious.

Somehow, the night had turned into recapping Brody’s Biggest Hits, which ordinarily I would’ve been fine with, but tonight I was too exhausted to play the role required of me.

Still, I found myself slipping into it anyway, because what else could I do? Drag everyone else down? Put a damper on the first evening I’d had with my old friends in years?

“You know how it goes,” I shrugged with a trademark grin.

All of that stuff I’d only done to get my friends to laugh, because that’s why people kept me around.

I was the comic relief. The one to keep everyone in good spirits. The one to fill the awkward silences with a quippy remark.

It had been exhausting back in the day, but now? It was honestly unbearable.

I didn’t know what was the matter with me. These were my friends. My best friends since childhood. This is what we’d always done. Got together, cracked jokes, blew off steam.

But tonight? It felt so empty.

I didn’t want to talk about bullshit pranks I pulled in eleventh grade. Or recap the way we got drunk at our senior prom and spray-painted the side of the school. Those were fun times, and I’d enjoyed them. But this wasn’t my life anymore. And all I wanted was to run like hell back to it.

I wanted Cassie talking so fast through a story that I could barely figure out the punch line. I wanted Liam making everyone who approached us for autographs uncomfortable with his dismissive stares and broody silence.