Page 129 of His Turn

Chapter Thirty-Five - Bric

Dinner at Quin’s is awkward at first. Not for Nadia. She fits in immediately and is over in the kitchen with Chella and Rochelle drinking wine. But it’s like… it’s like Quin, and Smith, and I are all very different people now and we’re not sure where we stand.

I hold Adley, who bats at my face with her chubby hands and drools onto my six-hundred-dollar shirt. “That tooth is adorable,” I say, smiling at Adley’s newest milestone.

“Yeah.” Quin laughs. “I thought you’d appreciate that.”

He’s sitting across from me in a chair. One ankle propped up on one knee. Smile on that golden-boy face of his. Looking like a motherfucking movie star who won the lottery.

Smith is on the couch with his dogs, two of the rats curled up in his lap and the husky pulling on his pant leg. It rips, and the puppy runs off with his prize. Smith sighs, looking down at the leftover strings. But then he smiles too. Because he loves it. He loves every bit of his new life.

“So,” Quin says.

“So,” I say, setting Adley down on my knee.

“You like her?” Quin nods his head to Nadia.

I look over at her and nod. “I like her a lot,” I say. “She’s a ballerina. Great one, too.”

Quin smiles at Smith. They share a look I know well.

Because I know them. And they know me. Everyone in this room knows who I am now. And I think they probably see the same thing in me that I see in them. Happiness.

Finally.

We all won the game, I think. How could we be here, with these beautiful, smart, talented women, and not think we’re the luckiest men on earth?

“Are you playing with her?” Smith asks.

“No,” I say. “The game ended a long time ago. I just didn’t realize it.” I look at Smith and say, “I’m selling the Club.”

“Well, it’s about time,” he says back. And then he takes a sip of his drink and smiles into his glass.

I think that’s all they needed to hear. That I’m over it. That I’m OK with it. That I have a future that doesn’t center around manipulation.

Dinner is better than expected after that. The food is good. The conversation never lags. We find our way through the unknown and decide, at the end of the night, that we’re still a team. We just added four new members to it, that’s all.

Smith and I make plans to go into business together. Since I’m kind of a real-estate whore, we’re gonna build some low-income housing to augment the neighborhoods around his gyms.

So I guess we’re gonna turn into a bunch of boring do-gooders.

I can live with that. It’s time to grow up.

In April, when the ground has thawed enough for digging in Montana and Nadia and I have settled into the Cherry Creek mansion, I take her home again. And this time I do it right. I introduce her to everyone, one face and name at a time. She’ll never remember them all. I barely remember them all. It’s weird. And unconventional. And weird.

But it’s us. That’s all I have to say about it these days. It’s just who we are.

I say goodbye to Luc properly as he’s lowered into the ground. Nadia cries, even though she never knew him. I know she’s thinking of her friend, also a victim of self-destruction.

And I realize I’m lucky.

Very fucking lucky that my friends loved me enough to drag me through to the other side. That Nadia is my light in the dark. And that she believed in me, even when I didn’t believe in myself.

I might’ve been a pretty bad player in the game of Taking Turns. Probably the worst in history, if that’s a thing.

But I’m a goddamned genius at the game of life as far as I’m concerned.

When I got my turn… I didn’t waste it.

Game over.