Page 97 of Play Dirty

“Listen,” Alexander says.

“No, you fucking listen! Who owns that building?”

Augustine just shakes her head.

“My father, he owns it, doesn’t he? You were never going to sell it to me, were you? This whole thing is just another part of his sick game. Did he pay you? Did you sit up at night, all those months while I was ignoring you, and plot how to make me believe you… you… fucking loved me?”

“Jordan,” Augustine says. “You have to let us explain. We—”

“Fuck you,” I say. “Just fuck you both.”

I have no house. I can’t go back to that house.

I have no job. I won’t go back to that job.

I have no family. Probably never did. I was just a pawn in some sick game I don’t even understand and never want to.

I never want to know what they were planning for me.

Ever.

So I go to the only person I have left.

Ixion opens the door to the penthouse he shares with Evangeline overlooking the 16th Street Mall, frowning.

“Dude,” he says.

But I just step forward into the apartment, unable to meet Evangeline’s obviously concerned gaze, and stop in front of the window. Press my hands and forehead against the glass, and say, “Who the fuck am I?”

Because I don’t know anymore.

I tell them the whole story. I don’t leave a single thing out. I don’t keep a single secret locked up inside me.

I tell. The whole. Story.

At some point I realize I left that folder of evidence on the coffee table in my parents’ living room. But it doesn’t matter. It was just copies Darrel gave me.

And when I’m done talking I turn around and face them. “I quit,” I say. “I quit. Because a very smart woman once told me sometimes the only way to win the game is to quit the game. So I just… quit.”

I walk over to their couch, slump down against the cushions, and just stare at the ceiling as they talk, or ask me questions, or whatever.

Because I check out.

The one person you never want on your side is the person who can’t accept themselves for who they are. The one who was like you, but pretends he isn’t.

It’s the smoker who quit and then berates everyone else about smoking.

It’s the newly converted vegan who turns their nose up at your burger.

It’s the alcoholic who thinks they have it under control, but you don’t.

The one person you never want on your side is the hypocrite.

And the hypocrite is me.

At some point, Chella and Smith show up. And Chella sits on the couch next to me and just folds me into her arms. She just hugs me.

I don’t even know how long we stay like that, but eventually she’s leading me down to her car in the closest parking garage, and then we’re at her house down on Little Raven Street. And I’m walked up to their second-floor guest room and put to bed.