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Zach swung his leg back and kicked the shelf, making all those pudding cups shimmy. “He’s mybrother, Prez. He fucked up, but he’s alegacy. Pop was the club’s first prospect.”
“Then his pop should’ve taught him not to fuckin’freelance.”
As expected, Rad punched him in the face.
They were crowded into this dinky room, so he couldn’t really get his shoulder into it, but Rad was only a couple inches shorter, and his aim was true. Eight’s nose began to swell at once.
“You know what I say is true, Rad. And I’m not gonna fight an old man with a bad fuckin’ heart.”
Rad punched him again.
Eight laughed. His nose was running blood now, but he didn’t care. It feltgood. It feltright. He was fucked in the head, no doubt, but fighting cleared shit out for him. Always had. Whether he was doing the beating or taking it, when fists were flying, his mind got all its wheels on the road again.
He would have loved to really go at it with Rad. They’d fought dozens of times in the decades they’d known each other. Rad usually won, mainly because he was trying to, while Eight was just trying to keep it going.
But he had spoken the truth—he was not going to fight a man who’d had three heart attacks. That Rad had almost ten years on him, too, only added to his resolve. They’d reached the point when ten years meant the difference between middle-aged and senior citizen.
There was a roll of paper towels next to the microwave. Eight pulled a banner’s worth off the roll, wadded it all up and pushed the mess at his nose.
Rad hadn’t spoken, but he shouted a whole book of anger at Eight with nothing more than his expression. Zach’s expression was a shadow of the same thing, tempered with respect for his president. Rad showed no such regard.
Eight pulled the wad of bloody towels back to get a look at the damage—damn. Then he looked at Rad and said, “What I said was still true. And I’m not talkin’ more about this. Focus on helping your kid get well. Questions about his patch can wait—and it’s not up to you, Rad. I know it hurts, but it’s just not.”
“Fuck,” Rad muttered, relenting. “Jesus fuck.”
~oOo~
Eight was standing in a public restroom at the hospital, trying to wash up at the sink—the whole front of his shirt was bloody, and his kutte, too—when his phone rang. It was his personal, so he ignored it at first, but then he remembered he was waiting for a call Marcella.
He let it ring twice more, considering the pros and cons of ignoring it even if it was her. Had he made a stupid mistake, seeking her out, pushing for all this? Wouldn’t they all be better off if he just faded out of the picture again and stayed away in his little cave like a crotchety old bear?
But that unpleasant ache was still there, that sense of something out of alignment. Since Beck’s death it had been aching, getting worse and worse. Having his friend would ease it, but that wasn’t possible.
Was he expecting a ten-year-old kid to fill the hole his decades-long best friend had left? That was fucking stupid. Yeah, he should bail.
His hand went into his pocket anyway.
And yeah, of course it was Marcella.
He swiped the call open. “Hey.”
“Hi,” she said.
She had a great voice. A phone-sex voice. Low and slow and just a little rough on the edges. Unless she was pissed—then her voice was harsh and fast, each word ending with a sharp hook.
“You talk to him?”
“Yeah. He wants to meet you. When are you free?”
He had not thought that far ahead. “Uh … this weekend?” It was Wednesday. The weekend would give him a couple days to figure out how to do this.
“This weekend is pretty packed. I’m playing on Friday and Saturday night. Ajax has a soccer game on Saturday, and Sunday’s my … there’s a family function.”
“Can I go to the soccer game?” Why the fuck had those words come out of his mouth? He hated soccer, the world’s second-most boring spectator sport, following hot on the heels of golf. And he damn sure couldn’t see himself cheering on the sidelines of a fuckingkids’game.
But he didn’t take it back. Something about the idea appealed.
“Um, that’s not a good idea. At least not for the first meeting. I don’t want to throw off his playing. He takes it hard when he does something wrong in a game. He doesn’t want to let his teammates down.”
