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“You’re worried because you think, just because you’ve never been allowed to have something this good before, that means you should never be allowed to.”
She sniffled again and nodded.
“But, baby, don’t you think it’s possible that, after losing so much and so often, it’s about time you won? Because I do.” I laid my hand over hers, pressing her fingertips over my frantic heart. “It’s about fucking time I won, Ray, and if I get to win, then you do too. Okay?”
She pulled in a deep breath, quelling her sobs as she nodded. “Okay,” she whispered. “If you win, I win.”
She calmed. Laying her head back against my chest and drifting quickly toward sleep with my thumb stroking her cheek and my fingers running through her hair. Her body grew heavy against mine as her breathing evened out, and I knew she was asleep. Maybe to dream about me again. Maybeto dreamabout whatever had spiked her fears enough to make her cry. But wherever she went, she didn’t take me with her, and for that extra hour I could’ve been sleeping, I stared at the sunlight streaking across the ceiling. Wondering if it was really, truly, honestly possible for me to win at all or if I was always ever destined to lose.
***
“So, what video games did you play when you were a kid?”
“Oh, uh … hand me that screwdriver over there.”
Noah reached with his free hand and grabbedthe Phillipshead from a nearby shelf.
Once it was in my palm, I tightened the mounting bracket to the wall and continued, “I liked a lot of games. You know … Super Mario Bros., Tetris, uh … Legend of Zelda …”
“What about, like, Sonic the Hedgehog?”
I shook my head. “Sonic was Sega, and I only had a Nintendo and Super Nintendo. One of my old friends …” I took my hands from the metal now attached to the wall, and Noah followed suit. “He had a Sega Genesis, so I’d play sometimes when I was over at his place.”
“Your friend that died?”
Man, kids were funny. Their lack of filters, their uninhibited honesty … it was refreshing and startling, all at once.
“Nah,” I said, shaking my head. “Different friend.”
“Oh … what happened to him?”
I shrugged. “Who knows? He moved when we were in the fourth grade.”
Noah nodded like this all meant something to him as I screwed the mounting plate to the back of the TV. And then, together, we hoisted it up and brought it to the wall. I could’ve asked one of the other guys in town to help me out, and maybe I should’ve, just to be safe. But this felt like a Noah and me thing, and I wanted to keep it that way. To make that memory, so years from now, we could say,Hey, remember that time we fumbled like idiots to get that TV on the wall? Yeah, that was fun.
I hoped I still knew him then.
“Okay, let’s get ‘er up,” I said. “Ready?”
Noah nodded, and on the count of three, we had the thing up from the couch and in our arms. I held most of the weight while Noah did his part to steady it. Twice, I asked if he was okay, and despite his lips being rolled tightly between his teeth and his face being the color of a fucking tomato, he nodded. We hung it up easily enough, and with a lung-emptying exhale, Noah stood back to admire our handiwork.
“Good job,” I said, lending my hand for a high five.
“Now, we justgottaget you a Switch.”
He grinned up at me, waggling his brows, and I responded with a laugh.
“One step at a time, pal. We—”
The moment was fractured by the cracking sound of splintering wood coming from somewhere outside. Noah and I both turned our heads so fast that my neck popped in places I hadn’t known it could.
“What was that?” Noah asked in an urgent, hushed voice.
I was already moving to the door. “I don’t—”
That was when she screamed.
“Mom!” Noah shouted, sprintingthe twentyfeet from the living room to the door, where I stopped him, my hand against his shoulder.
