The Hardest Cut by Jamie Bennett (book club recommendations .TXT) 📕

that he’s older and, well, better.  Smarter, more successful, you name it.  I’ve done a few things but they never seem to measure up.  Do you know what I mean?  Did your parents ever compare you and Kayden?”

Ben thought for a moment before he spoke.  “Yes, my dad did.  Kayden’s six years younger than I am, but there was always competition.  Mostly it was about him doing more than what I’d done when I played football, and doing it better.  He threw his first touchdown when he was eight, but I had been nine.  He started on varsity in his freshman year of high school, but I didn’t until I was a sophomore.  Things like that.”  I nodded, understanding.  “But neither of us ever did as well as we were supposed to.  Not according to our dad.”  He sighed.  “He was a real hardass.  A mean guy, really.”

I thought of my own dad and how sweet he’d been, how encouraging.  He’d been my biggest fan in everything.  “Gravy, you played in college and your brother went pro!  That’s pretty darn good,” I told Ben vehemently, and he lost the frown.

“How did this turn into you making me feel better?” he asked me.  “It was supposed to be the other way around.”

“I don’t need to feel better.  I can deal with what I’m about to get,” I answered, and I also knew that I had it coming.  “Anything that happens tonight—however hard Kristi laughs and when my mom gets disappointed and whatever big words Anthony uses to make me feel small, I’ll listen and say I’m sorry, because I am.  And then, I’ll try to make it up to them all.”  I looked at the time on my phone and smoothed my other hand over my hair, settling the strands that the wind had mussed.  “I have to go, or I’ll be late, too.  That wouldn’t be good!  Have a great weekend.  See you Monday.”

He waved his hand and I watched him in my rearview mirror as he went back to the house.  He stopped on the front porch and watched me, too, until my car disappeared over a dip in the driveway on the long path to the main road.  I thought about him on my way over to my mom’s house as I used the mirror again, this time to make sure that my makeup was still ok.

“Gabriella.  Gabriella,” my mom repeated sadly when I got there.  They had all come out into the brisk spring night to stare at the car.  Unfortunately, even though I’d taken my time in arriving, there was still enough daylight left to really get a good look at it.

“Gaby, you wrecked the car and set it on fire?” Kristi told me, and huffed a horrified laugh.  “You seem to have a knack for disaster lately, don’t you?  Your job, this car, what else?”

“This was an accident…” I started to explain, but Kristi interrupted.

“Please don’t pretend that you don’t have any part in your own life!  It’s like what my guru says, we have to be in charge of our choices, and in taking charge of our choices, we redefine our futures.  Like how he helped me make a lot of tough decisions about the playlist for my vinyasa flow class.”  Kristi had recently become a certified yoga instructor, and her guru ran her studio.  She pursed her lips.  “Your current situation reminds me of when you couldn’t pass calculus in college!  You told everyone that it was too hard for you, but we all know that you’re always more concerned with your hair looking great than with solving your own problems.”

That wasn’t true.  I had solved my math problem, because I had passed the class, and I would do my best to fix this issue, too.  And did my hair look great?  At least I had that going for me, and I would try to be happy about that so I wouldn’t cry in front of her.  “I am concerned about this, Kristi.  I’m very concerned!  I didn’t burn the car, it wasn’t something I did myself or though my own negligence—the fire at the stadium parking lot was on the news!  The police are still looking for the arsonist.”  Vanessa, of course, but they weren’t naming names.  Off-season stadium security, formerly mostly Lyle wandering around, had increased by a lot.

“But you had an accident as well,” Anthony noted, walking around the briquette that used to be his car.  “You failed to inform me of that.  Your eschewal of any and all adult behaviors…”

“Gabriella, you know how hard your brother works!” my mom said angrily.  “He’s a successful entrepreneur because he spends hours chained to his desk, making a good life for his family!”

Anthony looked modestly at the ground.  “I try,” he said simply.

“He did you a favor, and this is how you repay him!” she concluded.

The car was his from high school, I wanted to remind them.  It had leaked oil for years.  It sounded like someone playing a snare drum when it started!  No.  No, I reminded myself.  It was true that he had done me a favor and that I had messed it up.  “I’m very, very sorry,” I told my brother.  “I’ll have it fixed, all of the problems.  Even the oil thing.”

“Oil thing,” Kristi scoffed.  “Gaby, he wasn’t kidding about your maturity!  It’s like when you went skinny-dipping in the fountain in your school’s quad and nearly—”

“What’s skinny-dipping?” my nephew asked, and his mom thankfully put a stop to that story.

“It’s just something silly and thoughtless that Aunt Gaby did in college, something that almost got her in big trouble.”

“We were all…yes,” I said, and stopped myself again.  It didn’t matter that I had been part of a big crowd, and that I hadn’t actually been naked.  It had been poor judgement.  “Yes, that was a bad idea.  I’m very sorry about the car,” I repeated, “and I’ll repair it.  Can we please go inside?”

But the rest of