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

a small inspirational plaque urging me to “SOAR!” and they both fell with a clatter. I rushed into my bedroom, pushing the coats off the bed to sink down on it and hide my face in my pillow.  The dizziness swirled around me and I grabbed the brass bar of my headboard to hold myself on the bed.  Francie didn’t know about me and her father.  No one did.  But the guilt I felt when I saw her was much worse than the dizziness.

I heard the bedroom door open but I didn’t raise up to look at who came in.  “Sorry, I’m using this room right now,” I said, my voice muffled by the pillow.  “Your coat is probably on the floor.”

“You ok?”

I did lift up my head then, and the vision of Ben at my door jumped and spun crazily.  “Yes?” I answered.

“Is that a question?”  He walked over and stood next to the bed, looming over me.

I closed my eyes, which seemed to make the mattress spin faster.  I clutched the headboard harder.  “It’s a yes.  Yes, I’m ok.  I needed a moment of quiet to rest,” I explained, carefully pitching my words between a whisper and a shriek.

“Can you rest very well in this room?  It’s…bright.”

I cracked back open one eye to look.  I had decorated a lot in here, too, painting each wall a different color: turquoise, orange, pink, and yellow.  Combined with the large rainbow mural I’d also painted, and the floor pillows, the tall stack of dusty boxes, the sculptures, framed posters and paintings, the mobile, and the red crystal chandelier I’d had hung, it wasn’t what you would call relaxing and peaceful.  Not so restful.  I closed the eye.

“Are you moving?” Ben asked me.  His voice came from the vicinity of the boxes.  “Is this vintage Woodsmen stuff?”

I sat up slowly, still clutching the bed, and tried to straighten my hair with my other hand.  “Those are boxes of my dad’s stuff.  My mom had them in her attic but she was throwing them out and I took them.  He was the world’s biggest Woodsmen fan.”

“Bigger than you?  You know more about the team than the coaches do.”

“Bigger than me,” I agreed.  “But my mom hates football.  She absolutely hates the Woodsmen.  I’m surprised she didn’t throw out those boxes way before now because she pretty much hated my dad, too.  He died,” I mentioned, and fought with the sadness.  “Did I tell you that?”

“You did,” Ben answered quietly.

“He had a heart attack and she was so, so mad about it.”  I remembered her fury like it had just happened yesterday, the screaming and the glass breaking and me hiding, crying, thinking she hated me, too, for letting it happen.

“I guess that’s one way to deal with grief.”

“I don’t know if it was grief.  She didn’t really like my dad much, even before,” I confided.  “After he died, she told us terrible things about him.  He had cheated on her.  He wasted all their money.  She wanted us to know the truth about him but I loved him anyway, because even if he was a terrible husband, he was a very good dad to me.  I couldn’t really stop.  It’s so hard to stop loving someone.”

Ben nodded.  He came and sat on the end of my bed and I kept going.

“I was his favorite but my mom really loves Anthony a lot.  My brother,” I explained.  “He and I don’t get along very well.  Did I tell you that, also?”

“I guessed it.”

“You and Kayden get along better than Anthony and I do.  But you’re bossy with him like Anthony is to me.  Did you come here tonight so you could watch him?”

“Partly.  He shouldn’t be going out to parties.  It’s too much temptation.”

“You don’t seem like a party guy, yourself.”

“No, not really.  Maybe in college, but not anymore.”  He looked at the framed poster hanging on the orange wall, the one telling me that I was braver than I believed, stronger than I knew, and other things like that.

“Are you mad at Kayden?”

He turned from the poster.  “What?”

I repeated it, louder, then added, “It seems like you are.”

“I’m pretty angry at him right now for throwing away his chance to play in the United Football Confederation, but I understand it.  He’s always struggled a lot with his confidence.  It’s led him to do a lot of dumb stuff in his life.”

“Maybe he has issues with confidence because your dad was a real meanie.”  Way too loud.  “Sorry to say that, but you told me that he made you two compete,” I continued, much more quietly.  “How nothing was ever good enough.”

“That was hard on Kayden,” Ben agreed.  “I remember the practices our dad made us do, out on some artificial turf field and baking in the Arizona summer heat.  We’d have to throw, and throw, and throw.  Kayden was so little.  I’d try to have him stand where he could be in my shadow to be cooler and I’d put as much distance on the balls as I could so that it took my dad longer to shag them.  You’re right, he was a real meanie.”  Ben leaned and picked up the corner of my sheet, and then used it to wipe under my eyes.  “You don’t need to cry about that.”

“That’s very sad.  But I think I’m crying about my dad, too, and in general.  And from rum,” I explained.  And guilt.  Francie Sterling was in my living room right now, not knowing that she was drinking a mojito provided by a woman who had tried to ruin her life.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have drunk so much.”

“I don’t, not usually,” I said, suddenly remembering that he was my boss.  “I don’t go out so much anymore, either.”

“Right.  We were going to be friends because we’re both lonely.”

That made me also remember what he thought about me.  “Well, you can’t be friends with someone if you don’t have respect for that person.”

“You don’t respect