Chapter 8
eight
The hard edge of my father’s “Delilah” tells me all I need to know about the voicemail he leaves during Monopoly Sunday evening. I excuse myself from the game and move to the Wards’ kitchen to listen to the rest.
“Delilah, Delilah, Delilah. Y’know I came up with that name? Your mom,” he scoffs, “wanted to name you after some dumb flower.”
Daisy. She told me that once, a couple of years before she left.
“Anyway, Delilah. Thanksforcheckin’in,” he slurs. “I’m so glad your new life and family are so much more important than the one you were born into.” Another scoff. “You really are ’zactly like her, aren’t you? You couldn’t just take her physical features, you had to leave us all behind too.”
Every word is a lance tied with barbed wire and dipped in poison, shoving itself into my chest cavity.
I put my head in my free hand, knowing where this is going.
Where it always goes when he’s in a particular mood, two, three, who knows, ten drinks in his system.
But just because I know where this is going—know that this will be like the many messages he’s left me before and will be followed in a few days or weeks with some kind of apology—doesn’t mean that lance doesn’t stick in the fleshy part of my heart.
The worst part is, he’s right. I so badly wanted to be like her growing up, and now, in some ways, I am.
“Anyone can be trained tuh smack a ball with a racket, y’know?
There’s nothin’ special about you or what you do.
And clearly you don’t have the talent to cut it since you can’t even”—the sloshing of a bottle held to his lips muffles the last few words, but I get the idea.
I wish after all these years that it didn’t hurt, didn’t make my chest clench painfully or pitch that baseball-sized guilt down my throat. But it does.
I can’t bear to listen to the rest, sliding down the pantry door and setting my phone beside me.
Every word he said rings true, no matter how I try to outpace them with other thoughts.
I left to make money for them. I didn’t abandon them and leave them with nothing. But what good is money if my emotional support leaves them wanting?
I clawed my way into the top fifty women in the world.
Matteo wanting to work with me is proof I’m worthy of being here.
My sponsorship is proof that I belong. But what if it’s all a fluke?
What if Matteo truly just feels bad about Austin’s injury?
What if playing with me is simply a means to assuage that guilt?
And what if I can’t uphold my end of the Stratosphere deal?
A sob notches in my chest, and I take deep breaths to keep it at bay. In the other room sit three people who took me in like I was their own blood, plus my best friend and…whatever Matteo has become to me. More than an acquaintance, almost a friend. I can’t let all of this overwhelm me right now.
A presence settles beside me. When I raise my eyes, I meet Eli’s concerned blue ones. He picks up my phone and glowers at the screen, his jaw tight. I know he wants to know what my father said to me this time, but I shake my head.
“Please no.” I don’t know if it’s because I don’t want him to hear my shame, all the ways I’ve begun to feel small, or if I can’t stand to let him listen to my father in this state. A solitary tear breaks free, and I swipe it away quickly, though not quickly enough.
Eli clicks the phone off, putting an arm around my shoulders and pulling me into him. “Do you remember the first USTA tournament you played? The very first match?” he asks quietly.
“Of course,” I murmur. I’d been training with the Wards for months, but I’d never played against anyone besides Austin, and he always beat me. I was brimming with nerves when Eli and I showed up to the courts and waited for my name to be called over the speakers to signal the start of it all.
“I knew you were going to be something special the moment I put a racket in your hands, and that first match…I just wanted you to have fun. You needed it with all you were dealing with. You were shaky the first two games, but then you looked for me in the stands and something changed.”
I remember it well. So much of my life until that point, I’d felt alone.
Alone in taking care of my siblings despite both of my parents sometimes being around.
Alone at school because I couldn’t tell anyone about what was happening, and on the off chance I did, none of the kids my age understood.
Something about turning to see Eli cheering me on, being there with me for this big moment in my life, felt like a cool glass of water after the hottest Florida summer day.
All my nerves dissipated into nothingness.
He continues, “After that, you smiled the whole time, even after you lost the first set. I was so happy.” His voice breaks on the word.
“So honored to be there, watching you. Getting to be your number one fan when you won the next two sets, and then again and again every match you played. Even the ones you lost.” He pulls away, grabbing my hands and meeting my eyes meaningfully.
“I’ve never once wavered in that feeling, Delilah.
You are so strong. So hardworking. And you pour everything you have into your family.
Don’t let that man,” he spits the word out like he has a lot more, far less pleasant synonyms to use, “steal that truth from you.”
More tears fall, and Eli smiles kindly at me while I dab them away with my fingertips. Sniffling, I whisper, “I’ll try.” There’s nothing that can be done about it right now, other than to prove my father wrong.
“Do you want me to come up with an excuse for why we need everyone to leave? I’ll give you a ride home.”
“No, no. Let me wash up and I’ll be back in.
” Game night is exactly what I need to put this out of my head and feel better.
Compartmentalize like it’s my full-time job.
Offering a watery smile, I say, “After all, I have a lot of fake money to collect from all of you and a few rounds of poker to win before the night is through.”
Eli chuckles, giving my hands one last squeeze before going back into the living room. After taking a few breaths and splashing some water on my face, I text in my sibling group chat to make sure they’re all doing okay despite the binge our father seems to be on.
When I come back, five concerned faces turn to me. Ignoring them, I beam. “Ready to lose it all to yours truly?”
An hour or so later, when the game of Monopoly has devolved into anarchy—as expected when athletes congregate for game night—and a bit of my earlier sadness has melted away, I belt (very poorly) the lyrics to “Dreams” by The Cranberries, which Eli so generously cued up for my benefit, my phone safely tucked far away. Out of sight, out of mind.
The board game is splayed out across the Wards’ large oval coffee table. Across from me sit Eli and Austin. Nicola is to my left, Matteo to my right, and Lilian beside him.
“Wait, how are you buying a hotel?” Nic asks Austin suspiciously. Her question quiets the rest of us, who inspect Austin’s stack of money. “You’ve only passed GO like two times.”
I lean over to fake whisper to Matteo, “Austin loves to cheat during game night. Or do things that are cheat-adjacent.”
“I do not!” he exclaims, offended.
“What is cheat-adjacent?” Matteo asks, befuddled.
Eli holds his money up. “It’s when my son artfully ‘forgets’ when he owes someone money for landing on their property or raises out of turn in poker.”
“I’m not cheating! I can afford a damn hotel.”
Lilian scans the bank piles she’s been meticulously keeping. “No, Nicola is onto something. This isn’t right.”
“That’s it. I’m done for the night,” Eli says, throwing his money onto the table playfully and standing from the carpet.
“Okay, old man,” Austin responds. “We can pretend it’s not because your joints are achy from sitting on the floor, I guess.”
I snort, and I’m almost positive I see Matteo hiding a lip twitch behind the money he’s counting.
“Feel free to say that the next time I’m whooping you on court,” Eli responds, trying not to laugh as he heads to the main bedroom.
“As if!”
Nic tosses her money down. “Well, I’m certainly not playing if Austin’s going to be like this.”
Austin opens his mouth to retort, but Lilian beats him. “I’m out too. It’s getting too late for me.”
With a grumble, Austin begins putting his money back into the banker’s piles. “Fine, but the four of us need to play poker. Someone has to beat Delilah before the new year, and Sahar isn’t here to help.”
“Oh ye of excessive faith,” I respond. “You’re talking an awfully big game for someone who had to steal from the bank just to lose at Monopoly.” And Sahar only got close to beating me in poker once.
Austin rolls his eyes, and in a matter of minutes, we’ve managed to get the board game and its many pieces back into the box.
When Nic deals our first round, I peek at Matteo. He hasn’t spoken much this evening, but that’s not unexpected. After what he told me on Friday about struggling to make friends, I’ve made it my mission to coax him into conversations so he knows the rest of us are eager to hear from him.
“You know the rules of Texas Hold‘em?” I ask him.
“I do. What are the stakes?”
Austin glances between Nic and me. “Dares? Or photos?”
My friends, forever the best people on the planet, make sure we never play for money. It’s for my benefit, allowing me to have fun without stressing about what I could lose, and I love them all the more for it.
Matteo looks comically confused.
“We typically play for something like a dare for all the losers or embarrassing photos. Or sometimes for choosing a meal you want the others to cook for you. Stuff like that,” I explain.
He nods his understanding.
Turning to Nic, I ask, “Photos, right? It’s been a while since we did that.” And I desperately would love to get my hands on an embarrassing photo of Matteo.