Chapter 8 Ben #3
She looked back at me. “And while my skin has olive tones in it, I have bright red hair and blue eyes. That’s not a common set of genes from the area.
There were outside forces supporting the war.
Something like twelve to twenty thousand women were raped by the latest estimates.
I’ve always worried I’m the product of one. ”
I rubbed a hand over my face. “I am so sorry I brought all this up.”
“It’s okay,” she told me. “Talking about it is better than internalizing it, right? Sorry if it makes you uncomfortable. My family is really open, and I tend to overshare.”
“It’s fine. I can handle heavy topics.”
She nodded. “I figured. I think it’s really good what you’re doing, by the way. How you bring attention to so many issues that we, as a society, really need to start talking about.”
“Thank you.”
She picked up the cards and shuffled, and I tensed a little, waiting for her to ask about my family. About Zach. It would only be fair after she just told me so much. Instead, she looked perfectly content to hold such a one-sided conversation. Like she wasn’t bursting with questions.
“Have you been to Boston to visit your oldest sister much?” I asked.
“Yup. I go a couple of times a year. Whenever I need a reminder of what civilization is like.”
“What do you think of the city?”
“A lot of cool history. Good food. Loud people.” She started dealing the cards. “The last time I was there, a cabbie almost hit a pedestrian right in front of me and they both screamed ‘Fuck your mother’ at each other, which probably shouldn’t have made me laugh as hard as I did, in retrospect.”
My answering chuckle was cut off by the sound of my phone chiming from inside my pocket. “Sorry,” I said, fishing it out.
A slew of texts poured in from my lawyer, saying not to worry, that he and my PR rep were already on it.
On what? I texted back.
He sent me a link, and I spent a few minutes reading in frustrated silence. The Commissioner of the USFL was talking shit about our lawsuit against the league on social media.
Merry Fucking Christmas.
Thanks, Pete. Turning my phone off now, I texted.
I flicked it off and dropped it on the coffee table in front of the couch.
“Sorry about that,” I told Ella.
“No worries,” she said. “Everything okay? I can keep myself distracted if you need some time.”
I shook my head. “The Commissioner of the league is being a prick on Twitter.”
She set the card deck on the cribbage board and cracked her knuckles, expression dark. “Want me to create an egg account and call him bad names?”
I grinned. “No need. My lawyer is already on it. We’re not supposed to talk about the lawsuit, so the Commissioner might get his ass whooped in court over this.”
“Good. That man is such a jackass.” She picked the cards back up. “Okay, so, the first thing you should know about cribbage is that it’s eighty percent luck of the draw, ten percent desperation, and ten percent raw talent.”
I wanted to hug her for moving on so easily.
We played a few practice games, with her teaching me as we went. Cribbage was pretty straightforward. The only thing that tripped me up was the point system. Fifteen-two, four, six? What the hell was that?
“So where’d you go to art school?” I asked as I shuffled the cards in between games.
“I did two years at the Rhode Island School of Design, but then I ended up coming home. My grandfather and Jack’s wife were both diagnosed with terminal cancer that year.”
I shook my head. “Goddamn cancer. Too many of my family members have had it.”
“Mine too. Grandpa had lung cancer, and he wasn’t even a smoker. Renee had breast cancer. It went into remission several years before, so we all thought she was clear. Then it came back.”
“God, that sucks. I’m so sorry.”
“Thanks.” She tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear, expression troubled. “What’s super fucked up is that she’s listed as a survivor.”
I stared at her. “What?”
“A lot of medical research organizations and big-name charities have changed the definition of surviving it. So now, if you have breast cancer and you live cancer-free for five years after diagnosis, you’re marked as a survivor.”
“Even if it comes back and you die from it?”
“Yup. Because it makes them look better. Like they’re actually making headway, even though they’re not.”
I rubbed a hand over my face. “Let me guess, it’s all so they can profit off of it?”
She tipped her beer toward me. “Bingo. Long story short, I came home when they got sick and never finished school. The rest was mostly self-taught, though I’ve taken some art classes up here.”
I could sense that there was more to the story, but she’d already shared so much with me that I couldn’t bring myself to press her on it, despite my curiosity. “You’re really talented.”
She sent me a small smile. “Thanks.”
“Where do you get your inspiration for the more, uh, controversial cards?”
Her smile widened. “The murder squirrel one was inspired by a friend. She said something similar to her sister-in-law a few years ago before Thanksgiving. Their family is divided down the middle, politically, and there are several loudmouths on each side that like to ruin gatherings by spewing their opinions all over everyone else. I think her exact words were, I will kill you if you don’t show up this year, and I took that and ran with it. ”
“Well, you nailed it. I don’t think a greeting card has ever made me laugh that hard.”
Her expression turned serious. “Ben, if you and your parents don’t stop inflating my ego like this, I won’t be able to get my swollen head through doorways.”
“Too bad. You’re really good at what you do, and I’m not going to stop telling you that.”
She looked back at her cards, cheeks coloring. “Thanks.”
Half an hour later, I found out what the skunk mark meant.
If you lost a game, like I just did, and your pegs didn’t pass that mark, your opponent will jump up from their seat, nearly upending the board in their excitement, and perform an elaborate dance routine in your living room, their arms akimbo as they hop back and forth while singing, “Iiiiiiiiit’s skunkarooney time, it’s skunarooney time, with Uncle Frankenstein, it’s skunkarooney time! ”
Behind her, the dogs lifted their muzzles and howled along with her painfully off-key singing, creating a chorus that made me want to cover my ears.
The display was the most ridiculous thing I’d seen a grown woman do in person.
She looked like a demented scarecrow. Like some sort of marionette whose manipulator had gotten into a bad batch of moonshine.
Topping it off was the triumphant, gleefully deranged expression on her face that I wished I could unsee.
It was amazing.
My sides hurt from laughing by the time I was finally able to ask, “What the fuck is happening right now?”
“Ow,” she said. She fell back into her seat and clutched her hamstring. “I honestly don’t know. It’s this dance my dad used to do whenever he skunked us, and it somehow turned into another Jones family tradition. Even Jacob does it.”
“I hope you don’t expect me to.”
She levelled her gaze at me. “Of course not. You’d have to skunk me first, Ben.”
Was that a challenge?
I narrowed my eyes and stared her down.
She looked away first this time, wincing. “Owww. Totally worth it, but ow,” she said, stretching out her leg.
“I have a heating pad for that.”
“Bless your heart,” she said, and then cackled in a way that reminded me of when Jack said he missed half the jokes she made.
Looked like I’d be joining him.
I grabbed the heating pad from upstairs. Not wanting her to get up, I plugged it in for her, set it to medium, and handed it over.
She wrapped it around her thigh. Her eyes fluttered shut and she leaned way back in her seat, exposing the long line of her neck. A soft moan slipped through her lips.
And there went my mind, straight into the fucking gutter.
So much for not having to police my thoughts.