“Stop!” Chelsea yelled and she ran down into the yard. She was glad she was wearing flat boots as her feet sunk into the wet grass of Mikey G’s backyard. None of the men below heard her, or they didn’t react if they did. She slipped and slid down the hill of the backyard until it leveled off where the men were fighting and Chelsea raced across and threw herself between Blue and Jimmy. “Stop it!” she screamed, throwing her hands outward.
“You need a girl to save your ass now, Blue?” Jimmy demanded. He lunged at Blue but stopped short of actually touching Chelsea.
“Hey, asshole,” Chelsea said, “we’re not in high school anymore. Now you get arrested when you start fights. So why don’t you walk away before I call the cops.”
“Haha, the cops,” Jimmy said, but he wasn’t talking to Chelsea. He was talking past her, to Blue. “She don’t know, does she, Blue? What? You never told your bitch about The Pits? We all know why you’re back in town. But I’m here to tell you that I’m the new boss of The Pits. I don’t care about your military training or where you’ve been. I’m the best now and you’re never gonna knock me out of the top, so don’t even try. Consider this a warning, Blue. You walk into those pits and you’re leaving in a body bag.” Jimmy spit onto the ground and then turned around and headed back up the hill.
Chelsea turned towards Blue completely and totally confused. But she couldn’t even speak; his right eye was swollen and red and his there was a long cut along his cheek. “Are you all right?” Chelsea asked breathlessly as she brought her hand up to his face.
“I’m fine,” he said jerking his head away from her touch.
Chelsea looked up the hill and could see everyone from the party looking down at them, whispering to each other. “We should get out of here,” Chelsea whispered to Blue and finally he nodded, but he still refused to look her in the eye. “Will you tell Jamie we had to leave?” Chelsea asked Paul and he nodded as Chelsea took Blue by the hand and led him up the hill. She avoided the partygoers who were staring and pointing at them. She circled the house and quickly found their car where it was parked on the street.
“Where should we go?” Blue asked as he sat down in the passenger seat. “I don’t want to go home.”
“We could go to my old house,” Chelsea offered. “There’s no one there.”
“Yeah,” Blue nodded leaning back in his seat. “That sounds good.” Chelsea drove slowly towards her old house. She remembered the streets of Snowbird intimately and she didn’t even have to think about how to get home, her hands knew the way. Not that she could focus on the drive; she kept glancing at Blue, but he was sitting silent and still in his seat with his eyes closed, but Chelsea could tell that he was still awake.
She had so many questions. Who was that Jimmy guy? He kept talking about pits; what were The Pits? Had he really threatened to kill to Blue? Chelsea couldn’t bring herself to disturb him to ask.
She pulled into the parking lot for her mom’s house. It felt so good to be home. It felt so familiar and safe and she couldn’t help the smile that crossed her face. The only thing that made her a little sad was that all of the lights were off and the windows were closed. When she and her sister had still lived at home, all the lights would have been on and music would have been blasting through the open windows.
Finally, Blue opened his eyes and a smile crossed his face as he recognized Chelsea’s childhood home. Her key still worked and the door swung easily open. Her house smelled like she remembered, but it looked different. It was half-packed and empty-looking. There were half-filled boxes and other boxes filled to the brim with scarves and jewelry dangling over the sides. Chelsea looked at the boxes forlornly, she didn’t want her mother to move out of this house; she didn’t want Terrance for a stepdad.
“Come on,” she said, taking Blue by the hand and led him into the kitchen. She cleared a chair for him and as he sat down she grabbed an ice pack from the fridge and wrapped it in a towel before pressing it gently over Blue’s eyes.
“No steak?” Blue asked ruefully.
“Does the steak on the black eye thing really work?” Chelsea asked.
“It always worked for me,” Blue responded.
Chelsea began to rifle through the cabinets until she found her mother’s emergency stash of whiskey. She poured her and Blue glasses before sitting down across from him. They sat in silence, sipping their drinks as the awkwardness grew between them.
“You’re really not going to tell me what that was all about?” Chelsea asked.
“Chels,” Blue said, and he stopped himself, shaking his head for a moment before continuing, “I don’t want to involve you in that.”
“In what?” Chelsea asked. “I’m not a little kid, Blue. You don’t have to hide things from me or protect me.”
He smiled ruefully and then said, “I do need to protect you from this. It’s not some high school vendetta. It’s a lot bigger than that.”
“Is it drugs?” Chelsea asked. She couldn’t image what it was that it would have Blue scared. He was so strong and confident and he had been to war; she couldn’t imagine anything could scare him.
“No,” he said, shaking his head.
“You’re really gonna make me guess?” Chelsea asked. “Just tell me, Blue. You can talk to me; you always could.” Chelsea reached out and grabbed the hand that was resting on the table. She squeezed it and didn’t let go. She was willing to wait; she would sit at this table all night if that was what it took. “Does it have something to do with your dad?” she asked quietly.
Terrance DeMarco had always been this big unspoken thing that hovered over Blue’s life. When they had been kids Blue had never let Chelsea come to his house, he had never said one nice thing about his father, and Chelsea had always suspected that there was something bad and rotten about Terrance DeMarco.
“I knew you liked me back in high school,” Blue said putting down the ice pack and looking over at Chelsea. “I liked you, too, but I didn’t do anything about it because I was worried that something might happen to you. I was worried that if my dad knew I liked you he would try and use you to get to me. I thought that if he knew how much I liked you he would know how much it would hurt if anything happened to you. He’s not a good guy, Chelsea. He’s really not.”
There were tears in Chelsea’s eyes and she couldn’t stop them as they tipped over her eyelashes and down her cheek. Her jaw ached from holding back her sobs. It hadn’t all been in her head. She remembered shared looks as they walked down the street late at night, how Blue always found her at parties and at lunch at school. There had been so many moments when they had been so close to kissing, but then something had pulled him away. He had wanted her as much as she had wanted him. But Terrance had kept them apart.
“What did he do?” Chelsea asked, choking back tears.
“He’s a betting man. It started with cards and then moved to sports. One day his bookie told him about the sport that real men bet on. It wasn’t baseball or football; it was fights. They were off the radar and underground; there were no referees or penalties just two men in the ring and the last one standing wins. My father liked the fights; he liked them a lot. But then he became frustrated with the fighters. He thought they were too weak, they didn’t train hard enough, and they quit too early. So he started training me. I had my first match at fifteen, but I didn’t win one for three months.
For three months I marched into that ring and got the shit kicked out of me. But my dad wouldn’t let me quit, so it was either get better or die. Then I grew a couple of inches and baby fat turned into muscle and then I got really good. I fought for years in those pits. That’s where my father made all of the money he used to open his own shop. He made a mint from the bets and the ticket sales and I never saw any of it. I fought for years and there were men who didn’t walk out of the ring; they were carried out and it didn’t look like they were breathing. My father would never tell me what happened to them. It got bad, it kept me up and night and I knew I couldn’t do it anymore. So the day I turned eighteen I packed a bag and joined the military. I haven’t been back since.”