Brett

 

Seeing Grace enjoying time with her sister did something to me. I felt it deep, the tug back toward the true heart of our lifetime together. Family, friends, the real connections that mean something in this world.

I left them alone for some chat time, hoping it would help Grace to find herself again in this chaos. That maybe an ear from someone who knew her both at her best and her worst would be enough to drag her out of this bullshit insecurity I felt from her but couldn’t reach.

I really did plan to throw myself into pending paperwork, but behind the quiet of the reception desk I found myself brewing with bullshit insecurities of my own.

That’s when it really hit me — the truth of all this. How deep our issues were already running before Heath ever stepped through this door. This stuff in us was already festering there in the half light, running riot through our days long before he’d ever offered us a financial lifeline.

It’s always so easy to pin the blame on someone outside and hate them for your own shortcomings. That’s one of the things my dad taught me young. One of the things he believed in.

It’s always you, son. People can be shit bags and assholes, but our failures are always our own. Own them, change them, demand more from yourself than a pat on the back and a better luck next time.

I missed him. Missed both his praise and his criticism, even if I’d never have believed the latter while he was still around.

Had he really been gone so long that I’d forgotten the mindset he’d drummed into me since the the very first day he’d joined Mum and me at our dining table?

I found it hard to believe that a couple of years could be enough of a turning point, but it was true. I had forgotten the wisdom I’d lived by when I was a boy. I wouldn’t be in this mess if I hadn’t.

Heath had been such a beacon of hate for me, right from the first moment he’d slapped his filthy offer on our bar top. Not so very long ago I’d have laughed him off as a joker and not given a toss for his dirty cash.

Desperation had made me a weaker man than the one I expected to face me in the mirror each morning, but that didn’t mean desperation was the only road ahead.

I gave myself a moment, wishing I could pick up the phone and call my dad just to hear his voice and ask him to drum his solid words right into me.

My mum was the next best choice.

I’d been avoiding calling her for way too long, holding back the point I’d finally have to admit my host of fucking failures over here. She greeted me with a hello that sounded half in shock, and the weirdest lump was in my throat as I forced out the words.

“Mum, sorry I haven’t called. I’ve been busy.”

I couldn’t lie, not to her. When she asked about the hotel, I told her we were still on our knees. When she asked about Grace, I told her I was worried I was down on my knees there too.

And she did it, right when it was needed. She stepped into my old man’s shoes and said it right how it needed saying.

“This isn’t you, Brett. Isn’t who you are. Isn’t who you were raised to be.”

I nodded as that lump in my throat notched up a gear.

“What if it is?” I asked her. “What if I’m not up to fighting all this shit and coming out on top?”

“Then you dig down deep and give your all until you don’t have another breath left to fight it.”

“It’s not like that,” I said. “This isn’t crap I can face down and take on head to head. It’s bigger than that, harder than that.”

“It’s always like that,” she said right back, and I heard him there. Heard the soul of him right through hers. “You’re making excuses for putting off the inevitable. You fight, you win, or you give your all trying.”

It felt good to choke down my sadness and set my jaw the way I’d always set it.

She couldn’t see me nod, but I knew she felt it. I needed to make my way over to see her, living up north in a nice plush pad with her sister. I hoped she was happy. That maybe she’d even met someone new after all those years with my dad at her side. Now wasn’t the time to ask, so I didn’t. Just as it had never been the time to ask her for a bail out like Grace had with her sister.

I’d be washed up on the streets before I ever plunged the depths enough to crawl to my mum for a hand out. My dad would turn in his grave at the thought.

“You let me know how you’re doing,” she said, and I grunted an affirmation.

“I’ll let you know when I’m winning.”

“Or when you’ve given your all, Brett. I’m your mum. My door’s always open.”

I knew she meant well, but her words fired me up deep. She’d never said that before, that she was ready and waiting to pick me up from failure. My gut spat at the thought she was expecting me to come up short this time. That the pressures of a shitty business down the road and some smarmy cunt from London were too much for me to take.

She didn’t know about the details. Didn’t even know Heath existed, but that didn’t matter. She’d heard enough of it in my voice to paint a picture.

And that picture was mine.

Our failures are always our own. Own them, change them, demand more from yourself than a pat on the back and a better luck next time.

If Mum was hearing my own insecurities that loud from a hundred-mile distance after months of silence, how loud was Grace hearing them every day at my side?

No wonder that prick had taken her to places I never had. He was bristling with his own fight, battling my festering insecurities with a confidence way beyond anyone’s I’d ever seen.

He’d owned her, just like he’d owned me, charging me down on a field I hadn’t even known we were playing on. I barely even knew there was a ball in his hands until it was already in the net behind me.

Fuck him, but fuck me more.

None of it was too fucking much to take. Not a shitty rival down the coast, and not a shitty rival from the city.

If only I knew how to contact the fucker I’d face him right down for a rematch. Summon him back onto my turf and this time I’d own it.

I knew I was flaring like a bull-headed bastard, well beyond all fucking rational reason as I contemplated coming up trumps against Thomas Heath and whatever pathetic beef he had to grind out with me. I knew it likely had as much to do with the hard on in my pants every morning as it did the jockish call to slam his face in the dirt and call touchdown with my head held high.

But I knew it now. Knew a rematch was on the cards and always had been.

He’d always wanted back here, even if the cunt was as ignorant as I’d been, which I doubted. From that very moment he rocked on up with his proposal, it was always about something more.

The business card on the counter was every bit of a testament to his true fucking intentions, and fighter Brett would never have tossed that fancy-fonted little card in the kitchen trash.

Fighter Brett would have called him right up and told him to bring his game to an even playing field. No dirty cash, no stupid red lines, no shitty fucking nine-hour window.

Maybe I’d look him up.

It didn’t take long to decide that I would do, just as soon as I was done with the pile of crappy customer registration forms I’d need for the morning.

It was when I tugged the desk drawer open with more force than necessary that that same pathetic fancy-fonted little business card slipped out from its jammed in place between the parking receipts.

I didn’t know whether to smile or frown as I turned it over and over in my outstretched palm and goosebumps prickled my skin.

Maybe Dad really was up there, watching over me and demanding I dive back into the game, no matter how fucking sordid the game was.

But there was no doubt about it, not after the business card’s miraculous sneaky rescue from the trash, not even for a fucking heartbeat.

My pretty little wife was demanding I dive back into the game too.