He could barely contain his eye roll. “Give me a fucking break.”
“It’s true.”
“Yes, well, again, I shouldn’t be surprised. I mean, this has been going on ever since you showed up in my back yard with a bloody nose, like some fucking abandoned dog that didn’t have anywhere to go. Do you remember how my mother fucking babied you? It was disgusting. But you didn’t care. You just waltzed right in there and made yourself at home. You think I wanted you there all the time? You think I liked suddenly having this pseudo brother around, this kid that could do everything better than I could?”
“Um . . .”
But he wasn’t interested in hearing a single thing I had to say. “Remember how she took us to baseball tryouts when we were in sixth grade? How you didn’t even like baseball? You weren’t even interested in playing, but you went along with it because my mother was excited and thought that we both wanted to try out. So she goes out and gets you all the shit, the glove, the cleats, the fucking stirrups. And then we have tryouts, and who makes the fucking team? Do you even remember that?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I made the team. And you’re right—I didn’t want to play, but I did because your mother liked baseball so much.”
Jonathan shook his head. “Of course that’s what you’d remember. What you don’t remember is the fact that I tried out too, and I didn’t fucking make it!”
“You did?”
I tried to recall the memory of tryouts, but I couldn’t. Jonathan hadn’t been there though, had he? “I thought you didn’t even like baseball.”
“That’s what I started telling everyone after the fact, so it wouldn’t seem so pathetic. That here you were, the person who had probably never even picked up a bat, other than maybe a fucking whiffle ball bat, and you make the team, and I don’t. Do you know how many lawns I mowed and driveways I shoveled to earn enough money to buy my glove? But my mom just runs out and gets you one—before you even tried out! It was like she knew. I guess everyone just knows.”
“Jonathan.” I didn’t know what to say, though. I didn’t know if he was really telling me the truth, or if he was just making all this up in an attempt to make me feel bad. He wouldn’t even look at me. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I really had no idea about all of that stuff. If I had known that you were so into baseball, then I wouldn’t have tried out! I just did it because your mom kept talking about it. If you had told me that you didn’t want me to try out, then I wouldn’t have.”
“I wanted you to try out,” he said after a minute.
“But—I thought you just said you didn’t—”
“No, I did, actually. I wanted you to try out, and I wanted to be the one to make the team, and you didn’t. Or we both made the team but I was a starter, and you weren’t. I just wanted to be better than you. I wanted you to know that there were some things that I could do better than you could, that you didn’t always get to the one who came out on top. And same with Daisy. I knew that you’d think she was hot, but I thought we really had this connection. And I thought it would just really tick you off if I got the girl and you didn’t.”
“Holy shit,” I said. “So you’re basically telling me your entire existence is to get back at me? I mean, it sounds like you really hate my fucking guts, Jonathan. How have you been able to stand the fact that we see each other all the time? That we work together?”
“It hasn’t always been easy,” he said. “And I don’t hate you, Ian. I don’t want you to think that. But no one has ever made me feel more . . . shitty and inferior about my life than you have, and you don’t even realize it. I guess I just wanted one thing to work out for me, and not for you. But that doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen after all.”
“Do you want to hit me?”
“Of course I want to fucking hit you.”
“Then go ahead.”
He gave me a suspicious look. “I thought you said you didn’t want to fight.”
“I don’t. But if you want to hit me, if you think that might make you feel better, then go ahead.” I’d always considered Jonathan a friend. No, we didn’t see eye to eye on everything, and we had different interests, but we’d known each other for so long, and we’d been through a lot. It hurt to think that the whole thing had been a façade, that he’d just been biding his time, wanting to get back at me for something I didn’t even realize that I was doing.
“You’re saying I can hit you.”
“Yeah. Wherever you want. Well, maybe not the balls. Go on. Punch me in the face if you want. I’m ready.”
He didn’t say anything right away, and I thought he wasn’t going to do it. At least I had offered.
But then he spun around and caught me right on the cheekbone with a thunderous right hook. Any harder and my cheekbone probably would have cracked; as it was my head snapped to the side and I felt something in my neck pop, though that sensation wasn’t entirely unpleasant. The whole left side of my face though, felt like it was on fire. A giant pulsing white hot fire. My initial instinct had been to fight back, but I clenched my jaw and stood there, not doing anything. My eye started to water. Jonathan flexed and released his fist.
“Jesus,” I said, half-expecting him to jump on me and start hitting me again, but he didn’t. “That’s some fucking arm you got there.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’ve been working out, remember? That’s where I met Daisy.”
Touche.
“Thanks, though,” he said. “That did make me feel a little bit better.”
“Well,” I said, bringing my hand up to the side of my face and gingerly touching my cheek. “Now that you’ve got that out of your system . . .”